by Judith Curry
The story surrounding Richard Muller is providing some interesting insights into the psycho-dynamics of climate change science.
I find the story surrounding Richard Muller interesting for several reasons, at the end of the post I will provide my own analysis. Here are some recent articles that I have found to be interesting or insightful.
climatedenial.org
Climate change denial is a blog that explores the topic of climate change denial. The article The irresistable story of Richard Muller provides the title for this post. Some excerpts:
We are far more inspired by narratives that speak to our social values than data that mumbles to our intellectual reasoning. This is why the most powerful storylines have, since the earliest recorded tales, been those with identifiable protagonists clearly representing opposing sides, with sequential events leading to a denouement that confirms social rules.
Here at last we have the narrative ingredients we needed all along: an individual protagonist and the human drama of one man’s personal struggle that leads him to cross sides in the interests of the truth.
Changing sides is potent content for stories: just think of the movies on this theme? There are countless whistleblower films such as The Informer, Silkwood,, The Firm, Serpico in which the hero discovers information that compels them to turn against powerful bureaucracies (big tobacco, the nuclear industry, a lawfirm, the NYPD respectively).
But in many ways a more interesting analogue for Professor Muller is with the stories about people who have an internal change brought on by moral conflict. For example Schindlers List or – one of my favourites- Angels with Dirty Faces. In the world of documentary this theme is captured in Marjoe or The Fog of War.
He also directly plays to the iconic image of the scientist searching for truth. He writes” It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly sceptical. Science is that narrow realm of knowledge that, in principle, is universally accepted. I embarked on this analysis to answer questions that, to my mind, had not been answered”.
What is interesting in Muller’s opinion piece in yesterday’s New York Times is that the way he tells the story is shaped so knowingly by these narrative expectations. In his very first line: “Call me a converted skeptic” he infers a Damascene conversion. Later on he adds a dramatic flourish when he refers to “my total turnaround, in such a short time”.
Although the general public has a conception of the ‘Ur-Scientist’ as a polymath egghead at home among the bubbling retorts in any lab, professional scientists are usually very respectful of disciplinary boundaries and don’t assume that they have the authority to challenge the expertise of scientists in other areas. However Muller freely assumes that authority despite his lack of any expertise in climatology or atmospheric physics.
In an excellent study on the psychology of prominent climate change sceptics Dr. Myanna Lahsen of the University of Colorado observes that many of them have, like Muller, a background in theoretical physics.
Lahsen draws on anthropological studies to argue that physics, especially theoretical physics, has an internal culture that encourages “self confidant style of self-presentation and an inclination to discount techno-scientific risks and to approach even highly complex scientific problems with confidence”.
In her study Lahsen interviews three physicists who were among the highest profile climate skeptics : Frederick Seitz, William Happer and William Neirenberg.
Not only does Muller share the same discipline, but they have all sat at various times on the JASON Defense Advisory Group a small and highly confidential panel of scientific experts that reports directly to the Pentagon. [The JASONs have] a shared sense of its right to challenge people in other disciplines and has a strong propensity to challenge climate science.
This network also has its own narratives and storylines. Lahsen suggests, drawing on her interviews, that their position on climate change has been formed, in part, by their sense of diminishing personal influence in government and resentment that their authority has been undermined by the rise of oppositional progressive movements. Although they argue that their challenge to climate science is grounded in legitimate scientific scepticism, Lahsen puts a coherent and persuasive argument that it is more informed by their own cultural narrative about power and progress.
The power of the ‘I changed my mind’ narrative is highlighted in this article by Tom Chivers: Climate change and confirmation bias – what would it take to change your mind? Its a good article, I recommend reading it, but not too much that is directly relevant to Muller.
Nature blogs on Muller etc.
Nature blogs has a (surprisingly) even handed and insightful article entitled Amidst criticism, Berkeley Earth extends record, upholds findings. I find this interesting in the sense that this is the most honestly reflective I’ve seen Nature in one of its op-eds on climate change, giving serious consideration to points made by skeptics. Has Muller’s self-identification as a skeptic elevated the credibility of other skeptics? Excerpts:
The basic notion that greenhouse gases causes global warming is hardly newsworthy, and the study has been by and large treated as such within the climate community. But some are once again questioning the way Muller and his team have gone about their work as well as the conclusions they are drawing. University of Georgia climatologist Judith Curry, who was a co-author on the prior studies but declined to sign her name to the latest, offered a lengthy criticism on her blog. Although the temperature record itself is useful, she asks this question: If determining attribution is as simple as comparing a couple of curves, why is everybody else wasting their time with sophisticated modelling and analyses?
Many scientists have questioned his tendency to seek publicity before going through the peer-review process, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory climatologist Benjamin Santer, quoted today in the Los Angeles Times:
“I think you can do great harm to the broader debate. Imagine this scenario: that he makes these great claims and the papers aren’t published? This (op-ed) is in the spirit of publicity, not the spirit of science.”
And as it happens, there are already questions floating around about exactly this possibility.
Responding to an inquiry from Nature, Elizabeth Muller confirmed that McKitrick reviewed the urban heat island paper and that the paper was technically rejected the first time around. Muller declined to release information about the timing of the peer review process.
It’s hard to know what to make of all this. In the end we’ll have to wait for the peer review process to run its course. But climate skeptics have already seized on the news, and it is unlikely they will let go.
Progressive radio
The Progressive Radio Network interviewed Muller: I would have to say that it doesn’t look like Muller will become a ‘darling’ of the progressives anytime soon. From a post on the Brad blog, subitled:
Skeptical believer: The unapologetic physicist takes shots at colleague Michael Mann and Al Gore; offers unsupported assertions about the debunked ‘Climategate’; calls for conservation and ‘clean fracking’; stands by charge that most global warming concerns are ‘exaggerated’. . .
Read Brad’s article, its entertaining and interesting (I didn’t listen to the entire interview).
Carbon brief
The Carbon Brief has an extensive interview with Muller, which provides some insights. Excerpts:
Professor Muller’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing since his op-ed in the New York Times over the weekend, where he stated that BEST’s new research has answered his own doubts about whether humans are causing global warming. His self-described conversion to the mainstream scientific view linking human activity to climate change has captured the imagination of a media often wary of reporting on climate change.
Yet the story in the press – describing a ‘skeptic’s’ Damascene conversion – doesn’t seem to make sense. In fact, in his 2009 book Physics for Future Presidents, Muller doesn’t question the fundamentals of climate science, or indeed that humans are contributing to the greenhouse effect.
Asked if it’s really accurate to say he was ever a skeptic, Muller replies: “I have considered myself only to be a properly skeptical scientist. Some people have called me a denier – no, that’s completely wrong. If anything, I was agnostic.
But discovering his findings agreed with the scientists at the heart of the so-called Climategate leak hasn’t led Muller to soften his view of what he calls the “scientific misconduct” uncovered. He says: “As scientists, we have to be completely open with our data. The UK group purposefully hid the discordant data, and they did it in order to make sure that people drew the same conclusions that they drew. To me, that’s misconduct.”
Such a volume of criticism from sceptics and the mainstream alike may not be what Muller had in mind when he said in 2011 that he hoped the BEST project would help ” cool the debate” between the two sides.
But Muller believes BEST will win through in the end. “I don’t think anybody who has responded in the media so far has actually studied our work. We don’t expect immediate agreement on such things,” he says.
He adds: “What we expect is that by being transparent, open and clear. By having the data online and the computer programmes so people can see precisely what we did, that – over the coming weeks and maybe months – that gradually the debate will be cooled and people will recognise what it is we really did. And that we will forge a scientific consensus – that we will help with that.”
Muller says: “I think that many of the skeptics are, indeed, open-minded. But until they really look at what we did they properly should remain skeptics, and not be convinced by an op-ed piece.”
Although he’s clearly not banking on change coming overnight, Muller might still be accused of over-confidence in the scope for agreement in the polarised climate debate. But he’s not waiting around. In the meantime, he has big plans – to develop BEST’s remit to include measurements of ocean temperature and a study of ocean currents. One BEST paper on ocean currents has already been accepted and is awaiting publication, he says.
Meanwhile Elizabeth Muller, Professor Muller’s daughter and the co-founder of the BEST project, is interested in “starting a new section to look at policy,” Professor Muller says, to examine “in an objective scientific manner what can be done”. She says the idea is to focus on policy that could have an impact on future greenhouse gas emissions. These policies, she says, must be “low cost, cost-neutral or, ideally, profitable.” Two examples she lays out in an op-ed article in the San Francisco Chronicle are clean fracking – making extracting unconventional natural gas greener – and energy efficiency.
This new direction – no matter how transparent the work – raises the possibility of a conflict between scientific objectivity and advocacy. Instead of cooling the debate, it’s likely to raise new questions about science’s place in society. But whether you like that or not, it appears BEST is here to stay.
The Guardian reprints this article with the title: ‘There’s plenty of room for scepticism’ – climate study author Richard Muller.
Muller on Curry
This text appeared in the Carbon Brief interview:
One of the strongest voices criticising the study comes from the BEST team itself. Dr Judith Curry, head of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, declined to be a co-author on the latest BEST study, and says on her blog she does not “see any justification in [BEST’s] argument for” the group’s statement that its warming data fits with manmade carbon dioxide. Curry’s not alone: former climate scientist William Connolley claims BEST has done “none of the attribution work you’d expect”.
Muller says Curry distanced herself from the paper because she disagrees with the findings, and that she has an alternative theory – that the climate is random, so any correlation between increases in carbon dioxide and warming is an accident. His response: “‘I’ve said to her that the unfortunate aspect of her theory is that it’s untestable. Now a theory that’s untestable is not something I consider to be a theory.”
No one who frequents this blog has ever seen me refer to climate as ‘random’. I have an email discussion with Muller, who said he used the word ‘random’ in the interview since it is more easily understood by the public. He has read my post Trends, Changepoints, and Hypotheses. Re the climate shifts hypothesis, he is concerned that it is not testable. I argued that it is just as testable as the other two hypotheses, and observations are not currently sufficient to distinguish between these three hypotheses.
JC’s analysis
In the context of getting away from the consensus to power approach for decision making (see my draft consensus paper) and concerns about groupthink, we need more individual voices assessing the science in ways that are relevant to the science policy interface. Yes, there is already a cacophony of voices especially on the internet. But Muller is establishing a unique position in the climate ‘pundit ecosystem.’
A key aspect of uniqueness lies in the status of Muller and his team as elite physicists (team member Saul Perlmutter received this year’s Nobel Prize in physics) Lahsen’s article (referred to in the climatedenial piece) provides some insights into the historical role of elite physicists at the science-policy interface, particularly in context of the JASONs. The JASONs evaluate a broad range of science and technical topics that are policy relevant (particularly. In the 1990’s I twice made presentations to the JASONs in context of the DOE ARM program’s proposed activities in the Arctic. Lahsen describes a characteristic overconfidence of the JASONs, which is something that often gets Muller into trouble in his statements about climate research.
Muller has tied his contribution to an extensive research project that is pushing the standards of open/transparent research in the climate field. This openness/transparency is critical in a postnormal situation and is especially appreciated by the public.
Based upon my interactions with Muller, I am convinced that wants to bring the highest scientific standards to climate science. He isn’t bothered by my disagreements with their papers or his statements, he regards that as part of the needed dynamic. Maybe he should listen a bit more closely to me :) but his independence is his trademark. If he is wrong, I think he will admit he is wrong, rather than protect something that is wrong (this remains to be seen in terms of the reactions to his papers once they are published). The team is listening to input and critiques from a broad range of people, from scientists both inside and outside the climate field, as well as skeptics and auditors who have become known in the climate blogosphere.
A key difference between Muller and others that are trying to establish themselves as pundits at the climate science-policy interface is Muller’s substantial success at raising funds. In discussing this with one of the other team members at the AGU meeting last fall, apparently Muller has always been successful at raising funds for basic research.
He’s a colorful personality and he speaks his mind. He is rather brilliant at marketing his team and at communicating to the public. Muller is some sort of litmus test for extremists on both sides of the debate: people on both sides are concerned that he is playing into the hands of the other ‘side’. And some scientists seem resentful of Muller’s emerging high profile in the climate science debate.
So, is Muller’s primary interest in the science, or in establishing himself in a position of power at the climate science/policy interface? The press releases and op-eds suggest the latter. Muller and his team have made an important contribution by establishing the data set and in the transparency and openness of the data; it remains to be seen whether the team will make a fundamental scientific contribution to our understanding of climate change. The jury is still out on this, but since the project has been underway for only a little more than two years, I would say that they have accomplished a lot (whereby ‘accomplishment’ is broadly defined).
Apart from the personalities, I like the idea of ‘elite physicists’ taking a look at climate science. I also like the openness and transparency. And I like the independence associated with funding from a broad range of sources. Muller has a power narrative, and he knows how to tell his story to great effect. Here is a quote from Galileo that I am using in the consensus paper: “In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”
And finally, some advice to Muller from a dedicated student of the dynamics of the climate science/policy interface (moi): Don’t overplay your hand. This means not being overconfident of your own findings, and making sure you are thoroughly versed in the existing climate science literature so that you can provide context for your own findings, avoid traps, and not reinvent old wheels.
As summarized in the Carbon Brief: “But whether you like that or not, it appears BEST is here to stay.“
human drama of one man’s personal struggle that leads him to cross sides in the interests of the truth? I am aghast.
The currently popular description of Muller as a former sceptic who changed sides appears ludicrous to me.
In his book Physics for Future Presidents, 2008, Muller devotes pages 247-346 to “global warming”, and within these 100 pages I found no evidence of skepticism.
IMHO, his only claim to “skepticism” is his derivsive dismissal of Michael Mann and others involved in “hide the decline” (which you can find on YouTube). This is not skepticism of AGW, is is skepticism of a particular paper and the actions of a few.
one of the articles uses the term ‘skeptical believer’, which i think is a better characterization of Muller
Surprised at you choosing a post title spelt wrongly. It’s “irresistible” (even in the US).
The message is correct, simon:
The public conversion of UC-Berkeley Professor Richard Muller into a preacher of unscientific AGW dogma as “truth” bears little or no resemblance to the conversion of the Saul into Paul on the road to Damascus.
This appears to be PR (public relations) carefully wrapped in a sheep-skin of HD (human drama) that will not help the reputation of AGW proponents any more than the phony Nobel Prize did, but it will diminish the reputation of UC-Berkeley.
Deceitful PR planted the seeds of Climategate in the ashes of Hiroshima in 1945. One astute former employee of BBC**, George Orwell, correctly predicted the impact on society of giving citizens misinformation disguised as scientific “truth.”
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/
Professor Curry gave sage advice to the climate researcher who “has been always been successful at raising funds”: “Don’t overplay your hand.”
The rest of the story: http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-720
– Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
http://www.omatumr.com
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/
**Perhaps George Orwell’s wife, Eileen, deserves some credit. She died in late March 1945. She had worked in the Censorship Department in London during WWII.
Thank you, Oliver, for standing for good PR and behind the scientific virtues, which also correspond to our future children’s most cherished asset: truthful and honest communication.
Prof Muller seems to doing a lot of interviews recently.. this eatrcatis quite interesting.. not leting up on climategate, hide the decline, etc)
article and I belive audio of full interview here.
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9453
“Incredibly, Muller asserted that “Climategate” was not a settled issue, and that the scientists involved were found to have “hidden” data. (He also asserted, without evidence to support it, that the “controversial” e-mails at the center of the pseudo-scandal were intentionally “leaked by a member of the team,” rather than hacked. He claims that “most people” believe that to be the case, though he was unable or unwilling to back up that element of his charge either.) I pointed out that eight different investigations all found that no data manipulation took place; he asserted that temperature data had been “hidden”, not manipulated. When I asked if “hiding” data was not a form of manipulation, he gave a muddled non-answer (though he made sure to get in some particularly nasty, and seemingly personal, shots at acclaimed Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann).”
Muller was skeptical that the warming was as great as what others were showing because he found fault with their methods. He used different methods and got nearly the same results. Arriving at the same place through a different route is strong corroborating evidence.
It depends on what you mean by sceptic. Questioning that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has an effect on the energy balance is questioning physics that is 150 years old and exhaustively tested. It is not being sceptical, it is living in denial. Questioning that man has increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, primarily through the combustion of fossil fuels, is a failure to apply the law of conservation of matter, and represents a disconnect from reality. If you mean a sceptic is someone who does not believe the consensus view of 2-4.5 K warming per doubling of CO2 equivalent, I could go along with that.
In any event, a rose is still a rose no matter what you call it. Attempting to sideline the debate by making claims about how to pigeon-hole Dr Muller does not move the discussion forward.
Because Steven Chu has provided such a good role model? Far as I can see, the level of someone’s scientific credentials have no bearing at all on their ability to assess climate science. Some of the worst offenders are among the most elite scientists …
w.
So we are supposed to listen to stupid people about science rather than the intelligent ones? The issue you are concerned with is behavior of scientists at the science/policy interface, that is a separate issue.
No, but the last quantum physicist who had any clue how to work with anything practical was Feynman. They don’t make them like him any more, and even when they did, he was still a rare gem.
How do you suppose the Challenger investigation would have turned out if Chu was in charge?
This reminds me of a quote from Alice Cooper, if I can find it somewhere on the internet. It was something to the effect that people shouldn’t be getting political advice from rock start any more than you should be getting investment advice from them. I remember something in there about stars being idiots.
The problem with somebody like Chu isn’t that he’s an idiot, he simply doesn’t have the background to be making what boil down to engineering and economic/accounting decisions. Obama went for celebrity (because he has a Nobel) instead of someone with some real engineering background.
The reason why the US Manhattan project was so successful was partly due to the fact that Oppenheimer was one of these practical minded Feynmanesque scientists, but just as much, if not more so, it was because, unlike the Germans and Soviets, the US program has a two-star general from the Army Corps actually running the logistics, and freeing Oppenheimer to deal with the science. What’s not widely known is that in actual fact, Oppenhiemer was hired by and reported to Gen. Groves, not the other way around. It worked spectacularly. If Oppenheimer had to handle the administrative tasks in addition to the scientific tasks, it would have been as big a failure as Heisenberg’s program.
The religion of Feynman, how quaint.
I’m with Judith on this. Muller is a valuable addition, for the reasons given in the main post, not least the ability to win funds. (Talking of which I liked how Muller defended Koch’s hands-off approach having funding BEST in some TV interview as well. Smart in terms of winning more grants but also I think true. The whole story tells me he’s not tribal.)
Dr Curry’s warnings to Muller should also be heeded. As for Willis, he surely has much still to contribute – more than a Nobel Laureate like Steven Chu no doubt. But Muller is a special case I think. He will as Judith says admit where he’s shown to be wrong. This could be real fun.
I like the way Muller’s biases and attachments are not perfectly correlated with either existing “camp,” thus giving him the potential to add non-redundant information to the discussion. Also that his ego makes him willing to criticize the likes of the “award-winning” Mann in blunt terms that Mann’s colleagues were only willing to do in private emails behind his back. Not buying him on attribution, though, and McKitrick’s referee report scored some direct hits on the rural/urban adjustment process.
With you on all that Steve. Oh for more non-redundant information in my own grey matter on this subject :)
I do look forward to the day that Muller admits that he is wrong. That will be a grand day. Earth temperature and sea level are on course to prove that he is wrong. I doubt it will take very many more years of lack of additional warming and lack of additional sea level rise.
What we need the greatest care in doing is to avoid listening unquestioningly to educated and expert, but stupid, people. Substitute stupid with any of agenda-driven (Liz Muller, the “Team”), foolish (Gleick), reckless (Muller), ambitious in the Shakespearean sense (Muller), out of their league (too many to name).
Many of our experts in climate research could not find work in other scientific endeavors because they are sloppy, naive as in believing they won’t get caught, and thoroughly unprofessional as seen in CGI and CGII. The one thing they seem to do well is to find even more corruptible people with money.
What difference does it make when the “intelligent people” have no more useful information to impart than the stupid ones?
Ah, but inability to distinguish useful information from idiocy is one of the characteristics of stupidity.
To be sure. The next question, of course, is whether there is any reason to believe the average climate scientist is significantly more able to make that distinction than the average plumber. If there is, I haven’t come across it yet.
> So we are supposed to listen to stupid people about science rather than the intelligent ones?
Even stupid people can be right.
…more by accident than design
…which may the case for intelligent ones too.
yes, although possibly not as often
> Know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It’s 25 hits. 25 hits in 500 at bats is 50 points, okay? There’s 6 months in a season, that’s about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week – just one – a gorp… you get a groundball, you get a groundball with eyes… you get a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week… and you’re in Yankee Stadium.
[Crash Davis]
Dr. Curry,
Its neither/nor case!
If BEST is here to stay, what IS the actual status of the peer review process? Do you have any pertinent information on this?
Because unless that minor matter is settled to proper satisfaction sometime soon [right now we know that McKitrick turned it down in review and you removed your name] we will be stuck with a supposedly bona fide paper that is getting lots of coverage for climate political reasons, but which in fact is in the “pre-published”/”withdrawn”/”to be corrected-to be re-submitted” league of e.g. Gergis, Karoly, et. al.
At Chu’s level you either tow the company line or resign.
The ‘elected principal’ decides what he/she wants the policy to be and how he/she believes the policy can best be sold to the public.
If the elected prinicipal decides that the best way to sell policy ‘X’ is by emphasizing that the sky is blue then every public statement the appointed official makes will refer to how blue the sky is.
The fact that someone manages to get elected to ‘high office’ almost by definition means they must be exceptionally good at salesmanship and exceptionally good at making judgements as to what policy preferences ‘the people’ have or that the people will accept.
Willis, that actually cuts both ways. A lot of elite scientists, such as Freeman Dyson, line up on the skeptical side. The problem with Chu is that he was there for the taking by the political people doing the picking for their own reasons, and he fit right in with the zeitgeist of the administration.
Watch Romney pick somebody like Lindzen, and the other side will be howling “foul” faster than you can say moonbat. It’s all a question of whose ox is being Gored.
The plain truth is that Dr. Chu accomplishes more before breakfast than Willis Eschenbach has in his entire misspent life. It’s sad and pathetic that agenda-driven, science-illiterate blowhards like Willis think that anyone cares that they heap abuse on scientists, as though people looked to them for guidance in assessing success (or personal integrity).
I’m trying, but I can’t think of a way I could disagree with your assessment more, Robert. I challenge you. Name some of these things Chu does before breakfast. We’ll look over Eschenbach’s CV and weigh the relative merits. Your first sentence is completely, wholly and absolutely factually incorrect, not that that matters to people like you. I say this as someone who often disagrees with Willis.
Robert,
The plain truth is that Dr. Chu accomplishes more before breakfast than Robert yourself has in your entire misspent life. Willis may have accomplished more before breakfast than Dr Chu has in his entire misspent life. Time will tell the truth.
“The currently popular description of Muller as a former sceptic who changed sides appears ludicrous to me.”
It is ludicrous. His own words put the lie to this claim over and over again. Judith, you’re too generous.
Try not to be such a sore loser. Occasionally a “skeptic” is going to break down and face facts. It’s an occupational hazard. This revisionist story just communicates how devastated you are your idol has failed you.
Please let me point out that the BEST analysis does not require ‘elite physics’ skills. If anything, the BEST analysis is mathematically and physically pedestrian (albeit well-planned, scrupulously implemented, and entirely transparent).
By way of contrast, a canonical example of genuinely “elite physics” skills, as applied to urgent societal concerns, is presented in John von Neumann’s Discussion on the existence and uniqueness or multiplicity of solutions of the aerodynamical equation (1949). In consequence of its historical significance, this article was recently reprinted in the Journal of the American Mathematical Society, accompanied by a commentary by Denis Serre titled Von Neumann’s comments about existence and uniqueness for the initial-boundary value problem in gas dynamics.
These von Neumann articles have dry math-and-physics titles, but their 1949 audience appreciated their immensely juicy societal implications: supersonic jet aircraft and intercontinental ballistic missiles, both carrying fission/fusion nuclear weapons.
Relative to the standard of mathematical and scientific quality for “elite physics” that was set by John von Neumann and his colleagues in 1940s and 1950s, the BEST analysis of Muller and his colleagues is very far from “elite physics by elite physicists” … and it seems highly unlikely that Richard Miller or anyone else on the BEST team, would claim for themselves that label.
Conclusion Let’s have no more talk about “elite” BEST physics/physicists, because the history of physics does not adequately support that terminology. A simple “high-quality BEST analysis” is accurate and entirely adequate to the case. :) :) :)
Climate science doesn’t need von Neumann’s sophistication but it does need the honesty and independence of mind of a Feynmann or a Dyson. My hunch all along has been that Muller has it, in a way that the current IPCC cartel doesn’t. That’s all that matters.
“My hunch . . . [is] all that matters.”
You should put that on your stationary.
Why not put it on yours and send it to me, so that I know exactly who you are, who chops whole clauses to make one sentence out of two and completely change my meaning. What’s “all that matters” above is that Muller has the honesty and independence of a Feynman or Dyson. The evidence is starting to come in now. I’m happy to wait for it without further mention of my hunches.
it appears BEST is here to stay
Sure, but what does it mean? What is BEST? A temperature record, an imaginary attribution of climate change, or a “converted skeptic”?
BEST may be here to stay, and very welcome. But for the time being it is no more than a very minor player, pretending quite the opposite.
Muller has a power narrative, and he knows how to tell his story to great effect.
Sure, again. But being so happy deceiving with his “converted skeptic” strategy, you can tell what sort of “power narrative” you can expect. It’s not even an intelligent narrative. I don’t think any person with the minimum amount of critic perspective has taken the bait. Was he a skeptic? A skeptic of exactly what? Mann’s hockey stick? Al Gore’s movie? Come on!
It’s interesting how, for all that “skeptics” like to claim that everybody agrees that AGW is real, and we’re just arguing about the damage function — for all that, the standard that is applied to Muller is that he’s not/never was a skeptic unless he’s in full on radiative physics denial mode.
snap. see my parody comment below
If you think someone saying in 2003: -“my own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate” – is skeptical of IPCC’s narrative, I guess you can believe anything you like.
You illustrate my point. For whatever reason, Richard Muller’s opinions shifted over time. Your argument is that to be a skeptic, one must consistently and dogmatically expose the party line from birth to death. Otherwise you were never a “skeptic.”
Richard Muller has been and continues to be vehement in his attacks on the IPCC, “Climategate” and the case for mitigation. Digging into his past to cherry-pick heretical quotes echoes the Communist practice of “discovering” years or decades of sabotage and treason from party leaders newly out of favor.
Wow, read half a dozen posts of you without “denier denier denier” in them.
Are u feeling allright?
As has been pointed out above and elsewhere, Muller never was a skeptic. At least not until hide the decline. Going back to revalidate data is good. Except the US surface station QC used the wrong binning criteria, as Watts recently showed (and will likely continue to show one the vetting process is completed). The simple attribution of temperature rise (the degree of which now agaib in question) is just that, too simple. Our gracious hostess has pointed that out.
I conclude that part of the ‘reversal’ drama is just that. Deliberately theatrical drama that detracts rather than adds to the serious discussion of the science and it’s quality that needs to take place.
This is an entirely unscientific statement, not to mention, completely irrelevant in any meaningful way. It is gratuitous.
In fact, I think this description is very apt:
Keep in mind, that Anthony Watts along with untold climate blog “skeptics” frequently say that the definition of “skeptic” is people who don’t doubt that ACO2 could warm the climate, or that the Earth is warming, but that they question “consensus” estimates about the degree to which ACO2 has and will warm the climate.
Your definition of who is and isn’t a “skeptic,” Rud, along with that of many other combatants in the climate change junior high school lunchroom food fight, is a reflection of confirmation bias
There is no valid definition of who is or isn’t a “skeptic.” It becomes what people want it to become. Muller’s story is the absolutely perfect object lesson in that reality. Not in the sense of what he has or hasn’t said – but in how people react in response to what he does or doesn’t say.
Yep. There’s no official objective definition of what a climate skeptic is. Climate skeptics themselves have made sure of that.
The point is that the “conversion” narrative is false. He always believed the standard IPCC line, then Climategate got him worried that the Team and the CRU had screwed the pooch, then he launched BEST which he thinks let’s him happily return to his prior beliefs. It’s not an unworthy trajectory, but the dramatic conversion story is PR mythologizing.
Climate skeptics like Richard Muller don’t deny that climate changes. It always does. Neither do they deny the world has warmed or that man plays some role in this. What they question is how much warming man is responsible for and whether the temperature records are reliable.
After careful analysis Dr Muller is no longer a climate skeptic. He is now confident that the temperature records are giving us an accurate picture of global warming and that the warming is probably due to man.
Please read the claims made over and over about how Muller was never a “skeptic.” Then please read the first paragraph in lolwot’s post above (http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/04/the-irresistable-story-of-richard-muller/#comment-226025) and explain to me the logic of your thinking.
Is lolwot’s description above not consistent with how many “skeptics” describe the criteria that determine a “skeptic?” Seem like it to me.
Is lolwot’s description above not consistent with Muller’s view of global warming, at least for some period of time up until his team concluded their study? Seems like it to me.
Assuming the answer to those two questions are yes, then please explain your statement of “The point is that the “conversion” narrative is false. “
Of course, when i said “Seems like it is to me” I meant seems like it is consistent….
You’re not paying attention. I don’t contest the skeptic label; I don’t care for capture-the-flag games with positive-connoting terms. It remains true, however that at no time did Muller ever reject the IPCC consensus prior to Climategate, nor even afterward. His efforts are more in the nature of cleaning up the house on “his side” of the debate, just as many “rejectionists” (a much better and more neutral term, perhaps) feel the need to police out the people who don’t accept the basic physics and thermodynamics of the greenhouse effect. It’s a laudable anti-mommy-mommy tactic (and one that people like McIntyre have long called for), but to claim that Muller has switched sides in terms of his basic theoretical and empirical commitments is a fairy tale. What everyone is having fun speculating about are his emotional and value commitments, which are genuinely hard to nail down and the sort of things humans naturally love to argue about.
If that’s your argument, you need to show evidence for it. Please:
1. Define the “IPCC consensus.”
2. Define “rejection.”
3. Show that Muller never rejected the “IPCC consensus” at any time.”
It would also strengthen your case if you could point to anybody who claimed “Muller isn’t a skeptic” sometime before his results further confirmed global warming . . .
A skeptic is someone who does not accept peer reviewed consensus science without question or any science without question. All true scientists are true skeptics. When any scientist ceases to be a skeptic, they cease to be a true scientist. Being a skeptic does not say anything about what the skeptic believes or what theories the skeptic holds. There are many of us out here and we do not have consensus on what we believe. We do enter the debates and discussions with more of an open mind than the people who are not skeptics. There are some of us who do not believe that CO2 is causing global warming who are not skeptics. They believe something else with no skepticism that they may be wrong. I have my own theory and I do force myself to be skeptical of my theory. From time to time, I do find a piece of my theory that was wrong. I generally do not allow my skepticism to show. I do discuss and debate with people who disagree and with people who agree. The biggest benefit is with the discussions with people who disagree. Does anyone have a better discussion of what is a skeptic? Dr. Curry, you might do a thread on this. You likely already have done this.
I forgot to include the major point that I was trying to make.
If Muller quit being a skeptic, then he quit being a scientist.
Gah. Sorry to be the language Nazi, but why can’t people keep “infer” and “imply” straight?
+1
I can infer the implication bozo. BFD.
An interesting interview with Muller which should undermine the facile attempts, on both sides of the debate, to exploit what he says for partisan expediency.
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2012/08/02/climate-change-skeptic
Joshua, the link you cite is merely Muller talking about his current beliefs.
Before he believed in AGW, he was a skeptic; but before he was a skeptic he believed in AGW. (Read his book.) It echoes past political statements such as “he was for the war before he was against the war but before that he was…”
I think the most favorable interpretation you can make is that he honestly seeks the truth and changes his mind when new evidence comes into his view.
For one with such changeable conclusions, his current Damascene conversion appears overwrought.
Overwrought seems to me like a nice characterization of Muller – as well as about 99% of everything else I see in the climate debate. I tend to think of it as people taking themselves too seriously, but I like “overwrought” as well
Remember, that if you visit the “denizens” page, you will see quite a few “skpetics” describing, in a very serious tone, their personal journey in how they’ve changed their conclusions on climate change over time. Our illustrious host, herself, has such a story and it has been of interest to the media as well as many of our fellow Climate Eceterarians. Personal journey narratives have long history of appeal.
Maybe we need to say the roundabout to Damascus?
If he ceased to be a skeptic, how can he change his mind. Only skeptics look for new evidence.
You can believe that CO2 is or is not causing major global warming and still be a skeptic. You cannot believe you are a scientists if you are not a skeptic.
You can believe that CO2 is or is not causing major global warming and still be a skeptic. You cannot believe you are a scientist if you are not a skeptic. (spell correction)
He was a skeptic specifically about the temperature record. Now that he made his own, he isn’t. This seems quite a reasonable way to turn around, which is create your own dataset using the best methods you can. More other skeptics need to do that.
Please excuse my novice but how in the whole-wide-world of ‘everything’ can/has such a ponzi-game a la CO2 (-threat, -warming, etc. etc…) become such of major importance, small/big/short-/longterm?
How come, that millions/trillions of monies (=taxpayers=you-and-me’s) are being spent on the biggest scientific SCAM in history (ever!) to ‘find’ out whether mr. dr. prof… xyz has a ‘correct paper’ (published in some faked-up- journal(s) or not is being ‘accepted’ or not?
My Godness! USA leads the scores of Nobel Lauerants in overall comparision over long time and, yet, the – as seemed- US-science-area of kind (‘Climate-Changes, nowadays..) has more-less taken ‘control’ of how the things are to be constabulated/governed – When will the US communuty´come to A somewhat close to real world reality?
Go Figure!
Brgsd / Sweden
Nobel prices are now political rather than contributions. Nobel will rise from his grave.
@Joshua “This is an entirely unscientific statement, not to mention, completely irrelevant in any meaningful way. It is gratuitous.”
Joshua, concerning Muller’s purported prior skepticism, I’d say you’re missing the point. This is about public relations. Muller’s the darling of the credulous MSM precisely because of this (false) narrative. Muller knows this, which is why he’s constantly playing the “converted skeptic” card.
it’s the same deal on the skeptic side of the fence when former believers like James Lovelock either switch sides, or in Lovelock’s case, severely temper their previous views…
PG:
That may or may not be the case:
Yes, the media does like personal journey narratives – particularly on controversial topics, where they help to simplify a complicated debate. Such a narrative helps people to identify.
You imply that Muller is the media’s “darling” because of the specific nature of his journey. I doubt that.
You go further to attribute motives to Muller. Not having ever met the man (I have heard personal anecdotes from a nephew of mine who is finishing his doctorate in physics at Berkeley in an unrelated field, so I do have some first hand impressions), I am reluctant to do so. I also think that anyone who does so without first-hand information is a good “skeptic,” but if they make determinations with certainty as you have done, they should consider turning in their “skeptic” identification card.
“I also think that anyone who does so without first-hand information is a good “skeptic,” but if they make determinations with certainty as you have done, they should consider turning in their “skeptic” identification card.”
“Oy,” as my dear departed grandmother would say. One makes determinations on the basis of the available evidence. Judith, who actually knows the man, seems to agree with me, to a certain extent anyway: She writes: “So, is Muller’s primary interest in the science, or in establishing himself in a position of power at the climate science/policy interface? The press releases and op-eds suggest the latter.”
Granted, this does not speak directly to the claims of “converted skeptic” but it is in line with my general view of the man as an opportunist. Judith also makes the point that he’s “rather brilliant at marketing his team.”
Bottom line, he’s clearly speaking out of both sides of his mouth. Granted, I’m not a mind reader so you’re correct in your typical, trivially true way. Yes. I cannot be certain of his motives..
Exactly. And this is far from being a new pattern of behaviour on his part. Even when he was first criticizing Mann back in 2003/2004, Muller was quite steadfast – and outspoken – in his belief in human-generated CO2 as primary “culprit”.
So, IMHO, wrt his latest apparent casting aside of uncertainty in his attribution of CO2, one has to ask the question: to what extent have his “findings” been coloured by a very strong confirmation bias?
I am also quite distrusting of his very lame excuses when challenged on some of his statements. The latest one being his excuse for his misrepresentations of Judith’s criticisms: he claims that he used the word “random” in describing her theory because “it is more easily understood by the public”.
Yet during the Tucker/Rosenberg interview on the BradBlog, he chastized those who flog the scary stories saying that members of the public are smarter than the story floggers give them credit for! [my paraphrase, not Muller’s words]
Frankly, as a member of the public, I had no difficulty whatsoever “understanding” Judith’s criticisms when she wrote the other day:
So not only has Muller misrepresented Judith’s criticisms, but once again, IMHO, he’s speaking out of both sides of his mouth!
P.S. Judith,
The link to your “draft consensus paper” in the first para of your analysis above currently goes to the wiki page on JASON, and I don’t think this was your intention :-)
In this, Muller is an idiot. The climate is not random and the public’s concept of ‘random’ is not like climate. Judy was being slammed whether she thinks so or not, deliberately or not. So was the public. Whatever was in his mind? Maybe it was a random comment. Yeah, that’s the tikket.
======================
Has Muller ever even studied climate “persistence”, to have so blithly attributed recent global warming to anthropogenic causes? Has he ever read papers by D. Koutsoyiannis et al. who clearly show climate follows Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics and NOT random “white noise”. If so, how could he so readily mislead the public by attributing “the climate is random” to Curry?
See:
Y. Markonis, D. Koutsoyiannis and N. Mamassis (www.itia.ntua.gr)
Orbital climate theory and Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics
11th International Meeting on Statistical Climatology, Edinburgh, Scotland, 12-16 July 2010, Session 10: Long term memory
Markonis, Y., and D. Koutsoyiannis, Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics in long climatic proxy records , European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2011, Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 13, Vienna, EGU2011-13700, European Geosciences Union, 2011.
See: Slide 33
http://www.cwi.colostate.edu/nonstationarityworkshop/SpeakerNotes/Wednesday%20Morning/Koutsoyiannis.pdf
How can Muller so confidently attribute recent warming to anthropogenic causes, when there are over 100 parameters in models? And when clouds are so poorly understood? I fear Muller is overconfident and that his attributions are unsupportable and will be overturned.
Yeah, let’s get Muller and Dr K into the same room. They need each other (if only for that gift in raising funds rubbing off on Koutsoyiannis – the other direction is much clearer).
I had that same reaction. It’s like dynamics never even crossed his mind. Maybe Muller should go hunting for Trenberth’s missing heat. That would be a lot more productive than going over the surface station data.
I wish it was possible to get Muller to understand long term persistence and the problems it creates. One of his papers talks about 2-15 year natural variability at great length but it almost never seems to occur to him that this may scale up to 30-100 year natural variability, but his time series is really too short to see it. He just falls for the meme that averaging always reduces variance rapidly vs. scale for equilibrium systems. But there are many systems for which this is not true and climate is one of them.
Spence_UK
Similarly Loehle & Springer
Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 2010, 47(10): 1327-1336, 10.1139/E10-050
errata
Holocene temperature records show millennial-scale periodicity
Craig Loehle, S. Fred Singer, Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 2010, 47(10): 1327-1336, 10.1139/E10-050
David L. Hagen | August 4, 2012 at 3:26 pm said: ”Has Muller ever even studied climate “persistence”, to have so blithly attributed recent global warming”
David, your ”overloaded” comment is also to DECEIVE. David, it HASN’T being any GLOBAL warming. People saying that is GLOBAL warming; and having GLOBAL warmings – ate 10 light years away from each other. Global warmings are inside people’s heads; pumped by manipulators as good yourself. If one say; that is / was GLOBAL warming, when it wasn’t – is opposite than the truth… what’s called; opposite than the truth, in English…?
P.s. climatic changes have nothing to do with any phony GLOBAL warmings. Climatic changes are created by LOCALIZED warmings / coolings; and are controlled by H2O, NOT by CO2. Wetter = cooler days / warmer nights —– dryer means: hotter days / cooler nights. Mixing climatic changes with phony GLOBAL warmings is same as mixing midwifes with storks. In the text above; I believe in what Galileo said. . Davo, clean up your backyard first, before throwing stones at Muller. ”Resent” GLOBAL warmings is concocted / destructive crap!!!
stefanthedenier
Relax. Think.
1) To evaluate “Global warming”, a time period must be stated otherwise it is ambiguous.
Yes it has warmed since the Little Ice Age.
No, it has cooled since the Holocene climatic optimum.
Yes it has warmed since the last glaciation etc.
2) “Global warming” is a rhetorical equivocation between
2A physical warming over a prescribed period – (typically the last half of the 20th century)
and
2B Catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.
ie Gotcha if you say no to 2A – therefore you are wrong on 2B etc.
Try again to state something coherent.
David L. Hagen | August 6, 2012 at 11:24 am
David, I’m familiar with your pagan beliefs; that global temp goes up and down as a yo-yo. But that’s completely wrong. 1] Nobody knows what was the GLOBAL temp last year; to save his life! 2] localized temp constantly changes and has being confused as ”global” by swindlers in the past. Have a look at this, and realize that you have been duped in uni. : http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/skeptics-stinky-skeletons-from-their-closet/
stefanthedenier
Ad hominem attacks only destroy your own credibility. You know neither my beliefs nor my scientific training. Try rising to objectively address the science.
Johnny, that’s just downright silly. The known operational parameters of an airplane are well-behaved. Climate outcomes aren’t. I would think that somebody with a physics background would know the difference. Seriously, think before you post.
Little grasshopper “discord”, please reflect that:
• The First Law and the Second Law of thermodynamics are exact.
• Emma Noether’s First Theorem is exact.
• Energy transport theory is well-understood and well-verified.
From these it follows that the 787 dynamics and AGW both are reliably predictable … after considerable work, of course! … because the details of the transport physics do not fundamentally alter the predictability of the system dynamics.
Little “discord”, what is your next question? :smile: :grin: :lol:
Then why don’t the models work? You have actually looked at their hindcasting skill or lack thereof, haven’t you?
So far, so good, little grasshopper! :) :grin: :lol:
And btw, Fanny. Can you list these hundreds of parameters that affect the fuel consumption of an airplane? A hundred will do.
“Discord”, for the answer to your question, please consult Minimum-fuel turning climbout and descent guidance of transport jets for (hundreds of) details.
And yes, these (hugely complex) dynamical simulations *do* work reliably and accurately.
What is your next question, little “discord”? :) :) :)
Those aren’t parameters. Those are inputs. You know the difference, don’t you?
Little “discord”, even the simplest single-box inertial navigation package have thousands of parameters embedded in their Kalman filters and environmental models. As for the 787 as a whole, its flight control systems require 32 GigaBytes of RAM to hold all the flight parameters.
Scrupulous attention to the triply-redundant sensing-and-updating of these flight-control parameters pays for itself in producing flights that are efficient, comfortable, and safe. Which is good, eh? :smile: :grin: :lol:
James Hansen and his colleagues advocate that we pay comparable attention to sensing-and-updating the dynamical parameters of our planet. Which is good, eh? :smile: :grin: :lol:
A filter curve is not a thousand parameters. It’s a curve. It could be (and sometimes is) approximated by a polynomial or other continuous function with a whole lot fewer real parameters.
You need to bone up on your information theory. Remember von Neuman’s quote about wiggling the elephant’s tail with five parameters.
LOL … please reflect again, “little discord”! :) :) :)
Every digital iir filter/estimator contains dozens of state-parameters (the exact number depends on the order of the filter) that each are individually updated several thousand times per second … and a large aircraft contains thousands of closed-loop controllers in which such filters/estimators are embedded.
That is the common-sense reason why the total number of dynamical state-parameters of a 787 reaches easily into the millions.
Needless to say, the feedback in the earth’s climate system are of a similar order of complexity.
Not to mention, the turbulent water-flow of the Gulf Stream has a dynamical complexity comparable to the turbulent air-flow over an extended 787 landing-gear.
And yet we reliably control large aircraft, and we reliably predict AGW.
It’s amazing, and inspirational too, is it not, “little discord”? :) :) :)
Dood. Srsly. You just moved the goalpost again. Now it’s “dozens”. And you’re talking about loop control parameters in an IIR, which are completely unphysical.
Why stop there? The human brain contains trillions of synapses, each with numerous connection weights. so the brain has trillions if not quadrillions of what you call “parameters”. But they’re unphysical. They’re just data. Parameters are what you get when you boil all of this mass of data down to the essential information. Then you’re talking about von Neuman’s 5-parameter elephant.
I mean seriously. WTF?
Little “discord”, did you not know that every optimal controller has embedded within it an optimal estimator?
An optimal estimator that updates its internal state-estimate parameters (typically) many thousands of times per second?
Such that an computer-controlled aircraft like a 787 dynamically updates (typically) millions of internal state-estimates?
It is a pleasure to expand your understanding of modern systems engineering, little “discord”! :) :) :)
Can you not see the difference between a designed system, like a 787, and an undesigned system like the human body or the climate?
Lucia Liljegren, a mechanical engineering PhD, nailed that one right to the wall when she pointed out that the fluid mechanical models work great when the airplane is going straight forward, but fail miserably when you try to model one going several hundred miles per hour sideways or backward.
Not designed by man anyway. Like David Hagen, I see climate, like the human body, as designed – designed to allow the individual to exist in space and time and wherever possible to prosper, even in the face of the pride and injustice of other men. “He sends his rain on the just and the unjust” as Jesus says of the Father who loves his enemies. But to riff off Isaac Newton, we still have no idea how that creator works all this out and how it fits with other concepts we find inside our tiny minds, like natural law.
Ahem. A 787 was designed by man, out of his tiny mind, and the climate system was not. That was your point. Sorry to interrupt.
Richard Drake, scientists have for centuries reliably predicted the motions of the (nature-created) planets with similar confidence to the motions of (human-created) satellites, and (nowadays) scientists predict the folding-and-binding of (human-designed) synthetic proteins with similar confidence to the folding-and-binding of (evolution-created) natural proteins.
Is that not so, Richard Drake? :) :grin: :lol:
Wonderfully true. I hope you’ve read The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences by Wigner. And if you know why things had to be this way, then I’d really like to talk :)
Fanny, what about the three-body problem?
Little “discord”, the mathematical insights that you seek are in Saari’s and Xia’s Off to Infinity in Finite Time (which can be downloaded free-as-in-freedom).
How may we further slake your thirst for knowledge, little “discord”? :smile: :grin: :lol:
Fanny, you said that everything was completely solvable several centuries ago. Goal post move. 25 yard penalty.
We cannot predict the folding of proteins on any level, in silico. We do not even know how to model the effect of a single amino acid substitution on the 3D structure. Some of us have actully spent years looking at protein structures and making site direct mutations, as a way to understand function.
As far as docking small molecules into binding sites, we think a10% hit rate when moving from in silico to in vitro is fantastic.
The 3D crystal data is only part of the story; 3D NMR shows us that we are only observing some low energy states in crystal structures and some large proteins are extraordinary motile around flexible hinge regions.
You are again talking absolute bollocks.
Richard Drake, A next step beyond The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in Natural Sciences might be http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0503/0503028.pdf
There is something about non-ergodic systems, just when you think you have them figured out, they change :)
That looks wonderful and exciting Capn’, thanks for the ref. And of course, discord and Doc, even Wigner starts by admitting how little we can predict, how narrow the application of the beautiful, mathematics-drenched ‘laws’ we discover. And yet on the back of these we successfully make machines like the laser and the nuclear reactor. I look forward indeed to machines arising from the ideas of AM Selvam.
Your assertions are 15 years out-of-date, Doc Martyn. The predictive capabilities that your post describes as infeasible, in fact have become the standard-of-practice.
DocMartyn, how may we further improve your scientific understanding? :) :) :)
Fan
Please review your thoughts before posting.
The physics under Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models are built on well established lab scale experiments. Then the CFD models have been thoroughly verified and validated. See CFD-Online
Consequently Boeing etc can confidently use those CFD models to design aircraft – and the resultant aircraft efficiency is close to the CFD models.
Climate scientists are still trying to discover the models that control clouds. Furthermore, weather is seriously non-linear spatially/temporally chaotic.
Fitting Global climate models to recent temperature / CO2 without accurately knowing cloud physics has resulted in far too high climate sensitivity – consequently models are mean projecting temperatures (0.2 C/decade) that are much higher than actual temperature trends (~0.138 C/decade) (2 sigma high). So I see Muller making a foundational mistake of attribution that is unsupportable by physics.
To understand issues on requirements for scientific forecasting, see Green and Armstrong Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists versus Scientific Forecasting
Wind tunnel testing at various Reynolds numbers tells aero performance engineers all they need to know to predict a jet’s performance. After all, the values of lift and drag measured at the model, are the sum total of hundreds of parameters that affect the values obtained. They are measuring something, not predicting something using computer models. It is impossible using today’s technology to predict accurately what the cumulative value of all the variables coupled together would be without direct measurement in a wind tunnel. There have been millions of hours of tunnel testing and test flights data available for aero performance engineers (I was one for over twenty years) to perfect the techniques used to predict actual performance. I was at an aeronautical symposium a few years ago, where papers were presented by several of those in attendance, that stated that it will be about 100 years before wind tunnels are no longer needed and all the analysis work can be done by computer models. And this is for a subject that we have a much better understanding of than AGW.
There has yet to be a single measurement of what the century long effect of increasing CO2 will be. The factors involved are probably much more complex, and we don’t even know just what all the different factors are! Freeman Dyson has stated as much, apparently you were not listening.
Your statements are silly and very wrong. You don’t have even the slightest clue of what you are talking about.
I second Lurkingaeroengineer’s comments on the essential requirements to build on and test against experimental observation.
Lurkingaeroengineer, all that you said was true 20 years ago (or even 10 years ago), and of course *some* degree of experimental testing always will be necessary.
None-the-less, predictive codes nowadays are increasingly dominant in every stage of design verification and validation, such that wind-tunnel tests and stress-tests nowadays serve largely to verify the codes.
@article{Johnson:05, Author = {F. T. Johnson and E. N. Tinoco and N. J. Yu}, Journal = {Computers and Fluids}, Number = 10, Pages = {1115--51}, Title = {Thirty years of development and application of {CFD} at {B}oeing {C}ommercial {A}irplanes, {S}eattle}, Volume = 34, Year = {2005}}With scientific sceptics’ like Prof Muller, vs “sceptics” (unscientfic one presumably, like me :( ) who needs sceptics any more. Prof Muller laying into Mann, again
1st August 2012 – Prof Muller on the hockey team [Podcast in link – 18:40 mark of the audio]: (ref when ask climategate was setled) quite an agressive interviewer.
http://prn.fm/2012/08/01/green-front-dr-richard-muller-080112/#axzz22R4YezCa
Prof Muller:
“What they did was, I think shameful, and it was scientific malpractice. If they were licensed scientists, they should have to lose their license. What they did is they held back the discordant data..
if they had done this at Berkeley or Stanford, I think, they would have been shamed.
The standards that they have over there at the University of East Anglia are just not up to what we consider standard scientific methods. When you withhold data that is discordant, and they refused to release it until it came out in this leak…” (Prof Muller 1st Aug 2012)
—
more popcorn required?
(listen to all the podcast, he even defends the Koch brothers, against an antagonistic interviewer))
And the UK government has been so keen to keep the IPCC-blessed work at UEA going, as a jewel in the crown of UK science. Oh dear. At least we won some unexpected gold medals yesterday, to cheer everyone up.
Muller = Lomborg
Not one of us, you mean? I think you could be right. Poor things.
> Not one of us, you mean?
No.
Eli = Hasenpfeffer
Eli = Cute
(Eli has consulted w. Ms. Rabett and her opinion is dispositive:)
Eli
Elucidate
Tonyb
I’m not the bunny, but I think I got his drift. I think what he’s saying is that Muller has managed to position himself as a gadfly who takes flak from both sides. I’m not sure if I agree with the analogy; I think Lomborg is a lot more straightforward about his position. I keep getting whiffs of disingenuousness from Muller that I don’t get from Lomborg.
http://rabett.blogspot.ca/2012/07/the-incidence-of-solipsism-among.html
Fascinating discussion. I heard Mueller interviewed on a couple different NPR programs this last week. In one case, the interviewer actually goaded him toward a mea culpa along the lines of, “So, do you feel bad it took you so long see the light?” (Obviously not verbatim but that was the gist.) He became very nearly incensed, responding that he in fact was acting correctly in patiently pursuing data while withholding forming an opinion until the data was in his judgement at least highly indicative if not conclusive. I whole heartedly agree with his approach to decision making even if I question his conclusions.
Just a word to Dr. Curry: I can’t imagine how you find the time to keep up with the science, opinion and psychology of this debate. However I’m glad you do and thanks. I find it very helpful.
I was surprised to discover that locals in my own neighborhood know about Muller and think he has delivered a decisive, FINAL, defeating blow to climate “skeptics”. The naivety is beyond profound. They show at best only the faintest awareness that mainstream climate science has nearly zero understanding of natural climate variations. And they are certainly totally unaware that Muller COMPLETELY SKIPPED the main ingredient of the puzzle. Conclusion: We live in a corrupt society. I realize this isn’t a new idea (!), but it’s taking on new & deep meaning closer to home than ever — up close & firsthand. The issue as I’ve always seen it: We need to understand & appreciate nature. (I have NO interest in CO2 politics.) http://i49.tinypic.com/2jg5tvr.png (from LOD via Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum, Central Limit Theorem, & thermal wind relation — anyone who can’t isolate this isn’t qualified to project themselves as an authority on climate — let’s see Muller isolate it…)
very astute. Muller is better at PR, Lomborg is better at skepticism.
Diag
Lomborg gathered a group of world class economists, most of who were Nobel laureates. Consequently the Copenhagen Consensus clearly provides scientific papers with challenge papers etc.
Muller should take a lesson. Publicity will not will the scientific race.
All the sociological/psychological babble cannot conceal the fact that Muller and the BEST team are scientists from largely unrelated academic disciplines, who have no field experience in the acquisition and interpretation of climate data. They simply treat such data as numbers and fail to understand coherently what those numbers really represent. That’s what makes their PR-oriented posturing all the more insufferable.
“sociological/psychological babble”
I agree that that’s what that is.
–
It’s not a problem that people from other fields are taking a look at climate. That’s an asset. Climate science needs very serious help. However, the “BEST” team is not yet sufficiently seasoned by immersion. They have shown total blindness towards & lack of appreciation for nature. I 100% concur with your “insufferable” label. They will need to be dealt a schooling. Almost no one is qualified to give that schooling, so the impact of their attack is likely to be lasting even though it’s not soundly based. The non-alarmist leadership has faltered fatally on this file. We need replacements at the very top. Further delay can’t be justified.
Nobody understands what the numbers mean. Some have favoured hypotheses that singularly fail to pass any validation tests, others just pretend there is one big climate control knob and make assumption-led conclusions and yet others just make things up with no theory behind their chunterings whatsoever. There are altogether too few prepared to say “we just don’t know”.
The coherence with solar & lunisolar variables is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE beyond what one would expect from chance &/or chaos, so speak for yourself if you’re lost JamesG.
A (very minor) poet once wrote:: “What truth is there that lies in numbers?” This question is very apropriate when discussing the dance through time of an intensive state variable–temperature–which manifests strong spatial inhomogeneities and a myriad of wide-band oscillations. Those with field experience and incisive analytic tools stand a good chance of recognizing the various physical factors at play; those without any get mired in a swamp of simplistic academic presumptions.
Why did Muller use stations rated 3 as in the “OK” category?
Saint Judith is becoming the gossip columnist to the elite? I am stunned.
Prof Muller takes apart (USA, droughts heatwaves , to quote interviewer:
“do you say it is nonsense ‘ record heat, ‘record drought’ at about 21 mins 30 secs..
see podcast..
http://prn.fm/2012/08/01/green-front-dr-richard-muller-080112/#axzz22R4YezCa
and at 28 mins ish..
the interviewr menbtiosn the drough again.. Muller brings in the 1930’s dustbowls, etc.
Thanks, for that link. It is today’s nugget.
Perhaps Muller’s “conversion” was inspired by Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth.
So true… The Earth’s climate is not random. It’s chaotic.
To bad Richard “Dick” Feyman isn’t still around — he’d get to the bottom of this whole temperature record thing and he’d do it in a much more amusing way than that Muller guy.
How could Muller seriously say that Dr. Curry called the climate system ‘random’? — that is beyond incredible. I think Dr. Curry now has ample fuel to write a NY Times Op-Ed that explains what (in her opinion) drives the climate system, and why it is not random — just wicked.
I was invited to write a muller/best related op-ed, not by NYT but one of approx the same impact factor. I decided not to, writing an op-ed is a political act, and I don’t really want to go there, particularly over this issue.
You could leave out the politics and just speak to the nature of the climate system? Just using the Muller quote as a take off point, ask that it be placed on the Opinion page. Not all opinion pieces are political. Or, hey, a piece to go in the next issue of a climate journal , like a ‘letter’ to Science.
I’m sure that the larger interested public has no idea of what it means in layman’s terms that the climate system is a bounded non-linear chaotic system (or however you would describe it, that’s my guess).
> [W]riting an op-ed is a political act.
And what about a blog post?
Hi, Judy. I’m curious about your exception to the word “random.” Why would it be wrong to describe the climate as random?
Certainly, I would usually substitute “stochastic” for “random” when writing a scientific paper. And I would probably define more precisely what I mean by this. But I understand that these two words – “random” and “stochastic” – mean essentially the same thing.
Perhaps it is because “random” implies – to a general reader – something like a uniform distribution, when in fact “random” could also be a normal distribution, or a power law, or a “random walk,” etc? Is it simply that, though “random” technically means many things, it can easily be misinterpreted to be one thing, i.e. “totally random?”
I would strongly suspect that if Feynman were still around, the warmists would be trying to discredit him by, for example, calling him senile.
Senile and a denier.
I strongly suspect if Feynman were still around, he would be a solid part of the consensus.
JCH – I did not know Feyman personally but have read three or four biographies over the years. I suspect that Feyman would have been fascinated by the Climate Wars and finally settled in to sort out at least the temperature records. My feel for it is that he would have loved the Surface Stations Pjt for its tenactity, howled about the refusal of the Team to take it seriously, would have pointed out that if the US stations are junky, then the R.o.W. is worse. I think he would have liked the satellite measurements, but would have qualified them as measuring just what they measure. I think as well that he might agree with Dr. Curry that the climate system is not the simple ‘single thermostat’ version that Muller has cooked up. Just my feel for the way he thought about things.
> I suspect that Feyman would have been fascinated by the Climate Wars and finally settled in to sort out at least the temperature records.
Citations needed.
He wouldn’t believe in the ignorance of experts?
I think skeptics cite Feynman because he’s dead and cannot defend himself from being hijacked against his will. Wrt to the various temperature series, my wag is that Feynman would be where Mosher is, but would have offended far fewer people along the way.
Purely coincidental to your own views on climate change, no doubt.
Just as with every other climate combatant that cites something Einstein or Feyman said to support their views on climate change.
The weakness of many climate skeptics is that they both miss the forest for the trees and don’t understand the nature of danger/risk.
If this Feynman fellow is as bright as I am led to believe I have no doubt he wouldn’t suffer such weaknesses and would accept AGW.
lolwot,”If this Feynman fellow is as bright as I am led to believe I have no doubt he wouldn’t suffer such weaknesses and would accept AGW.”
He would more likely separate regional anthropogenic impacts from the “global” misconception in order to show the range of potential sensitivities to various changes in forcing for a variety of random natural conditions.
People of all sorts cite Feyman because he was brilliant and, while a world-class physicist, had an original mind that was able to think outside the usual boxes others built to protect their favorite ideas.
He focused on practicality — which is why NASA called him in to diagnose the Challenger disaster.
He famously taught (paraphrasing here..) “Don’t worry if your don’t understand quantum mechanics…NOBODY really understands quantum mechanics.” This did not endear him to those colleagues who insisted that they understood it perfectly.
AND…..he had a terrific sense of rhythm :-)
Can you tell the name of a single person who thought that he understood QM perfectly?
There are certainly people who don’t worry about understanding as long as they can do the calculations and get the results but I’m sure Feynman’s comment didn’t worry them at all.
Hi, JCH. I think I would have to disagree with you here. Of course, any opinion on this subject is deeply speculative. But the sense I have from Feynman’s writing and speeches is that he’s just not comfortable talking about subjects outside of his field. The few times he has done it – such as by reviewing science textbooks for a local school district, or as with the Challenger accident – before he makes any comment he will delve into the issue as deeply and thoroughly as possible.
But I also think he would be repulsed by the idea of joining a “consensus” on matters scientific. I think he wouldn’t do that or sign any petition that he hasn’t investigated himself. And I suspect that any prominent climate scientist (or reporter, etc.) would have to work very hard to convince him to do so.
And if he did delve into the issue? Then we might as well argue about what the truth actually is, because he would certainly report what he found, as accurately and simply as possible. Since he hadn’t done that, we can only speculate as to what he would have uncovered.
> Since he hadn’t done that, we can only speculate as to what he would have uncovered.
Indeed, and thus to speculate about Feynman like denizens oftentimes do (I mean, it has become YesButFeynman) might not be quite feynmanian.
Go team!
Muller is an interesting character, since neither ‘side’ in the climate debate likes him very much. The skeptics don’t trust him because of his bogus claims of conversion, and the AGW faithful don’t like him because he has dared to speak the truth about climategate. Overall, I think his influence is positive, if only in shaking up the debate that had previously become so entrenched.
I think, like Professor Jonathan Jones, Dr Muller has a keen eye for integrity and the importance of this in science. Unfortunately, he also seems a little naive of some of the issues in performing attribution analysis on a complex system such as climate.
Like you, I agree his involvement is likely to be positive, in standing up for integrity; I don’t think his scientific analysis is going to change any minds, though, partly because I don’t see anything new in it. And the polemicists will remain entrenched. No man’s land is a lonely place in climate science :)
Very good point about the integrity issue, I agree, and we need to see more scientists standing up for this
Paul –
An honest question – do you really think that is an accurate description?
Joshua and Paul M
As an independent observer, I’d say that Paul has described it succinctly and accurately.
I might have reworded it very slightly to:
Max
The Muller/Mann schism is instructive.
Unusually, I’ve rewritten three times, here. See the Bish’s for Muller’s Brad Blog interview. Muller shatters several shibboleths of the juggernaut narrative. That’s not surprising, given that the narrative pays so little attention to nature and has been fabricated so preciously. But attribution is insidious, indeterminable with our present knowledge of natural process. It’s as amenable to perversion as Trenberth’s null and as difficult to show.
I clearly find Muller skeptical of the previous narrative; I’m surprised he’s so credulous of his new one, ignorant of nature and fragile as it is.
====================
You’re hardly an “independent observer, ” Max. It is rather amusing that’s how you describe yourself.
Here’s a description that is no less “accurate” than Pauls.
In the end, both descriptions are facile and neither is more or less “accurate.”
“The skeptics don’t trust him because of his bogus claims of conversion”
The need to repeat this silly claim over and over, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, is fascinating. Clearly the denialosphere had settled on a meme they intend to push on their followers regardless of the facts. When have I seen that before . . .
” . . . he has dared to speak the truth about climategate”
Ah, there it is.
Ah! “denialosphere”
Finally! I thought you were sick or something…
As an amusing side-note, I learned from a reader’s comment on WUWT about today’s James Hansen essay in the Washington Post, titled
Funny…it’s the first item on the Weekend open thread at Watt’s.
So much for being ‘disappeared’.
Harrywr2, please let me say that you are entirely in the right, and that I hereby stand corrected. Doh! :oops: :oops: :oops:
Whoops, and now Climate Etc.‘s own Skeptical Warmist is reporting more breaking news regarding the Hansen/Watts/Neven drama …
Oh the humanity! :) :grin: :lol:
Oy vey, Fanny. Hansen’s really flipped his lid this time. He thinks the Chinese are going to impose carbon caps on the US He thinks the Chinese are going to impose carbon caps on the US.
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :roll:
Today’s main breaking climate-change story turns out to be unremarkable, and yet not without its points of interest, or its relevance to Richard Muller’s story.
Tomorrow PNAS will publishing a peer-reviewed article by Hansen, Sato, Rued titled “Public Perception of Climate Change”. This is apparently based upon the preprint that has been on-line since 5 April titled “Public Perception of Climate Change and the New Climate Dice“.
It will be very interesting to compare the published article to the submitted preprint, eh? This is a concrete example of how submitting preprints to the arxiv serves the interests of transparency. Anthony Watts, take notes!
Of course, in the intervening months, the onslaught of a huge drought and nationwide crop failure, together with the massive Arctic ice-melt, now make climate-change seers like Hansen and Neven look like the wizards Gandalf and Dumbledore! :) :grin: :lol:
Did Richard Muller see this coming? That is a safe bet.
Meanwhile the reputation of uncompromising climate-change skeptics like Watts and Pielke is evolving more in the direction of the wizard “You-Know-Who’s” reputation. Doh! :) :grin: :lol:
What main story is that? The melting streetlights in OK?
And…
After that howler about China, Hansen’s looking more like Smeagol.
Sit down and have coffee with Hansen some time and you see that he really just wants to do do all he can to prevent handing over a doomed world to his grandchildren and he really believes we’re headed that way based on the current trajectory. That’s it, period.
“Storms … of … my … PRECIOUS!!!!!”
Fan, is that the same paper with the statistical issues?
We’ll find out tomorrow how large the Hansen’s changes are from the April preprint.
Obviously this summer’s pronounced heat, drought, and ice-melt all are consistent with Hansen’s predictions.
Skeptics “Hansen & colleagues got lucky.”
Hansen Predicted a large AGW odds-shift.
Fan, “We’ll find out tomorrow how large the Hansen’s changes are from the April preprint.”
I doubt there will be much change. The press release mentions the past 6 decades, 1950 to present likely based on the 1951 to 1980 base line. That would show more drought in some regions which is predicted by meteorologists based on the warm AMO and cool PDO. For the weather to be shocking, it should be compared to a previous warm AMO and cool PDO. I have no doubt that the trend is likely greater this time around but with likely a shorter duration. Padding the impact does no good, a little honest skepticism would do wonders.
Major research paper coming out Monday on “worse than we thought.” It will cause a few ripples.
I had to laugh at the interchange between Anthony and Neven today on WUWT. Quite comical to see Neven tweek Anthony about his brief “Sea Ice News”. See:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/04/sea-ice-news-volume-3-number-9/#comment-1051422
With another historical low Arctic sea ice extent and area on the horizon, Anthony could barely manage a full paragraph. Maybe too busy working on his “unprecedented” paper? Of course, Neven’s sea ice site is superb, and probably the best place to get a front row seat (short of going to the Arctic itself) for very informed discussions on all the historic happenings going on in the Arctic this summer and into the fall.
How do you know the Neven the troll is Neven with the Arctic ice web site? You don’t.
True enough, I don’t, but Anthony identified him as such, and Anthony would be in the position to know based on his email and/or IP address which Anthony can easily trace from the post. I don’t think Anthony would identify someone as Neven who was not without pretty good evidence it was the case…but then again, maybe I’m wrong about what Anthony would do as he did release his “unprecedented” paper-tiger a bit prematurely….
Are we reading the same thread? Watts called the troll “Neven”, he didn’t say it was the guy who ran the ice website. They may be actually be more than 1 person on the Internet with the name “Neven”
Come on Gates, are a you a “Skeptical Warmist” or a “Gullible Schmuck”?
I saw that you commented at the arctic website about this , and none of the commentors responded. I think none of them had a clue what you were talking about.
Here’s the full post:
Günther Kirschbaum says:
August 4, 2012 at 7:22 am
Never mind. There’s nothing happening in the Arctic any way!
REPLY: As usual, Günther plays the smart ass with snark. He’s actually Neven. No scruples with this one. – Anthony
___________
Now, knowing there is no love lost between Anthony and Neven (the real Neven) and knowing that I posted a reference to this on Neven’s site, which Neven no doubt read and did not deny, I think the evidence is strong about what is going on here. But also, you could be right, I’m just a Gullible Schmuck.
Either way, it was a bit of entertainment and it drew a few more people to some real conversation about Arctic sea ice at Neven’s site.
You know what Gates, since you have the first initial and the last name of the last Secretary of Defence, that’s who I’m going to assume you are. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it :)
If you could trace my email and/or IP address to Robert’s computer or one that he uses, you might have something.
But really, what problem do you have with whether it was or wasn’t the Neven from the Arctic Sea ice blog? Though I think it likely was, this person made a sarcastic comment about Anthony’s lack of a real Sea Ice Update during a period when 2012 is looking to possibly break the lows set in 2007. Really doesn’t matter who it was, does it?
Just a follow up, in the Washington Post piece mentioned above, Hansen says:
“In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, which will be published Monday, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.”
So we had Muller’s “shocker” change of heart last week, Watts “unprecedented” paper tiger, and now Hansen et al. coming out with a paper that has “stunning” findings. Are these guys trying to compete with Olympic coverage or is this just PNS?
After digging around a bit, I think you’re right: Neven the troll is the same guy with the ice website. My mistake.
I don’t find him irresistible, just appalling. I commented about it for The Telegraph but they had close to a thousand comments which means getting lost in the shuffle. Below is what I said about him to The Telegraph:
Here is Müller: “The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect — extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does.”
He is dead wrong and shows ignorance of the temperature history included in his own work. Let’s start with the twentieth century. The first ten years were a period of cooling. But in 1910 warming suddenly started. It continued for thirty years until 1940 and then stopped equally suddenly. There was no parallel sudden increase of carbon dioxide in 1910 which rules out carbon dioxide as a cause of warming by the laws of radiation physics. In the fifties, sixties, and seventies there was no warming while carbon dioxide relentlessly increased. People were worried about a coming ice age and newspapers and magazines had articles about it.
There is no satisfactory explanation of why raising carbon dioxide failed to
cause warming for these thirty years, only contorted hypotheses trying to
explain it away. One of them was smoke and aerosols from war production
blocking out the sun. In the eighties and nineties there was no warming
according to satellite observations while carbon dioxide kept on increasing. Ground-based records for that period show a phony “late twentieth century warming” that does not exist. I note that Müller deliberately did not include the satellite record in his analysis because it would show no warming at the time when Hansen made his presentation to the Senate. This period came to an end when the super El Nino of 1998 brought us a short spurt of warming. In four years global temperature rose by a third of a degree Celsius and then stopped. It is impossible for carbon dioxide to turn itself on and off on such short notice. The cause of this step warming was the large amount of warm water the super El Nino carried across the ocean. Since that time there has been no warming for over ten years while carbon dioxide just keeps increasing on its own merry way up. Add this to the thirty years of no warming in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, the twenty years of no warming in the eighties and nineties and the ten years at the beginning of the twentieth century and what have you got? More than half the time since the beginning of the twentieth century there was no warming at all while carbon dioxide steadily increased. And if this isn’t bad enough, the only two periods of warming during this entire period are not even greenhouse warming! To claim that “The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried.” is totally absurd because demonstrably carbon dioxide has nothing whatsoever to do with the warming. It is incompetence on a colossal scale, or pseudo-science if you like.
Here is Müller: “The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect — extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does.”
At its core, this is an argument from ignorance.
While I don’t want to put words in our host’s mouth, I don’t believe that Dr Curry believes climate is random anymore than I do. Rather, that since the dynamics of climate are non-linear, the problems of predicting future states are intractable. Whether a theoretical physicist, or a janitor, accepts this reality doesn’t change this reality.
No, it’s isn’t.
On a related note, we need a new fallacy, the argument from ignorance (strong): when someone claims that because they are ignorant of something, everyone is.
The problem of predicting climate is demonstrably not intractable. Scientists predicted global warming, and it has happened.
And a final thought: don’t be one of those fools that throws around “non-linear” like a lazy science fiction writer uses “nanotechnology.” To quote a classic, that word does not mean what you think it means.
Some scientists predicted it would warm, there was a 50% chance they would be correct. After it did warm, many more jumped on the bandwagon.
Please do tell us all how you have solved the problems of predicting future temperature states in our coupled non-linear climate system. The mistake made is to believe that the much sought after sensitivity parameter is constant or continuous.
The CO2 curve is a rather good proxy for human activity; which in turn is a rather good proxy of human alterations of habitat.
It would be nice to compare the before and after temperature profiles of the Chenobal ‘dead zone’
Arno Arrak,
Very good. AGWers will need to explain and probably will be speechless about these temperature information.
I love it when people admit mistakes. I love watching how they make the admission, it tells you a lot about the person (or the institution).
I love it when people are accused of making a mistake and they deny it. I love watching the spin and the contortions. I love reading people who have never made a mistake, how they rationalise.
I am not a scientist, nor a statistician, nor a physicist, but I judge people and their works by how they handle themselves in the mistakes department
The “Steve Jobs” of climate science.
Why did Muller use stations rated 3 as in the “OK” category?
Oh, I see. He based his selection on a histogram of anomalies.
From line 32 of the abstract:
A histogram study of the temperature trends in groupings of stations in the NOAA categories shows no statistically significant disparity between stations ranked “OK” (CRN 1, 2, 3) and stations ranked as “Poor”(CRN 4, 5).
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/03/an-uncorrected-assumption-in-bests-station-quality-paper/
Wow. Muller is another scientist in this climate establishment afflicted with a major case of hubris. Imagine that.
I’m shocked, shocked.
And he seems even more successful than Capt. Renault when it comes to pocketing his winnings.
Very interesting Judith. In Muller’s case, he may be the perfect scientist-salesman as he seems to want to please everyone a little, and no one completely. In the polarized PNS world he probably will stay along the shadows now, never quite in, or out, though every time he changes a little this way or that, he’ll get a few that trust him even less. I’m follow comments made by Mann, and it seems the term “trojan horse” is the word of the Mann is using related to Muller meaning of course, “Oh, warmists, now I believe, please let me in your camp and let me tell you about safe fracking…”
The art of compromise is making everyone equally dissatisfied and happy they are :)
The fact that Muller continued to tweek Mann even after having his supposed “change of heart” makes for interesting (and a bit distracting) side drama. Muller must be doing something right to have Watts and Mann ;pissed off at him (or if you believe Mann, maybe Watts and Muller aren’t really at odds at all, but part of the same Trojan Horse team).
He is rather brilliant at marketing his team and at communicating to the public.
Maybe yes to the first, but no to the second. I previously advised him to avoid public pronouncements (please, I know I do not count heavily in anyone’s thoughts), and I truly wish he had taken my advice this time around.
With regard to the general theme, psychodrama of changing one’s mind: are there more skeptics who have become believers, or more believers who have become skeptics? As psychodramas, are they not equally interesting stories?
Tsonis and Swanson say the climate shift to a cooler or flatter regime that occurred ~2000 could be in place for 20 to 40 years, or could, due to natural causes, switch back to a warming regime at any time.
Test away.
Do you have a research paper from them to link to?
Chef Hydro has linked to them dozens of times. You don’t read the Chef’s links?!!
T-S 2009
Swanson at RealClimate
Swanson PNAS
T-S 2007
Sometimes I do. This from the PNAS paper I find very amusing:
“A vigorous spectrum of interdecadal internal variability presents numerous challenges to our current understanding of the climate. First, it suggests that climate models in general still have difficulty reproducing the magnitude and spatiotemporal patterns of internal variability necessary to capture the observed character of the 20th century climate trajectory.”
Here’s the thing: All models are wrong and will not just have “difficulty” reproducing “he magnitude and spatiotemporal patterns of internal variability “, but will NEVER reproduce them. It would be akin to developing a model to predict the quantum fluctuations at the smallest
units of space-time. Ain’t gonna happen. But even expecting the models to do something they can’t, means a basic lack of understanding what models are useful for and designed for. Should models randomly put in a few medium sized volcanoes, a quiet sun, and predict how much coal the Chinese are going to burn?
R.Gates,
My interpretation of those sentences differs totally of that of yours. I don’t see in them anything about predicting the actual path. The claim presented in those sentences is that the variability in the models is not of right magnitude and has spatiotemporal patterns that differ from the observed ones. I.e. they claim that the statistical properties of the models are wrong not that they are unable to predict future.
Consequently your conclusion on the lack of basic understanding is not supported by the evidence that you present. Their claim may be well or badly justified but it’s not that stupid.
Pekka,
I appreciate your interpretation, and hardly think these scientists are stupid, but this one sentence seems to indicate some kind of basic disconnect with what climate models are designed to do, and could ever do:
“…models in general still have difficulty reproducing the magnitude and spatiotemporal patterns of internal variability…”
____
The word “still” here is key for me, as it indicates that they assume that someday models may have the ability to reproduce natural variability. Sorry, just isn’t going to happen, and so it creates a false perception by those who may not understand what models can and can’t do. Models are not weather forecasts and will always be wrong. But they can be useful in understanding the dynamics of what produces this thing called Earth’s climate.
Isn’t it better to clearly spell out what models can and can’t do, what models are and are not designed for, and then to validate the underlying dynamics of models by matching them up with actual observations, adding in the natural variability, and see if the underlying dynamics is correct? In short, I think we need to move to a “Models+” paradigm, similar to what Foster and Rahmstorf 2011, and others have done and are doing. We have to do this as I think we are seeing the limits to what models can tell us. FR 2011 even quantified how much of the remaining variability was not accounted for in their analysis. I suspect, if you add in all aerosol effects from anthropogenic sources (which FR 2011 did not do) you’d get even a better match between current models and observations.
R. Gates,
There may be some freedom of interpretation in their formulation, but I cannot figure out exactly what you wish to tell.
If models still cannot reproduce the variability, that does not imply necessarily a claim that they try to do it. It could also mean that some essential change would be needed in the models. Surely you don’t think that future models could not be is some respects much more capable than the present ones.
Climate models can certainly never predict weather and almost as certainly not averages of individual years far in the future, but I cannot see why it would be impossible that some future models could describe correctly all major major factors that contribute to the variability.
Pekka,
I’m simply saying that models are tools, not crystal balls. We can make the dynamics better and better in models as our knowledge of the science improves, but we’ll always hit the wall of internal natural variability. It is here that we have a chance to improve our use of models, becoming more sophisticated with how we use these tools, and I think one way is to evolve our validation and improvement of models by accepting natural variability as an outer boundary to models and using it to confirm and refine the models, Those who criticize models for being “wrong” are like someone criticizing a hammer for not being a screw driver. Find out what the hammer does, and improve it if you can, but don’t try to make it something it is not.
R. Gates,
I agree fully with that, but noting limitations of the present models is relevant for that paper as one motivation for studying what can be learned on such potential variability that the present models cannot describe.
From Miller’s interview with the New York Times: “It was possible, according to the I.P.C.C. consensus statement, that the warming before 1956 could be because of changes in solar activity, and that even a substantial part of the more recent warming could be natural.”
Possible ?, Yes. But why look for the possible unmeasured solar activity when the measured industrial activity is staring you in the face. Why did Muller follow the IPCC in not recognising that the climate change between 1905 and 1940 of 0.45C was industrial? His BEST project was supposed to be independent. Because the IPCC would have had to explain why it stopped so suddenly and reversed in 1940, Muller would have known that the narrow band resonance in CO2 was limited in the amount of earth’s IR radiation it could absorb. That is not surprising as no resonant system is able to absorb infinite power and most are limited to much less. When the maximum absorption power of the CO2 molecule is exceeded the additional energy escapes harmlessly into space. That is still the position today. The pre-1940 extra energy is still being pumped into the system and is slowly raising the temperature of the oceans, hence the global temperature increase between 1970 and 2000. The extra CO2 in the atmosphere is not enough to measurably raise the temperature above the 2000 level. This is just an example of signal tracing through inertial and transport delays. See my web site.
A. Biggs said:
“The extra CO2 in the atmosphere is not enough to measurably raise the temperature above the 2000 level.”
Except for the fact that it has been very accurately measured and every year since 2000 has been warmer. You mean except for that?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A.gif
You link to GISS???
ROFL
“every year since 2000 has been warmer. You mean except for that?”
No, I don’t. The satellite measurements presented in the evidence to the House, show a leveling off of global average temperature after 2000, while the ground measurements were shown to be biased.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/mean:5/mean:7/from:2000/plot/uah/mean:5/mean:7/from:2000/plot/rss/from:2000/trend/plot/uah/from:2000/trend/plot/rss/last:204/mean:5/mean:7/to:2000/plot/rss/last:204/trend/plot/uah/last:204/mean:5/mean:7/to:2000/plot/uah/last:204/trend
One explanation is the global temperature rise slowed. Sure.
If you ignore that the world was coming out of the strongest El Nino on record into a cluster of La Nina events.. and the global temperature _still_ rose slightly despite these La Nina’s, a startling outcome.
Also, where we can suppose there may be a bias somewhere in the observations, nailing down exactly where the bias is becomes problematic: do we trust 1970’s technology that was shot into orbit and has since fallen to a small circle to interpret, which they’ve done with divergent outcomes published for only three decades, or do we trust a whole-hearted, transparent, open process to take all of the temperature observations available, subject them to the best known techniques of analysis, and come up with something cogent and credible?
Seems to me the indicators point more toward the 1970’s technology and its few interpreters showing more bias is more plausible.
And if we refer to a period that is long enough for statistically significant results — ie 17 years, or 204 months — then we see the rise continues on all records, satellite or surface-based.
And even if it didn’t, Bayesian logic dictates it takes more than one such exception to question the trend.
I think one good exception is exactly enough to question a trend. It must be comforting to the true believers to suppose that serious skeptics can be refuted by citing some warming temperature data. In fact they almost all except that warming is happening. If that is true, than saying that there has been some warming since 2000 simply means that you agree with them. Straw men do not stand up well to scrutiny. The question is how much is do to CO2 increase and how does that show a unique change in the warming of the globe. Looking at the Mona Loa data it is apparent that CO2 and temperature seemed to be tracking together from 1975 to 2000.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/normalise/plot/esrl-co2/normalise But that failed before 1975 and post 2000. What is especially interesting is comparing the warming periods from 1910 to 1940 with the one from 1970 to 2000. If the CO2 effect provided something extra for the later period compared to the earlier, it is not readily apparent. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:1940/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1970/to:2000/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:1940/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1970/to:2000
or more simplified http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:1940/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1970/to:2000/trend I know, I know that the earlier period was cooler than the later. See strawman argument above. And just for giggles, what do you think of this chart http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/isolate:60/mean:12/scale:0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/isolate:60/mean:12/from:1958
Mr. Biggs,
Every year since 2000 has been warmer than 2000, both on land and in the ocean. Your notion that the ground based measurements are inaccurate or “biased” has no basis in reality…much like the “unprecedented” paper-tiger that Anthony Watts is busy cobbling together.
R gates
That would be the surprisingly cool year 2000 would it?
Would be interested to see your version of the trend from 1998 to 2011 . Is it cooling, warming or static?
Tonyb
Tony,
Mr. Biggs was the one who chose the year 2000, not me. But of course, if you chose the huge El Nino year of 1998 is which massive amounts of stored heat energy was released by the oceans back to the troposphere, you would get a different story.
Better to look at the long-term trends don’t you think,, filtering out both ENSO and volcanic effects as FR 2011 did (and even human aerosols if possible) to see what forcing might exist from the continual build up of greenhouse gases. In doing so of course there is an underlying and continual warming, over at least the past 50+ years. Those are the facts, everything else is the picking of cherries. Mr. Biggs just unfortunately picked the wrong cherry that did not happen to prove his AGW denialist position…
R gates
As a matter of interest have you charted the trend for the latest best study to 1753? If so I would be interested to see it as I have seen a number of different versions. It’s very hard to get an objective graph it seems as so many people want to prove their own view point
Tonyb
CMS | August 7, 2012 at 1:13 pm |
The average understanding of the meaning of average, between the two of us, appears to be somewhat less than 100%.
But let’s talk about Proof by Counterexample, something else that between the two of us, there appears to be an average understanding somewhat less than 100%.
Proof by Counterexample is a technique of binary logic, requiring that a proposition be clearly one thing or clearly another and that it be generally asserted. “All students are lazy”, is purely binary in that a student is either lazy or diligent, and is asserted in that this general condition applies to all students. If we can find a single counterexample to this condition anywhere in the AGW argument, we’ve proven that Proof by Counterexample is irrelevant to the discussion, and that throwing it around as if it meant anything is a spurious distraction of no merit.
So for counterexample, the trough of a wave may be lower than the average level of the rising tide, but does not demonstrate that the tide has reversed itself and begun to flow out.
And really, this land temperatures vs. global temperatures canard ought be put in perspective. Land is almost 1/3rd of the surface of the globe. Blood is a small fraction of the human body. If a medical test for the presence of an infectious agent is being carried out, it’s generally good enough to draw a little blood, even if the disease isn’t one primarily of the bloodstream. As the land goes, ARGO and GRACE show us that so go the seas and polar sea ice. In a Bayesian sense. ;)
Bart R
What about the student who is sometimes lazy and at other times diligent? [i.e. the largest percentage arguably]
Now, as far as the “trough of the wave” is concerned, this is purely conjectural – it could well be the start of a longer downward trend. You don’t know; I don’t know. James E. Hansen doesn’t know, nor does the IPCC.
Let’s wait and see.
Max
PS Is it likely to be the beginning of a 30-year cycle of slight cooling or simply a 15-year “blip”? Let’s have your guess…
manacker | August 8, 2012 at 10:43 am |
Sometimes diligent is sometimes not lazy. Ergo, a student and at a time not lazy. Hence, “All students are lazy,” is false on the one sometime counterexample. Weren’t you following the discussion?
PS Is it likely to be the beginning of a 30-year cycle of slight cooling or simply a 15-year “blip”? Let’s have your guess…
Likely? How likely? Likely on what bases? Where does the physical mechanism for a cycle come from at all? Is there a wheel involved? A pendulum? Why ‘slight’? On what mechanism slight? How slight is slight?
Do you mean cooling relative to how warm it could’ve been otherwise, or absolutely cooling?
July was the hottest US month on record by 0.2F — and it isn’t even an El Nino year. There are many inferences we cannot draw from this fact alone, however in concert with what we do know, we can expect many decades of much more frequent extreme weather in the USA.
Every month for the past 550 months has ended a decade hotter globally than the decade before it. There are many inferences this simplistic trendological statement does not satisfactorily support alone. However, taken with everything else we do know, continuation of this trend is sufficiently likely and sufficiently risky to demand attention.
A two-factor CO2/volcano graph can explain 95% of the global temperature, including matching jump discontinuities (fingerprint ridges) in the tangents to the curve. We call those sharp stalagtite shapes in two curves at the same time coffin nails. They seal the lid on any question of the strength of the correlation.
We’ve waited, and now we see. The only ones who don’t see are the ones closing their eyes wilfully.
Ocean paracyclic trends lag land temperatures. Where the models overestimate warming in atmosphere they underestimate albedo-loss by warming in ice caps, meaning they’re understating the severity of the issue. Lucrative human activities fostered by neomercantile ‘cheap energy’ government policies have led to this outcome, and continued adherence to these failed and discredited policies will only continue to dig us all deeper into carbon cycle debt.
CMS | August 5, 2012 at 2:59 pm |
I think one good exception is exactly enough to question a trend.
That’s a nice opinion.
Here’s what Bayes says about it. Or at least what Cambridge says about it: http://videolectures.net/mlss09uk_bishop_ibi/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference
As a mathematician, guess whose opinion I find more compelling?
Comfort has nothing to do with it.. but belief? Bayes was all about belief, prior and posterior, given observations.
While some skeptics may not deny warming, it’s not a straw man to directly say to someone denying warming that the observations disagree with their claims (http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/04/the-irresistable-story-of-richard-muller/#comment-225915 is where the claim happened). Try looking up the definition of these technical terms before you misrepresent them, or at least looking at the context from the nesting of comments.
“The question is how much is do to CO2 increase and how does that show a unique change in the warming of the globe.
Which would be Figure 5 of the most recent BEST release (http://berkeleyearth.org/pdf/results-paper-july-8.pdf), wouldn’t it?
Why limit yourself to Mauna Loa when there’s so much more information to be had, and especially why ignore the very clear role of particulates, which when their effect is removed from the trends leaves a remarkable signal of CO2-global-temperature correspondence, as distinct as a fingerprint, and as convincing, to a high confidence level.
Your analyses ignore this current state of knowledge, which explain 100% of the differences between your conclusions and, y’know, something factual.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterexample
I see you cannot but help raise the straw man, ” it’s not a straw man to directly say to someone denying warming”, even in your rebuttal. Yes we all believe the earth is warming. It would be so much more convenient did the skeptics not believe so. In fact I would be on the other side were that true.
Your citing of BEST reaffirms the common MSM characterization of the study. Unfortunately we are discussing Global temperatures, not land temperatures. Not your fault, Muller did not make the distinction when he first made his publicity splash and left everyone scratching their heads.
Particulates, well that was the excuse for the last hiatus in warming. And in fact I have seen that that excuse is again being trotted out for this one. Yes I know they used that in the models so that they could make some kind of fit for that period.
In fact one begins to wonder if we are not repeating that period. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/to:1970/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to:2011/offset:-0.4 . But of course that is an argument that in less than 20 years warming may start up again. That should give you comfort. Though of course that will seriously impact the average rate of warming.
CMS | August 5, 2012 at 4:51 pm |
Uh, what?
Look, if everything to you is a straw man, that’s cool and all, but to some of us it really means only one type of thing. If you want to speak some other language than English, kindly stop borrowing so many words from English that people can’t tell where English ends and your special language begins.
Not all of “we” believe the Earth is warming; clearly, Mr. Biggs has stated that there’s a leveling off. Which, if he doesn’t believe is still warming, he’s not one of your “we”. But that’s not the point, either.
In a Bayesian sense, as observationally and in the models we have observed many “leveling off” phases on longer periods that are known to be not just warming trends but also to be dramatic warming, the identification of a leveling off phase is on its own simply meaningless.
It would be as bad as saying that 2012 is what Global Warming Looks Like, or some other nonsensical soundbite. 3% to 17% or so of 2012 is what some Global Warming may look like.
And I get that you, Dr. Curry, and Dr. Muller have all emphasized the point that BEST is land-only (though why you deny Muller pointed this out plainly is puzzling). I’m cool with that stipulation. It doesn’t influence my argument in the least. I also get that BEST is not yet fully through peer review and publication, either. I’m cool with that stipulation. It doesn’t influence my argument in the least. Why do you suppose it does? Is this guilt-by-association magickal reasoning? http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/genetic
The correlation in Figure 5 is just as present comparing the Figure 5 CO2/Volcano plot with GISS or HadCRUT. If RSS or UAH were long enough to compare to the plot, it’d be worth mentioning them. As they’re inadequate to the job, it’s not worth going to them. Wrong tools for the job.
And what is this “average rate of warming” that you feel is seriously affected by anything? Clearly, rate of warming is dynamical and influenced by many factors, CO2E level merely the largest among them on the multidecadal-millennial scale, based on the available evidence, but it isn’t the whole story.
It’s only the story about 95% of the time.
Sorry, You throw “Bayesian” around so much, that I thought that you would at least understand what an average is.
Changes the words, changes his mind, changes the rules of engagement. Hmm…
Vhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH2w6Oxx0kQ&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=AL94UKMTqg-9BdMKl_uf29RE56NDtkg0Iw
Blowing in the Wind by Kansas, but the link isn’t working. (
er, Dust in the Wind, perhaps Kansas was advocating conservation agriculture :)
That’s the answer, my friend, all we are is looking for.
============
cd, I’d say more a description of his personal ‘stand.’ :-) Pragmatic, technical solutions ter problem solving seems ter be more a sceptic thing than the big government ‘solution’ policies favoured by AGWers..
J. Curry writes: “I was invited to write a muller/best related op-ed, not by NYT but one of approx the same impact factor. I decided not to, writing an op-ed is a political act, and I don’t really want to go there, particularly over this issue.”
Judith, how disappointing. So you think it’s a political act. It does not necessarily follow that it’s somehow a bad thing, or not worth doing. Apart from the fact that people are hungry for balance, I guess I don’t understand on a human level, the lack of passion. Your expressed opinions are being distorted to some extent, are they not? JUst on a human level, don’t you feel the urge to set the record straight?
All that said, I do not see that it is in fact a “political act.” Or at least, it certainly doesn’t have to be. You’re being invited to express an opinion as to the science. This is not inherently political. It would be your op-ed, yours to frame as you see fit. I see it as a huge missed opportunity.
Maybe, but I just didn’t feel particularly inspired to write anything that I thought the editors would be interested in.
Dr Curry, I rather think that would be their problem not yours. You should write what you think should be heard, even if it is not what editors want to hear or whether they think it is interesting. Your blog postings tend to be pretty diplomatic and ‘apolitical’ – a principle reason I visit here (and I suspect I am not alone), I don’t see why that couldn’t extend to an op-ed.
Nicely reasoned!!!
I have to admit, you’ve been wise in the way you’ve guarded your apolitical status. You’ve got to be one of the very few luke-warmers shall we say, whom the MSM bothers to contact for quotes. Part of that is the mirror image of the Muller effect…that is to say a converted true believer to a more skeptical point of view. Apostates are rare, and compelling.Of course in Muller’s case it’s smoke and mirrors, but still…
And part of it is also your refusal to get caught up in the “wars” People respect this.. Still, I’m hoping there comes a point when you see fit to start writing an op-ed here and there. I don’t know how you can stand the nonsense regularly published by the NYT’s. I’m thinking especially of Hansen’s recent absurd op-ed. Somebody, somewhere with the respect and credentials to do so has to stand up. These guys know they can say just about anything they want and get away with it. And they do so regularly.
Don Aitkin (who now has his own blog, btw) has an interesting take on how Muller’s latest has been playing out downunder
He’s changed his mind
‘I’ve said to her that the unfortunate aspect of her theory is that it’s untestable.
it is untestable, just like the junk on your side is untestable.. very unfortunate!
In her study Lahsen interviews three physicists who were among the highest profile climate skeptics : Frederick Seitz, William Happer and William Neirenberg.
It would be at least as worthy of a psychological study to explore why so many climate credents “believe” a theory that is so full of inadequacies. It would be one thing to say “This is the only theory we have until a better one comes along”, but to actually believe the theory is at least as mysterious as not to believe it.
I agree with you Judith on this one. Muller is a good catelyst for the kind of shaking the field needs. I note Real Climate has been deafeningly silent. I liked Muller’s approach from the beginning. As Teddy Roosevelt observed of the muckrakers: “The man with the muckrake can do a great deal of good, provided he knows when to stop raking the muck.” Muller could stray over this fine line if he doesn’t watch his showmanship tendencies. So far, so good.
What claim have they made that Muller has not confirmed? They said GisTemp is accurate. He seems to agree. They said all of the claims would not change anything: same answer. He seems to agree. Why would they rush out and say something? They already did it: long ago.
Anyway, they posted an article.
A pretty good summary from Gavin – a circus; much ado about nothing.
Yes a real clown show, both the professional ones and the amateur skeptic clowns.
Actually, there are lots of false claims, some documented by Steve McIntyre. Surely the hockey stick and its stubborn defense by the RC crowd is pretty much discredited by professional statisticians. There was just a letter to Nature stating that climate models accuracy had probably plateaued, perhaps permanently. But the models are the keystone of the RC doctrine. The main problem is just the political expedient of never admitting error, sneering at opponents and “putting the best possible face on everything.” A prime hallmark of positive results bias. Skeptics fall into the same traps of course and Webby, the poor boy so concerning to his mom, by pointing this out learns nothing and forgets nothing, as a wag said of the French between the wars. You can feel good by doing this if you have a certain personality problem, but it does nothing to advance the debate.
See how far you get without any models of any kind.
Clown.
Excellent post, Judith… interesting, informative and thoughtful.
Jo Nova has a different perspective on Muller and BEST.
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/07/muller-the-pretend-skeptic-makes-three-claims-hes-half-right-on-one/
Muller has a much broader interest base than the typical climate scientist. Take a look at his book “Physics for Future Presidents”. As I recall he has an entire chapter on fossil fuel depletion, including the history behind it and where he sees it going.
Like his fellow scientists at some level of authority, such as Steven Chu, he has a very complete picture of the risk mitigation measures necessary to guide the energy economy through the current crisis.
The agenda-driven climate skeptics fear Muller for the knowledge that he represents, and that’s why he is getting attacked.
I was looking for regional temperature anomalies as measured by satellites enumerated in degrees C/decade and found this:
http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/currydoc/Agudelo_GRL31.pdf
This should make anyone skeptical of CO2 driven global warming. There is no rational explanation for the distribution Curry found and plotted in figure 1. This should make a skeptic out of anyone informed enough to realize that well mixed CO2 can’t possibly explain it.
I shouldn’t have written no rational explanation. Of course there some rational explanation for it because the universe obeys a set of laws that govern its behavior and the laws are rational once properly understood. What I meant to say is there is not rational explanation based on anthropogenic CO2 in a well mixed atmosphere.
I have my own suspicions about a rational explanation which largely involves soot emissions and wind patterns.
I am beginning to think just more general emissions plus dust from wind erosion.
Dust isn’t particularly darker than average land surface but it’s certainly darker than snow. There isn’t much dust in air in the winter though. Soot production however goes into overdrive in the cold season as demand for indoor heating goes up. In the summer in the regions most effected demand for energy goes down because demand for air conditioning rapidly declines above 35 degrees north latitude. It sure looks like a solid link with anthropogenic energy use in colder climes.
Notice how CONUS isn’t as effected as Europe and Northeast Asia? The fig. 1 plot of for the period 1979-2001. US made great strides by 1979 in scrubbing soot from vehicle exhausts and industrial smokestacks. That began with the Clean Air Act of the 1964. Europe and Asia meanwhile did not consider soot to be a problem and did nothing. Plus they have a love affair with the diesel motor which in general (older models anyhow) has a very high soot content. United States is in love with gasoline motors which emit little soot compared with diesel.
WOW! That might even make some think that land use change might have some impact :)
I tried land use change and drew a blank. Northeastern Canada is a hotspot and there’s little land use change. Australia has lots of land use change and it cooled. Seems like there’s too many exceptions. Generall in the NH prevailing wind is west-east so if you think about industrial smokestack concentration and wind patterns it might make more sense. I was vaguely aware the NH had more warming than SH but I wasn’t aware the warming pretty much starts above the 30th northern parallel and anything south of that is more likely to have cooled. There is absolutely no way that CO2 in a well mixed atmosphere can explain this but because industry is largely concentrated above the 30th northern parallel, as well as amount of time when land is covered by snow and most susceptable to albedo change by soot, that may be a rational explanation. It sure looks anthropogenic just not anthropogenic CO2.
You should take notice of the fact that this analysis did use version 5.1 of the UAH analysis, which was found to have a rather serious error. The corrected version 5.2 differs substantially from 5.1, but I don’t know how strongly that would affect the Fig 1. of that paper.
From what I recall (which may be wrong) version 5.2 was within 2-sigma CIs of version 5.1. The “pro-IPCC” advocates made a much bigger deal out of this than was really the case.
However, I agree it would be better to use the data with the error corrected.
Duly noted. Below is the Mears 2005 paper which comprises the correction.
https://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/104116.pdf
It’s just one satellite that flew for 5 years (NOAA-11) that had the problem and it wasn’t a problem in the beginning years because it was cumulative drift in orbit causing the equatorial flyover point in time to have a growing error.
The overall effect on trend was confined between 15N and 15S latitude as can be seen in figure 4 and produced a warming trend of about 0.05C/decade in UAH v5.2 where UAH v5.1 showed a trend in the same region of 0.00C/decade.
This has no significant impact on any of points raised here from Curry 2004 fig. 1 as the decadal trends by latitude between NH and SH differ by up to 0.8C/decade and exist largely outside the tropical region error corrected by Mears 2005.
But thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Spence_UK | August 5, 2012 at 8:16 am |
The phrase ‘Much ado about nothing’ comes to mind. In Pekka’s defense, and in general defense of weasels everywhere, he states up front he doesn’t know if it matters in the context of Curry 2004. It doesn’t. But I agree use of more accurate data is always preferable and it would also be nice to see how the trend changed between the 2001 and 2012 as Curry’s analysis ends in 2001. As stated I’d also like to see decadal trends split into cold and warm season trend to test my hypothesis that there’s far more warming when and where there is snow on the ground. Splitting the year in two APR-SEP and OCT-MAR should suffice for that. I’m guessing but I believe snowcover by area and time covered is probably 4x greater in NH vs. SH. There’s twice as much land mass in NH as SH and what land there is in the SH tends to be far less removed in distance from the nearest ocean shore. The ocean of course moderates summer/winter temperature difference over land the closer the land is to the shore with some bias towards western shoreines in NH and eastern shorelines in SH getting more of the moderation because of different directions in prevailing winds NH vs. SH.
Based on these papers the effect is much more than you indicate.
First of all it is not limited to 15S – 15N but extends essentially as strongly to 45N.
The second point is that adding 0.2C/decade would make the Figure 1 of the Curry et al paper look very different as anybody looking at the Figure can immediately see. All what’s presently blue in this range would be black and whats presently black would be orange and that would really change the whole picture.
It’s also easy to see from the Mears and Wentz paper that this is to be expected as the broad minimum in the tropics disappears totally in the correction.
Should I be surprised of your totally false reaction?
Given that the global effect of v5.1 to v5.2 on trend was 0.035 deg C/decade, and locally was larger in the tropics (0.05 deg C/decade), why on earth is Pekka talking about 0.2deg C/decade? That is 4-6 times larger than the error, and slightly larger even than the current global trend according to UAH.
Of course 0.2 deg C/decade would change the plot. But there are no 0.2deg C/decade errors to account for.
Looking again at he paper I see that the correction is not as large as I wrote before for the difference of versions 5.1 and 5.2, but it’s still large enough (almost 0.1C/decade over latitudes 15S – 30N) to change the Figure 1 of the Curry et al paper significantly. My comment was a little too strong but closer than the dismissal of the correction as insignificant.
The full 0.2C/decade is true for a comparison with what’s called “new results” in the paper. That means that using the alternative data makes the Figure that much different. This observation means that the original interpretation is questionable as it’s significantly weakened for the UAH data and essentially removed by the alternative data.
“Almost 0.1”
*shakes head in disbelief*
I don’t think that I have made any further misinterpretations on Fig 4 of the Mears and Wentz paper.
The latitudes in question cover about 30% of Earth surface. Thus the effect on the global average is about 0.03 C/decade.
No, sure Pekka. It’s fine to give yourself a fictitious 50% hike in the error term, after all you qualified it with the word “almost”.
I mean, the error was “almost” 0.1 and the sky is “almost” pink, and 1+1 is “almost” 3.
*continues to shake head in disbelief*
Also: once you take into account Greenland and the poles (the poles aren’t covered, Greenland is too high to give reliable readings*), 15S to 30N is more like 38% of the globe, also your calculation (0.1*0.3) would only hold if the difference was zero elsewhere (it isn’t).
In short, your numbers are all biased in your favour, and all of the bias adds up to a big disagreement with reality.
* The Tibetan plateau also removes area, but extends both above and below 30N so may not affect the ratio so much.
Everybody interested can check the two papers directly.
I add only that after the corrections the tropical trend changed from essentally zero to clearly positive according to the figure we have been disussing and that the analysis of that paper gave roughly the 0.2 I mentioned first.
Everybody interested can do some basic trig and realise your numbers are wrong. Everybody interested can read graphs and see that the error is not zero outside of the range 15S to 30N. Everybody interested can do basic trig and realise that 15S to 30N is rather more than 30% of the globe. Everybody interested can realise every single number you quote has a non-trivial bias in your own favour.
The odd thing is that “everybody interested” is probably pretty much nobody. This debate is pretty much irrelevant to the wider discussion here. I was hoping to get you to look at your own analysis objectively and without bias. You know, the corner stone of great scientific thinking. I guess that isn’t going to happen any time soon. I give up.
Let’s go back to what we are discussing.
I pointed out that the data used was found to be in error. You and Dave admitted that but made statements to belittle the significance of that observation. Dave gave also a reference to support his comment. I checked that reference and found that it actually provided evidence that the error was significant. I didn’t check it carefully enough and overstated my point – and admitted that immediately when that was pointed out. In the following I used a formulation “almost 0.1” which was perhaps a bit too inaccurate as the correct value is 0.07. You made your opposite overstatement implying that the right value would be 0.05, but I didn’t want continue on that detail but leave your comment as the last one on that.
The area where the correction extended was brought up only to explain that the change of global trend is only a fraction of the change in the range of low latitudes.
The real issue is whether the corrected data differs so much from the original that the basis for Dave’s original message is significantly modified. I maintain that it really does differ. Even the average 0.07c/decade for the latitude average is enough for that. To tell precisely how the result gets modified depends also on the longitudinal distribution of this average value.
The main point is that the results of one particular scientific paper should not be used after the observation that the experimental data that is essential input for the analysis have been found to be substantially in error and that the version 5.1 data were substantially in error over that range of latitudes. Whether that change is more or less than two standard deviations is totally irrelevant when the values have changed enough to influence possibly the conclusions.
I admit that the specific numbers I gave were somewhat wrong. You could respond by admitting that your first belittling comment was even worse off the mark.
@Pekka “The Weasel” Pirila
Please refer to fig. 4 in Mears (2005) linked above. The correction for drift in NOAA-11’s orbit in v5.2 changed the decadal trend between 15N and 15S latitude from very slightly negative very near zero upwards by about 0.07C which put it in positive territory for the range. Not many parallels north of 15N it was already positive in uncorrected v5.1 and north of 30N it was my POINT that it was a very positive trend everywhere in the NH almost opposite in sign to the same latitude in the SH.
I thank you again for pointing out the correction between UAH v5.1 and v5.2 but it does not diminish the fact by any significant degree that northern and southern hemisphere warming differ by over 0.5C in most places. The correction is nearly tens time smaller in magnitude even nearest the equator and becomes a much smaller magnitude difference in the areas of greatest contrast between NH and SH.
You are a weasel, Pekka. I don’t expect you to agree to anything that doesn’t further your vested interest in climate change and I encourage anyone interested to simply look at the papers for themselves and reach their own conclusions. Too bad you won’t do the same. Only very rarely do you ever even make any citations in support of your claims whereas I do so very frequently even without prodding and almost always if anyone asks.
If you look at the southern hemisphere you can see the warming is East and somewhat south of the major land masses. The general land use and pollutant impacts shift with the winds and are not as strongly amplified. In the Northern hemisphere the impacts are East and slightly north of the main land sources of the warming. There are other land mass to amplify the impact in the northern hemisphere and the oceans tend not not amplify as much in the southern hemisphere.
Dust and black carbon have a much more sever impact in the northern hemisphere because of the distribution of land mass and the prevailing winds.
By the way, Muller is a putz with no basis at all for any attributions he fabricated to go along with the temperature study.
Dr. Curry,
re; http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/currydoc/Agudelo_GRL31.pdf
Is it possible to get figure 1 split so it breaks out decadal warming (or cooling) that occured from say April-September and another for October-March? I’d like to see something that gives an indication of whether the warming tends to happen more in the colder part of the year for each hemisphere.
I don’t understand how it could be that the encroachment of civilization upon weather stations would not induce a warming signal. Do you, or anyone else, have a copy of the paper with the BEST methodology? Dr. Curry?
Muller well represents every academic scientist today (which is why his story “interests” Judith Curry, as she does not see how like him she is, nor of course how egregious he is–“elite physicist”, she says!). You are all determinedly disconnected from reality, much less from good science.
Oliver,
Mass exists in many forms.
The area of pressure is one that is totally missed in many factors as the energy is slowly released and the pressure then also changes depending on the vectors of the very different gases, particle, etc.
Velocities have a big influence in these changes. Every rotating body that is round also has many different velocities…
Which our scientists have missed and NOW ignore due to the SCIENCE IS SETTLED law.
In 1884, meridian time personnel met in Washington to change Earth time. First words said was that only 1 day could be used on Earth to not change the 1 day bible. So they applied the 1 day and ignored the other 3 days. The bible time was wrong then and it proved wrong today.
Joe, energy (E) stored as mass (m) in the cores of atoms and stars is very much like a highly pressurized fluid.
After 1945 world leaders and leaders of the scientific community attempted to unite nations, avoid nuclear annihilation, and reduce nationalism and racism by promoting misleading models of energy (E) stored as mass (m) in cores of stars [1] and atoms [2].
Society is in crisis now: It is time to end the debate and discuss experimental data and observations [3] openly, in public !
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-720
References:
1. Fred Hoyle, “The chemical composition of the stars,” Monthly Notices Royal Astronomical Society 106, 255-59 (1946); “The synthesis of the elements from hydrogen,” ibid., 343-83 (1946)
2. Hideki Yukawa, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (1946); Introduction to the Theory of Elementary Particles (1948) http://www.nndb.com/people/759/000099462
3. Oliver K. Manuel, “Neutron repulsion,” The Apeiron Journal 19, 123-150 (2012) http://tinyurl.com/7t5ojrn
What is this Ape Iron journal that the Manuel posts to?
Indeed, it is a home for ctackpots.
http://www.physicsforums.com/blog.php?b=1476
Oliver,
Then the formula of squared is then absolutely incorrect as mass slowly changes and does not double every single shift of energy difference.
Velocity difference has very different energy flows due to the differences of speeds to centrifugal force along with size differences. Inertia is the slow release of these and changes the density.
NPR’s own “elite physics” weblog 13.7: Cosmos and Culture is headling the story “How Good Were Climate Models 30 Years Ago?“
The gist of the NPR story is simple and well-documented:
• Hansen’s climate physics was right back in 1981.
• Hansen’s climate physics is proving right at present.
• Hansen’s climate physics likely is right about the future.
As the NPW analysis concludes
Old-school climate-change deniers are fighting back desperately, but the skeptics are not landing their punches … particularly in view of the debacle of Anthony Watts’ recent dubious-quality, rushed-release data analysis.
In contrast, the dreadful drought, baking heat, and (as documented by Neven) incredible ice-melt, all are drawing the public’s attention to the utter bankruptcy (both scientific and moral) of climate-change denialism.
Conclusion As Richard Feynman said: “Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled” … and we are seeing that Nature is in James Hansen’s corner. That is why summer of 2012 is shaping up to be a science-driven knockdown of climate-change deniers.
Nature’s knockdown of deniers was inevitable … and now it is here. :smile: :grin: :lol:
I think your bow tie is on too tight.
I disagree. If it was on tight enough he’d be unconscious.
I need a LOT of conversational condoms for that one, methinks.
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
Not so good. They go up more and more after 1998. Earth temperature has not gone up more and more after 1998.
In your dreams, Dopey Professor John Sidles of University of Washington Medical School.
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Some of your response must have been lost. All that came through was the opening sentence and a bunch of emoticon spam. Hope you saved before posting.
Sometimes there just aren’t enough eyeballs to properly convey a sentiment. That doesn’t mean we should abandon the effort though.
Write that down, Trebor.
“Sometimes there just aren’t enough eyeballs to properly convey a sentiment.”
It would help if you knew how to write.
But I suppose little smiley faces, etc., better reflects your level of mental and emotional development.
It’s nice when you childish morons label yourselves. ;)
Rumor has it that Dave Springer’s lost prose was a well-considered analysis of the Good-Reuveny Effect’s key role in climate-change denialism.
Yet due to a regrettable editor glitch, Springer’s analysis got changed to a row of smilies … and so Dave’s noble conceptions were “lost in time, like tears in rain“! :sad: :sad: :sad:
Is that guess right, Dave Springer? :lol: :lol: :lol:
Dave springer
IF Fan is John Sidles he ought to be proud of his outstanding academic record. He’s hardly dopey. However the wild overuse of emoticons has always suggested to me a female rather than male, but whatever, he/she can assume whatever identity he/she wants when many others also choose to be anonymous on this blog
Tonyb
+1.
I think John Sidles may have some gender identity issues but rest assured that’s who is behind “a physicist” and “a fan of *more* discourse*. On pj media, about a year ago, he made two identical postings within a minute of each other. On one of them he inadvertently, instead of his usual handle “a physicist”, instead used his university email address. This can be done easily enough by accidently filling out the two required fields “email” and “name” in reverse right below the comment edit dialog. So his email address instead of his name appeared on the post. He noticed and corrected it immediately in a second comment posting without changing anything in the text of the comment. He’s never denied his real name nor, as far as I know, acknowledged it either. He was considered a threadjacking troll at pj media and later at WUWT. After being banned at WUWT under the handle “a physicist” he changed it to “a fan of *more* discourse” and tried to continue trolling there but WUWT identified him by his IP address and made it known he wasn’t welcome under any name.
Dave Springer’s posts are immensely valuable in a sense that needs to be appreciated: his posts have illustrated on Climate Etc. — over-and-over again — the addiction of climate-change denialists to ingroup/outgroup thinking, scapegoating, motivism, polarizing rhetoric, bad science, anti-intellectualism, conspiracy theories, personal abuse, and compulsive enemy-listing.
Along the same lines, Judith Curry is highlighting in “Week in review 8/5/12“ a recent article in the journal Psychological Science titled “NASA faked the moon landing – therefore climate change is a hoax: an anatomy of the motivated rejection of science”.
Perhaps the summer of 2012 will be remembered for the collapse of climate-change denialism? In consequence of a one-two punch: (1) dreadful drought, baking heat, and incredible ice-melt, combined with (2) a growing scientific appreciation of the cognitive foundations of climate-change denial?
For your many, wonderfully consistent, and oft-repeated examples of denialist cognition, thank you Dave Springer! ;) ;) ;)
True-believers, or true-unbelievers (as is the case with anthropogenic climate change deniers) will not change their perceptions no matter what rational evidence is presented to them, and would literally rather die than change. Their entire identity is tied together with their belief system, To give up that belief system is to give up their identity and world-view and is equal to death anyway (in their minds), so they would rather go out holding on to it.
Denial and projection.
R. Gates, no, not in this case. Show me the evidence you speak about. I don’t have a belief system regarding A(GHG)GW. Strictly evidence is what I want to see. So I have nothing to give up. Actually, I believe in the null hypothesis (no relationship, no effect). When I see observations that reject the null hypothesis, I will change my mind. So far I only see failures to reject it.
Furthermore, knowing the history and philosophy of science, and seing the behavior of the consensus scientists, ring all the bells – cargo cult science!
Furthermore, the whole emission reduction activity achieves no significant reduction at all – it only makes rich richer. Bureaucratic verbiage!
Scientifically, it’s all laughable and very simplistic.
And then you tell what you believe.
Giving on the beliefs the subjective name of “null hypothesis” makes them not to least less beliefs.
Perfect example of an true-unbeliever.
With a little bit of luck I think you’ve got it.
=============
Sam NC, CO2 does have radiant properties. If the Earth was a nice milquetoast planet with a thick slow moving atmosphere, CO2 would have a huge impact on climate because it takes time for CO2 to build heat capacity. With constant whirling and twirling atmospheric circulations, the impact is much less because convection and conduction at the radiant boundary layer are negative feed backs to CO2 radiant forcing. It is kinda like insulating one wall of your house. It does retain some heat, but not very efficiently.
Pekka, I changed my mind while writing, because the null hypothesis came into my mind. So, yes, I believe in the null hypothesis.
I also believe that climate changes, which warmists deny to the various extents. It’s basic education (geography). Glaciers for example ALWAYS recede and grow – that’s why the Alps look the way they look.
But most of all, it’s the pseudo-science and dogmatic behavior of the consensus scientists. Climate sensitivity? All the other things being equal? Laughable.
CatptainDallas2,
“CO2 does have radiant properties. If the Earth was a nice milquetoast planet with a thick slow moving atmosphere, CO2 would have a huge impact on climate because it takes time for CO2 to build heat capacity. With constant whirling and twirling atmospheric circulations, the impact is much less because convection and conduction at the radiant boundary layer are negative feed backs to CO2 radiant forcing. It is kinda like insulating one wall of your house. It does retain some heat, but not very efficiently.”
1. All matters at above the absolute zero temperature have radiant properties.
2. You need to prove that CO2 is gaining energy (absorpted in > radiated out to space/surrounding air mass) in order to build up energy content in CO2. CO2 heat capacity as a physical property has a finite heat capacity at a particular temeperature.
3. The atmosphere as a medium between the Earth and the space has insulated effect, whilst CO2 contributed minimal -> 0 to that effect. H2O vapor in the atmosphere with its large latent heat and heat capacity retains heat content longer than any other composition of the atmosphere. H2O is the controlling factor of heating and cooling of the atmosphere, not CO2.
Sam NC,
1. All matters at above the absolute zero temperature have radiant properties.
All matter with energy can radiate heat. All matter does not radiate energy equally.
2. You need to prove that CO2 is gaining energy (absorpted in > radiated out to space/surrounding air mass) in order to build up energy content in CO2. CO2 heat capacity as a physical property has a finite heat capacity at a particular temeperature.
I don’t need to prove anything. A doubling of CO2 would mean there is twice as much CO2. Whatever fraction of the energy retained in the atmosphere is due to CO2 heat capacity of the transfer of energy from CO2 could nearly double with twice as much CO2. The question should be how much was the initial concentration of CO2 responsible for, what is the natural range of variability in the atmosphere, where in the atmosphere did CO2 have its maximum impact and where will a doubling have its maximum impact.
. The atmosphere as a medium between the Earth and the space has insulated effect, whilst CO2 contributed minimal -> 0 to that effect. H2O vapor in the atmosphere with its large latent heat and heat capacity retains heat content longer than any other composition of the atmosphere. H2O is the controlling factor of heating and cooling of the atmosphere, not CO2.
You nor I know what initial impact CO2 had, the “whilst CO2 contributed minimal” is what rednecks call talking out of your ass. You seem to share that habit with a number of climate scientists :)
Water vapor does provide most of the energy retained in the atmosphere. Water, liquid, retains most of the energy in the Earth system. Ice, solid, stores a great deal of energy buffering both ocean and atmosphere heat capacities. CO2 is an additional buffer. It has greater impact when the surface has lower energy and less impact when the surface has greater energy. CO2 has a “sweet spot” in this non-linear system. CO2 is much like a space blanket with a crap load of holes in it. You can only determine the impact of a change in CO2 after you find that “sweet spot”.
The trace gas argument is played out Sam NC. Time to move on to non-linear dynamics.
captdallas2,
Did you find that sweet spot? Can you substantiate it?
Did I find that sweet spot? That depends on who wins the data battle. If UAH wins, the sweet spot is about 21.1C average sea surface temperature. If so, we have arrived at the high normal of the bi-stable climate range.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2012/07/there-are-no-steps-it-is-constant.html
captdallas2,
Your link does not appear to have substantiated your statements.
“You nor I know what initial impact CO2 had,” I know for sure from physical properties of CO2 that there is no initial impact CO2 had.
” the “whilst CO2 contributed minimal” is what rednecks call talking out of your ass. You seem to share that habit with a number of climate scientists” I believe you are running out of reasons.
“Water vapor does provide most of the energy retained in the atmosphere. Water, liquid, retains most of the energy in the Earth system. Ice, solid, stores a great deal of energy buffering both ocean and atmosphere heat capacities. CO2 is an additional buffer.”
Trace gas with minimal ->0 buffering effect.
” It has greater impact when the surface has lower energy and less impact when the surface has greater energy.” Please substantiate them.
‘CO2 has a “sweet spot” in this non-linear system. CO2 is much like a space blanket with a crap load of holes in it. You can only determine the impact of a change in CO2 after you find that “sweet spot”. ‘ Assuming your 21.1degree C is the sweet spot, please substantiate the impacts.
“The trace gas argument is played out Sam NC.” Why would you think the trace gas argument is played out, can you substantiate it?
” Time to move on to non-linear dynamics.” Or you meant to muddle thru the trace gas argument with non-linear dynamics? Why do you think non-linear dynamics is relevant to trace CO2 gas?
Sam NC, “Why do you think non-linear dynamics is relevant to trace CO2 gas?” The system being impacted by the change in the trace gas concentration is non-linear.
captdallas2,
“The system being impacted by the change in the trace gas concentration is non-linear.”
Any substantiation?
Brandon Shollenberger,
Thanks for clearing the muddy waters. Nice to have your unbiased view here.
Brandon Shollenberger,
Can you explain how does mud correlate with surface temperature in simple terms, thanks.
SamNC, I think you put this in the wrong fork, but since you posted your comments here, I’ll respond to you here. If you want more information, it might be best to start an entirely new chain. Either way, I’m glad to offer what help I can!
The first thing I’d say is it is best not to think of sediment records as “mud.” Words like “mud” and “dirt” are commonly used, but they generally lack the precision needed for scientific analysis. To a person, dirt may just be dirt, but to a scientist, there may be hundreds (or even thousands) of types of dirt. It can help to understand how scientists analyze samples if you consider all the different possible traits dirt can have.
The second thing I’d say is related to the first. Different types of dirt have different properties. That’s used for all sorts of things, including determining time periods for soil layers. The type of dirt that forms a layer under one set of circumstances is different than the type of dirt that forms a layer under a different set. This includes major changes, such as shifting plate tectonics, as well as changes in the seasons. During the winter, the type of dirt that falls to the bottom of a lakebed is different than the type of dirt that falls in the summer. Just think about how plant life is different in the seasons to see why this would be so.
That gives a seasonal pattern which can be observed in the data. Once you can see where winter and summer are, you can then look at more specific aspects of the record. Specifically, there are two things scientists generally look at: thickness and isotope levels. In the case of the former, how much soil falls to the bottom of a lake can depend on various factors, including summer temperatures which determine how much snow/ice melt. The more snow/ice that melts in the summer, the more the sediment layer for that year is affected. The hotter the summer, the more snow/ice that melts. Therefore, the hotter the summer, the more the sediment layer is affected.
There are a lot of details I left out, including tons of confounding factors, but that should give you an idea of how it’s done.
There are also biological methods with sediment (the TEX86 proxy that I mentioned below in this case).
Jim D:
I don’t know of many such cases, much less any which have been commonly used. TEX86 is a proxy based upon an aspect of a particular set of single cell organisms. A mechanism has been proposed for using them as a paleothermometer, but it’s a pretty new concept. It’s hard to say much about something that has been studied so little.
It may eventually catch on, but for now, I’m going to focus on the types of proxies which get used in climate science as a whole. If nothing else, it’ll keep things simpler when explaining sediment records to people new to the subject. This is especially true since there is little information on the precision of the TEX86 proxy. It may turn out to be the proxy is good for qualitative but not quantitative information.
Brandon,
Thanks. Now I know paleo scientists prefer ‘dirt’ than ‘mud’.
JimD,
Would like to learn your biological method of paleo temperatures determination some other relevant occasions.
Actually SamNC, they don’t generally use either term. I used dirt because I’m not a scientist, and quite frankly, I don’t know all the terms they use offhand. It really doesn’t matter though. As long as you understand there are many types of dirt/mud/whatever, you can understand how information may exist in “mud.”
“you can understand how information may exist in “mud.””
I pretended that I understand but actually I don’t know how the sediment could accurately relate to temperatures to that kind of precisions on the graph. That lake JimD mentioned is huge almost as big as Lake Superior. One lake end’s temperature could have a big temperature difference in the other end.
Sam NC, The Lake Tanganyika reconstruction is based on the TEX86
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/paleolimnology/eastafrica/tanganyika2008.txt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEX86
There are issues with TEX86. The temperature that causes the change is not necessarily the surface temperature. Then all proxies have some issues and some have advantages.
Tanganyika temperatures follow Northern Hemisphere insolation and indicate that warming in tropical southeast Africa during the last glacial termination began to increase ~3000 years before atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. dD data show that this region experienced abrupt changes in hydrology coeval with orbital and millennial-scale events recorded in Northern Hemisphere monsoonal climate records. This implies that precipitation in tropical southeast Africa is more strongly controlled by changes in Indian Ocean sea surface temperatures and the winter Indian monsoon than by migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone.
That is kinda interesting I thought. JimD, elected to link to only a 1500 year portion of the 60,000 year reconstruction. As a believer, he doesn’t want to confuse people with the pesky natural variations in climate that don’t seem to be related to CO2. :)
Joshua, you were just wrong about the meaning of simple sentences three times. You now say:
I’m afraid you’ve stopped being amusing and have again returned to obnoxiously asserting your baseless opinions as fact. At the point you say something amusing enough to catch my interest again, I’ll respond some more. In the meantime, I’d encourage you to think about the fact you were wrong three times in a row, and you now make your boldest and least supported statement yet. You might consider the expression: “Doubling down on dumb.”
captdallas2,
Thanks for the links. Comparing TEX86 2005 with TEX86 2010 there were already more than 3degC surface temperature differences. So the temperatures were adjusted down to show the hockey stick?
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Lo3aF92JJ3I/UCBX0bpsNUI/AAAAAAAACv8/La4doRvPTD8/s927/JimDs%2520hockey%2520stick.png
The Hockey Stick is from Tierney 2010, 1500 year Tanganyika reconstruction with the same mean as the 60,000 year reconstruction. The orange line is the 60,000 year mean. It is warmer. Likely the warmest in the past 1500 years in tropical Africa. It doesn’t look at that “unprecedented” though for the Holocene. Since the variation in the 60,000 year had nothing to do with CO2 and the most recent does not exceed the past, I wouldn’t say CO2 done it all by itself.
captdallas,
Impressive that your temperature re-construction immediately show where JimD’s hockey stick location located. You must be working in front of a university/research institue’s powerful computer.
Is that a self-diagnosis Edim?
Well maybe you only play a coward on the internet.
But to be fair, what else do we have to judge you by?
Interesting that such is your intent.
Why are you seeking to judge me?
And in particular, why are you seeking to judge me based on blog comments – an impossible task?
And further yet, why would you think that evidence so weak as the assignation of a last name to a blog comment would be a criterion upon which to assess someone’s courage?
Judge my comments as you will. Judge the quality of logic in my analysis if you’re so inclined.
I look at the logic of someone who concludes that someone else is a coward because they don’t assign their last name to a blog post, and I think to myself:
I look at the quality of thinking from someone who make such an assertion and then doubles-down when his poor reasoning is pointed out to him, and justifies such poor logic, and I think:
So, what do you think, Dave?
Very good, Brandon.
I was wrong again. And with each post, your point gets weaker and weaker.
You see, Brandon, part of the reason why you made such a weak point is that you have a habit of confusing opinion with fact
Rather instructive in that regard is when you say, as I have seen you say many times, “That makes no sense,” as opposed to “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” or “That doesn’t seem correct to me,” or even “That doesn’t make any sense to me.” (It is something that we’ve discussed in the past, but unfortunately, your responses on that topic haven’t made any sense.)
And my view is that out of that confusion, you have determined that just because I don’t agree with you on certain issues, I am therefore reluctant to admit it when I make a mistake. And from that you go on to say: ” I could accept it if you learned from or corrected your mistakes, but I pretty much never see that happen. ” Of course you “haven’t seen that happen,” given that you confuse opinion with fact as to whether or not I have “made a mistake.”
Well, now you’ve seen it three times in this very thread alone where I have admitted to being wrong about something.
Now of course, since you like to nit-pick it is entirely possible that your confusion is based simply on a sample-size issue – whereby you simply haven’t seen a representative sample of my behavior – or my behavior in this thread being somehow uncharacteristic, but I think that is unlikely because the behavior on your part which I am explaining causes your skewed understanding of what is or isn’t a “mistake” has cropped up in the past in our interactions.
Of course, it isn’t only in your interactions with me that you display that confusion. As I have pointed out to you previously, your “That just doesn’t make any sense” kind of logic is fairly common found in your interactions with other people as well. Sometimes you even escalate your confusion to insult the individual your conversing with, although not always.
But that’s OK. That kind of confusion is fairly common. You needn’t feel singled-out in that regard.
And thanks for reading my posts, Brandon. And thanks in advance for continuing to respond.
CO2 as a trace has any effect on global warming is the most ridiculous thought. Warmists are lack of physics common sense in heat magnitudes and are deniers of thermodynamics and energy magnitudes.
Would you prefer a bus towards the front of the line or a bus towards the back of the line? Space under buses in the middle of the line have already been filled.
Joshua Juggernaut Conductor.
=======================
Joshua,
I don’t know your above preferences. I drive my own car.
Sam –
As someone who doubts that ACO2 can warm the atmosphere, you are about to be thrown under a bus. As a humanitarian, I’m just trying to help throwees out, and was just asking for your preference so as to make your experience more pleasant.
Joshua,
“thrown under a bus” is a threat!
Seriously, my common sense tells me CO2 as a pollutant or as an atmospheric warming agent is non-sense. My conclusion with the warmists relating global warming to CO2 is lack of common sense and lack of energy magnitude sense. Do you have that sense?
To think that I saw it on Mulberry Street.
=====================
Sam –
Actually, yes, common sense tells me that given the vastness of the Earth, human emitted CO2 would not change the climate.
However, I also know that sometimes scientific research trumps common sense – particularly my common sense. I am ill-equipped (in terms of intelligence and knowledge) to evaluate the scientific research – however, I think that it is only prudent to not dismiss a preponderance of findings in the body of scientific research on the basis of my common sense understanding.
For that reason, I think that it is only prudent to look at the probabilities as described by the preponderance of the scientific literature, and plan in accordance – with an understanding that the research could be wrong.
Anyway – I just want to be clear. I am not threatening you. I’m just trying to make it clear that there are some “skeptics” who claim that “skeptics” such as yourself, despite being represented in large numbers from what I can tell, are not worth listening to, aren’t in the room, etc. It seems that they want to throw folks such as yourself under a bus. I’m just trying to help you out.
Joshua,
Thanks for the good intention.
Until there is clear explanation how a trace gas like CO2 with the energy magnitude caused global warming, I am skeptic of any conclusion jumping to CO2 as the culprit. If you are not clear how CO2 caused warming, those thrown under bus may not be the skeptics, could be the warmists.
Any substantiation?
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-rRs69Ekl9Zc/T_7kMjPiejI/AAAAAAAAChY/baz0GHWEGbI/s917/60000%2520years%2520of%2520climate%2520change%2520plus%2520or%2520minus%25201.25%2520degrees.png
60,000 years of substantiation. There is about 2 C difference between an ice age and not an ice age in the tropics. If you start near the blue line, it looks like uncontrollable warming. If you start at the orange line it looks like normal. Where did Hansen start?
re; Lake Tanganika temp graph past 60,000 years linked by Capt.Dallas
What are the much hotter spikes than today, those going way over “high normal” at 6,000 and 12,000 years ago caused by? Cave men burning coal, perhaps? Yeah, that’s it. That’s the ticket.
Joshua,
The bus bearing down, bears down upon thee.
Or maybe not if you can remain the anonymous coward. Cowardice hath its rewards, huh?
David, I think it had to be unicorn farts :)
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-JetNuc4BIgQ/UBbhjA1G-VI/AAAAAAAACus/-A4K5S4C1lc/s912/strangely%2520attractive.png
Way to the left is the Tasmania reconstruction. Notice there must have been unicorns 3600 years ago.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/climate%20stuff/highlownormal.png
Normal is almost “unprecedented” in a non-linear system interpreted by “post normal” science.
More current Lake Tanganyika temps are here. The current spike is already 26 C and rising, and the warming hasn’t even really started yet.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/unprecedented-warming-in-lake-tanganyika-and-its-impact-on-humanity.html
Now there’s a courageous man: Dave Springer, from behind his keyboard, calling me a coward, because I use only his first name when expressing opinions.
Because obviously, by virtue of using his last name, his act that certainly would generally be considered cowardly, becomes a brave act.
Indeed. A man so brave as Dave Springer doesn’t need to actually know a person, know anything about that person’s life, to determine whether they are a coward or not. Dave’s gifted that way. Just ask him.
captdallas2,
Again, your link did not substantiate your claims. It was a mere diversion of attention.
JimD, the lake Tanganyika reconstruction is 60,000 years long. You pick the last 1500 years to get a hockey stick. I suspect you have been studying at the Hansen and Mann school of fruit selection :)
Here is a tip. When you look at ALL the data, you get a less biased perspective.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/average.png
A few more reconstructions. Notice no smoothing was used to flatten out the past.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/
Lots of data if you want to pretend you are objective.
Sam, I said I didn’t need to prove anything. You need to learn what you need to learn to think about what I “implied”.
Well maybe you only play a coward on the internet.
But to be fair, what else do we have to judge you by?
Anthropogenic unicorns no doubt…
I guess this belongs here, Dave:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/04/the-irresistable-story-of-richard-muller/#comment-226531
JimD,
1. How did you get the surface temperatures of Lake Tanganyika palaeorecord for the past 1,500 years when the surface temperatures are always above 23degC. Where are the cores?
2. When you picked 1500 years palaeorecord, you should chose 1500 years as the base to derive the warming was about 1degC per 1500 years. It looks like you chosed the hockey stick instead. It looks like hockey stick and as good as a hockey stick.
Seriously Joshua, explain in terms that don’t sound fearful or ashamed why you would post anonymously on a female science professor’s blog? Judith Curry’s a girl and she’s got more stones than the majority of the men here.
captdallas2,
“I said I didn’t need to prove anything.” I guess you cannot convince me as you cannot convince yourself.
“You need to learn what you need to learn to think about what I “implied”.” You, like all other warmists really need to appreciate energy magnitudes or put yourselves out of reality into CO2 fantacies.
SamNC, those would be sediment cores. Yes, a good hockey stick, isn’t it. It doesn’t even use tree rings, but seems to show a weak MWP.
Dave –
I just want to make sure that you fully appreciate this complete lack of logic in this sequence of thinking:
First, you judge me based on no evidence other than whether i use my last name in my posts.
Then you double-down by saying that the lack of other valid evidence somehow justifies you drawing conclusions on insufficient evidence.
Then you triple-down? by challenging me to provide evidence that your obviously facile thinking isn’t logical.
And in doing so, to quadruple-down? you introduce an entirely unrelated variable – Judith’s gender.
And to top it all off, you imply that gender is somehow correlated to courage.
How much further down into this rabbit hole of illogic will you dig, Dave?
Joshua | August 6, 2012 at 10:01 am |
That’s pretty much the immediate reason I’m seeking to judge you. I’m just a humanitarian trying to make you more self aware so that may become a better person. The first step in fixing these kinds of problems is knowing that you have a problem.
So look at where you are posting. You’re not posting on a Ku Klux Klan or Black Panther’s website. This is a science website. It’s created and personally attended to by a female science professor who lets everyone know exactly who she is and where she works. You don’t feel a bit out of place hiding behind a veil of anonymity in this circumstance?
Why do you feel the need to be anonymous here?
I judge you on the only evidence I have, Joshua. Why don’t you change your handle to Joshua_The_Lionheart and see if that sways my opinion. ROFL
JimD,
I thought hockey stick was contaiminated with tree rings. So you think this hockey stick is not contaiminated?
I can’t resist:
I’m not sure if “coward” is the word I’d pick for using someone else’s name while posting!
Joshua, you’re barking up the wrong tree if you think you can impugn my certifiably awesome logic skills. I got a perfect grade in Formal Logic in college, a 99.97th percentile score on the SAT, and was paid like a rock star at Dell Computer for my programming skills which is an art demanding a skill in logic perhaps moreso than any other known to man. Water off a duck’s back, my boy
Google search for “Dave+Springer:” About 7,040,000 results.
Without conceding the begged question of whether Internet pseudonymity has any bearing on a commenter’s “bravery” or lack thereof… I don’t know if you necessarily get the Badge of Courage for being a needle in a haystack.
Just saying.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/SouthernExtentreconstructionwithGISS24Sto44S.png
There is another that does show a particularly strong MWP. The MWP was mainly northern hemisphere, but you can see there is a MWP indication in the southern hemisphere that lagged the northern hemisphere peak. The tropics have a completely different cycle. If you average everything, you get a shaft for a hockey stick. Kinda like if you don’t include TOBs for surface temperature you don’t see much warming.
Comparing smoothed paleo to painstakingly adjusted surface data is apples and oranges. Compare regions and there is a different picture.
BTW, that chart was converted to approximate Wm-2 which does amplify the changes somewhat.
SamNC:
I’m not familiar with that particular proxy offhand, but I can confirm sediment records have been used to generate a hockey stick before. Mann used the Tiljander series, upside down, despite it being known to be contaminated in the most recent ~200 years, to get a hockey stick without tree rings.
As that should show, whether or not a hockey stick exists in a record doesn’t mean much. You can find all sorts of patterns in data; that’s normal. Picking and choosing which ones should get focus and weight is where things stop being normal.
As far as paleoclimate is concerned, the (overall) data is so noisy and uncertain we can’t hope to draw many conclusions from it. People who do so, do so only by selectively emphasizing small amounts of data.
Dave,
So now we can add another to your sequence of illogical conclusions:
I don’t feel a “need” to be anonymous here.
Let’s put the logic of your conclusion to a little test.
You like speaking of how much you’ve earned. If you would like, you can put down a little money to back up your conclusion. We’ll allow someone we both agree to from this blog to broker a bet. If I “need” to be anonymous here, then I wouldn’t be able to post my last name. We’ll make a bet – say for $40,000. We’ll both write cashier’s checks in that amount, plus a check for $10,000, and send them to chosen intermediary. Upon receiving those checks, our intermediary will post a comment to that effect, and I will either post my last name or I won’t.
Contingent upon my action, our intermediary will tear up the checks signed by the winner, keep the $10,000 check from the loser, and send off the $40,000 check from the loser to the winner.
Deal? I suspect not. I doubt whether you are stupid enough to take that bet, because deep inside you know the illogic of your analytical process even though you have a hard time owning up to it. Or perhaps we might conclude that you don’t have the courage to stand behind the logic of the conclusions that you assert?
Anyway, assuming that I’m correct and you won’t stand up behind yoru conclusion, I’ll just say it has been fun, Dave. I’ll be stepping off your train of illogic thinking now. It seems rather clear that instead of owning up to your logical errors, you will continue to add more such errors to the list. Not much point in demonstrating that any further.
Although, you might take a different course. So, If at any time you’d like to discuss the dynamic behind why, someone who can understand logical analysis in some very technical contexts, makes obvious logical errors in relatively simple contexts, and then has trouble owning up to those errors, I’d be game. If you think you’d find such a discussion useful, I’d be more than happy to lend you a hand.
Or, you could just tell me that you want to make the bet, and we’ll find that intermediary.
Brandon,
Congratulations. You have well-earned the title of the typo-nanny of the thread.
BTW – Brandon,
IIRC, you have more than once said that you don’t read my posts.
What caused you to change your mind?
The paper on Lake Tanganyika is Tierney (2010) and it uses the TEX86 thermal proxy (Google it) back to 500 AD. I don’t know any more beyond that.
Joshua:
Typo? Come on, it was funny!
Your recollection is wrong. I read comments from everyone. There are some people whose comments I barely pay attention to, but I never skip any in their entirety.
As for you? I read your comments; I just choose not to respond to you. My experience with you, both in responding to and reading your comments, is you misinterpret things to such an extent as to make reasonable discussions impossible. I could accept it if you learned from or corrected your mistakes, but I pretty much never see that happen. As such, I consider you a hopeless case.
Try this:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4LENN_enUS461US461&q=david+springer+dell+usa
That might narrow the list down to something a bit less than 7 million hits.
Brandon,
Well – it appears that I was wrong. You do read my posts.
So much for that theory of yours, eh?
I’m just joshing with you, Joshua, if that’s your real name. I never thought you’d take it quite so personally. I mean c’mon, I don’t really know you from any other group of six letters, now do I? That’s all I really offended – six letters. Not even a particularly unique or distinguished group of six letters for that matter. Why take it so personally?
Dave –
I’m not taking anything personally, Dave. Anyone who makes an assertion as you did is being entirely illogical. Why would I take such an illogical assertion personally? It would be entirely illogical.
I just thought it would be a good opportunity to use your posts to point out one of my favorite climate blog phenomena: when “skeptics” who pride themselves with their logical abilities make incredibly obvious errors in logic.
Anyway, just to be clear because I could use that extra $50,000 — I assume that your most recent comment — illogically concluding that I took your ridiculous assertion personally without any mention of the bet I offered, means that you don’t have the courage to take the bet, or at least aren’t stupid enough to stand behind the obviously flawed conclusions that you draw?
I mean seriously, Dave – I offered you a bet. At least stand up to state one way or the other as to whether or not willing to take the opportunity I offered you to put some money behind your conclusions.
Do we have a bet or not, Dave?
Joshua:
I said you “pretty much never” correct your mistakes, and you respond by claiming that by correcting one mistake proves me remark wrong. Obviously, “pretty much never” is not the same as “never” so that conclusion is erroneous.
This is just a small demonstration of what made me reach the conclusion I reached about you. I’m fine with people misunderstanding me if they seek to understand me, but when a person repeatedly states as true things which are obviously untrue, it wears on me. I don’t like having to spend every comment nit-picking details just because people don’t bother to read simple sentences for what they say.
Brandon –
Obviously, “pretty much never” is not the same as “never” so that conclusion is erroneous.
Well – looks like I was wrong again, eh Brandon? Looks like your theory is getting weaker and weaker by the post.
Please, feel free to stop any time you’d like. I would say that the claim of you “having” to do that is specious. If you choose to do so, it is entirely on you. There is no reason why you “have” to do it.
What do you think, Brandon? Can you own up to it when you’re wrong?
Joshua, I have no problem admitting when I’m wrong. I just don’t see much reason to believe I am when you keep getting it wrong when you disagree:
This is the sort of silly misinterpretation that makes responding to you an unreasonable burden. I never said I “have” to do anything. I said I don’t like having to do something in order to talk with someone so I (generally) don’t do it. Obviously I don’t think I have to do something if I don’t do it.
You just somehow completely ignored what I said save the part you could try to use as a “Gotcha!” moment. It’s hard to imagine how you could do this so consistently without trying. I mean, even if I tried, I don’t think I could be as wrong as you are on such a regular basis.
As for how any of this bears on my theory, I don’t find any of this particularly relevant. Doing something when specifically challenged about it doesn’t really speak to whether or not a you would do it in general. It doesn’t matter how many times you admit you are wrong in this exchange if that behavior isn’t representative of how you behave in other exchanges.
By the way, I do intend to stop responding to you once again. I’m just waiting until it stops amusing me. For now, I’m getting a kick out of you getting so much wrong.
As I said, Brandon – you don’t always escalate into insults, but it isn’t exactly uncommon of you to do so, either.
Dopey Professor John Sidles of University of Washingtong Medical School, a.k.a. “a physicist”, a.k.a. “a fan of *more* discourse” why are you so dishonest?
Do you lie to friends and family too? Do you have friends and family that stil speak to you?
Just wondering.
Dave,
Think of the quality of medicine a dishonest person can practice.
“Snake oil” comes to mind.
Extremist trolls are a reall hoot.
Allow me to prezi-ent the “irresistable” story of one Willie Weatherbie:
http://prezi.com/0hnowfmeqroi/wondrous-wirewalking-weatherby/
If we’re looking for a narrative of a climate hero, why not make one up? It seems there’s so much fiction about climate already, a little more won’t do any harm, and may even shed some light on things a bit.
Can’t disagree that its a circus, filled with tightrope acts and assorted skeptical theorizing clowns.
I just listened to this interview:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9453
and I am shocked. Richard Muller uses the Orwellian “Climate Change”, when he means anthropogenic climate change! He’s a physicist for god’s sake! Is the indoctrination so strong? Has he forgotten his basic education?
This interview is worth listening to if for nothing else but the entertainment value. He certainly does frustrate the interviewers.
Yes, he does drive them mad.
“Is Muller’s primary interest in the science, or in establishing himself in a position of power at the climate science/policy interface? The press releases and op-eds suggest the latter.”
— Judith Curry
Also suggestive of the latter are Elizabeth Mullers “GreenGov”, registered and trademarked in 2008.
“GreenGov™ is a service offered by Muller & Associates for Governments, International Organizations, non profits, and other organizations that work with Government. The aim is to provide politically-neutral counsel that is broad in scope while rooted in the hard facts of state-of-the-art science and engineering. The key is to make the right patch between the best technologies and the strengths of the government. We know that to be effective the political dimension must be integrated into the technical plan from the start.”
From her “speakers profile”:
“GreenGov provides interdisciplinary knowledge that helps clients determine the best technology for their specific need.
Elizabeth has designed and implemented projects for public sector clients in the developed and in the developing world, helping them to build new policies and strategies for government reform and modernization, collaboration across government ministries and agencies, and strategies for the information society. She has developed numerous techniques for bringing government actors together to build consensus and implement action plans, and has a proven ability to deliver sustainable change in government.
It’s not just about reducing the Carbon footprint for information and communication technologies – though this is also important. But the real breakthrough for Green ICT will be in helping build consensus among stakeholders, and to bring clarity and transparency to Green projects.”
Looking for code on the BEST web site reveals there is some code there, but according to the notes, it does not work. OK.
And there appears to be no data on the BEST web site either. So much for openness.
OK, found the the data. Not sure if it is that used in the latest paper at this point.
Perhaps Dr. Muller should spend less time in interviews and more time getting his code and methods fit for public consumption. Or is the whole point of this that we should bow down in fear, serf-like, to Muller because he is a physicist?
Muller is shill. His ‘conversion’ is a pretense intended to take advantage of the ‘team switching’ meme and the credibility that carries engenders with some.
His describes his ‘short term turnaround’. He fails to note it was 360 degrees from/to the original orientation, the term for which is ‘spin’.
Richard Muller is commendably open about the funding of BEST via his vehicle, Novim [and the role of his daughter].
However, just because some potential conflicts of interest are declared, it doesn’t necessarily follow that all bias is removed from BEST as a result. Examining the Novim web article “Carbon Levers”…
http://www.novim.org/projects/carbon-levers
…I can only read this as a confirmation that the BEST project was never, ever, intended to be “Just Science” as declared by the slogan beside the logo on the same page. Or at least Richard Muller never intended it so, unless he has made more than one journey to Damascus.
Quoting from that page
“…it would demonstrate how to maximize energy efficiency, and minimize carbon emissions using current technologies and existing or new infrastructure.”
The “it” in that quote refers to the development of “yet another specialized digital tool “, which also focuses on “energy investment choices in the countries that are the fastest growing consumers of energy.”
This digital tool [as of Dec 2011] was being developed in partnership with Environmental Capital Group [ECG]. Searching the Novim wesite I only find one reference to ECG. This reference describes ECG as “Novim’s technical support and engineering group.”
http://www.environmentalcapitalgroup.com/clients.html
Now ECG may well, as claimed, develop free investment tools for it’s many “clients”, some as large Calpers, the California State Pension scheme, but I don’t see http://mullerandassociates.com/ making the same claims.
The names of the other 32 associates comprising the “team” are listed on the page http://mullerandassociates.com/sitemap/ I wonder if they work for free?
A reasonable person could conclude that Richard Muller wishes to derive financial gain from investments in the energy sector, investments that specifically exclude carbon-based fuels.
I don’t think I need to describe all the conclusions I reached.
I also note that the Berkeley Earth Team includes two other members of Muller and Associates, other than Richard and his daughter:-Physicists Jonathan Wurtele and Arthur Rosenfeld, former California Energy Commissioner.
As before, this is commendably open. I just seem to come to different conclusions than media such as the BBC and The Guardian newspaper.
Muller has a much broader interest base than the typical climate scientist. Take a look at his book “Physics for Future Presidents”. As I recall he has an entire chapter on fossil fuel depletion, including the history behind it and where he sees it going.
Like his fellow scientists at some level of authority, such as Steven Chu, he has a very complete picture of the risk mitigation measures necessary to guide the energy economy through the current crisis.
The agenda-driven climate skeptics fear Muller for the knowledge that he represents, and that’s why he is getting attacked.
Comment on The ‘irresistable’ story of Richard Muller by WebHubTelescope by WebHubTelescope on Aug 5, 2012 9:39 AM
Reposted as the truth hurts
WHT
“Crisis?”
Howdat, WHT?
As to “guiding the energy economy” does that mean raising US gasoline costs to $8 per gallon?
[If thats “the truth” that “hurts”, I’d agree it would surely hurt the US economy and most Americans, particularly those with lower incomes.]
Max
Manacker said:
Definition of a crisis, which is a time of difficulty.
So I see you agree.
What a hoot.
A guy profiteering off of silly advice on science, and a guy overseeing a corrupt funding process that has squandered literally billions of tax payer dollars are held up as role models and sources of truth.
Web Hub,
Thank you for the afternoon laugh.
A fan of *MORE* discourse | August 5, 2012 at 11:14 am | Reply
“Dave Springer’s posts are immensely valuable”
A Freudian slip, obviously.
:mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
Dave Springer, please accept that every word of that post was sincere! :) :) :)
Your Climate Etc posts — along with Latimer Alder’s posts — provides an especially clear and instructive example to everyone, of the intimate association between demagogic rhetoric and restricted cognition. ;) ;) ;)
“Know thine own rhetoric, and the truth shall set the free!“
This is good advice, Dave Springer!
Do you seriously believe you’re clever, John Sidles?
Speaking of demagogic rhetoric and cognitive restriction…
http://freethesaurus.net/s.php?q=demagoguery
Main Entry:demagoguery
Synonyms: debating, declamation, demagogism, elocution, eloquence, forensics, homiletics, lecturing, oratory, platform oratory, public speaking, pyrotechnics, rabble-rousing, rhetoric, speaking, speechcraft, speechification, speeching, speechmaking, stump speaking, wordcraft
The less restricted can spot the redundancies penned by the more restricted…
Whether or not one accepts all of the WUWT release:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/
It was clear when the first BEST report showed that urbanization had a slight net COOLING effect on the land-based surface temperature tend, that something was fishy with the BEST analysis.
The second BEST study now tries to arm-wave attribution into the data.
This is unfortunate, because it raises the question of credibility of the entire study.
Had Muller et al. limited their study to analyzing the temperature record without venturing into nebulous attribution postulations, they might have retained some credibility, which they have now unfortunately lost.
Max
I have a question for the convinced. Is this with the so-called pre-industrial atmospheric CO2?
http://science-edu.larc.nasa.gov/EDDOCS/images/Erb/components2.gif
If yes, how do the fluxes change after the doubling of CO2? They all must change. What are the percentages after the doubling? This must be known among the convinced, if they are so certain.
Edim,
I am not a convinced but I can tell you (or you have already known) that energy budget is completely false. Most of the Sun energy reached the Earth was used to evaporate water on land and oceans, with the rest of the Sun energy stored in plants on the land and the plants in the oceans. There is no role for the CO2 preindutrial or now.
Pekka Pirilä | August 6, 2012 at 3:45 am |
“I pointed out that the data used was found to be in error. You and Dave admitted that but made statements to belittle the significance of that observation.”
No, we stated the facts. The facts then did the belittling, weasel boy.
Joshua | August 6, 2012 at 4:35 pm |
Why do you feel the need to be anonymous here?
I don’t feel a “need” to be anonymous here.
Let’s put the logic of your conclusion to a little test.
You like speaking of how much you’ve earned. If you would like, you can put down a little money to back up your conclusion. We’ll allow someone we both agree to from this blog to broker a bet. If I “need” to be anonymous here, then I wouldn’t be able to post my last name. We’ll make a bet – say for $40,000. We’ll both write cashier’s checks in that amount, plus a check for $10,000, and send them to chosen intermediary. Upon receiving those checks, our intermediary will post a comment to that effect, and I will either post my last name or I won’t.
——————————————————————————————
I’m not sure I understand. Your last name isn’t worth a plugged nickel to me. If you’re willing to pay to see proof of any of my claims I’m certainly willing to entertain something like that. How about you send a check for $100 to Judith Curry and I’ll send her a front page from one of my tax returns showing over $1M in taxable W-2 income in a single year from Dell and just to sweeten the pot I’ll throw in a DD-214 showing I was honorably discharged from the United States Marine Corps at 21 years of age, at the rank of sergeant, after a 4-year tour on active duty. I think it shows I enlisted and wasn’t drafted but I’d have to go look and I’m sure it shows that I’m a Vietnam Era veteran.
C’mon. Just $100 for all that. What a deal.
Dave –
This isn’t complicated.
You made a conclusion. I am pointing your conclusion (as an example of many in a growing list) to show how you drew that conclusion illogically.
That is why I offered you the bet. If you think that your conclusion was logical, and you want to stand behind your conclusion, take the bet. You will be very so slightly richer than you currently are, or you will be just a smidgeon less wealthy than you currently are, completely contingent on the logic of how you draw conclusions. Maybe the $50,000 isn’t much money to you, but for me it’s a fairly significant chunk of change.
You have posted twice now in response to me, subsequent to my offering you the opportunity to stand behind your conclusions, without indicating whether you are willing to take the bet or not.
Just answer the question, Dave, are you willing to put your money where your mouth is or not? One might be tempted to think that you’re trying a misdirection to avoid simply answering that question.
Do we have a bet or not?
And I’d like Judith to donate your check to the Humane Society of the United States after I provide the docs.
Dave – I have no interest in taking the bet you offered. I have never had any reason to doubt your word about your money or accomplishments.
It seems that you are offering some kind of misdirection here.
I’m not sure what conclusions you’re talking about, Joshua. I made no conclusions about you other than you’re afraid to put your name behind your opinions on a science blog where the hostess has the courtesy to put her name behind hers. I don’t need to pay to see proof of that. I offered to prove claims of my past earnings and service to my country to you for a mere $100 to my favorite charity. Is that too much to ask?
Dave –
Really?
I made no conclusions about you other than you’re afraid to put your name behind your opinions on a science blog where the hostess has the courtesy to put her name behind hers.
Well – that was one of the conclusions I’m talking about, Dave – except you expressed it differently earlier, in calling me a coward on the basis of whether or not I use my last name as a part of my nic.
But more specifically as to the bet:
This, obviously, shows that you concluded that I “need” to be anonymous here. I don’t, and I can prove it.
You drew an illogical conclusion (actually, many, but that is the easiest one to categorically prove illogical).
Dave – if you aren’t willing to stand up behind the logic of your conclusion, just own up to it and we can move on. Otherwise, I really could use the money. I’m beginning to have hope that many you really are stupid enough to take that bet because although I’ve given you numerous opportunities, you haven’t just owned up to your poor analysis.
Do we have a bet or not, Dave?
I explicitely asked you to explain why your motives for anonymity so that I might be persuaded that you are an exception to the rule. In general people don’t use their real names because they don’t want friends or family or coworkers to see their online behavior. That’s shame. The other most common reason is fear which is understandable I guess for women but if our hostess is brave enough to put her real name on her blog I figure it’s just common courtesy to you use your real name too.
Now it appears you’re afraid to even anonymously explain your motivation for being anonymous. Precious.
Dave –
Let’s leave aside your specious conclusion that “as a rule,” the reason people post anonymously is because they are “cowards.”
You called me a coward before you asked me the reason why I post anonymously.
And this is how you “explicitly” asked me what my “motives” are:
Are you trying to say that is some sort of good faith attempt, with some openness as to the answer, to understand the situation?
Dave – I will ask one more time, and then I will give up. It seems that you will persist in not accepting the challenge I offered you to stand behind your words. But $40,000 is worth one more shot.
Will you accept the offer of a bet, giving you the chance to stand behind your words, or not.
A simple yes or no will suffice.
Joshua, I think perhaps you are not aware of the history of the term “anonymous coward” on the internet. It’s not the kind of coward that would refuse to enter a burning build to save a child or anything like that.
Non-anonymity, it is supposed, encourages civility. Ironically I’m living proof that it doesn’t always work out that way. ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_post
Go to link to read more.
I was being precisely (I hope) as literal in calling you an anonymous coward as you were in telling someone they were going to get thrown under a bus. Presumably you’re not a coward where it really matters and presumably you didn’t literally mean global warming doubters were going to crushed under the wheels of a Greyhound bus. Go ahead and be anonynmous if you want. Just keep Slashdot policy and their traditional name for that behavior in mind when you do. Fair enough?
Dave –
Why do you need to have the same questioned answered more than once? I have no reason to doubt your claims of past earnings, service to our country, etc. I already told you have no interest in a bet whereby you proved your claims. I assume them to be true.
Now in direct contrast to me needing to answer the same question more than once, why don’t you answer a question asked repeatedly, just one time.
Are you willing to stand behind the logic of your conclusion or not? Do we have a bet or not?
I’m willing to stand behind the fact that “anonymous coward” is a mildly derogatory and commonly used handle to describe exactly what you are doing when you comment anonymously. [shrug]
How about we settle this in the traditional manner with a googlefight?
http://googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Dave+Springer&word2=anonymous+coward
I told you to have your lawyer contact me if you wish to make a substantial wager. I can’t bloody well have mine contact “Joshua” now can I?
Dave –
I have laid out the conditions of the bet very clearly. I’m not going to pay a lawyer to set work on this bet if you haven’t first agreed to openly specified terms.
The conditions, I believe, are quite fair. If you want to add some condition to the bet, feel free to suggest so openly in these blog comments. If you agree to the terms of the bet, I will contact you with my full name and email address so you can have your lawyer contact me.
But before doing that, I want to have your public acknowledgement that you’re accepting the bet. I will take you at your word if you accept the terms.
Yes or no, Dave?
No need to defer to a lawyer to answer that question.
Of course, if you feel it is necessary, you can contact a lawyer as some sort of protective measure (I won’t need to do that but I could understand why you might seek the protection of legal counsel) – but first just say whether you’ll accept the bet or not.
It’s a yes or no answer, Dave. Last chance. I know I’ve said it before, but this really is the last time I’ll give you a chance to stand behind your words. Baring an answer directly to this post, I will just determine that you don’t want to stand behind your words, and I’ll move on. It would be no big deal. It’s about what I would expect from you anyway.
Just to make sure that you do understand – I am offering you the opportunity to either win $40,000 or lose $50,000, contingent on the logic of how you drew a conclusion.
If you have confidence in the logic of your own thinking, take the bet. Please, Dave, take the bet – and we can stop filling up the thread with this nonsense – or just admit that you’re not willing to stand behind the logic of how you draw conclusions.
We’ll first have to draw up a contract specifingy the deliverables and conditions. I’m afraid that’ll have to at least be done through a lawyer. Have yours contact me.
Dave – that seems a bit like a duck.
I already explained the conditions of the bet. It isn’t complicated. We both send checks as I specified (if you’d like, we could increase the sums) to an intermediary of mutual agreement. After they get the checks, they will post a comment at his blog as notification. After which, I would (let’s say within three days) to post my last name on this blog. Depending on whether I did so, the intermediary would do with the checks as I specified.
No need to involve lawyers. This is very straight forward, explicitly detailed as sufficient, in a very open an public manner. The intermediary will have my full name on the check, and could also verify that I am the person whose name is on the checks I send.
Seriously, Dave, I could use the money and it would barely even be something that you’d notice losing. Just agree to the bet and we’ll find an intermediary.
You have to admit that this is beautifully ironic.
(1) You say that based on my lack of last name in my posts, I’m a coward.
(2) I offer you, someone who puts your last name on your posts, an opportunity to prove that you have the conviction to stand behind the conclusions that you post on this blog.
(3) You, as the person with the last name attached to your posts, keeps ducking the offer of the bet to stand behind your words.
I don’t understand how the winner will be determined and before I would bother tying up fifty large in a wager you may be damn sure I understand the terms and that defined in a legally binding contract.
Have your lawyer contact me if you are serious. Is there some part of “have your lawyer contact me” that you don’t understand?
Okay. If can prove that people who post anonymously on the web are often called anonymous cowards with no more evidence of their cowardice than posting to the web anonymously that I will win $50,000 from you? That sounds good. You have a bet. Have your lawyer contract me to formalize the details and my burden of proof.
Dave –
Unfortunately, I think I will need to yet again respond, just to be clear lest you later try to claim that I declined the bet – that is nothing close to the bet I offered.
Dave, there is no doubt that on the internet, specious accusations of cowardliness are often found. The fact that others make the same facile conclusions that you make does not make your conclusion any less facile.
You have now tried to offer me two different bets other than the one I offered, rather than simply answering yes or no to the bet I actually offered.
What’s even funnier is that in his last post, you indicated full willingness to agree to a bet without legal consult, even though you said that you needed legal consult before agreeing to the bet I offered.
I have to say, Dave, there are certainly some characters out here in the interwebs, but you may well just take the cake.
Y’all still at it? I think Joshua’s last name is Shinken :)
“If can prove that people who post anonymously on the web are often called anonymous cowards . . .”
Great argument Dave!
Dave’s confronted with the fact his behavior is moronic.
His defense: there are lots of morons on the Internet.
“I’m beginning to think you just want my attention, Joshua. You have a man-crush on me, huh?”
Poor Davy! You lost the argument but you just keep spamming — including complaining the argument is going on too long!
Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t think Josh is going to be your boyfriend. You’ll have to pick yours up in the red light district as usual.
Cap’n –
I think Joshua’s last name is Shinken
Explanation needed.
It costs me $0.30 in marginal tax for every dollar I pull out early from tax deferred savings. To make this bet costs me $15,000 next April. I’m not willing to pay that to see your last name on a blog. I’ll do it if I’m sure of winning. If your only performance burden is using your last name on a blog well hell some people do that without being goaded into it?
So why don’t you tell me why you don’t attach your name to your comments. I’d love to hear what reason you might have that is isn’t either shame or fear. I’ll let you have the last word because the good shows on cable are coming up soon and I still have to get the dogs fed.
“It costs me $0.30 in marginal tax for every dollar I pull out early from tax deferred savings.”
Better pull some extra shifts at the 7-11.
Oh, wait, is that the sound of a coward trying to weasel out of putting his money where his mouth is?
That’s your basic denier: all mouth and no guts. Whine, whine, until it’s time to wimp out. No backbone. Why don’t you back to spamming emoticons; that was marginally less pathetic.
Shinken = bacon
Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave.
I know I can’t blame you if I keep making the mistake of reading your posts and feeling compelled to straighten you out, but…..
This really isn’t complicated. I have explained it in simple terms numerous times, and I am actually stunned that you have so much confusion over a relatively simple concept.
The bet isn’t over whether it is worth money for you to learn my last name. The best is over the conclusion that you drew, that I “need” to post her anonymously, and the facile logic you used to draw that conclusion.
You made a statement that I said is completely wrong, and based on facile reasoning. I said I can prove what I said, and I offered you a bet whereby you could earn $40,000 if I couldn’t prove you it.
I get the impression that you’re dissembling – but perhaps even after all these explanations, you still really don’t understand?
I’m still hoping that you’re not dissembling because you can’t just own up to your facile reasoning. Maybe if I clarify your confusion over the bet, you will agree to it, and I can earn a cool $40,000 by exploiting your illogic. It would be kind of unfair, but I’m willing to bend my ethics for $40,000.
But please, read over these posts again if you still really don’t understand the bet – and then instead of offering me other bets, or continuing to dissemble, just answer yes or no to the bet I’ve offered.
I’m beginning to think you just want my attention, Joshua. You have a man-crush on me, huh?
I can hardly blame you for that!
You on the rebound from a bad bromance or something?
Brandon Shollenberger | August 6, 2012 at 5:53 pm |
“I don’t like having to spend every comment nit-picking details just because people don’t bother to read simple sentences for what they say.”
May I humbly suggest that unmoderated anonymous blogs in controversial subjects are not the best place to avoid that kind of irritation?
Just sayin’
Dave Springer, in my experience, blogs like this are perfectly fine for it. All one has to do is ignore people who aren’t contributing to the sort of conversation you’d like to have. It may turn out that requires ignoring everybody on the blog, but if not, you can find reasonable discussions.
By the way, I find anonymity is far less important than many people seem to think it is. Excluding trolls, I’ve never found any correlation between anonymity and poor contributions to discussions.
Well sure, excluding trolls. But there are always trolls on unmoderated anonymous high traffic blogs. In a high traffic blog it takes a LOT of moderation effort to keep the trolls out while still allowing anonymity. I was the adminstrator and head moderator of a high traffic controversial blog Uncommon Descent. Doctor Doctor Dembski (no typo, he’s got a PhD in science, another in math, and a masters in Divinity) called me his blog czar. You have rule an anomymous blog with an iron fist to keep the trolls under control. The pundits on the other side called me “DaveTard, The Banninator”. Ah what fond memories! In testing the limits of acceptable behavior here I’ve found the only thing moderating the joint is the WordPress list of swear words. I’m kind of like “when in Rome do as the Romans do only do it more”.
Dave Springer, of course there are always trolls. The key isn’t moderating them. The key is getting people to react appropriately to them. If a blog community mostly ignores trolls, trolls will have little impact on discussions.
In my case, once I’ve decided a person is a troll in reality or effect, I pretty much don’t respond to them. There are exceptions, like above when I responded to Joshua, but they are predicated on humor rather than an expectation of reasonable discourse. I find the approach is fairly effective, and I don’t have many problems when I implement it. The only times I have any real difficulty nowadays is when I slip up or when I run into somebody I don’t recognize.
Yes sure. Everyone knows about “Don’t feed the trolls” but enough can’t resist that we end up with a situation like Curry’s blog where the articles have 500-1000 comments piled unto each other like a giant mound of manure where, after considerable effort spent looking, there may be a pony in there somewhere. Anything more than 50-100 comments per article where the great majority are on-topic by well informed civil people becomes useless for anything except entertainment for the regulars and assorted drive-by trolls with one caveat… if they are indexed by google then you might find gems in them during web searches. These comments here are not indexed.
“That is kinda interesting I thought. JimD, elected to link to only a 1500 year portion of the 60,000 year reconstruction. As a believer, he doesn’t want to confuse people with the pesky natural variations in climate that don’t seem to be related to CO2. :)”
It seems 2010 analysis shows a fairly consistent temperature of this tropical lake surface. Being within range of 22.1 to 25.8 C over 60,000 year period.
It seems to me one might this range variation in the present lake within a meter or two of surface. And wonder what the error bars are, but anyways
stable temperatures in tropics during time of large swings in global temperature.
the author’s 95% confidence range is about +/-0.4 C, but I am not 50% confident in their 95% confidence. It does indicate there has been temperature changes with a rather interesting approach to a somewhat bi-stable range.
Also the link to India monsoons is interesting. The India Ocean Di-pole is like the ENSO only with a more erratic cycle. Tsonis et al hinted about a Mongolian system impact on the North Atlantic Oscillation. A couple of tri-poles in the climate equation would be very entertaining, if you happen to be of the impression land use change is under estimated.
@Joshua
I still have a few minutes to spare. I want to tell you a joke with a moral in the story.
A well dressed attractive middle aged man goes into a bar and espies a beautiful young woman sitting alone nursing a glass of chablis. He approaches her and asks if she’d sleep with him for one million dollars. She looks him up and down, considers it briefly, and says “Yes, I believe I would.” He then asks “Will you sleep with for ten dollars?” She instantly says “Of course not! What do you think I am?”. He says “I already know what you are, we’re just negotiating the price now.
So Joshua, if I understand you correctly you’ll divulge your real name here to win a $10,000 bet.
Will you divulge it to win a $10 bet?
—————————————————-
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:mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
Dave –
I might or I might not. But that isn’t germane to the discussion we were having.
You said that I “need” to post here anonymously.
I said that you were wrong, and that the logic you used to reach that conclusion was facile.
I offered to risk $50,000 of my hard-earned dollars behind a bet that I could prove that you were wrong, and that I was right.
Despite way too many posts back and forth, and number claims on my part that I would give up trying to exploit your foolishness to the tune of $40,000 gain, I am still holding out hope that you might be stupid enough to stand behind your facile logic, and agree to the bet. In lieu of agreeing to the bet, you could just admit to your facile reasoning and get back to your cable TV show. I’d say that it’s worth it for me to waste a couple of hours if there’s any real chance that I could get $40,000 out of it. I don’t typically earn that much on an hourly basis.
Yes or no, Dave?
I will bet $1 that you’re afraid to use your real name here. Yes or no?
We’ve already established what you are, Joshua. Now we’re just looking for the point at which greed overcomes fear.
Dave Springer | August 6, 2012 at 8:51 pm
Joshua has proven that: climatology is the ”oldest profession” (money in advance – then they will stop climate from changing) Climate, never stopped changing for one day in the last 4billion years; but now the western swindlers will stop it. Not by the foot-brake, but by fleecing the Urban Sheep,
Please explain your statement – “Then the formula of squared is then absolutely incorrect as mass slowly changes and does not double every single shift of energy difference”
Mass (m) is stored potential energy (E), period!
m is E
Since different units are used for m (mass) and E (energy), we use a proportionality constant (k) to express that above sentence as an equation
k m = E
I replied, but my message appeared above.
Climatefellas III – the writing on the wall.
Scene – The basement at Big Jim’s
Jim
I’ve called youse all here today ‘cos our climate protection business is facing the biggest threat since the punters saw those friggin’ emails.
This Muller guy ‘n his BEST crew ‘r crawling all over us – muscling in on the racket and making us look like maroons.
We gotta do something.
Eric
It’s really tough times out there boss, Muller & his team are putting it about that they’re the new boys in town and the punters are lapping it up.
Jim
OK – so we gotta do what we always do – blow ’em away. What’s da big problem.
Raypierre
It’s not that easy Jim – people are listening’ to their story and it’s kind’ve of new & fresh and they like what they hear also they seem to have the meeja on their side.
Jim
Meeja fer Chrissake! – just fix them like we always do – speak to Revkin, Borenstein, Black at the BBC and that other limey dimwit at the pantywaist green rag…….
Eric
It’s called The Guardian Jim – but Muller’s not just talking to our guys – he’s going over their heads and talking straight to the broadsheet editors & national networks.
Anyway it may not be such a problem – he tells everybody he’s on our side.
Jim
On our side, on our side! They say he’s letting the punters look at his DATA!
When you guys got made up in da racket – waddid we do?
We mingled our blood and made a promise – only team members get to see THE DATA!
Raypierre
Calm down Jim. It’s under control – all our media guys are explaining Muller’s joined our racket and he pretty well well agrees with everything we’re doin’………….. except mebbee Katrina…….
Jim
Whaddaya mean “except mebbee Katrina”………
Raypierre
Well he says it was only a cat 3 and probably nothing to do with the climate racket……..
Jim
NUTTIN TO DO WITH CLIMATE! Hurricanes are our best fear factor – they terrify the punters how can we keep ’em scared without hurricanes?
Eric
Well, the punters don’t scare as easily as they used to Jim – but don’t worry, Muller backs us on pretty well everything else.
‘Cept mebbee those emails.
Jim
Whaddabout the emails?
Eric
Weeeellll – he says they were probably an inside job by the CRU crew.
Jim
An inside job! Whaddaya mean an inside job – we told the punters they were a criminal heist by the Big Oil mob – that’s our pitch and he’s screwing it.
OK – I’ve heard enough – Muller’s gotta be terminated. I’ll send Mad Mike & his bagman Scotty the Strangler down there ‘n they’ll waste him.
Raypierre
Errr – we already tried that boss – there was a …kind of a … malfunction. Something happened as they were getting their hardware out’ve the trunk and they both got shot in the foot.
Came back in wheelchairs.
But I don’t think you should upset yourself as long as Muller’s basically on our side.
‘Cept maybe on weather extremes………..
Jim
WHAT…..ABOUT……WEATHER….EXTREMES!
Eric
Well, calm down boss, don’t let it eat you up – but Muller says this years weather is cooler over 98% of the globe and the extreme weather here’s just normal variation.
Jim
NORMAL VARIATION fer Chrissake! Who’s gonna give us $7BN a year to study NORMAL FRIGGIN’ VARIATION!
That’s it Muller’s gotta go – Gav & I will fly down to Berkeley tonite and fix him.
Gav’s the only one of you eejits I still trust.
Gavin
Yeeess – Jim. Of course you know I’m your strongest and most loyal supporter here and couldn’t agree more with your assessment of the situation – but, bearing in mind that my key role here has always been on the more strategic and advisory side I think…………
Jim
You’re a chicken hearted, meally mouthed limey pussy, Gav!
The rest of you are just as bad – there isn’t a soldier among you bunch of lilly livered girl scouts! – book me a ticket ‘n I’ll fly down there & do the job myself.
Wahhduwe know about this guy Muller……… does he have a favourite horse……. dog………gerbil……………..?
Jim leaves for the airport and the others look at each other nervously for a while – before Gavin breaks the silence.
Gavin
Well, as I said before and I’m sure you all agree, I’ve always been Big Jim’s main adviser and strongest supporter during the long years when he’s been building up the business.Years which have no doubt put an enormous strain on Jim as he went out there on his own, way ahead of the field and stuck his neck out pioneering the more controversial aspects of our enterprise. While Jim’s away doing the business in his..err..traditional, old fashioned way, I wonder if we shouldn’t take this opportunity to review some of our long term strategic objectives.
The other guys look at each other, hesitantly at first, and then nod – knowingly.
Same story, with technical substance, told here. :) :) :)
Warning For adults, not kids. :) :) :)
foxgoose
Scenario skits are not usually this long but yrs works, lol.
Nice denoument… ‘Jim leaves fer the airport…Gavin breaks the .silence….’ ‘Et tu, Brutus?
Typo: “Based upon my interactions with Muller, I am convinced that [he] wants to bring the highest scientific standards to climate science. ”
Muller’s glory-hounding is very distasteful. I am disappointed by your tolerance and rationalization of it.
A science writer for Der Spiegel Magazine doesn’t think much of Muller or his work:
http://notrickszone.com/2012/08/08/richard-muller-is-a-fake-german-der-spiegel-magazine-writes/
Moreover, he quotes you, Dr Curry, as an authority on the subject.
Thanks for spotting this
R.A Müller is a theoretical physicist has observed strong correlations between man made CO2 emissions and global warming. So, anybody knows if he has been able to show how the fundamental systems of thermo-magnetohydrodynamic equations are accounting for these correlations ? If not, is there a clear theoretical basis for admitting that CO2 is causing any global warming (I don’t consider the qualitative and misleading “explanations” about the so called trapped heat)?
Happened (by chance) to sit next to Muller at breakfast one day. He had no idea that I knew anything about climate science and started to explain to me all sorts of things that were patently untrue about how GCMs are formulated. It was very clear that he had not even spent the time to learn the basics of climate science before having rather strong opinions about it. I believe that scholarship is part of having the “highest scientific standards”. I see nothing in his latest ‘curve fitting’ paper to suggest that he has changed. The field is no richer.
http://www.3s.uea.ac.uk/blog/berkeley-earth-surface-temperature-best-project-redefines-climate-change-skepticism
I pay a visit daily a few web pages and information
sites to read content, but this web site offers quality based
posts.
The issue here seems to be not whether there is or isn’t significant global temperature change but whether it is caused or even influenced by industrial activity , detrimental or beneficial to mankind and if any action on our part will affect it at all , and who pays for it.After attending several talks given at , among other venues , the OffshoreTechnology Conference in Houston , TX , the answers all come down to who benefits financially , not whether the action discussed has any effective impact on anything other than money. First – trying to hide or bury CO2 from oil and gas production is a massive waste of time , resources and money because it cannot be done without spending far more than any oil and gas produced would be worth. Second – there is no cost effective substitute for fossil fuels and no amount of taxing , subsidizing and pretending that “renewables” can replace them when basic math and logic prove otherwise will make it so.The sun still doesn’t shine at night and the wind does not always blow even of you wish to give up millions of acres of territory to plant solar and wind farmsst night and the wind does not always blow even of you wish to give up millions of acres of territory to plant solar and wind farms.Take a look at “Power Hungry” – R. Bryce – 2012Plus petro products are the only cheap and abundant raw materials for the basis of the modern world economies and civilizations. Try doing without everything in your life made from or created using oil gas or coal. Welcome to the 14th century.Third – Every so-called “solution” all requires productive people and activities to have their money stolen by force through taxes , regulations and bizarre trading schemes like carbon credits and the proceeds of theft handed over to non-productive people and entities who do zero to “improve” the energy , climate or economic situation other than enriching themselves for no contribution of any value whatsoever. Fourth , The only countries the global weather /theft activists want to destroy economically by such theft are Western democracies like the US and Western Europe but China , India , Russia , etc. somehow are left to carbonize the planet with no restrictions at all.. How srange since they are the fastest growing fossil fuel users of all. But they have no intention of crippling their economies to placate a mob. Of course they strongly support the West doing so. Could their be any leftist influence in the environmental movement , say almost all of it ?So who benefits ?Not “the globe” since even shutting down all fossil fuel use by the West wouldn’t reduce the overall CO2 enough to make any real temperature change if you believe the global warnist models. As they are unproven I personally believe the predictions of no change attributable to less CO2 since any actual warming is far more influenced by natural forces like solar activity and volcanic activity.Not the poor of the planet since they would be deprived of the things and services made possible by cheap energy and petroleum based products (like medicine , fertilizers , plastics , etc.) , at least affordable versions.Yes , the modern world IS built on cheap energy, like it or not that means fossil fuels. No one seriously belives there are electric planes, trains , heavy equipment and 18 wheelers that run on “clean” ( nonexistent) power sources do they ? If so you go ahead and jump in that electric trans-Atlantic airliner and wave bye-bye.So who benefits ?You could claim that all those much proclaimed disasters would be averted but since the CO2 is still coming from the non-West that would be wrong even if the predictions were right ( not proven by a long stretch anyway ). Most people would likely benefit from a warmer climate due to longer growing seasons and less need for heat but I’m sure some will claim they’ll all be under water in a tornado clinging on to the last remaining polar bear.
So who gets the money ?Well all the non-Western countries like Russia , China , India , etc.A few environmentalist types who helped them destroy the West. Maybe.Don.t forget – if you kill an economy or a nation you can no longer get some government crony to steal taxes from it.So , looks like the leftists and their sponsor governments make out like bandits while the rest of us freeze in our mud huts in the dark while eating whatever variety of weeds the enviro-left hasn’t killed off by “protecting” it.So forget thiswacky latest attempt by the left to fear monger themselves yet more stolen wealth and Drill Baby Drill ! Reopen our coal mines. Build breeder reactors and reprocess spent fuel.
Or..die in the dark while the socialists/Communists/leftists enslave what’s left of the world. A cold , cold future indeed.