by Judith Curry
[T]here’s good reason to believe that the self-righteous and contemptuous tone with which the “scientific consensus” point is typically advanced (“assault on reason,” “the debate is over” etc.) deepens polarization. That’s because “scientific consensus,” when used as a rhetorical bludgeon, predictably excites reciprocally contemptuous and recriminatory responses by those who are being beaten about the head and neck with it. – Dan Kahan
My, the Cook et al. 97% consensus paper is a gift to the climate blogosphere that keeps on giving. Some insightful new posts provide fodder for additional discussion on this.
Ben Pile
Ben Pile has a new post Tom Curtis doesn’t understand the 97% paper. Here are a few excerpts that raise some interesting points:
We see now why many environmentalists are so hostile to debate. Permitting debate — even giving the possibility of debate a moment’s thought — shatters the binary opposing categories that have been established in lieu of an actual debate of substance on climate change and what to do about it. The division of the debate into scientists versus deniers is a strategy, but one which has worn thin, as Davey’s performance on The Sunday Politics show revealed, and which Hulme alludes to.
It has been somewhat gratifying that almost all of the criticism of my post I have seen so far is from angry trolls, mostly on twitter, but one or two popped up to comment on the post. From what I can tell their argument is circular: it is irresponsible to give air/blog time to sceptics because there’s a strong scientific consensus that says they’re wrong.
Tom Curtis (who is, as far as I can tell, a partner in the Skeptical Science blog enterprise) obliges, with archetypal green invective.
There is a large measure of idiocy in Ben Pile’s post, and in Mike Hulme’s endorsement of it.
The architects of the new consensus — Cook et al and their pals — really ought to understand the dynamics of a consensus. If you begin your defence of a consensus by calling those who might belong to it ‘idiots’, the only possible outcome is that the consensus will diminish.
I certainly do know for a fact that some people’s estimates of climate sensitivity are so low as to at least imply, contrary to the IPCC statement, natural variability might account for more than 50% of the warming in the second half of the C20th. My argument, however, was that the Consensus Project is too clumsy to capture such a position.
It’s all about endorsing with these guys, isn’t it… Endorsement and rejection. Hulme should have rejected Pile and endorsed Cook et al, because Pile rejects the consensus, whereas Cook et al endorse it, as do most climate scientists. They want agreements and disagreements to be black and white, yes and no, true and false, science and denier.
But as I explain in the post, in the case of Davey, the science is being ignored by a politician, it having been displaced from the debate by the 97% figure.
JC comment: This is an important point. In my No consensus paper, I argue “the consensus building process employed by the IPCC does not lend intellectual substance to their conclusions. “
Moreover, as we have seen in Davey, his predecessors, and his superiors, you can say anything you like about climate change, as long as it doesn’t contradict this view of sides. You could say, for instance, that there will be 10 metres of sea level rise by 2100 and that therefore climate policies are necessary. This claim would exist far away from ‘The Science’. But it would seem to be correct according to the tests applied to it by the Consensus Project. This is disappointing, because Curtis is nearly on to something…
Further, he appears to have picked up that strange censorial attitude noteworthy also in von Storch which presumes that because they do not believe that AGW will lead to catastrophe (which is a respectable position inside the consensus), that therefore scientists who do believe that it will (also a respectable position inside the consensus) must not state that belief in public.
Surely this is a frank admission that there is no consensus on catastrophic climate change? If so, then Curtis is now in a real bind, because this deprives the ‘warmist’ crowd of their moral imperatives. Moreover, most complaints from sceptics are that the catastrophism we are all too familiar with is undue — not that there is no such thing as climate change.
Dan Kahan
Dan Kahan has chimed in with a post The distracting counterproductive 97% consensus debate drags on. Some points that caught my eye:
But it is demonstrably the case (I’m talking real-world evidence here) that the regular issuance of these studies, and the steady drum beat of “climate skeptics are ignoring scientific consensus!” that accompany them, have had no—zero, zilch—net effect on professions of public “belief” in human-caused climate change in the U.S.
On the contrary, there’s good reason to believe that the self-righteous and contemptuous tone with which the “scientific consensus” point is typically advanced (“assault on reason,” “the debate is over” etc.) deepens polarization. That’s because “scientific consensus,” when used as a rhetorical bludgeon, predictably excites reciprocally contemptuous and recriminatory responses by those who are being beaten about the head and neck with it.
Such a mode of discourse doesn’t help the public to figure out what scientists believe. But it makes it as clear as day to them that climate change is an “us-vs.-them” cultural conflict, in which those who stray from the position that dominates in their group will be stigmatized as traitors within their communities.
Nevertheless, the authors of the most recent study announced (in a press release issued by the lead author’s university) that “when people understand that scientists agree on global warming, they’re more likely support politics that take action on it,” a conclusion from which the authors inferred that “making the results of our paper widely-known is an important step toward closing the consensus gap and increasing public support for meaningful climate change.”
Unsurprisingly, the study has in the months since its publication supplied a focal target for climate skeptics, who have challenged the methods the authors employ.
The debate over the latest “97%” paper multiplies the stock of cues that climate change is an issue that defines people as members of opposing cultural groups. It thus deepens the wellsprings of motivation that they have to engage evidence in a way that reinforces what they already believe. The recklessness that the authors displayed in fanning the flames of unreason that fuels this dynamic is what motivated me to express dismay over the new study.
Members of the public are not experts on scientific matters. Rather they are experts in figuring out who the experts are, and in discerning what the practical importance of expert opinion is for the decisions they have to make as individuals and citizens.
JC comment: In my post Climategate essay On the credibility of climate research Part II rebuilding trust, I wrote: Credibility is a combination of expertise and trust. While scientists persist in thinking that they should be trusted because of their expertise, climategate has made it clear that expertise itself is not a sufficient basis for public trust. Recent disclosures about the IPCC have brought up a host of concerns about the IPCC that had been festering in the background: involvement of IPCC scientists in explicit climate policy advocacy; tribalism that excluded skeptics; hubris of scientists with regards to a noble (Nobel) cause; alarmism; and inadequate attention to the statistics of uncertainty and the complexity of alternative interpretations. The experts do their science and ’cause’ a disservice by engaging in these behaviors.
Ordinary citizens are amazingly good at this. Their use of this ability, moreover, is not a substitute for rational thought; it is an exercise rational thought of the most impressive sort. But in a science communication environment polluted with toxic partisan meanings, the faculties they use to discern what most scientists believe are impaired.
JC comment: In my paper No consensus on consensus, I wrote: While the public may not understand the complexity of the science or be predisposed culturally to accept the consensus, they can certainly understand the vociferous debates over the science portrayed by the media. Further, they can judge the social facts surrounding the consensus building process, including those revealed by the so-called “Climategate” episode, and decide whether to trust the experts whose opinion comprises the consensus. Beck argues that “in a public debate, the social practices of knowledge-making matter as much as the substance of the knowledge itself.”
The problem with the suggestion of the authors’ of the latest “97%” study that the key is to “mak[e] the results of [their] paper widely-known” is that it diverts serious, well-intentioned people from efforts to clear the air of the toxic meanings that impede the processes that usually result in public convergence on the best available (and of course always revisable!) scientific conclusions about people can protect themselves from serious risks.
Indeed, as I indicated, the particular manner in which the “scientific consensus” trope is used by partisan advocates tends only to deepen the toxic fog of cultural conflict that makes it impossible for ordinary citizens to figure out what the best scientific evidence is.
JC comment: with the advent of the ‘pause’ in dominating the public debate on climate change, deepening of the fog may be the objective of the shriller perveyors of consensus.
But from what I see, it is becoming clearer and clearer that those who have dedicated themselves to promoting public engagement with the best available scientific evidence on climate change are not dealing with the admittedly sensitive and challenging task of explaining why it is normal, in this sort of process, to encounter discrepancies between forecasting models and subsequent observations and to adjust the models based on them. And why such adjustment in the context of climate change is cause for concluding neither that “the science was flawed” nor that “there is in fact nothing for anyone to be concerned about.”
JC comment: Too many defenders of the consensus have become either ‘pause’ deniers or ‘pause’ dismissers. A while back, I recommended that they ‘own’ the pause, and work on explaining it. Belatedly, we see a little bit of this happening, but of course it does not lead them to challenge the main IPCC conclusion on 20th century attribution.
JC summary: It is really good to see this discussion about the role of consensus in the public debate on climate change and the problems this has caused for the science, the policy, and increasingly for the proponents of consensus. It is however dismaying to see that continued influence that the existence of a ‘consensus’ has on the politics (especially President Obama’s citing of the Cook et al. study).
JC wrote:
A while back, I recommended that they ‘own’ the pause, and work on explaining it.
It has been explained ad nauseum. It in now way undermines AGW, which many many scientists have now said. The Earth still has a clear energy imbalance, and the AGW problem is still here.
The “pause” is absolutely no reason to take AGW any less seriously. Surface warming will resume — physics says it has to.
What will be the excuse then?
Until less than a year ago, anyone who spoke too loudly about the pause and possibility of natural variability dominating climate change was called a ‘denier’. Now the the establishment is scrambling to explain the pause in context of the ‘inevitable’ dangerous anthropogenic climate change, we have about a half dozen different competing explanations. At some point temperatures will increase at some point; the question is when, and how much anthropogenic CO2 will have contributed to that increase.
What evidence says that anyone speaking of a pause was called a denier?
We’ve had pauses before, such as 1945-1975.
In 2007, the 15-yr trend was 0.30 C/decade(!) Where were you all then? Keeping quiet, waiting until another brief pause appeared, that’s where. But you aren’t any more convincing now than you would have been then. 15 years is simply too short of time period to make climate conclusions about. Why is that so hard to understand?????????
I understand that 15 years is too short, but the climate model apostles told us not to expect a pause longer than 10 years, then 15 years, then 17 years. Looks like this one might go another two decades.
The 1945 – 1975 pause was not caused by aerosols. People who have argued that the 1945-1975 pause was caused by multidecadal ocean oscillations are called deniers, this is one of the main ‘denier’ arguments.
“The 1945 – 1975 pause was not caused by aerosols.”
Yes it was.
Even when the climate models are way over juiced with aerosols, they still do not reproduce the temperature record during 1940-1975
That’s because the models do not correctly represent aerosols.
“ut the climate model apostles told us not to expect a pause longer than 10 years, then 15 years, then 17 years. Looks like this one might go another two decades.” – JC
Judith has consistenly misrepresented this, in the most unscientific way.
The models simpy gave results with decreasing likelihood of pauses longer than 15 years.
That pauses linger than 15 years is inconsitent with AGW is a ‘sceptic’ talking point.
Nope, none of the climate model simulations gave a pause that exceeded 20 years, and exceeding 17 yrs was statistically very unlikely, given they way they analyzed the climate model simulations.
I understand that 15 years is too short, but the climate model apostles told us not to expect a pause longer than 10 years, then 15 years, then 17 years.
THey certainly did not, and if you had read Santer’s paper you’d know that’s not what it says.
Besides, Judith, did you really expect AGW theory to have been laid down perfect in 1988, once and for all? That’s just ridiculous. Understanding changes as time goes by and new evidence comes in. This happens in all sciences and certainly in a relatively young science like cliamate science.
No, I don’t expect climate science to be ‘perfect’ at all! What I do expect that appropriate confidence levels be given to the ‘consensus’ conclusions in view of all the things that they are not likely to have adequately understood.
curryja wrote:
Even when the climate models are way over juiced with aerosols, they still do not reproduce the temperature record during 1940-1975.
You are just wrong, and badly:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-8-1.html
Besides Judith, you’re a scientist.
What does YOUR model say?
Does it capture the 1945-1975 pause?
What are YOUR proposals for improving models?
What have YOU done to improve them?
Did YOU predict the pause, Judith?
Have you ever successfully predicted anything at all?
I have a company Climate Forecast Applications Network that is in the business of making predictions. Our predictions are quite good, otherwise we would go out of business. http://www.cfanclimate.com
I have been making decadal scale hurricane projections since about 2007 based upon the PDO/AMO. I first publicly predicted a flat temperature trend for the next few decades in this post in Jan 2012:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/01/31/climate-scenarios-2015-2050/
A year earlier, Jan 2011, I made it pretty clear that I supported Tsonis’ argument regarding climate shifts and a flat temperature trend for the next few decades
http://judithcurry.com/2011/01/04/scenarios-2010-2040-part-iii-climate-shifts/
I have a new paper under review that will hopefully be accepted soon.
Hey, David de Loud, Stevie Mac has addressed you about yours and the Piltdown Mann’s lies over at climateaudit.org
==============
David Appell | July 27, 2013 at 9:07 pm |
Did YOU predict the pause, Judith?
Have you ever successfully predicted anything at all?
_________
So when will the pause end?
curryja | July 27, 2013 at 8:22 pm |
Until less than a year ago, anyone who spoke too loudly about the pause and possibility of natural variability dominating climate change was called a ‘denier’.
Well, by definition, if you’re doing it TOO loudly, you are being some kind of denier.
Natural variability too dominating of climate change would be denying climate change, no?
Getting the metrics right would be not denial.
Pointing out that the best evidence shows that on normalized global trends spanning climate timescales (ie three decades), unnatural climate kinetics dominate over the natural about nineteen times in twenty, but that below that timescale natural tendencies might dominate or be inseparable from the overall signal isn’t denial.. but it also isn’t a climate pause.
It’s just a pause in the meaningless part of the data after the endpoint of the meaningful part of the curve.
Emphasizing this meaningless part of the data and pretending it rises to a confidence level we can use for anything, or that pauses aren’t found in the many model runs many times? That’s denial.
The absolutists who claim with no hint of uncertainty that it’s all one or all the other, or all anything but human agency?
They’re still around, denying like crazy. And I use the term advisedly.
Judith said:
“The 1945 – 1975 pause was not caused by aerosols.”
—
Now, certainly we can’t say for certain that some of the negative forcing to climate during this period was not caused by aerosols, especially in regards to their effects on the AMO. The aerosol load over the Atlantic from the rapid post-WWII industrialization in the U.S. was far from minor. This does nothing to take away from natural cycles, but we step into that very interesting area where Anthropogenic forcing may influence natural cycles.
The absolutists who claim with no hint of uncertainty that it’s all one or all the other, or all anything but human agency?
I know of no such scientist who has ever said such a thing.
Ghil 2001 looked at this aspect and suggested a more rigorous null.
As northern hemisphere temperatures were falling in the
1960s and early 1970s, the aerosol effect was the one that
caused the greatest concern. As shown in Sect. 2.2, this
concern was bolstered by the possibility of a huge, highly
nonlinear temperature drop if the climate system reached the
upper-left bifurcation point of Fig. 1.
The global temperature increase through the 1990s is certainly
rather unusual in terms of the instrumental record of the last 150 years or so.
It does not correspond, however, to a rapidly accelerating increase in greenhouse-gas emissions or a substantial drop in aerosol emissions. How statistically significant is, therefore, this temperature rise, if the null hypothesis is not a random coincidence of small,
stochastic excursions of global temperatures with all,
or nearly all, the same sign?
The presence of internally arising regularities in the climate
system with periods of years and decades suggests the
need for a different null hypothesis. Essentially, one needs
to show that the behaviour of the climatic signal is distinct
from that generated by natural climate variability in the past,
when human effects were negligible, at least on the global
scale.
It does not correspond, however, to a rapidly accelerating increase in greenhouse-gas emissions
Please go to CDIAC and tell us approximately how much carbon was emitted from 1945 to 1975, including land use emissions.
I know the answer. I’ll await yours.
And how much carbon was emitted between 1910 and 1940, when warming was pretty much at the same rate as 1980-2000
And how much carbon was emitted between 1910 and 1940, when warming was pretty much at the same rate as 1980-2000
Have you bothered to look at the increase in solar irradiance in the first half of the 20th century?
The solar irradiance data in the first half of the 20th century is hotly debated, see previous CE solar threads
http://judithcurry.com/?s=solar
Then go to the AR4 and see what they have to say about the period 1910-1940.
The error (uncertainty ) was around 15%.At present the error in CDIAC is around 6%an error of around 0.9% in say US emissions is around the ttl estimated emissions from the bottom 100 developing countries eg Marland.
problem what is the present co2 atmospheric burden in ppm.
curryja wrote:
No, I don’t expect climate science to be ‘perfect’ at all!
Did YOUR climate model predict the pause?
What does IT predict for the transient climate respone?
For equilibrium climate sensitivity?
Surely, given your criticisms, you must have copious advice to give the GCM coders, telling them what they’re been doing wrong and how they should do it better, right?
Right?
For my recommendations to climate modelers, I have published several papers on this and numerous blog posts. You can see my views on climate models under this tag
http://judithcurry.com/category/climate-models/
Guy Callendar has some advice for the climatologists, and for the economists.
=============
JC wrote:
and exceeding 17 yrs was statistically unlikely,
Santer’s model calc gave a 5% chance of a “pause” > 17 years.
As they say, “all models are wrong, but some are useful.” So how do *you* propose to use this result to improve climate models? What are modelers doing wrong, and how can they do it better? Isn’t THAT that point, and not just writing blog posts claiming your colleagues are always wrong? To make *better* models, to do better science — even to produce your own models that more accurately describe climate than do others?
Where are YOUR models?
Yes, 95% corresponds to ‘very unlikely’, and none of the models had a pause exceeding 20 years
The point is that my colleagues are overconfident.
Note, my new paper is network based climate dynamics analysis/projection (it is not a numerical model).
JC wrote:
For my recommendations to climate modelers, I have published several papers on this and numerous blog posts. You can see my views on climate models under this tag
Ok. So you are constantly talking to modelers, trying to understand what’s missing in their code, helping them with their algorithms, trying to see how things can be improved? Right?
Or, dare i ask, making your *own* model, with your own predictions, superior to all those other bad and overheated models?
Did YOUR model predict the pause? And how long does it say it wil continue for?
Where does Tsonis “predict” flat temperatures for the next few decades?
This thread is like walking into the bar scene in Good Will Hunting where a bloviating grad student is trying to impress a girl by showing how much he has memorized about what others have written. Except here we have a pompous bag of wind, who doesn’t have the excuse of being a young, or a student, regurgitating the dogma he has imbibed against a published professor who at least tries to engage in critical thinking.
It’s like watching Pee Wee Herman try to pick a fight with Chuck Norris. On the one hand you want to feel sorry for the pretentious runt. He doesn’t even know enough to be embarrassed by his lack of class. On the other, you know he deserves to get his ass kicked for being such an obnoxious snot.
” curryja onJuly 27, 2013at 10:58 pm
And how much carbon was emitted between 1910 and 1940, when warming was pretty much at the same rate as 1980-2000 ”
Work out the log sensitivity calculations of CO2 and that early trend starts to appear. Vaughan Pratt destroyed Loehle’s analysis by pointing this out.
David Appell asked: “What evidence says that anyone speaking of a pause was called a denier?”
Not sure this has been answered, but SciBlogs blogger Ethan Siegel (startswithabang) actually called Judith a *fraud* when she first started talking about the pause. Although that was party due to a misrepresentation of her views by the Daily Mail, when I pointed him to the clarification she posted, he did not retract the claims.
David also asks: “What does YOUR model say? Does it capture the 1945-1975 pause?”
I cannot speak for Dr Curry, but using the model I would choose for natural variability, Hurst-Kolmogorov Dynamics, both the recent pause and the 1945-1975 pause are expected behaviours of the natural variability of the climate system. Hurst-Komogorov dynamics results in much larger natural fluctuations at decadal, multi-decadal, centennial (etc) scales than current climate models do.
David Appell | July 27, 2013 at 8:58 pm | says:
” ….did you really expect AGW theory to have been laid down perfect in 1988, once and for all? That’s just ridiculous.”
You seem to think AGW is perfect now and that is what is ridiculous. 1988 means that we are talking about its origin in James Hansen’s famous presentation to the Senate. That presentation was not what it seems to be. Checking global temperature history we find that the warmth attributed to global warming by Hansen in 1988 came from an accidental coincidence of his talk with the peak of 1988 El Nino warming. That El Nino was the middle one of five El Nino peaks between 1979 and 1997. Six months after his talk a La Nina appeared and lowered global temperature by half a degree Celsius. You don’t hear this because temperature was supposed to go up not down. His 1988 talk was not the first but the second time Hansen spoke about warming to the Senate. The first time was in November 1987 and it was a bust. It was cold, nobody wanted to hear about warming, and the media failed to show up. This did not please senator Wirth, chairman of the committee. But if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. And senator Wirth sure tried. First, he checked with the Weather Bureau to find out the warmest day in Washington, D.C. It was June 23rd so he chose that day for a new hearing. He also made sure that the TV networks were notified. The room had to be warm so he went there at night, opened all the windows, and made sure the air conditioning was not working. It all paid off. The meeting room was stifling hot, and the star witness had to wipe his forehead while giving his talk. And best of all, there were TV cameras in double digits, something Wirth referred to as “bliss” in a later PBS interview. The evening news was all about warming and energized global warming activists. And that is how today’s global warming movement began. By that time the IPCC had already been planned behind the scenes and Hansen’s presentation produced enough political support to make it a reality. As for today’s AGW, it has been basically unchanged since its inception and still klings to the idea that carbon dioxide greenhouse effect is warming up the world. There are numerous objections to it, based particularly on the existence of the “pause” today and experimental observations of Ferenc Miskolczi on the infrared absorption by the atmosphere.
Everyone is talking about a pause, let’s pause a minute and define what a pause is. If we can agree on a number statistically defined like a trend less than 0.05 C per decade, then we can say how long there has been a pause or not.
If we go with that definition, then the pause is only 12 or 13 years with the exception of RSS which puts it at 18 years.
Got to define our terms lest we go the porrnography route.
Mr. Appell, I spoke of the pause for three years and was called a denier countless times.
Undeniably, something profound has happened to the climate system 10 years ago. Rate of warming on “climate timescale” (30 years) is in decline since then, but even its sharp peak at the end of 2003 was no more than 2K/century. If the past is any guide to future, flatlining, even cooling will go on for at least 2 more decades. No computational climate model has ever predicted that. If it happens indeed, a paradigm shift is inevitable.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3qodwc00tbfv09s/rate_of_warming_in_previous_3_decades.jpg
Appell, have you never heard that “climate change” MEANS anthropogenic global warming sometimes, when and only when it’s convenient to hide what you’re really saying?
IPCC/ UNFCC look it up.
anyone operating under the auspices of IPCC can use it both ways, though all are instructed that it precisely means AGW.
David Appell: Did YOUR climate model predict the pause?
What is the significance of that? Everybody who did not predict the pause is not to be believed, whether some of them had models or not.
David, you write “Surface warming will resume — physics says it has to.”
As I have remarked before, future empirical data is a Sword of Damocles hanging over the warmists. If global temperatures dont start rising rapidly in the near future, the whole house of cards that is CAGW collapses. Peronally, I am quite happy to wait as long as it takes. No-one in their right minds is going to stop using fossil fuels.
So, David, what happens if global temperatures continue falling, as they have been for about 5 years?
It depends on what else happens, especially if the oceans keep warming strongly as they have.
If there are clear signs of an energy imbalance, as there are now, then AGW will still be here. Do you think CO2 will suddenly stop being a greenhouse gas?
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2013/05/wither-global-warming-has-it-slowed-down/
In fact, the planet’s surface is pretty much the *worst* place to look for the kind of energy imbalance AGW creates.
It’s 2-dimensional, and can’t hold any heat anyway.
“These large changes in ocean content reveal that the Earth’s surface is not a great place to look for a planetary energy imbalance. “This means this heat is not being sampled by the global average surface temperature trend,” [Roger Pielke Sr] says. “Since that metric is being used as the icon to report to policymakers on climate change, it illustrates a defect in using the two-dimensional field of surface temperature to diagnose global warming.”
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2013/05/wither-global-warming-has-it-slowed-down/
David Appell, “In fact, the planet’s surface is pretty much the *worst* place to look for the kind of energy imbalance AGW creates.
It’s 2-dimensional, and can’t hold any heat anyway.
”
Really?! Imagine that. So it must have been pretty stupid to focus on “surface” temperature for so long. Luckily, no one has notice how the minions have swapped metrics. Mums the word.
cap’n,
That’s why all the reported temperature trends rely so heavily on deep sea ocean and upper troposphere temps.
And by the way, if surface temps are the last place to look for warming, why is anyone still wasting time on tree ring proxies?
Oh, oh! I know! Because heat retained by anthro CO2 is different from other heat, and needs to hide from skeptics.
It’s 2-dimensional, and can’t hold any heat anyway
Tell us what the dimension of a state of the art GCM is,
Tell us what the dimension of a state of the art GCM is,
Roger Pielke Sr’s point has gone completely past you.
No a point only exists on a line. The problem was what is the dimension of a state of the art gcm
The alarmist are going to seriously have their work cut out to persuade anyone to worry about their problem if the best they can come up with is ‘deep ocean heat’
If only 3% of the population get worried about a 0.8C rise in surface temperatures (where we actually live), think how big the tsunami of apathy is going to be if the same folks are asked to soil their underwear over a rise of <0.1C deep in the oceans where nobody ever goes.
Sure going to require some good salesmanship to get away with that one. And none of the current climatoanguishists seem to have anywhere near the class or experience required.
Listen up guys – running away from questions and hiding behind 'I'm a climate scientist. Hear and obey – you dumb schmucks and denier trash!' – is sooooo last century and just doesn't work anymore
“If only 3% of the population get worried about a 0.8C rise in surface temperatures (where we actually live), think how big the tsunami of apathy is going to be if the same folks are asked to soil their underwear over a rise of <0.1C deep in the oceans where nobody ever goes."
Well first of all your figures are wrong. Far more than 3% of the population are concerned about climate change.
Second they are quite rightly concerned about the general prospect of climate change itself. They aren't hinging that concern on the details of deep oceans and surface warming.
@lolwot
You might find that people are vaguely uneasy about an unspecified ‘climate change’, just as they are about the earth being hit by an asteroid, or a new global plague…or any of the other millenarial predictions that pop up in the popular press on slow news days.
But I doubt very much that you’ll persuade people to dig deep into their pockets about deep ocean heat. Because the next question that really ought to be asked (after ‘are you worried about ‘climate change?’) is ‘how much are you willing to pay?’. Or – what premium do you feel is appropriate to insure against this risk? (same question). And then compare with how much people actually spend.
My guess is that you’ll find very very few people prepared to make anything other than a token gesture towards ‘deep ocean heat’. Especially when there’s very little experimental evidence of its existence and – if it is there at all – it is very very small in temperature change.
lolwot,
I have a serious question to ask you and those who share your persuasion. This question is not intended to be inflammatory.
I don’t understand why you and those who share your beliefs about the risk of catastrophic man-made climate change do not seem to consider the consequences of the policies that are advocated by the people who share your beliefs.
This morning I spoke to my 22 year old nephew and explained to him that he would be paying for the Australian ETS until he is sixty (at least) if it is not repealed. Treasury has modelled the costs of the ETS. For political purposes they named it the “Strong Growth Low Pollution” policy. A far more accurate name would be “High Cost No Benefit” policy.
According to Treasury estimates, Labor’s ETS would cost Australia $1,345 billion dollars by 2050.
That is $61,000 for every man, woman and child living in Australia now. This is what it will cost every man, woman and child if paid each year at the 2011 value of the Australian dollar.
However, the discounted cost – if you pay a lump sum up front – is $19,000 per person ($76,000 for a family of four) and no more to pay (until the next doomsday scenario of course.) In return for this up front payment you hope to get $4,600 per person of benefits – i.e. climate damages avoided – over the period to 2050.
But the $4,600 of benefits will only be realised if the world implements a global ETS, it begins now, everyone is on fully board from the beginning, there is 100% participation of all countries and nearly all emissions in every country, the carbon price begins at the optimal rate and is ramped up in unison across all countries and maintained at the optimal carbon price everywhere throughout the century. That is what is required for the $4,600 of benefits to be achieved by 2050 in return for an expenditure of $19,000 now, or $61,000 spread over 37 years to 2050.
So, lolwot, I do not understand why intelligent people do not consider the costs and benefits of the policies they advocate.
If you want to understand the cost-benefit analysis through you can do so here: http://jennifermarohasy.com/2012/06/what-the-carbon-tax-and-ets-will-really-cost-peter-lang/
David Appell
As Captain Dallas writes:
Yeah. Looks like the “team” is trying to move the goalposts here.
But, hey, if the lower ocean warms by a few thousandths of a degree because of human GHG emissions, that is no problem for humanity (or even for all those fishies in the deep blue sea). No scare factor there. That “warming” is gone forever, never to be seen again – if it even existed at all. And since it can’t be measured, it’s probably just the figment of someone’s (or someone’s model’s) imagination.
Only if we are presented the specter of 4C to 6C warming of the air temperature at the surface, where we all live, does this start to sound scary.
And that’s not happening.
Sorry David – NO SALE.
Max
Appell, why are you switching metrics for warming?
Now you’re all about prediction and physics instead of trend…hmmm?
David Appell: In fact, the planet’s surface is pretty much the *worst* place to look for the kind of energy imbalance AGW creates.
fwiw, that is a rather absolute denunciation of all the “hockey stick” results produced by Michael Mann and others. Has that become a part of the consensus?
Right David, just one big yawner, is the pause. And yet a year ago the cries of “denier” and the howls of derision were ear splitting concerning the very existence of the pause. Now that we’re at 16+ years and counting, and even AGW stalwarts like The Economist and the UK MET are conceding the pause, what do you do? Claim it means nothing, and that it’s been “explained ad nauseum.”
WHat a laugh riot you guys are. Well, just because people are trying to explain it…in various ways….doesn’t mean it’s explained.
Now that we’re at 16+ years and counting
That’s false, as the data shows. But I’m guessing you can’t calculate with it.
its 17+ in the SH and the slope is negative.
maksimovich: its 17+ in the SH and the slope is negative.
Same is true in the troposphere, which readers may have learned recently is also asserted to be an irrelevant location.
So the ‘pause’ was both predicted [so says the Met Office] and has now been “explained ad nauseum”.
Well, damn, I must have missed school that day.
So, a paper on how climate scientists are all cuddled up in a cosy ‘consensus’ causes slanging matches to break out between… climate scientists.
Sort of like Tom Lehrer’s ‘National Brotherhood Week’. :-)
“slanging matches to break out between… climate scientists.”
Is David Appell a scientist ????
Dissipative structures operating far from equilibrium, tend to favor mechanical equilibrium ie a mode locked system that is rectifying.
As this is partly about Tom Curtis, who is Tom Curtis, just some random guy on the internet with an opinion (like me)
extract from his About Me page:
“But if not a scientist, what am I? By training, I am a philosopher, with a particular interest in ethics, logic and epistemology (in that order). Unfortunately due to a combination of ill health, financial stress and family commitments, I have not been able to pursue a career as a philosopher. This could be regarded as an ironical test of my ability to be philosophical.
My stunted career has had one benefit. It has given me the time to study privately and very intensively first evolution, and now global warming. This has given me the opportunity to become knowledgeable, but not expert.
As is purported to have said, “An expert is someone is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.” Given this definition, I am certainly not expert on climate change. I am likely to make bad mistakes from time to time, so (and this should never need saying) do not believe anything just because I have said it.
However, I have made and seen made some very bad mistakes in climate science, and have learnt from the process. And I know from hard experience that the level of public exposition of climate science is generally woeful. Therefore, I think I have something to contribute. I have no doubt, however, that my biggest contribution is in my list of blogs (most of whom are both more credentialed, and more expert than I in climate science) and to sites for the raw data.”
Confident enought though to take on Richard Tol and Ben Pile.
http://bybrisbanewaters.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Richard%20Tol
ie Tol’s Gaffes – by Tom Curtis
Barry,
Why people such as Tom, Dana, John Cook and others are of the opinion they are capable or qualified to argue climate science is a bit of a mystery to me. Based on education and course work I may be better qualified than any of them and I certainly wouldn’t be as sure of myself, not to mention as arrogant as they are from time to time. (Though to fair, Scooter is really the only one of the three I mentioned who truly is arrogant on a constant basis.)
I do not think for a minute they lack intelligence. I would be willing to accept they are more so than I. But that in no way proves they really know what they are talking about. Yet they (along with David Appell – another intelligent guy) have zero qualms over criticizing folks like Judith and Richard Tol who really do climate related science. Heck, Dr Curry goes beyond that and does real world work in the commercial market.
“The Earth still has a clear energy imbalance”
Really? You got measurements of energy influx and efflux, with error bars that demonstrate that energy efflux is statistically different from energy influx?
By the way, you trousers are aflame.
+1 ……. Made me laugh, thanks :)….
David Appell | July 27, 2013 at 8:10 pm | says:
“…The Earth still has a clear energy imbalance, and the AGW problem is still here. The “pause” is absolutely no reason to take AGW any less seriously. Surface warming will resume — physics says it has to..”
First, energy imbalance is impossible. But it is possible for climate scientists to either misplace or lose global energy as Trenberth and Fasullo did. In their case, they lost eighty percent of global energy in only four years and no one has been able to find it since. Looking at their paper I have no idea why it was published. If I had been the reviewer I would have sent them back to learn how the Argo floats they used as data source work. I will let you guess how your alleged energy loss compares with theirs. Now you, David, affirm your strong belief that surface warming will resume because physics says it has to. Would you be kind enough and tell us what laws or principles of physics are you using to make this prediction? I am not aware of any laws of physics that will do that but maybe you have superior knowledge of physics that I somehow missed. I sure would like to know the science behind your assertion, assuming of course that it is science and not intuition that we are talking about.
That comment re4quires some substantiation. Otherwise I can only conclude that you don’t know what you are talking about.
If you define a pause from Hadcrut4 as the last decadal average (ending this spring) minus the previous one ending spring 2003, you get 0.14 degrees, and the pause hasn’t actually started yet. Let’s look for it again next year.
Yeay.
Just goes to show it all depends how “you define a pause” and “decadal average”.
If you simply look at the past decade, HadCRUT4 shows a net decadal cooling of around 0.05C.
Sounds like a “pause” in warming to me, although I wouldn’t call it a “travesty” yet.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2003/trend
Max
The physics says nothing of the sort. It is trivially simple to hypothesize a climate response that results in little or no net warming. The simplest hypothesis would be clouds and increased albedo.
Doug,
That would be my first hypothesis. From there I would want to figure out how clouds work in the system. Until I had a fair understanding of that, I would not be sure of anything.
+1
David Appell: The Earth still has a clear energy imbalance, and the AGW problem is still here.
Where exactly is this energy balance “clearly” measured? Some models put hypothetical heat into deep oceans, but that’s about all. Everywhere the measurements are pretty equivocal.
Maybe they should draw a line in the dirt at 1.6C or better yet 1.5C, that was the minimum value determined during the Great Charney Compromise of ’79. Then anyone in the >1.5C camp can be defrocked or whatever appropriate academic black listing term is supposed to be.
That would put Guy’s that said things like this, “it may be said that the combustion of fossil fuel, whether it be peat from the surface or oil from 10,000 feet below, is likely to prove beneficial to mankind in several ways, besides the provision of heat and power. For instance the above mentioned small increases of mean temperature would be important at the northern margin of cultivation, and the growth of favourably situated plants is directly proportional to the carbon dioxide pressure (Brown and Escombe, 1905): In any case the return of the deadly glaciers should be delayed indefinitely. ” on the fence :)
But that would mean I am a ‘warmista’ believing a range of 1.5-1.8 degrees for a doubling of CO2.
“the consensus building process employed by the IPCC does not lend intellectual substance to their conclusions”
It’s not meant to.
It’s meant to help readers understand where the weight of expert opinion is. Similar to if we are told 9 out of 10 dentists recommend X.
Don’t tell me you wouldn’t find such information useful.
sure it is, it is meant to stifle debate, Ben Pile makes this point eloquently
BS.
A polticial spin-meister churning out ‘teach the controversy’ nonsense for those gullible enough to fall for this political axe-grinding.
Though in defence of the gullible, the Pile’s and their ilk do deliberately target those who have adopted the highly simplistic duality of ‘both sides of the debate’.
> Ben Pile makes this point eloquently
Indeed. What was Mr. Pile’s title, again?
And I am to take Cook and Nuccitelli more seriously than Pile because Cook and Nuccitelli have a journal publication? I am interested in well crafted arguments and insights, I don’t care who they come from.
There’s no debate that AGW is happening.
Yes. Lets stifle that debate. With facts such as the fact that 97% of experts accept AGW. You included I think.
If that means climate skeptics can’t go around claiming anymore that AGW doesn’t exist or that the world isn’t warming (it’s just thermometers near asphalt!) then, well good!
We’re to take Pile seriously – he makes the point that N.’s not a climate scientist.
On the same basis, let’s ignore Pile and his PR.
Hilarious.
This is the ‘well crafted argument”??
Judith’s advocacy grows more desperate by the month.
“I am interested in well crafted arguments and insights, I don’t care who they come from. ” – JC
This is typical from Pile;
“From what I can tell their argument is circular: it is irresponsible to give air/blog time to sceptics because there’s a strong scientific consensus that says they’re wrong. ”
He gives no actual example, and I haven’t seen this argument to this effect; but like a good polemiscist, he gives himself the wiggle room of “from what Ican tell”.
A steaming pile of BS.
Judith
Piles argument:
“[consensus], it is meant to stifle debate, Ben Pile makes this point eloquently
Piles Title: Tom curtis doesnt understand.
Willards implication might be that Ben should practice what he preaches and that his title “stifles” debate.
I hope that is not his point, but it could be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well
‘Til now, the water’s been pristine. Poor false naif willard.
==========
I feel you’re not listening, kim:
https://twitter.com/wottsupwiththat/status/361296251997782020
I don’t feel good
therefore I am bad
therefore no one loves me.
I feel good
therefore I am good
therefore everyone loves me.
I am good
You do not love me
therefore you are bad. So I do not love you.
I am good
You love me
therefore you are good. So I love you.
I am bad
You love me
therefore you are bad.
http://www.oikos.org/knots2.htm
Don’t eat the mashed potatoes.
===========
Lolwot. Instead of solo acts like Mann, or vague appeals to consensus…climate science needs…. wait for it…
boy bands.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6TwzSGYycM
I’m imagining something like the image factories set up by SM entertainment for budding climate scientists
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/08/121008fa_fact_seabrook
and maybe some of the things that the Marketing guy from interscope sensed
“When the Girls came out again, Jacobson watched them closely. “O.K., it’s all about humility,” he said. “Look how they bow to their fans. That’s a big part of it.” He started ticking off the Girls’ qualities on his fingers. “First, beauty. Second, graciousness and humility. Third, dancing. And fourth, vocal. Also, brevity. Nothing lasts more than three and a half minutes. Let’s time it.”
curryja | July 27, 2013 at 8:26 pm |
I’m unfamiliar with debate from the right being stifled by a consensus factually in the wrong.
Else, I’d be surely stifled.
alas willard you have no idea why I hope that was not your point.
1. if it was your point, and I hoped to make it first, then you beat me to it.
It would be a great coup to out clever willard
2. if it was your point and I thought it looked like Tu quoque, then I would hope it was not your point because you are clever than that.
Merely pointing: look there. is ambiguous. what I hope for is equally ambiguous. ambiguity is fun, dont you agree?
Willard. BTW thank you for reminding me of knots.. old favorite.. along with the divided self.
Bart R wrote:
I’m unfamiliar with debate from the right being stifled by a consensus factually in the wrong.
Poor you, so many people treating you badly.
How do you get through the day?
If you want to win the debate, then produce superior science.
That’s all it takes.
Superior science has never failed to carry the day, ever.
Indeed, it is how greenhouse gas theory prevailed in the first place.
So stop whining, stop complaining, and roll up your sleeves and do the hard work of proving your point.
Because if you don’t, no one else will.
You will just continue to look like a bunch of whiners.
Hey, Climate Science should produce superior science. So far, it is Mighty Casey has Struck Out.
====================
David Appell | July 28, 2013 at 12:52 am |
Superior science has never failed to carry the day, ever.
History does not hold up your claim well to scrutiny.
Plato’s incorrect assertions held sway over half the world for more than a millennium, while opposing voices were often crushed, ignored, or.. okay, I’ll admit, I’m familiar with the stifling of others by a consensus in the wrong.. just as much as I’m unfamiliar with that working on me.
Maybe David has a reading thing, that he thinks I feel bullied or put down, when I say the opposite?
Perhaps, he ought read harder?
Bart R wrote:
Plato’s incorrect assertions held sway over half the world for more than a millennium, while opposing voices were often crushed, ignored…
Wake up call: You aren’t Galileo, or Copernicus, and the more time you waste pretending that you are is the less time you spend proving that your science is superior.
Stop talking, stop whining, stop blogging, stop commenting — just do better science. GThat’s all it takes. You will win the day. Guaranteed.
So far, you have not.
Don’t look now, David, but you sound like you are sucking on your thumb.
================
> you have no idea why I hope that was not your point.
No, I don’t, and I think this is a general phenomenon:
http://www.peace.ca/crucialconversations.pdf
Our feisty ways to waiting for Godot might explain why Mr. Pile just fails to understand Tom Curtis’ demonstration (I might be biased, since mine is quite similar), and I don’t think it relates to his ignorance of conversational implicatures.
Day after day, the crucial conversation we’re supposed to have fails, and fails, and fails. Over, and over, and over again. Not sure this can’t be resolved the Kahan way, since there are ways to profit from failures to communicate. Not unlike ambiguity.
Convergence implies termination and confluence. I see no reason why our crucial conversation should be modelled with a formal dialogue that has these properties.
***
TL;DR — GaryM for the win.
I messed up my quote:
Do you feel safe?
Now, kim, please tell us how that thing on your forehead makes you feel.
Interesting. David Appell treats Bart R the same way he treats a “skeptic.” And I didn’t think his approach could be less effective.
Brandon Shollenberger | July 28, 2013 at 2:56 am |
Frankly, I welcome David Appell’s disputative and unapologetically unkind comments, however wrong he may be some of the time.
It keeps me on my toes checking my facts and checking my approach.
What’s so bad about that, that putting up with a little misdirected invective is so hard?
And heck, sometimes he’s even right. I can’t bring to mind such an occasion, but I’m sure I’ve seen it.
interesting document willard.
You’ll note that the start with the conditions of post normal science.
Not that you were ever a big defender of ravetz, but what the hell.
Lets do some work.
“Nothing kills the flow of meaning [dialogue] like fear” (p. 49).
How to talk about the gloabl warming challenge without play in the fear card.
good topic. the answer isnt “green jobs”
When unsafe people resort to either silence or violence.
“SILENCE: purposefully withholding information from the dialogue.”
Well that speaks volumes doesnt it.
Nice
“MASKING: understating or selectively showing what you actually think.
Sarcasm, Sugarcoating, Couching, etc.
AVOIDING: not addressing the real issues.
Changing the subject, Shifting the focus to others, etc.
WITHDRAWING: not engaging in the conversation any longer.
Exiting the conversation or room all together.”
VIOLENCE: convincing, controlling, or compelling others to your viewpoint.
Violates safety by forcing meaning into the pool
LABELING: stereotyping or categorizing people.
Name-calling, generalizing
ATTACKING: belittling or threatening the other person.
############
Now where have we seen these
Victim Stories – “it’s not my fault”
We are innocent sufferers
We ignore the role we play in contributing to the problem
We have nothing but the most noble of intentions
Helpless Stories – “there’s nothing else I can do”
We assume there is no alternative to our predicament
Explains why we can’t do anything to change our situation
Attribute fixed and unchangeable traits to the other person
ahem….. pass me the mirror when you are done with it
pass this around to others:
Consensus: Everyone honestly agrees to one decision.
Use only with:
High-stakes and complex issues.
Issues where everyone absolutely must support the final choice.
Everyone shares a common agenda.
Consider the following:
Don’t force consensus onto everything.
Don’t pretend that everyone will get their first choice.
If you don’t get your choice, don’t be a martyr.
Don’t take turns, base your decision on merit.
Don’t engage in post-decision lobbying.
If the decision fails, don’t say “I told you so.”
Kindergarden teecher tot me dat.
=========
It might be time to admit that this is not a conversation.
Boots must be taken off every day, I’m tired telling you that. Why don’t you listen to me?
What kind of toothpaste do you use today lolwot? It’s not Ipana, I bet.
@lolwot
‘Why is Al Gore discussed so much’?
Please re-read your previous post. I was quite happily living in a delightfully Gore-free world when *you* raised his spectre. Not me. I’d be quite happy never to hear of the sanctimonious git ever again.
Senior moment for you? Or is it still late Saturday in your time zone and ‘drink has been taken’?
lolwot.
Someday I might do a post on marketing climate science.
Short version: when building a brand one of the choices you have is picking
an authority to appeal to. There are a few ways to do this:
1. You can select an ‘anonymous’ endorser. Like,
http://us.sensodyne.com/
In this case you start by selecting a group THAT YOUR CUSTOMER
ALREADY BELIEVES IN. you pick a group because you dont want to
tie your brand to a particular person.
2. You pick a person. say somebody well known or loved that your customer
respects or admires: Say something like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z_VpVaPLWs
Well you see the problems with number 2. You can think of micheal Mann as the equivalent of OJ. That is, he did for climate science as a product what OJ did for hertz. The point is if one uses personal spokesmodels the product is identified with the spokes model. You have to choose wisely. To date climate science has not, but they are getting better. The failure comes from an lack of customer awareness. Folks dont know who they are selling to. Mike sells well to Gavin, so Gavin thinks mike will sell well to the customer. But they dont know who the customer is. They never talked to the customer or listened to them. Oh, maybe they lectured to some customers, but they dont understand the customer. They listened to oreskes about the customer. another mistake.
The problem with number 1 is that appealling to “all scientists agree” assumes that the customer already respects scientists. They dont. Just witness the attacks you see on All academics by some of the skeptics.
As a marketing device the appeal to “all scientists agree” really misses the mark as far as the customers are concerned. Further, it boomerangs.
it opens one to a positioning move by competitors: namely, if I use “all scientists”, then the counter move is easy: appeal to einstein, appeal to galileo, appeal to individual genius, preferably a historical figure who wont suffer any OJ problems. Finally, you never really have to explicitly appeal to the consensus. You can get the same effect by showing the consensus. That is you can parade experts ( I see more of this now ) and NEVER actually make the explicit point that they all “agree”. You show agreement, you dont “tell” agreement. You let Spencer be the lone voice against a parade of experts and you never count heads. Your customer will do that for himself.
Spending time with the skeptical customer I can tell you that they are sold by the individual appeal. They are sold by appeals to guys who did stuff. ( see the astronaut spokesmodels ) see the appeal of Willis in their ranks. See the latest top post at WUWT. And never never never attack the spokesperson of the other side ( oh spencer believes in evolution ) especially when you are in the majority and in power, you’ve just created a victim.
Marketing climate science is very hard, so while its easy to criticize the ham handed efforts of the past charting a way forward is harder. Still, one lesson should be learned. Appealing to consensus doesnt work. It does not work.
So stop it. now.
Also, appealing to the old guard as spokesmodels doesnt work: they are all OJ: trenberth, mann, hansen, Unfairly attacked in many cases, but damaged goods. Move on.
First job: who is the actual customer: skeptics? maybe not.
A reenactment of Gavin’s choice of Michael Mann as spokesmodel for CAGW:
+1
You know, I think I like “so stop it” the more I see it. Overall fun comment here–enjoyed it. Think I would even enjoy going to a hanging with you.
Don’t stop willard, Joshua, Bart R, Webhub, Max_OK, and especially David Appell. Give him overtime. Work him into a frenzy.
======================
Kim
It is indeed fun isn’t it?
i swore I’d quit before schadenfreunde struck, but Honey, I got the Fever.
=====================
Steven Mosher,
The problem with getting your fellow consensusites to follow your advice, is their disdain for the “customer.”
Which do you think most accurately describes the attitude of the consensus leaders toward their audience (or at least who their audience should be – the voters):
A) The voters are too dumb to understand the science anyway.
B) They (the consensus) are so much more intelligent, better educated and better informed, that the public should just do as their told, say thank you, and then shut up.
C) The truth as they know it to be is so obvious that anyone who does not agree with them is either stupid, dishonest, or mentally unbalanced.
D) All of the above.
garym
yes. this is why I would suggest putting SM entertainment in charge of media training for climate science
see my comment here
http://judithcurry.com/2013/07/27/the-97-consensus-part-ii/#comment-353704
SM,
I don’t know how many voters it would convince, but if you can get Schmidt, Hansen and Mann to form a “boy” band, you’d make a mint on ticket sales. You could be the P.T. Barnum of climate science.
Oh, and please, no more links to barely pubescent Japanese girls without a warning. If my daughter walks by when I click on one, I’m liable to get the same response as in the article. “‘They look like cheerleaders,’ my twenty-one-year-old niece hissed over my shoulder one day as I was watching ‘Gee’ again. ‘Uncle Pervy!’”
Gary, you asked a question and I failed to answer it. Sorry, let me fix that
“The problem with getting your fellow consensusites to follow your advice, is their disdain for the “customer.”
Which do you think most accurately describes the attitude of the consensus leaders toward their audience (or at least who their audience should be – the voters):
A) The voters are too dumb to understand the science anyway.
B) They (the consensus) are so much more intelligent, better educated and better informed, that the public should just do as their told, say thank you, and then shut up.
C) The truth as they know it to be is so obvious that anyone who does not agree with them is either stupid, dishonest, or mentally unbalanced.
D) All of the above.”
I can only speak for myself and I can say that I have had those feelings and thoughts, so answer D.
Lets start:
A) my customer is too dumb.
when I think you are too dumb I will just give you a pile of references and say ” read the damn manual moron” you see a lot of people do that. Ive done it. This really doesnt work too well.
B. Hmm, I have experience doing B, . mostly the “shut up” tactic. I will say that the more work I did in the field the more intolerant I became of Keyboard Jockeys.. So, if I tell you to shut up its not because I think Im smarter or better educated. Its cause I did the work. So, over the years I have become much more sympathic toward people who tell keyboard jockeys to shut up and do their own damn science. That said, “shut up” doesnt work. they own keyboards.
C. I try to avoid the mentally imbalanced attacks. the wholesale diagnosing your opponents with mental illness is perhaps the most offensive move I have seen folks on my side perform. Lets say my experience with loved ones , friends and the random vet who sleeps on the sidewalk outside my building makes these kind of wholesale attacks especially offensive to me. Still, I bet that I’ve stooped to that tactic on more than one occasion on an individual basis. The internet made me do it.
Im almost of the opinion that any mass marketing of climate science is damn near impossible. Maybe we should go door to door like the witnesses or do missions like LDS.
> Im almost of the opinion that any mass marketing of climate science is damn near impossible.
Here’s something Black Hat marketers might appreciate:
http://www.cbc.ca/undertheinfluence/season-2/2013/04/20/loss-leaders-how-companies-profit-by-losing-money-1/index.html
A very good podcast.
***
No, I’m not suggesting any climate loss leader in particular.
GaryM
Its a korean phenomena, but rooted in japense Kawaai
The Ajusshi doesnt have the same experience as the younger fan. Its more nostalgia and hope ( think daughter in law).. advuncular for some. That’s part of the genius of it. But in the west, it has to be interpreted according to western categories. There “uncle” is a good thing. Here, well we have the “funny” uncle.
I’m not sure the concept of loss leaders translates to “selling” climate science.
Since the goal of the consensus is decarbonization, what would a loss leader look like? A less drastic increase in the price of energy?
British Columbia just tried that. An energy tax that was supposed to increase incrementally with time so the people would buy into the process. They recently decided on a five year freeze. Their loss leader…lost.
Carbon emissions trading has been tried. And has failed miserably, repeatedly.
“Investment” in “green” energy has been tried – to disastrous effect in England, most of Europe, Australia, and to a lesser though still damaging effect, in the U.S.
Loss leaders have been tried as sales tools for CAGW. They have backfired every time.
No, the obscurantist strain of the CAGW movement has the right idea. Don’t let the public know what you are selling them, until it’s too late.
> I’m not sure the concept of loss leaders translates to “selling” climate science.
That’s the effing point, GaryM.
First, I don’t think I’ll never convince you of anything, or alternatively that you’ll act as if I ever did, except for preterition effect. You can think whatever you may like to think about that. See if I care. As if you won’t try to make it your soapbox trick again, rinsing and repeating your populist claptraps.
Second, I don’t want to upstage Mosh. He may use this resource as an springboard for his selling pitch. He can go with it, oppose to it, or ignore it. No harm in all cases.
Third, I’m just pointing to an interesting resource. It’s a very good podcast. There’s no real point behind it. I’m just a Green hat remark.
Fourth, I find the notion of “loss leader” funny. In a way, all leaders are loss leaders, except perhaps dictators.
I can think of one that is dear to you. He did not came to bring peace.
Cue to Tom here. There’s not grand end to my comment. It’s just a comment.
See how it works? Think about dancing.
Willard’s just in a bad mood ’cause it’s another Saturday night.
yes willard.
loss leaders, razor razorblade, printer ink cartridge paper,
free product, just pay shipping and handling.. trial version and upgrade.
loss leader to drive foot traffic. all very cool
My best:
Prior to their IPO I was not selling Nvidia product and I backed 3dfx, my arrangement with them gave me a licence to use their chip names
as my product brand.
Why? well I noticed by spending time in the stores talking to customers who picked up my boxes that None of them read what I wrote. They looked to see what chip I used. So, I secured the rights to use 3dfx chip names as my product name. They thought I was crazy to push their brand on my box.. I was building their brand for free.. hell I was paying to build their brand.
Of course I knew this would not last. They would get power hungry. which they did and that would mean I would have to switch. Enter Nvidia. Problem here was they would not licence their brand to me exclusively. And if I used their chips , everyone in asia would follow me and crater the price. they would free ride on my marketing we would all over build and lose money. So, instead my plan was to buy nvidia stock. Then engage in price wars to drive the volume as high as I could,even if it meant losing a few dollars on every product, The goal:making a killing in equity gains. meh.. it worked. the equity returns were 9 figures and over 30X the original investment.
Anyway, I’ll think about some loss leader approaches and credit you if I come up with any.
The authority we are appealing to is sum of science itself. To let it be known that the scientific field as a whole accepts AGW, that there is a consensus of scientists who accept AGW.
The reason skeptics hate the consensus being talked about is that it’s an effective strategy. It bolsters the credibility of AGW while marginalizing the credibility of AGW skeptics who are forced into conspiracy ideation to explain away the consensus.
I don’t think we need spokespeople for AGW. It’s skeptics who need spokespeople for AGW and pick spokespeople for AGW. No-one but climate skeptics picked Al Gore or Mann to be spokespeople for AGW. It’s convenient for them to have figureheads to attack. Individuals to target, just like in politics. It also helps them avoid the issue of the wider consensus by suggesting that only a few prominent figureheads accept AGW.
We didn’t need spokespeople for the theory of evolution. Some loud individuals (dawkins) picked up the bat, but then people will enter contrariwise speculation of whether they do more harm than good (just like al gore).
@lolwot
‘No-one but climate skeptics picked Al Gore or Mann to be spokespeople for AGW’
Really? Was ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ an undercover operation of Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts, directed by Chris Monckton? Lets see what wiki says
‘An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 documentary film directed by Davis Guggenheim about former United States Vice President Al Gore’s campaign to educate citizens about global warming via a comprehensive slide show that, by his own estimate made in the film, he has given more than a thousand times.
The idea to document his efforts came from producer Laurie David who saw his presentation at a town-hall meeting on global warming which coincided with the opening of The Day After Tomorrow. Laurie David was so inspired by Gore’s slide show that she, with producer Lawrence Bender, met with Guggenheim to adapt the presentation into a film’
Seems to me that there was very little sceptical involvement in this production. Can you produce another example to illustrate yr remarks?
2006 was so long ago. Why is Al Gore still discussed so much? Because climate skeptics just love to reference him.
It was you who brought him up
Steve, I have three Lab Coats; Clean (Tissue Culture), Dirty (post-Tissue Culture and now general lab) and Stained (Sudan Black and all sorts of Chromophores).
Lab Coats are therefore a uniform for work, if you work in a lab. However, Lab Coats are also a symbol of learning and authority, think of TV commercials for any health product with a ‘Dr’ telling you that the product has been tested scientifically and found good.
The question is, with respect to marketing climate science, do climate scientists wear Lab Coats to protect themselves or as status symbols, like the quack selling diet supplements?
Kim is forever listed as one of the all-time clowns. It is a tight fit getting all you into the volume of a 3% midget-sized clown car.
“The reason skeptics hate the consensus being talked about is that it’s an effective strategy.” I think not. The value of the 97% paper is we are all part of the consensus now. Relying on consensus on AGW to drive CAGW is where the alarmist argument fails. They make no attempt to define a CAGW consensus because they know there is none.
This is another case where the reader must carefully observe the pea (to use Steve McIntyre’s term). The appeals to consensus are non-controversial. They are then used as a bludgeon by the alarmists.
The battery is always dead in my little car, so I stick strictly to the oversize shoes.
================
> The reason skeptics hate the consensus being talked about is that it’s an effective strategy.
Yes, for deception. Which is exactly why alarmists love it.
Steven Mosher: They never talked to the customer or listened to them.
that was a good post.
I am always mindful that I don’t know who reads my posts, if anyone does other than the people who reply,. Although I address my comments toward particular comments, I try to imagine that there are people not committed to this or that who will find them informative, and find the replies to my comments informative as well.
lolwot: No-one but climate skeptics picked Al Gore or Mann to be spokespeople for AGW.
That’s an odd statement. Al Gore’s movie got prominent awards, and Mann’s “hockey stick” was displayed at the IPCC web page before it was discredited.
lowlot:
Why would they bother, when, as you yourself have pointed out, only a small % of the population is concerned about climate change?
> [Consensus-building] diverts serious, well-intentioned people from efforts to clear the air of the toxic meanings that impede the processes that usually result in public convergence on the best available (and of course always revisable!) scientific conclusions about people can protect themselves from serious risks.
Consensus, bad. Convergence, good.
So, is there a convergence on the best available scientific conclusion regarding AGW (as defined by the SPM)?
Suppose that there is. Could we then call that a consensus?
I suppose not. OK, then. Could we then call that a convergence on the best available scientific conclusion regarding AGW?
Now, suppose Cook & al studied the level of endorsement on the convergence on the best available scientific conclusion regarding AGW as defined by the SPM.
Sigh.
I’m beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I’ve tried to put it from me, saying Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven’t yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle.
Track record proof.
Steven,
Or is your compulsion just to over-complicate the not very complicated?
It’s not a matter of ‘sloppiness’ but appropriateness.
I could take a laser measure on my next fishing trip and tell to within +/- 0.00002mm how big the fish was, but ‘this big’ fits the purpose with elegant adequacy.
Following your suggestions woul djust be a massive watse of time.
Why suppose anything?
We have Cook’s paper on the 97% consensus. It’s crap. Yet you and others want to keep badgering Dr. Curry and act
Cook & al is not criticized because it’s crap, timg56, but because it participates in consensus-building. Any kind of consensus-building is purported to leads to some sociological and communicational properties that are unwelcome, e.g. counterproductivity (see below). Other approaches should be preferred, which vary from concerned commenter to the next. It would be impossible to mention them all, since their number is increasing anyway.
Kahan, to mention one name mentioned in the op-ed said of Cook & al:
http://www.culturalcognition.net/kahan-on-cook-et-al-4-points/
This is an important concern. Every concern is important. So we should be thankful for this concern.
So thank you for your concerns, timg56. That Cook & al is crap seems very important to you. How does it make you feel?
I’m all ears. I won’t judge you. I will listen.
Please continue.
willard makes an interesting remark:
I’m pretty sure I wrote half a dozen blog posts, not because the paper “participates in consensus-building,” but “because it’s crap.”
But who knows, maybe willard knows my mind better than I do.
Brandon is right: there are people who claims that Cook & al is crap. I’m sorry not to have notice that. It’s just been two months, and I have read so little.
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
***
Let’s try again:
That Cook & al is crap or not matters little to the Judy’s convergence point or Kahan’s point, or Hulme’s point, or an increasing number of people who doubt that consensus-building is the right approach.
***
Since Brandon speaks of his arguments, here’s one Bart V discussed:
http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/consensus-behind-the-numbers/
Readers will appreciate Brandon’s tapdancing in the comment thread.
err. cook et al is crap for failing to adhere to some very basic principles of norming the raters. Also, failing to provide data to critics that would allow people to acertain whether there was a regression to the mean over time for raters who rated huge numbers of abstracts relative to others.
The set up of the experiment was elegant and well thought out.
The execution sucked ass.
The reproduceability of the results is non existent.
When you set out to prove the obvious ( the vast vast majority of climate science recogizes that man causes climate change ) falling down on the basics is down right stupid.
Consider this a lost opportunity. Cook was given the option of spending more time getting the work done. Evidence is he cared more about the marketing.
That looses on two accounts.
As a card carrying published member of the consensus I object to morons like Cook carrying our flag into battle.
> cook et al is crap […]
Perhaps. Perhaps all the concerns so far are not so bad. But who cares, if it results in increasing meaninglessness?
***
> principles of norming the raters.
Please tell us more about ways to do that in a contrarian-proof ways.
***
> Also, failing to provide data to critics that would allow people to acertain whether there was a regression to the mean over time for raters who rated huge numbers of abstracts relative to others.
The opposite would be even more absurd. It’s like trying to prove that they were peanut sorters. And the protocol clearly indicates supervised learning. This request simply amounts to fishing in the dark, and is in fact unethical, as it eo ipso identifies the raters.
Anyway.
Willard
“Please tell us more about ways to do that in a contrarian-proof ways.
***
The protocal is pretty simple. Any one who has ever participated in a study like this or run a study like this can tell you. I explained on Lucia’s how the process works. It is a protocal which I suggested to Anthony as well before he did his site rating. Like cook he failed to follow a simple set up. So DAFS.
Next, your standard, “contratrian-proof” is faulty. The goal is not to do something contrarian proof as that is impossible. Arguing that a given protocal is good, because no standard is contrarian proof, allows you to use any protocal. So for example, if my protocal were to have one rater do them all, your answer ” oh, find a protocal that is contrarian proof” would justify something that you know to be sub optimal. So miss me with “anything is ok, because skeptics will never be pleased”
“> Also, failing to provide data to critics that would allow people to acertain whether there was a regression to the mean over time for raters who rated huge numbers of abstracts relative to others.
The opposite would be even more absurd. It’s like trying to prove that they were peanut sorters. And the protocol clearly indicates supervised learning. This request simply amounts to fishing in the dark, and is in fact unethical, as it eo ipso identifies the raters.”
No it does not identify the raters. Further if that is your problem, non disclosure solves that in a heart beat.
More later..
Anyway.
some reading for willard.
First some background. My experience with the protocals and measures goes back to practical experience performing and running these kinds of studies both in academia and business.
start here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-rater_reliability
Here on some issues with coders
http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1250&context=asc_papers
or try this
http://books.google.com/books?id=s_yqFXnGgjQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Klaus+Krippendorff%22&hl=cs&sa=X&ei=THD1Uei4CYOjigL8vIG4DA&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAQ
or here
http://www.agreestat.com/book3/
Or here you can find descriptions of the need to
A) establish exemplars.
B) train the coders
C) MEASURE the agreement
D) renorm.
Cook did none of these or if he did he did not report the results.
http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=7&n=17
More background closer to the particular application I have experience with
http://www.utexas.edu/academic/ctl/assessment/iar/research/report/content-analyze.php
here is another example showing the proceedures
https://www.usc.edu/dept/education/cegov/focus/assessment/publications/journals/The-quality-of-content-analyses-of-state-student-achievement-tests-and-state-content-standards.pdf
And this
http://academic.csuohio.edu/neuendorf_ka/content/reliability.html
To keep it a dumbed down level for you, see this slide deck
slide 12 might help you see the issue
http://quizlet.com/21219853/research-methods-content-analysis-flash-cards/
And here you see how the issue is actually related to the peer review system
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0014331
And the false consensus effect, basically why you dont want raters who believe in a consensus doing the rating, or rather why you have to control for this variable to exclude the false consensus effect
http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Ross-et-al-The-false-consensus-effect-an-egocentric-bias-in-social-perception-and-attribution-processes.pdf
Willard
“Cook & al is not criticized because it’s crap, timg56, but because it participates in consensus-building. ”
wrong.
1. it has been criticized because it is crap.
2. it does not participate in consensus BUILDING
a) it participates in polarizing
b) it participates in silencing
c) it participates in consensus SELLING, but none of the customers are buying it.
Showing that it participates in consensus building is simple. Point to a person who was in the 3% who now says he is in the 97%. quite the opposite, when people tried to agree and say they were a part of the consensus, they were told they were not. And when people in the consensus objected to the crap, they were told they didnt belong. I dont think one can fairly call that BUILDING.
Willard, one doesn’t have to strain themselves to find criticisms of that paper which have to do with how the research was structured
. It is crap, garbage, a steaming pile of poo. And the only importance I place on it is in observing who gives it any credibility.
Go ahead, put your faith in it being a quality piece of academic work. It will get one thing only. Recognition that you wouldn’t know quality if it bit you in the ass.
Thanks for the refs, Mosh. Will take a look. In return, here’s what I recently read:
http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~julia/courses/CS6998/Interrater_agreement.Kappa_statistic.pdf
Please note that handwaving references, while welcome, does not count as offering constructive criticisms.
***
> Cook did none of these or if he did he did not report the results.
Here’s where Cook & al describe their ABSTRACT rating process:
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article
My emphasis.
To offer constructive criticisms, it helps to refer to the paper and the study.
***
> No it does not identify the raters.
There are 12 raters and the paper reports their implication, most of whom we know. It would be very tough not to guess the raters’ ratings.
Please refer to the paper if you wish to offer constructive criticisms.
“Please note that handwaving references, while welcome, does not count as offering constructive criticisms.”
willard, I explained that the process of renorming the raters was missing.
If you want to understand how that works.
To renorm you have to measure. you have to report those measures. Cook doesnt.
Here is one sample of how one does this kind of study.
1. You set out your categories and criteria for “belonging” to a specific class.
in some cases the class has many features you have feature checkboxes.
2. You select exemplars for every category.
3. You train your coders using the exemplars.
The coders then are given a batch to code. Through out the entire process you are stopping and measuring inter coder reliability. YOU RENORM.
The problem is that as you go through the rating process raters will start to drift. everything will look like a 3 or 4. To elliminate the kind of concern that Tol had you control for it and you measure it. this is just fundamentals.
You start the coding process again. and again stop to renorm till you are done with coding.
Then you have to profile your coders for factors that may influence their coding. Sadly this group of coders all believe in the consensus. So, you have no control over that factor. See the paper on false consensus.
Lets put it this way: John had the opportunity to do a GREAT paper. a really good study. but he borked up the methodology and execution. Did it impact the results? probably not. Did it reduce the impact? well when you lose folks on your own side that is not a good thing.
Steven Mosher, the issues you raise are far less problematic than the idiotic rating system used by Cook et al. Not only did they not set out a clear definition for the “consensus” they were seeking to analyze, they came up with a rating system that had overlapping categories.
Their rating system is such a paper could acknowledge humans cause global warming yet get categorized as rejecting AGW. That’s a far bigger problem than anything you’ve raised.
Brandon armwaves again. Endorsing is not minimizing is not remaining neutral. Implicit is not explicit. Quantified is not non-quantified.
***
To offer constructive criticisms, it helps to refer to the paper and the study.
The coders were trained, learned vicariously, fulfilled their tasks in pairs, and had their divergences adjudicated.
Handwaving to handbooks, while interesting in its own right, does not suffice to evaluate what has been done to insure consistency and will not help us converge near contrarian-proof.
“willard, I explained that the process of renorming the raters was missing….[blah blah blah]’ – Mosher
Do you have some kind of compulsion to be a pompous jerk?
Stuff and nonsense.
They weren’t proposing a new rating scale for assessing climate papers that has to carefully demonstrate its IRR be to be considered of use.
The rating system was part of the process in reaching their conclusions, not the proposed product of the paper. Comparing independent raters for consistency and having a calibration process in this context is quite adequate.
Brandon
‘Steven Mosher, the issues you raise are far less problematic than the idiotic rating system used by Cook et al. Not only did they not set out a clear definition for the “consensus” they were seeking to analyze, they came up with a rating system that had overlapping categories.”
you seem to be of the opinion that your criticism are the only or the most important. You havent demonstrated that, and I doubt whether you could demonstrate that.
I can only speak from my professional experience conducting content analysis. They did not follow well known protocals, despite willard’s arm waving to the contrary.
There were no exemplars.
There was no formal training of the coders.
There were no measurements of inter-coder variability
There was no renorming.
Coders are a factor and they unbalanced the design by not having coders do the same number of ratings.
They had no controls for confirmation bias to prevent a false consensus effect.
The only thing of merit they did was recode those items that had different scores and even there they did not follow proper procedures.
As for your argument about overlapping categories, nobody is buying what you are selling. perhaps you might consider that.
Or better yet, do your own damn science. You have access to the abstracts. Come up with your own coding scheme. get a volunteer who has actually published in content analysis to help you. Do a better study.
Until you complete a better study the record is established by Cook and your criticisms, my criticisms and Tol’s criticisms dont amount to anything.
I trust that will offend your intellectual purity.
Micheal
‘They weren’t proposing a new rating scale for assessing climate papers that has to carefully demonstrate its IRR be to be considered of use.”
The rating system was part of the process in reaching their conclusions, not the proposed product of the paper. Comparing independent raters for consistency and having a calibration process in this context is quite adequate.
#######################
lets see if I can explain it to you.
When you do content analysis, lets say reading anewspaper article to determine whether it is liberal or conservative, or lets say judging an ESL student to see if he can speak the language, or judging incoming students to see if they can write, you establish categories that the coders will put the content into.
So you start by definining the categories and the features required for membership. I’ve got no issue with their categories.
Next, you select exemplars of every catgeory. These are used for formal training of your coders. You train your coders using the exemplars and you dont start until every coder can match the exemplars. Cook and company continued refinement and discussion while they were coding.
After you have trained coders you turn them loose on a batches, collecting those where they differ. You collect stats on how ratings change over time. You monitor for regression to the mean. This happens in all coding sessions I have ever participated in as a coder or monitored as a test director. It happens because people get tired. When you see this happening you stop. its time to renorm which means breaking out more exemplars to re train everyone. Then you start again. rinse repeat.
Then you have to profile your coders for any known factors that could influence their assessment. For example, if you are rating say ESL students on their language proficiency upon exit of instruction, you might think twice about having their instructors serve as coders. Similarly, if your coders are all interested in finding a consensus, you might think twice about having a pool of coders that is uniquely defined in this way. You need not have an entirely balanced set of coders, but you would want to control for the factor of prior belief in the consensus.
Finally note: saying the study is crap, doesnt entail that I disagree with the conclusion. because I dont.
Now, if you are going to do a study that is political divisive and actually cause more polarization and more DIVERSION, then at least have all your ducks in order so you dont lose people who actually agree with you, but object to your sloppiness.
If you want to defend sloppiness, then by all means do so, but remember the planet is at stake.
wilard
“The coders were trained, learned vicariously, fulfilled their tasks in pairs, and had their divergences adjudicated.”
1. there is no evidence that the coders were trained against a known set of exemplars. There is no evidence that they were all trained to the same level of accurate assement.
2. There is no evidence that they learned vicariously. The presumption from years of practical experience is that coders regress throughout the coding process. This is why you have a handbook that shows you how to test for this.
3. Pairing can present problems. Very simply, if you pair A with B and you start to experience a lot of conflicts you will see that over time that the coders will adjust their behavior to generate fewer conflicts. Without renorming what ends up happening is that coders follow the path of least resistence and more regress to the norm. So you get fewer conflicts for the wrong reason. Happens all the time. Take two TAs, have them read papers. One gives As, the other gives Bs. The more times they have to present conflicts to the third coder the more likely one of them will start to adopt the rating scale of the other one. That doesnt solve the problem because the problem is not lack of agreement, the problem one of them has mis coded it and you need to re norm. without renorming the coder will adjust to avoid conflict.
4. fixing divergences is the band aid. Of course you do that. That’s not enough however, you have to fix the problem. The problem is drifting in coder performance.
###############
Handwaving to handbooks, while interesting in its own right, does not suffice to evaluate what has been done to insure consistency and will not help us converge near contrarian-proof.
Its hardly handwaving to point you at a how to guide. I gather you have never participated in content analysis as a coder or as monitor. The instructions are straight forward. the metrics are straightforward. Playing stupid is a form of silence. Finally, there is no contrarian proof approach. that is a false standard. there is a hand book. there are established metrics. even Anthony watts knows enough to use this approach by appealing to WMO standards. when you can raise your intellectual game to his level, drop a note to the rest of us.
Let’s see if I can make myself clearer.
Here’s an example of constructive criticism:
Kappa Statistic is not Satisfactory for Assessing the Extent of
Agreement Between Raters
http://www.agreestat.com/research_papers/kappa_statistic_is_not_satisfactory.pdf
(Incidentally, this author is the same as the textbook offered by Moshpit, a textbook which, for chronological reasons, can’t have been the one he used during his studies.)
This paper contains an abstract, an introduction, sections introducing the relevant concepts, a description of the theorical problems, suggestions to remedy these problems, and simulations showing that performances are way better. Here’s the spoiler:
In other words, researchers should think about how to interpret what it means to have a random rating before using Kappa.
***
However we might feel about Cohen’s Kappa, there is something to be both to read this report and to produce it.
Everything the author claims is substantiated. What the author claims follows an argument. The argument flows naturally and rests on empirical grounds.
Compare and contrast with what is being done above with the first negative existential claims we encounter:
> there is no evidence that the coders were trained against a known set of exemplars. There is no evidence that they were all trained to the same level of accurate assement.
By contrast, we do have textual evidence that the authors did train the raters:
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article
Not only that, we also know by private emails that the ratings was discussed:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means/
In other words, the authors did stuff to insure rating consistency. To determine if what they did was sufficient, one does not simply say what the authors shoulda, woulda, coulda done. Sentences that start with “there is no evidence that so and so” and “the presumption from years of practical experience […]”, “happens all the time”, do not help evaluate the study. It doesn’t even help determine if the study did meet the standards proclaimed as being authoritative or not. While these ad hominem claims may be useful to grasp the semantical real of theorical concepts, they remain pontifications that support more the conclusion that Sir Richard Branson is not alone in having a well-lived life than the conclusion that “such and such study is crap”.
If one wants to say that what the authors did is crap, one has to look at what the authors did. For instance, if one wants to claim that any study with a drift in coder performance has to be rejected, then one has to show why it is so (by providing the proof or referring to specific citations), how that it is the case for the study under investigation, and what is the impact of the actual drift for the results. Until that is shown, all one has is that Cook & al could very well be crap.
Raising doubts is as easy as raising concerns and unsubstantiated dismissiveness is easy to read, with basic experience reading blog posts.
***
Any other kind of constructions should be seen as some kind of critical review. Such reviews seldom finish by saying that the reviewed work is crap. Here would be one way to do indicate being unconvinced:
http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/40779-scientific-enquiry-and-natural-kinds-from-planets-to-mallards/
See how easy is it to be sport?
Follows a tight criticism of a book which is interesting for those who took an interest in the concept of acidification not long ago. It should also hint at the fact that contemporary philosophers are not the cloud chasers one might think. I did choose my two examples on purpose. Left as an exercise to readers, if any.
***
I have no reason to believe that Cook & al is an important study. Yet, I invested more than two months on this. I don’t think I’m losing my time, for I want to be able to make people realize that they should own their shtick and produce constructive criticisms. Whatever the crappiness or meaninglessness or elseness of Cook & al, I gain by using the approach I’m using. Commenters should start to think in more constructive manner instead of wasting their time criticizing crap they find useless by throwing useless mud nobody reads anyway.
***
If blog science is to come about, blogs should start to sound like it.
Willard,
You will note that I did not endorse Cohen’s Kappa. Read all the documents. That will give you some idea of the importance of the problem. And then you can ask Cook which measure he used and why. Using no measure is not preferred over Cohen Kappa’s, but you seem to be suggesting that.
Go publish that, I will gladly change my mind when you get it through peer review.
That’s right do your own damn science and suggest that because there is no contrarian proof method and because there are issues with no methods that it is best to do nothing.
Lovely argument.
Thank you for your comments and concerns.
Keep resuming, Willard.
Eventually you’ll get it (if you’re lucky).
In the last three decades the temperature has risen by a total of 0.5 C, or 0.167 C per decade. This includes the so-called pause and is still in line with the expected rate from 1980. The pause can be seen as an illusion of the fast previous rise culminating in 1998, and a correction to it. A lot of people are fooled by looking at climate over time scales less than 30 years which is where natural variability is seen. The choice of 30 years eliminates this type of variability, which is probably why it was chosen to represent official climate.
On this same thread you said it averaged 0.3/decade for 3 decades. Which is it?
Land is 0.3 C per decade for 3 decades, especially the NH continents. This rate is continuing through the pause, but this fact has been largely ignored. It is very clear from this and the cooling pattern that the pause is driven by ocean circulations, rather than forcing. Focus on global means hides all this.
Jim D, I refute it thus
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.C.gif
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A.gif
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/crutem4/data/web_figures/global_n+s_monthly.png
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/crutem3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/annual_bar.png
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vnh/mean:36/from:1970/plot/crutem4vgl/from:1970/mean:36
The case for 0.3 C per decade is stronger for the NH land, but the total land might be 0.27 C with error bars depending how you choose starting and ending points.
Jim,
It could be interesting to dig a little deeper to see which parts of the land area have been warming strongly and which not.
While the total land area and NH land areas behave similarly that seems to be due to the fact that most of land areas are in NH. Looking at SH separately gives a very different picture. Within the NH some specific areas may turn out to be decisive while the rest may have shown much less warming. One hint that leads me to expect that is given by the graphs linked by DocMartyn.
JimD, since you are webstering into the land warming with the miraculous water vapor feedback to be measured later mode, you know you can use the ERSSTv3 land data by regions to confirm your hypothesis.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/07/regional-land-temperature-anomaly.html
One of the more interesting things about the land temperatures is how wheat belt regions during the great rush to convert virgin lands to the plow tend to have warmed at a larger rate. Given that land use is supposed to lead to cooling, I would have imagined they would have frozen their arses off on the road to desertification. Converting the Aral Sea resort of Czars to a desert must be some kind of anthropogenic climate change mitigation award winning project since the salt sands are so bright viewed from space.
Pekka, yes I have looked and the largest warming is in the interior north of the large continents (Canada, north Russia) – regions of low population density by the way. The southern continents are smaller and more influenced by the oceans, and so have less warming. The continental warming is leading the oceans as an independent response to forcing.
‘A characteristic feature of global warming is the land–sea contrast, with stronger warming over land than over oceans. Recent studies find that this land–sea contrast also exists in equilibrium global change scenarios, and it is caused by differences in the availability of surface moisture over land and oceans. In this study it is
illustrated that this land–sea contrast exists also on interannual time scales and that the ocean–land interaction is strongly asymmetric. The land surface temperature is more sensitive to the oceans than the oceans
are to the land surface temperature, which is related to the processes causing the land–sea contrast in global warming scenarios. It suggests that the ocean’s natural variability and change is leading to variability and
change with enhanced magnitudes over the continents, causing much of the longer-time-scale (decadal) global-scale continental climate variability. Model simulations illustrate that continental warming due to
anthropogenic forcing (e.g., the warming at the end of the last century or future climate change scenarios) is mostly (80%–90%) indirectly forced by the contemporaneous ocean warming, not directly by local radiative
forcing. http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/DIETMARDOMMENGET_zps939fe12e.png.html?sort=3&o=9
Jim,
That’s exactly what I expected, and I have also my theory (probably shared by many) for the explanation. In these areas the air temperature is weakly coupled to any major heat capacity. The surface has a low heat conductivity and therefore does not moderate efficiently variations of the air temperature. A major change in the local temperature is caused by a small change in the Earth energy balance. In addition absolute moisture levels are low and CO2 has therefore more direct influence on IR transmission.
The effect is strongest in the winter over the period of snow cover, but probably to a lesser degree true also during the summer when compared with lower latitudes.
Some people have mentioned feedbacks as the cause, I doubt that explanation as it’s probably not needed at all. Living at the latitude 60N and visiting often more Northern parts of Finland has made it very clear that the Winter temperatures can vary widely without any strong reason.
CH and Pekka, I think that since it is the northern margins of the continents that are warming most, they are affected by the Arctic amplification include positive sea-ice feedback from the Arctic Ocean and positive albedo feedback from reduced snow cover (though that may be smaller as there is less light in the northern winter). However, the way the land is warming robustly as the other oceans are not does not support what CH’s quote speculates, so perhaps they wrote that before the pause, and would change their minds with this evidence.
Any science Jim? I can’t be bothered just throwing around empty verbiage with you.
CH, Arctic amplification. You may have heard of it before?
It could just be that the water under the ice is warmer than the atmosphere above the ice and as the ice extent lessens the warmer water has more influence on the temperature of the atmosphere. This mighht explain why the temperatures in the Arctic are going up in the spring summer and fall but going down in the winter.
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/amet/2012/505613/
According to GISTEMP, the Arctic Ocean warming is largest in the winter. I don’t know why, but maybe the surrounding warming continents are influencing it.
Jim, interesting isn’t it that one data set says it is warming the most in the winter and the other says it is warming except for the winter when it is cooling. I’ll just throw my hands up on this one. The data isn’t even close enough to speculate on.
JimD,
I know that arctic amplification and albedo feedbacks are often mentioned, but I don’t buy that. I do still think that most of effect is due to the factor I described.
I haven’s seen any studies on that point, thus this is based on just my physicists intuition built upon observations from the environment I’m familiar with. The most important observations are from weather statistics, which tell how large the variability in winter temperatures is in comparison with summer temperatures, and I’m sure also in comparison to temperatures at lower latitudes.
Examples of what I have in mind can be seen on two web pages (these pages are available on in Finnish, but the graphics should be understandable):
– January statistics scroll down or search for Tammikuun keskilämpötilat vuodesta 1951.
– July statistics scroll down or search for Heinäkuun keskilämpötilat vuodesta 1951
The graphics below these titles show monthly average temperatures since 1959. The tables just above the titles list the lowest and highest monthly averages. All this data is given both for Helsinki and for Sodankylä in Northern Finland.
It’s natural for high latitude land areas that even average temperatures change easily. That should be even more true for the large land masses of Northern Canada and Siberia.
It is scientific skeptics (such as myself) that have consistently pointed to possible 30 year natural cycles in climate, with periods of quickly rising temperatures interspersed with flatter periods with little warming or low rates of cooling. One argument I’ve heard recently from more mainstream (i.e. warmist) AGW scientists is that it could be part of the natural cycle causing the recent “pause”. But no acknowledgement that it could have also contributed to the increases in the 90’s and calling people who used this arguments 10-15 years ago “deniers” but now conveniently use it themselves when they can’t explain why their models are off.
Yes, the 90’s increase was faster than expected, culminating in 1998. It certainly raises awareness, just like the next such decade would. It is a roller coaster that is smoothed by only looking at 30-year periods.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:360
JimD, “It is a roller coaster that is smoothed by only looking at 30-year periods.”
What a pity. That excludes comparison to nearly all the paleo data that has natural 30 to 100 year smoothing. I guess you have to squint pretty hard to see your “effect”.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/05/how-to-splice-instrumental-data-to.html
Without squinting you have a pooper scooper but by squinting just right you get a hockey stick.
If you want to look at decades, take the last ten year average from HADCRUT4, and subtract the previous 10 years. You get 0.14 C. No pause. Should give you pause.
JimD, “If you want to look at decades, take the last ten year average from HADCRUT4, and subtract the previous 10 years. You get 0.14 C. No pause. Should give you pause.”
Not really, if you look at the splice a little more closely the instrumental used is HADCRUT 30-30 which is sliced to the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool. Since there was a little ice age and since the globe has/is recovering from that little ice age, the Oppo IPWP with HADCRU 3030 makes perfectly good sense and a remarkably good fit. You can even follow the energy to the sub-polar north Atlantic.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/07/still-following-energy.html
Considering there is a +/- 0.125 C margin of error in your 0.14C of no pause, you appear to be squinting again.
Jim D
A lot of people (apparently including you) are fooled by looking at 30-year “blips” in the record.
Since there are observed multi-decadal oscillations of sharp warming and slight cooling of around 30 years each, this is obviously not a wise thing to do.
We just completed one of those 30-year warming cycles (to which you refer), and it appears that we may be in a multi-decadal cycle of slight cooling now.
Jim, you should look at the entire record to get an idea of what is going on, not just the “last three decades”.
Even better yet, go even further back in time using a proxy record, such as CET.
Max
I now see why you go by lolwot, Archie.
“Yes. Lets stifle that debate. With facts such as the fact that 97% of experts accept AGW. You included I think.”
Warmists, meet nail:
You are right, it is all about Him.
I bet that guy is a warmist.
Totally
willard will enjoy this
http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins-2.html#.UfTHro1tMRs
men are pigs
Bender would approve
“I must admit that I initially felt a certain amount of repugnance at the idea of being a hybrid. The image of a pig mating with an ape is not a pretty one, nor is that of a horde of monstrous half-humans breeding in a hybrid swarm. But the way we came to be is not so important as the fact that we now exist. As every Machiavellian knows, good things can emerge from ugly processes, and I think the human race is a very good thing. Moreover, there is something to be said for the idea of having the pig as a relative. My opinion of this animal has much improved during the course of my research. Where once I thought of filth and greed, I now think of intelligence, affection, loyalty, and adaptability, with an added touch of joyous sensuality — qualities without which humans would not be human.
When it comes to topics like human origins, where the opinions are rigid and the evidence thin, reservation of judgment is best. It is my hope that the arguments presented here will serve as an intellectual springboard allowing the mind to rise above the inflexible creeds of traditional evolutionary thought. Even if the hybrid hypothesis is wrong, any satisfactory theory of human evolution will have to address the facts touched upon in the foregoing discussion. Wrong or right, I believe a final answer is at hand. The obstacles to the acquisition of such knowledge are by no means insurmountable. Scientists around the world are gathering more data every day. If this rising tide of information indicates that the ideas that we have always had about our origins are wrong, we should not hesitate to correct our errors. Time after time, science has dispelled dogma and brought us things that were once beyond imagination. From tiny bacteria to vast galaxies, from telephones to rocket ships, our knowledge has continued to expand. Perhaps we will even at last be able to rend the veil that has long obscured our own origins. If the hybrid hypothesis is correct, we will be able to find out where we came from. One simple thing is essential to that discovery: In the immortal words of Professor Bernhardt, “It isn’t faith that makes good science, Mr. Klatu. It’s curiosity!”
When pigs fly, they have monkeys on their backs.
===========
That must be the intellectual property of Mr. H.W., buy now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaatu_barada_nikto
Are you still having problems with Dollywood?
Humans evolved just like every other living thing has, from land adapting amoeba that had emerged from the sea. Hybrids seem never to last very long in the scheme of things.
“Peter Davies | July 28, 2013 at 8:52 pm |
Humans evolved just like every other living thing has, from land adapting amoeba that had emerged from the sea. Hybrids seem never to last very long in the scheme of things.”
you are an aussie right?
You are aware that a platypus has both bird and mammal DNA?
The point of his argument is this:
you have to explain the traits that humans have that chimps ( and other primates ) do not have. guess what animal has those traits as well?
kinda interesting
I read the whole paper Mosher and indeed find it most interesting. The suggestion that human infertility could arise from hybridicity is belied by the Earth’s increasing population count since the beginning of human recorded history.
The platypus seems more the result of evolutionary adaptation to its preferred living environment rather than any hybridisation of bird and mammal. Eggs can be soft shelled objects that are fertilised and incubated internally or fertilised and incubated externally (like, for example, some shellfish) or hard shelled objects that are fertilised internally and incubated externally but they nonetheless remain a feature of all animal reproduction.
The ancient question remains: whichever came first? The chicken or the egg?
The chicken of course.
Tom, the following quote seems to have relevance to this old question:
“The modern chicken was believed to have descended from another closely related species of birds, the red junglefowl, but recently discovered genetic evidence suggests that the modern domestic chicken is a hybrid descendant of both the red junglefowl and the grey junglefowl.[18] Assuming the evidence bears out, a hybrid is a compelling scenario that the chicken egg, based on the second definition, came before the chicken.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_or_the_egg
Evolution seems to happen, at least in part, to hybridic style cross fertilisation but perhaps “natural selection” was away on leave when this type of thing happens.
peter
‘I read the whole paper Mosher and indeed find it most interesting. The suggestion that human infertility could arise from hybridicity is belied by the Earth’s increasing population count since the beginning of human recorded history.”
Then you didnt read the artcle
‘The usual result is a reduction in fertility, not absolute sterility. My current work documenting hybridization among mammals shows that partially fertile natural hybrids are common, too, in Class Mammalia. And yet, it seems most people base their ideas of hybrids on the common mule (horse x ass), which is an exceptionally sterile hybrid, and not at all representative of hybrids as a whole.
Another observation that appears significant in connection with the hypothesis under consideration is that it has been well known for decades that human sperm is abnormal in comparison with that of the typical mammal. Human spermatozoa are not of one uniform type as in the vast majority of all other types of animals. Moreover, human sperm is not merely abnormal in appearance — a high percentage of human spermatozoa are actually dysfunctional. These and other facts demonstrate that human fertility is low in comparison with that of other mammals (for detailed documentation of this fact see the article Evidence of Human Infertility). Infertility and sperm abnormalities are characteristic of hybrids. So this finding suggests that it’s reasonable to suppose, at least for the sake of argument, that humans might be of hybrid origin. It is also consistent with the idea that the hybridization in question was between two rather distinct and genetically incompatible types of animals, that is, it was a distant cross.
And you didnt follow the links
http://www.macroevolution.net/support-files/evidence-of-human-infertility.pdf
“These researchers found that in humans, on
average, 18.4 percent of the spermatozoa are abnormal in shape; but in the
common chimpanzee, just 0.2 percent (a 92-fold difference).5
In the pygmy
chimpanzee, they observed no abnormally shaped spermatozoa at all.6
In a
more extensive survey, Bedford7
examined spermatozoa from a wide variety
of primates, and concluded that variability was the salient feature
distinguishing human sperm from that of other members of Order Primates “
Mosher, explain the riddle.
You’ve heard that we share 97% of our genes with Chimps.
and you’ve heard that you share 100% an identical twin, 50 % with siblings.
Explain or admit you know nothing about biology.
Mosher suggests that this paragraph was not understood
“The fact that even modern-day humans are relatively infertile may be significant in this connection. If a hybrid population does not die out altogether, it will tend to improve in fertility with each passing generation under the pressure of natural selection. Fossils indicate that we have had at least 200,000 years to recover our fertility since the time that the first modern humans (Homo sapiens) appeared. The earliest creatures generally recognized as human ancestors (Ardipithecus, Orrorin) date to about six million years ago.”
I merely suggested therefore that modern population levels seemed to contradict this point.
Your points about abnormalities in human sperm were noted but I was more interested in eggs and how cross fertilisation takes place if “natural selection” were indeed a basic premise of Darwinian evolution.
I don’t usually respond to suggestions that I made an untrue statement when I in fact made a true statement. I found the whole paper of interest notwithstanding the posture you have taken with respect to my POV, which is reminiscent of the posture generally taken by WebHubTelescope to other posters on this blog and IMO not conducive to civil discourse.
If there is a pause, it is as unimportant as the warming. Since climate is nothing but change, there will always be a warming trend…unless there is a cooling trend or a pause where nothing much is apparent. If climate ceased to change very markedly both in the shorter and longer term, it would be something else: an eggbeater, or a coathanger, maybe…but it would not be climate. Nobody will deny this, of course, in clear words; but there is a cute tendency on the part of many alarmists to imply a past stable or clement climate which has, of course, never existed. It is never said, but often implied. If you want to be taken seriously, do not say or imply such evident tripe.
And since nobody can point to a decade or century when climatic extremes or freak events have not occurred, the most the School of Extremism can do is rely on increased reportage in recent times to give the appearance of increasing frequency and severity. If very great efforts were made to introduce greater precision of terms and to ascertain much more knowledge of the past, then this would be more than a stunt. In fact, most climate alarmists can’t bury or obscure the past quick enough. The cataclysms of past centuries just kinda happened, while Sandy was heaps Franken…and other such baby talk.
Conclusion: Stunt!
mosomoso, a much needed breath of fresh air on this thread.
Has the publication of Cook and N’s paper had the dramatic effect on public opinion that they plotted and schemed to achieve?
It seems not.
http://newnostradamusofthenorth.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/new-eu-poll-only-4-of-europeans-rate.html
‘When horse is dead, stop flogging’ (old proverb)
Those on the strong horses watch Obama flogging his dead mount.
=====================
Had to read that a second time.
first run through I read it as meat.
but then I am someone who would ask why folks were
upset their lasagna had horse meat instead of beef. Who cares if it tastes ok.
The horse, of course.
kim
Obama’s “97% steed” isn’t quite dead yet.
But it’s three-legged and won’t make it to the finish.
Max
It’ll have a positive influence on people’s careers.
Not yet it ain’t. I don’t think that the extra focus it has put on Nutticcelli’s CV has been to his benefit. T’would be a brave ‘environmental consultancy’ that took him on after this week’s events.
I wouldn’t expect many people to rank climate change as their most pressing concern. Low %s sounds about right.
It’s a typically climate deniery kind of strawman to require every citizen to rank climate change as their #1 concern.
I notice terrorism is an even lower concern.
Then why does it bother you so much what other people think?
Terrorism should be a low concern, especially in the US. Yet another area that has been hyped beyond belief by statists and “fraidy cats” from both parties.
lolwot > It’s a typically climate deniery kind of strawman to require every citizen to rank climate change as their #1 concern.
lolwot is using words he doesn’t understand. Even if skeptics did require every citizen to rank climate change as their #1 concern – and there’s not even a grain of truth in that claim – that wouldn’t make it a strawman.
Inventing claims that are easy to knock over , and putting them into the mouths of others, is what strawmen are all about. Which is exactly what lolwot has done above, in his ignorant and dishonest attempt to accuse others of strawmanning. Typical climate truebeliever behaviour, I need hardly add.
From the original post above, “Further, he appears to have picked up that strange censorial attitude noteworthy also in von Storch which presumes that because they do not believe that AGW will lead to catastrophe (which is a respectable position inside the consensus), that therefore scientists who do believe that it will (also a respectable position inside the consensus) must not state that belief in public.”
I hope I am following here. Perhaps from the above, maintaining the Consensus to the point of also limiting Catastrophic views. A vision of Science that does not value testing unconventional ideas. Assuming the Consensus captures the middle, then both ends of the Scientific spectrum should continue to be tested. To censure the skeptics seems to imply that one needs to censure the other end of the spectrum as well. Once you’ve thrown a few people out of the boat, it’s easier to do that in the future. You’ve set your example. The limiting effect of such an approach to the advancement of the Science seems to apparent to me. You’ve grouped your people up, and rather than wanting them to have bold thoughts and explore the limits, you seem to be sending them a message to not do that.
Ragnaar
“Consensus” is a construct of the IPCC. It is in its charter. Without it, it’s reason for existence fades, so it has become existential for the IPCC.
And for this very reason, it is a “forced consensus”.
But it’s not real.
Max
The 97% is getting boring. It was 97% ages ago and it is still 97%. Climates change faster than that “consensus” figure. Not even any decimal points to add some unnatural variation. Surely it should be at 99% by now? Whatever “it” is.
The 3% crank rule
Some other notable “3% cranks” include Wegener and Agassiz.
Predicting the Pause
In 1999, Geology Prof. Emeritus Don Easterbrook began predicting a trend change in temperature to reduced warming and possible cooling from around 2005 to 2035 – due to the change in phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation – while the “consensus” was declaring strong future warming. The “pause” is proving Easterbrook right.
Declining persuasion of the “consensus”
The forced “consensus” is causing declining public “belief” in human “global warming”.
I’m looking forward to ‘The 97% Consessus: Part III” where Judith approvngly quotes Ben Pile praising Judith’s Part II take on Ben last post, then followed by Pile’s next post, quoting Judith’s Part III praising him, then comes Judith’s Part IV…..
Maybe the Wegman crew can come in and do a Social Network analysis…..
Are u accusing them of stealing Romms tactics?
Oh poor Mikey et al,
It’s very painful for you, ain’t it? Damn deniers are winning and you can’t do anything about it, but whine.
Actually mikey, the world has moved on from your Chicken Little alarmism. Got mitigation, mikey?
Let me tell you who’s looking like ‘deniers’ on this comment thread.
About that 97% ‘consensus’ — the poll was set up to get the results they wanted. If the questions had been phrased differently the answers also would have been different as any professional pollster knows.The truth or falsity of climate science per se does not depend upon any opinion polls, period. As Einstein pointed out, it only takes one observation to determine whether a scientific claim is true or false.Your observation that –
“…Too many defenders of the consensus have become either ‘pause’ deniers or ‘pause’ dismissers. A while back, I recommended that they ‘own’ the pause, and work on explaining it. Belatedly, we see a little bit of this happening, but of course it does not lead them to challenge the main IPCC conclusion on 20th century attribution.”
is certainly germane but I don’t see any of it happening. Your advice was meant to rally the warmists but they really can’t do anything but observe. And this is what scientists are supposed to do – observe and then apply your knowledge of the laws of physics to the observations in order to understand them. Their hope of course is that once understood the pause will become just another natural phenomenon that does not invalidate their belief in global warming. They believe in global warming as strongly as Nazis believed in Aryan supremacy. That one only lasted for twelve years before it was demolished. The pause has lasted for fifteen years now and opposition to it is futile – just admit defeat and start thinking of postwar policies. And that means you have to challenge the main IPCC conclusion on 20th century attribution. I have given serious thought to the pause and have come to the conclusion that its persistence demolishes the concept of greenhouse effect as the cause of global warming. And that is exactly what Miskolczi theory demands. You might say that the pause shows the Miskolczi theory supercedes the Arrhenius thory of the greenhouse effect. At least ten years have gone by since the pause became well known but it has remained incomprehensible to modelers because they work with the Arrhenius theory of global warming. And when I hear that all they can think of is that OLR is now heating the ocean instead of the air I know that they have lost their way. The failure of the greenhouse effect has manifold consequences, First, all predictions of warming that utilize the greenhouse effect are invalid. Since they have been the foundation stones of green legislation all projects that were started as a result of their use have been started under false premises. They must be halted immediately or as soon as practical. The same goes for laws to support these projects. And organizations such as IPCC that are at the center of global warming movement should be closed down and their monies stopped. There is much more and world governments will each have to do their part in eradicating the effects of this mass global warming hysteria the pause has exposed as the pseudo-science it is
].
Arno Arrak
+100
Max
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“In 2007, the 15-yr trend was 0.30 C/decade(!) Where were you all then? Keeping quiet, waiting until another brief pause appeared, that’s where.”
Such honesty will take us toward the right answer.
The thing is, when the warming seemed unstoppable, namely 0.3C/decade, warmies were on top, calling anyone asking questions Holocaust deniers. The people asking uncomfortable questions are still there around.
In Science magazine, in 2008, there was an article on the pause. There are people asking questions about the pause from as early as 2003.
You didn’t notice.
> calling anyone asking questions Holocaust deniers.
Denier is a perfectly legitimate word in the English language that has nothing to do with Holocaust. Here, it is being used appropriately.
Indeed, many of you approve of the term:
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2012/05/why-its-ok-to-use-word-denier.html
Hark, the heretic anglers sting.
================
“…Denier is a perfectly legitimate word in the English language”
The problem is not the word. It is being called that by you guys. Being called anything by you guys, i.e., warmies, would be a problem. Because those were the days when you wanted to use the 0.3C/decade to bludgeon your opponents.
Being called anything by you guys, i.e., warmies, would be a problem.
You mean like “alarmist?” Like “warmist?”
Poor you, we’re hurting your feelings. Can’t take the rough and tumble of real science? Maybe you should take up bird watching?
Heh, David Appell thinks this is the rough and tumble of science, when it’s actually the nasty business of constructing a false but powerful narrative.
====================
The rough and tumble of science? Like starting off by saying how you predicted the pause all along and asked Curry for her models?
If you want to win the debate, produce superior science. It’s that simple. So far you have not.
Well, so far the uncertainty monster is winning the debate, I am putting my money on the uncertainty monster
By Gum, I believe David Appell still inhabits the late 20 Century.
==============
“Can’t take the rough and tumble of real science? ”
damn you are exactly the kind of tough guy that climate science marketing needs. Tell those pussies Mann and Jones that asking for their data is not harassment. Kick the pussies off our team david. you can do it!
Tell those pussies Mann and Jones that asking for their data is not harassment.
Mann’s data has been available for years and years, and there are now several portals for paleoclimate data. Go ahead and do something with it.
“Mann’s data has been available for years and years, and there are now several portals for paleoclimate data. Go ahead and do something with it.”
Well, dude I have. The point is you were no where to be found with your tough attitude when we actually had to fight to get the data.
And now I see you complaining over at climate audit about “harassment”
Yes science is rough and tumble. and pussies like you complain even today that asking for data is harassment.
alarmist, warmist, Chicken Little, pause denier
Say kim,
Christmas in July!
Bts
Umm
‘Denier’ without specifying what is being ‘denied’ is meaningless. The term Holcaust denier is clear…on who denies the holocaust took place.
But what is a ‘denier’ denying? Or a ‘climate denier’ – denying that there is such a thing as climate?
Seems a pretty useless term to me. Conveys no information about the supposed subject and a lot about the guy who uses it. ‘Muddle-headed’ is the least of the qualities its use displays.
So, according to Appell, it’s “rough and tumble science” when we do it. But “harassment” when you and your crowd do it.
Hypocrite, writ large.
Steven Mosher, “damn you are exactly the kind of tough guy that climate science marketing needs. Tell those pussies Mann and Jones that asking for their data is not harassment. Kick the pussies off our team david. you can do it!”
I don’t think that is allowed. Isn’t there a Climate Scientist with disabilities act that mandates no scientist left behind policy? I think it is called tenure. You should tell David to get tough and laterally promote their asses.
David, so where is the superior science showing us how bad a warming world will be?
To predict the warming of 0.5 degrees from 1980-2000 with a climate model, you would have needed a sensitivity of 4 C per doubling (even after subtracting aerosol effects), so it is safe to say the models would have underestimated that, followed by missing the pause which would have put them on track for the 30 years 1980-2010. Point is, these models don’t do internal variability wiggles unless you look at individual ensemble members that have a random chance of getting the wiggle phase right. Climate models are not initial-value Predictions, they are for long-term Projections of global change out towards a century where changes of several degrees are not conditional on getting the 0.1 degree wiggles right, but more dependent on the response to projected forcing changes.
Jim D
Problem with the model projections (as with all predictions, see Taleb) is that the longer the prediction period the greater the chance for error.
Any projections of more than a few years are totally meaningless because of the many uncertainties involved (see other thread).
Max
At some point, the length of the prediction matters less than the change in forcing. Whether CO2 rises to 700 ppm in 50 years or 100 years, it gets to the same temperature at that time. There is some determinism here.
‘Global mean temperature decreased prior to World War I, increased during the 1920s and 1930s, decreased from the 1940s to 1976/77, and
as noted above increased from that point to the end of the century. Insofar as the global mean temperature is controlled by the net top-of-the-atmosphere radiative budget [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007], such breaks in temperature trends imply discontinuities in that budget. Such discontinuities are difficult to reconcile with the
presumed smooth evolution of anthropogenic greenhouse gas and aerosol radiative forcing with respect to time [Hansen et al., 2005]. This suggests that an internal reorganization of the climate system may underlie such shifts [Zhang et al., 2007]…
[4] This paper provides an update to an earlier work that showed a foreshadowing of such climate shifts in the time evolution of major Northern Hemispheric atmospheric and oceanic modes of variability [Tsonis et al., 2007]. In that paper, it was hypothesized that certain aspects of the climate system behave in a manner analogous to that of synchronized chaotic dynamical systems [Boccaletti et al., 2002]. Specifically, it was shown that when these modes of climate variability are synchronized, and the coupling between those modes simultaneously increases, the climate system becomes unstable and appears to be thrown into a new state. This chain of events is identical to that found in regime transitions in synchronized chaotic dynamical systems [Pecora et al., 1997]. This new state is marked by a break in the global mean temperature trend and in the character of ENSO variability. Synchronization followed by an increase in coupling coincided with all the major climate shifts of the 20th century, and was also shown to mark climate shifts in coupled ocean-atmosphere simulations. While in the
observations such breaks in temperature trend are clearly superimposed upon a century time-scale warming presumably due to anthropogenic forcing, those breaks result in significant departures from that warming over time periods spanning multiple decades.
[5] Using a new measure of coupling strength, this update shows that these climate modes have recently synchronized, with synchronization peaking in the year 2001/02. This synchronization has been followed by an increase in coupling. This suggests that the climate system may well have shifted again, with a consequent break in the global mean temperature trend from the post 1976/77 warming to a new period (indeterminate length) of roughly constant global mean temperature.’
ftp://starfish.mar.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/pub/ocean/CCS-WG_References/NewSinceReport/March15/Swanson%20and%20Tsonis%20Has%20the%20climate%20recently%20shifted%202008GL037022.pdf
Much better science – although perhaps discontinuities in the toa energy dynamic may have a bigger role in background warming.
Note the trend before and the shift at the1998/2001 climate shift.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandlaken2013_zps3c92a9fc.png.html?sort=3&o=14
I look forward to your new paper Judith.
David Appell= Dunning-Kruger effect.
It’s interesting that the percentage of the public who are scared of global warming can be found by subtracting 97%, from 100%. I ain’t too good at math, but ain’t that kind of like a reciprocal?
sometimes I think your existence is explained by this
http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html#.UfTGWo1tMRs
That’s kind of childish and petty, steven. And I haven’t slapped you around in a long time.
Hey, I am worried about your friend joshie. It’s not like him to miss an opportunity to join in with his fellow travelers on a Judith bash fest like we have on this thread.
Don, you didnt read all the way through. Some of our best qualities have porcine roots. seriously, read the whole thing and you’ll see why the ladies should be grateful that men are pigs and not apes in certain regards.
Joshua is absent who knows why? we can speculate
Don,
Mosher deconstructs Josh far better than you ever have.
It is interesting to note who the gentlemen & ladies are here. Mosher is certainly one of them. Tony, Pekka, Faustino, Rud, Bob D, and several others all qualify. When I see the example they set, I know I should tone down my smartass factor if I want to behave in the manner my mom raised all 4 of her sons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_(zodiac)
See also Monkey. Stir.
I always wondered why I found Miss Piggy strangely alluring.
Zaftig Zephyrs.
===========
Does my fondness for bacon make me a cannibal?
Actually my favorite part was the noting that primates have dark eyes and that we get lighter colored eyes , nose, and eyebrows from our pig fathers.
in terms of evidence I was particularly struck by the recapitulation in the human fetus of a pig like stomach…
Good science seems like science fiction sometimes.. I kept waiting for the punchline… Also, His logic was quite tight. Always appreciate that. I thought willard would approve. meh
I read it as parody and was awe-struck. Alzo the logic.
==============
David Appell
Did YOUR climate model predict the pause?
You just need to look at the pattern since 1850 as shown:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/plot/gistemp/compress:12/offset:-0.08/detrend:0.04/plot/hadcrut4gl/compress:12/offset:-0.03/detrend:0.02/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:732/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:-0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/scale:0.000001/offset:2/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.003/offset:-1.03/detrend:-0.22/from:1982/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:0.015/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:732/offset:0.015/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.003/offset:-1.03/detrend:-0.22/from:1982
This pattern shows no warming for about the next twenty years.
David Appell
Did YOUR climate model predict the pause?
You just need to look at the pattern since 1850 as shown:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/plot/gistemp/compress:12/offset:-0.08/detrend:0.04/plot/hadcrut4gl/compress:12/offset:-0.03/detrend:0.02/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:732/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:-0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/scale:0.000001/offset:2/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.003/offset:-1.03/detrend:-0.22/from:1982/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:0.015/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:732/offset:0.015/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.003/offset:-1.03/detrend:-0.22/from:1982
This pattern shows no warming for about the next twenty years.
Let’s assume for the moment that it was 100% agreement. And that everybody on the entire planet believed (as I do) that the planet has warmed a bit since 1800 and that human activities have probably contributed something to that warming.
That still doesn’t pass the ‘So What?’ test. . It dampens my underwear not a drop. It may send alarmists all into a tizz, but it fails to register with the general public as much other than a curiosity. Maybe that is why the level of concern is down in single digits in many countries, even though we have had 30 years of pretty one-sided media coverage of ‘climate change’
So for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (aka Cook and Buccittelli)’s paper to have the desired effect of motivating the public for action on climate change (whatever that may mean), they will have to try a lot harder.
No doubt there is fertile ground for similar analysis of expected sealevel rises , the date of disappearance of the North Pole, the flooding of the West Side Highway, the desertification of the Sahel, extinction of the polies etc etc
Or perhaps the recent radio silence from Dana means that he is already busy writing the conclusions of his next effort. And then will only have to wait for the ‘data’ to be gathered, suitably massaged and then hidden before publication
Dana commented at he Guardian that he has been given a response guest post at the Making Science Public blog (Nottingham Uni).. bets on whether he can refrain from smear, innuendo, smugness unfounded statements of ‘fact’ and the general Skeptical Science tone and attitude..
More Popcorn, *If* he attacks Mike Hulme, I’m sure he will get an appropriate response.
Can a leopard change its :: ?
He’ll be far out of his depth in a blog where he doesn’t control the moderation. So far, MSP has been very light and even-handed IMO.
Barry Woods,
I agree. This short exchange on SkepticalScience is revealing. He posted an article on his interpretation of what Nordhaus analyses say. I posted a comment. His response said:
I provided more explanation. dana said:
Which demonstrates he doesn’t have the faintest clue what he was talking about.
I responded.
He said no more, so apparently realised he was clueless about the subject he had written so authoritatively about.
JC comment: … Credibility is a combination of expertise and trust. While scientists persist in thinking that they should be trusted because of their expertise, climategate has made it clear that expertise itself is not a sufficient basis for public trust.
An understatement. The enduring deafening silence from the bulk of the alarmist consensus over the hockey stick, hiding the decline, hiding data and other frauds, tells us
1) that dishohesty is a central pillar of the 97% conensus,
2) and hence that there is no basis at all for public trust.
Judith curry rocks.
I did press shift. “C”
Apologies, Judith Curry.
“The enduring deafening silence from the bulk of the alarmist consensus over the hockey stick, hiding the decline, hiding data and other frauds, tells us
1) that dishohesty is a central pillar of the 97% conensus,
2) and hence that there is no basis at all for public trust.”
Or rather it tells us deniers like you are willing to lie to promote their agenda.
That the consensus rests on dishonesty and deception is beyond all reasonable doubt – their enduring refusal to criticize the Climategate crooks proves it. This means they cannot be trusted.
Eager to ignore this elephant in the room, lolwot tries to mislabel a statement of this simple truth, as lying. Which of course makes *him* a liar.
But I bore you with old news, sorry.
Everyone with strong views on the role of consensus seems to support those views by cherry picking the evidence. The number and variety of people participating in the discussion in some way gives plentiful material for cherry picking.
The blogosphere, in particular, offers examples of quite extreme nature from both sides. On the one side we have widely known blogs that present in a confident manner alarmistic views (not supported in that form by IPCC or more moderate scientists) and are very hostile towards anyone who questions the correctness of their approach, on the other side we can see participants applaud any wildest argument against main stream science.
There are also working scientists who react strongly against other scientists whom they see as rocking the boat. They are afraid of open discussion and by that, in my opinion, do a disservice to both all science and to their own cause in the long run.
It’s typical for this kind of situation that more moderate scientists tend to keep quiet in the public. Even in scientific publications they may choose formulations that are less likely to be attacked by the real activists. I don’t think that they leave their results unpublished, they just formulate them so that getting the real message requires more careful reading than would be needed otherwise.
That applies also to the IPCC WG1 reports. A couple of chapters have been discussed on this site based on a critical guest post about the way reults are presented. Looking very carefully on the text and the supporting annexes, the caveats are mostly there, but the message that many readers are likely to get is biased.
Outstanding comment Pekka. Let’s hope people are paying attention.
BFJ: silence from climate science over the endemic dishonesty and bias of the 97% consensus as revealed in Climategate, shows us that the dishonesty and bias form part and parcel of the 97% consensus; it’s an accepted practice, requiring no further comment.
Pekka: the silent majority of scientists are right to be silent, at least publicly.
Phew.
97% of tobacco-funded scientists agreed smoking wouldn’t harm your health.
97% of government-funded climate scientists agree government is justified in further enriching and empowering itself.
97% of homeopathy practitioners think that it works
97% of astrologers agree that their clients think astrology works
97% of drunk drivers think they are fit to drive
“97% of government-funded climate scientists agree government is justified in further enriching and empowering itself.”
Sounds like tomcat just admitted there IS a 97% consensus among climate scientists.
It must be hard being a climate denier. Having to decide what to believe each morning.
Today will I believe that there must be a consensus because scientists are motivated by funding to believing the same thing?
Or will I believe there is no consensus?
Heh, they have a right to remain silent. They have a duty to …….
=======================
Yeah, but only 4 out of 5 dentists approve of Dentyne.
Memphis,
Scientists may avoid public appearance or contribute actively to the public discussion. If they contribute as scientists they should not deviate too much from what’s appropriate in scientific publications and presentations.
One serious disadvantage of the situation where most keep out of the public discourse is that the public sees a seriously biased sample of scientists, not only on the views on the subject matter but also on the nature of scientific knowledge and scientific process. They may be led to think that science is typically a fight between opposite extreme views, while the truth is that science is a process where knowledge builds up gradually and where errors are made and corrected all the time.
Judith makes a very important point almost in passing and as an aside. Its not about us versus them, its not about taking one of two sides. Its about understanding a very complicated system. But the advocates are always in ‘for it or against it’, only two alternatives mode.
That Dana has now apparently been handed the environment pages of the Guardian to pollute with his manichean posturing is a leading example of this ongoing disaster. When it continues to fail to warm there will be many casualties, and the Guardian will be among them.
The chances of the warming not continuing is so small that if it happens we can just put it down to the fact sometimes science is wrong.
It’s more interesting to consider what happens in the far more likely scenario that warming continues. The same excuse hardly flies when the science has been hammering away the point that the world will continue warming all along.
If the world continues to warm but only manifests itself as trivial (and so far only hypothetical) temperature changes of the ‘deep oceans’, it will continue to fail the SFW? test.
Lolwot may console him/herself in her old age that the theory was right, but the world will give a collective yawn and file it in the drawer marked ‘historical oddities and scientific curiosities’.
It just doesn’t matter. And no amount of ‘consensus’ will make it do so.
Heh. “Casualties.” After we saw this:
Only an “us vs.them” mentality would lead to such a confident prediction of the catastrophic fate of the Guardian. I’d say it’s more than likely that, even in the event that as you say “it continues to fail to warm” the Guardian will continue without missing. It’s always amusing to me how people who self-define as “skeptics” project their own thinking on to others (w/o being skeptical about the accuracy of doing so), and jettison uncertainty right out the window as they make predictions with complete confidence.
Deniers have a “us vs. them” mentality, on the other hand believers have an “us with Him” mind set that let’s us take his predictions with complete confidence, Joshua. Try this for a real change of viewpoint?:o)
May I ask if you were skeptical about the models for the epidemic of vCJD that would result from the British public eating meat from cows infected with BSE? Think was, I was. I also thought the use of resources to fight the future epidemic of vCJD was a complete misapplication of capital.
Oddly, the epidemiologists are not wearing sackcloth and ashes.
http://www.cjd.ed.ac.uk/documents/figs.pdf
Doc –
I wasn’t following that issue to any great extent.
Not entirely sure what you were going for there, but I don’t doubt that you have been and will be appropriately skeptical in many cases. Perhaps very often.
What I find, however, is that you fail to apply due skeptical scrutiny to your own analysis, at times, when it comes to climate change. I pointed that out just recently. Likewise, I have no reason to doubt that you are an excellent scientist, who effectively employs comprehensive analysis when studying the cause-and-effect of drug trials. What, then, explains why you failed to employ the same basic principles of scientific analysis in that recent thread? It does not follow that since you have employed a well-reasoned and controlled in some situations, we can assume that you always do so.
All of us are prone to influence from biases in these debates as well as in any particular type of scientific or empirical analysis. Confirmation bias is a human characteristic – a manifestation of the fundamental component of pattern-seeking in our cognitive processing. And our propensity for confirmation bias/motivated reasoning – a product of fundamental attributes on how we reason – is only exacerbated in debates that overlap with out social, political, ideological, cultural, psychological identifications. The best we can do is acknowledge our propensity for such reasoning, accept that we are all inclined in such a fashion, and to be serious about controlling for that problem and to be open to feedback that might help us gain insight into our own biases.
Be Self-Reliant
“No friend is better than your own wise heart! Although there are many things you can rely on, no one is more reliable than yourself. Although many people can be your helper, no one should be closer to you than your own consciousness. Although there are many things you should cherish, no one is more valuable than your own life.”
Genghis Khan
Joshua, I am an experimentalist. I design experiments in as tight a manner as I can so that I get a plus/minus result.
I test my hypothesis to destruction. I test, test and test, hone, hone and hone.
I know how the sausage machine works.
I know how to turn crap into very pretty rubbish.
I know EXACTLY how to test and validate a model; you have a prior criteria before you test you model that is your measure of success and failure.
What is the criteria for a ‘climate model’ to be rejected as false?
Come Joshua, share with the class, how is a GCM falsified?
Because all a model is is a complex hypothesis, and if your model cannot be falsified, it is not a scientific model.
I am skeptical of everything, in my own field and in others. Science is more about the controls, internal and external, than about the result.
I do not believe that the GCM are truly models. I suspect that they are fits. I believe that the statistical properties of model minus reality are different in hindcasting and forecasting; the models developers have tuned they models to match the past and yet claim that their outputs are based on fundamental physic’s. This latter claim I do not believe.
I not only don’t trust other people, I don’t trust myself. I try my best to blind myself to the idea of my cells types, when ever I can. My technician grows many of my cell types and labels them ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, so that I cannot bias myself. I make damn sure I nail center field when I perform cell counts, because I know that cells are not heterogeneously distributed in wells.
Finally, I know bullsh1t and I know unprofessional conduct. A reading of the CRU emails tells one all that one needs to know about the field.
“Finally, I know bullsh1t and I know unprofessional conduct. A reading of the CRU emails tells one all that one needs to know about the field.”
When I looked at climategate I tried to constrain my conclusions to the four corners of the data: the men in the mails.
That turns out to be the right way to look at it. In my experience these guys are the exception and not the rule. I could list the fine people I have come to know, but folks might construe that as name dropping. Lets put it this way. I’ve yet to come across the likes of jones or Mann. Judging the entire field by those two is using a N of 2 to draw a conclusion. hmm not so wise
Mosher, the problem is that individuals at the top wield power over people at the bottom; they mentor Ph.D., students, they review papers and most importantly, they sit on panel of grant awarding agencies. The ‘gate-keeper’ role means they can veto research, in the form of grants, and veto information, in the terms of research papers.
The role in developing Ph.D., students and young Post-Doc’s cannot be ignored. The mentor’s function is to teach them what is and what is not ethical and professional.
Doc:
Yes, the overarching influence comes from the top, from where the (political) money is doled out, and where those who toe the political line are given preference over those who don’t.
It’s all part of Manufacturing a Consensus 101.
@David Appell
“In fact, the planet’s surface is pretty much the *worst* place to look for the kind of energy imbalance AGW creates.
It’s 2-dimensional, and can’t hold any heat anyway.”
Ah Ah Ah Ah times 10E20
You must be a member of the Flat Earth Society? The Earth’s surface is three dimensional as it us curved and because it spins it has a fourth dimension.
So not only have the alarmists discovered magic radiation that avoids the surface and goes and hides in the deep oceans they don’t believe that the energy penetrates the surface?
As to the Pause this term is now being used to support the Cause? There is no pause just a climate change due to natural variability.
As to your cross questioning of Dr Curry on computer generated models we don’t need them because there is actual data, that is temperature change and CO2 emissions which have shown the models to be wrong and demonstrates that the hypothesis that man made CO2 will cause dangerous global warming is false.
Judith said:“The 1945 – 1975 pause was not caused by aerosols.”
“R. Gates aka Skeptical Warmist :
Now, certainly we can’t say for certain that some of the negative forcing to climate during this period was not caused by aerosols, especially in regards to their effects on the AMO. The aerosol load over the Atlantic from the rapid post-WWII industrialization in the U.S. was far from minor. ”
So I am to understand that reducing the steady state photon influx, due to aerosols scattering sunlight, gives an instantaneous response with respect to land and sea surface temperature. However, at the same time it is argued that addition of gasses that cause IR photon recycling has response time in the order of decades; thus the difference between ‘transient’ and ‘equilibrium’ climate sensitivity.
So matter knows if it hasn’t been hit by a photon more quickly than it knows its been hit by a photon. Cool.
Doc,
Not sure what you are babbling about, but meanwhile real science into studying the effects of anthropogenic aerosols on the 20th century clomate goes on:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v484/n7393/full/nature10946.html
Judith made an absolute definitive statement about aerosols. I would love to see her data to back it up. Research I’ve read would seem to indicate something quite different.
Their model underestimates the aerosol optical depth in the early 20th century Katmai being the largest volcanic excursion of the 20th century,
Aerosols do have an influence on climate, but the AR5 is finding a much smaller effect than AR4. Even with too much aerosol and hyperactive aerosol response, climate models do not explain the cooling and the pause during 1940-1975 using aerosols.
I have little doubt about the connection between multi-decadal cycles and the 1945-1975 cooling, but what gets trickier is trying to disentangle the potential added influence of anthropogenic factors into those natural multi-decadal cycles. It seems a very fair question to ask how much both GH gases and our aerosols might impact these cycles.
If you use GISTEMP maps, for example, to look where the cooling geographically was in the 60’s, you find it extended downstream from the industrial eastern US to the western Atlantic. It seems that the fossil fuel burning in those areas also exploded after the war and created a downstream aerosol effect that affected the Atlantic nearby.
Here for example is 1960-1970 minus 1940-1960 showing where the cooling was. I would not rule out aerosols so easily.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?year_last=2013&month_last=6&sat=4&sst=3&type=anoms&mean_gen=0112&year1=1960&year2=1970&base1=1940&base2=1960&radius=1200&pol=reg
That cooling has a very different pattern from the current cooling in the Pacific and Southern Ocean upwelling regions, and cannot be considered physically related.
“Not sure what you are babbling about”
Of course not poppet, its hard. However, you are happy to believe that dropping the light flux by post-war injection of aerosols into the atmosphere has an immediate effect on temperature. You also believe that increasing back radiation, by adding CO2 to the atmosphere, takes decades to change the temperature. So aerosols have a very short lag and GHG’s a very long one.
R. Gates … errr … counselor … unless you have evidence that Dr. Curry said natural ocean cycles are completely independent of aerosols, then your case probably won’t stand up in court … well … unless you find a judge that’s on your “side.”
Bottom line – aerosols can affect the ocean, but not vice versa. Some ocean effects are from anthropogenic aerosols. A similar thing may be happening downstream of China now.
Jim2,
Judith said:
“The 1945 – 1975 pause was not caused by aerosols.”
——–
Seems pretty clear to me. No aerosol involvement. No uncertainty in her statement.
Doc,
We know physically that aerosols cool things off rapidly whereas CO2 has a longer term effect. Is this hard for you to grasp?
Aerosols from volcanoes drop out fairly quickly – anthropogenic aerosols quicker.
Oceans are a big source of sulphides in the atmosphere.
http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/dimethyl/overview.php
Praise Gaia.
>Don Monfort | July 28, 2013 at 2:25 am |
>alarmist, warmist, Chicken Little, pause denier
I think you are on to something Don, AWCLPDs has a nice ring to it.
What too many people, heh …. including me, do is take criticism too personally. You have a situation with climate science, like any other profession, where material is being produced. It’s hard and improper to call scientific discourse a product, but in the context of using it as a means to a policy end, it is. The climate science community consists of many factions of people. Some produce science results and others produce messages. The message producers pretty much fail on both sides… i.e. the 97% message as well as the ”there is no GHE’ message. We should expect, and do observe, the message makers to be emotionally connected to their message. When confronted by those who question they go straight to defense mode, barriers up and snark on. Rational discourse becomes very difficult and tends to be emotionally charged. It is useless to try.
Science producers, OTOH, we do not expect to behave in this manner. (I say ‘we’ but I guess I really mean ‘I’. I can’t assume everyone will agree with me but I will, rightly or wrongly, assume most will). We expect science producers to take on a more ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ position. For the most part they do, except when they don’t. David Appel has stated numerous times ‘the best science wins the day’. This is not a false statement, but it does not account for how long it takes for the better knowledge to evolve. For the better theory to form. What happens to cause the evolution of theory to advance slowly? Among many other things I suggest one important restriction to be personal attachment of existing theory by the science producer. Taking the hard work produced too close to heart. Letting your pride get in the way of alternative thought. Looking only at evidence that supports and avoiding that which does not. Surely this is not the case with all and I am not suggesting this is the main problem with how climate science evolves, but when the appearance of such behavior shows up, it’s not insignificant in the way it can play out in such a public debate. The ramifications of how science producers behave when confronted with questions and how that behavior impacts those asking the questions and those observing on the sidelines is magnified when it plays out in the general public.
I had a similar response to myself as what Mosher observed above. One should treat scientific results as products. Where Mosher talks more about marketing of the science in general, I talk more about personal behavior in marketing yourself. When your customer complains, do you throw the product back at them and tell them take it or leave it? Or do you listen to your customer carefully and sincerely to hear if the complaint is worthy? And when the complaint is not deemed worthy, how do you deal with the unhappy customer? Science producers need to be wary of this. Climate science producers should be more so, bad behavior could mean the difference between planet saving policy being endorsed or rejected. Like fighting terrorists… The good guys have to be right 100% of the time, while the terrorists do not. Please, do not misunderstand that analogy of one where the good guys are the consensus and the terrorists as the skeptics. The idea is, if you want to advance policy through science product, be prepared to handle every situation correctly. Bad behavior by a few over attached producers can spoil the overall message.
+1 Emotion does not make for good science nor for effective communication.
I have been jumping up and down in excitement this morning because we have been doing a cells study for the fifth time.
This time we have refined our technique, based on previous runs, and have a lovely definitive result in four cell types. I will be jumping up and down later as we run four assays on each of the four cells types, grown under three conditions, to a true n of 8 each (96 wells).
This is very exciting and very emotional. Science is fun, science is sculpting, it is joyful to stick your brain into a crack and twist until a block of waste falls away and shows you what is lying underneath.
Emotion, the joy of the chase and the elation of being the first person to identify something, is the basis of science, because scientists are human and people are emotional.
Doc, I can totally identify with your excitement when things go right. I too get very happy when experiments appear to confirm theories we work on for engineering coatings. But, I am always cautious that I am not fooling myself as well. Sometimes things don’t end up as it initially appears and the excitement turns to a let down. Personally, I try to take an even keel approach to keep the roller coaster hills to a minimum. What I was attempting to say was one should not become too attached to any idea or theory that is still in the making as it can lead to fooling ones self and bias. In the worst case, it leads to ignoring important and relavent information that could change the current theory/ideas. No doubt emotion is a major and important part of being a scientist otherwise what is the fun in doing science work? However one needs to keep it properly in check, IMO.
> Please, do not misunderstand that analogy of one where the good guys are the consensus and the terrorists as the skeptics.
My own analogy relies on American Football:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/384966743
Hence our current comedy of menace followed by concerns raised to an imaginary referree about stifled debates.
Since you are using a football US style analogy, care to explain how GCM’s are different from Madden NFL 2012?
Computing power. Problem space.
Thank you for your concerns.
You missed real world reliability in predicting future outcomes.
Surely you must be joking, timg56. Since you are the scientist among the two of us, you do know that a model is a projector, not a predictor:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_modelling#Simulation
In any case, thank you for your concerns.
Please tell us how you feel about Cook & al, again.
willard,
I have never claimed to be a scientist, even with credit on a published paper and a couple of MS degrees. The closest I get is doing science education in the field.
Neither do I claim to be an engineer, even though I filled an engineering position at a utility company for several years.
I don’t claim to be a journalist, though I’ve had training along with newspaper articles and guest editorials printed.
I do claim to be a qualified Submariner, of which there are far fewer in the world than there are PhD’s.
I also understand that GCM’s do not predict future climate conditions, rather they project out into the future possible climate condition scenarios. What matters is the potential accuracy of those projections. One can run an entire NFL season of games on Madden 2012 and get a projected winner of the Super Bowl. The question is would you put money on the resulting projection? The same applies to the results of GCM’s.
Not sure on the consensus or the pause. Judith, if the pause continues for 1 year forwards it goes backwards a year as well, n’est ce pas. Therefore we may only have to wait 6 months to see a 17 year pause, or 2 years to see a 20 year pause if we are at 16 years now, interesting times.
Come on guys, lay off David or else Joshua will wade in. He is like Tol, one of our best resources now.
Too Late Climate Gate
Today’s Best of David Appell;
I was struck early on by the interchange between Dave and our hostess. Dave seemed to be convinced of two truths: Dr. Curry was wrong and natural ocean cycles played no role in the 20th century surface temperature record..
I can certainly understand the latter point since if ocean cycles have a cause other than change in the CO2 level of the atmosphere, the whole modeling enterprise starts to fall apart. Further, Dave points out focusing on the surface temperature record is so 2012. The true fingerprint of AGW is now in the deep oceans (and he knows this because there are, by definition, no natural deep ocean dynamics).
So anyway, here is David insisting Dr. Curry is wrong. Reading through the thread is a hoot:
— The “pause” is absolutely no reason to take AGW any less seriously. Surface warming will resume — physics says it has to.
— What evidence says that anyone speaking of a pause was called a denier?
— They certainly did not, and if you had read Santer’s paper you’d know that’s not what it says.
— You are just wrong, and badly:
Then we get a threefer in one post. A hint of desperation perhaps?
— What does YOUR model say? Does it capture the 1945-1975 pause?
— What are YOUR proposals for improving models?
— What have YOU done to improve them?
And then without waiting for a response:
— Did YOU predict the pause, Judith?
A little interchange with other posters
— Have you ever successfully predicted anything at all?
— Have you bothered to look at the increase in solar irradiance in the first half of the 20th century?
And another threefer!
— Did YOUR climate model predict the pause?
— What does IT predict for the transient climate respone?
— For equilibrium climate sensitivity?
And then again. Apparently David fervently believes that one must sponsor a GCM in order to comment on the results of the GCMs. I’m sure he is a paragon of reticence in that regard.
— Where are YOUR models?
And another threefer! These are getting increasingly verbose and repeat earlier questions:
— So you are constantly talking to modelers ……. –> Earlier it was “..what is your advice to modelers?..” Since Dr. Curry had a great response, David moves the goal post.
— Or, dare i ask, making your *own* model, –> Again with the red herring fallacy.
— Did YOUR model predict the pause? –> Yawn. Fortunately, it ends soon as GaryM jumps in at July 28, 2013 at 12:12 am | with a fantastic allegory.
This thread ends but the irrepressible David Appell is well represented down topic.
David Appell is saying that the “skeptics” have to put the work in before they are listened to. At the moment they are just throwing things from the sidelines.
Hmmm. Does the fact some skeptics are listened to mean they “have put in the work?”
It always helps to put your alternative ideas on paper. That way there is a focus on facts and data to support those ideas. Indeed, some skeptics have done that, even in some cases revealing their methods.
“Dave seemed to be convinced of two truths: Dr. Curry was wrong and natural ocean cycles played no role in the 20th century surface temperature record..”
I was struck by the inability to find evidence of David arguing the 2nd ‘truth’ you ascribe to him.
On the first, David posted a graph to demonstrate (rather than asserting) that one of Judith’s assertions re: models, was simply wrong.
Reminds me of that time one of Judith’s former students popped in, and told Judith her GCM critiques were at least a decade out of date.
“I was struck by the inability to find evidence of David arguing the 2nd ‘truth’ you ascribe to him.”
Guilty – rhetorical license my part. :-). The problems the alarmist rushing to the deep ocean heat sink have include: 1) not in the current generation of models so not considered for 20th century warming 2) tiny numbers 3) no well developed science on what is going to happen.
It took years for the CO2 alarmists could reliably attribute surface temperature change to increasing anthropogenic CO2. How long will it be before they can reliably attribute miniscule changes in deep ocean temperature to anthropogenic CO2?
Yeah, might take a while, but like the surface record, there it will be…….then where will the denialists have to hide??
Denilism – going the way of the dodo.
Anthropogenic Climate Alarmism – fading off into the sunset to be replaced by the next glaciation alarm.
Michael, you are close but no cigar.
Rev 6:16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:
It is all in the book.
Robert
I missed the exchange but bemused by the comment about Natural ocean cycles.
I have an email from the met office confirming the part ocean cycles play in natural variability. Surely this is not in dispute?
Tonyb
Bob Tisdale on ocean cycles
in SU_G 4th edi-shun.
‘The sea, the sea.’
http://beththeserf.wordpress.com/
Ammended para on El Nino in SU_g.
Bts
http://beththeserf.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/fourth-edition/#comments
The pause is a result of low solar activity causing a shift in global cloudiness and albedo which results in less solar energy entering the oceans.
That is then superimposed on the basic ENSO cycle to weaken El Nino events compared to La Nina events.
If low solar activity and increased global albedo continue for long enough then the pause in warming will become a distinct cooling.
My New Climate Model covers such events perfectly having been constructed from observations and basic physical principles.
New website coming soon.
Abject nonsense.
It fits the facts.
Why are we talking about the climate change discourse rather than the climate change science?
Because it is so much more fun! Admit it! Something new happens in the discourse every week or so. And we all think we are experts on rhetoric and logical fallacies and have valuable contribution to make to the discourse about the discourse. On the other hand, climate science moves at a comparatively glacial pace. And, as indicated up thread, talking about the science is hard work for those of us who only drop in now and again. Every time I want to assert a non-trivial fact, I have to go double check it. Putting together a single pithy post might take me a couple of hours. Maybe all day if I get distracted in my fact checking (a little ADD in action here). But I can whip this post out in ten minutes.
So thank you Dr. Curry for articles like this.
RobertInAz, you are not doing “posts”. You are commenting. Get yourself your own blog or ask to do a guest spot if you want to post. With a post you can do graphs and tables and mathematical markup.
The 3% are so delusional in every aspect of discourse.
Don’t you just love how shrill and desperate the warmists are becoming?
Oh wait… no you probably don’t. Forget I asked. ;-)
“RobertInAz, you are not doing “posts”. You are commenting. ”
I stand corrected. A blog is too much work for me,
Or get involved in trying to defend Intelligent Design as a science, like what SpringyBoy specializes in.
I’m having trouble getting past the Big Bang.
I’m having trouble getting before the Big Bang.
==============
webby’s having problems getting it up for a big bang.
Intelligent Climate Design
Good one.
> Why are we talking about the climate change discourse rather than the climate change science?
https://twitter.com/omnologos/status/361621179578060800
It’s too much for one man. (Pause.) On the other hand what’s the good of losing heart now, that’s what I say. We should have thought of it a million years ago, in the nineties.
Always remember willard, what he said too.
.
Keep the faith, baby…any day now.
Kojak
Who are you going to believe? Dr. Curry links to an interesting post: http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2013/6/7/five-theses-on-science-communication-the-public-and-decision.html
By ascribing much of the public’s decision-making on which authorities to believe to (my words) a form of tribalism, I believe the author denigrates the reasoning facility of the non-climate scientist public. I believe people are able to look at arguments and discover strengths and weaknesses. One of the reasons we see so few alarmist skeptic debates is so much of the alarmist credibility relies on appeals to authority. If the science were rock solid, the consensus or lack thereof would be irrelevant and (most of) the public would know it.
Two of the weaknesses I find on alarmists blogs are overheated rhetoric and censorship. I have frequently criticized the overheated rhetoric at WUWT as non-productive to presenting a coherent argument and, frequently, non-civil. The censorship criticism is important because much of, for example, Skeptical Science relies on addressing questions that are not asked or in subtle misdirection. I was especially struck by the SS response to the Mars is warming argument (which I have not recently reviewed). This is an example. I see the misdirection in many alarmist arguments. When I was getting serious about growing my understanding of the CAGW issues, I recall being struck by the circularity of the arguments Real Climate.
For me, any blog that limits censorship is much more credible than blogs that practice censorship. There is an alarmist blog that practices overheated rhetoric which admirably has very little censorship: http://blog.hotwhopper.com/. When I get behind, I sometimes stop by there before WUWT these days to see what I want to read at Anthony’s place.
For me, one of the defining moments in my maturation as a skeptic is when the Hadley Center took down their 5 year average of their temperature series just as it was rolling over. Their explanation was facile. This change to the way they presented the information showed me they were scientists with an agenda. They were less interested in the facts and more interested in telling a story. Instead of adding information to the graph explaining how 1998 impacted the result, they “disappeared” it.
When history becomes inconvenient for the advocates of a position and they work to disappear or change history, I become very skeptical of their motives and their “science”. The US temperature record where the progressive cooling of the 1930s is much discussed is not well defended by the scientists changing the historical record.
It used to be important for the alarmist to minimize natural variability because it plays such a small role in the late models of the 20th century warming. The actions taken by the alarmists to reduce natural variability are, to the skeptic, suspect. The often discussed Yamal tree ring chronology is an example situation where history is changed and the proponents of the change come off looking bad. Using Yamal as one of the key chronologies to minimize the medieval warm period looks especially weak now that we know those medieval trees were from a significantly higher altitude than the 20th century trees. One basis of my skeptic belief structure is the behavior of many of the alarmists.
Finally, I love the “pause” because it is causing the alarmists to rush to rediscover natural variability. There was a paper in 2012 which, in effect said (my paraphrase): “Taking into account ‘natural variability’ the climate models are spot on.” This had to do with the increased cooling from the post 2000 ENSO pattern. Since alarmists have short memories, not a word about how ENSO may have contributed to the late 20th century warming. A subject on which the loquacious Bob Tisdale writes often. Bob is not a “climate scientist” so his careful analysis can be safely ignored and even discredited because of his lack of credentials.
Finally, the alarmists have embraced a point Dr. Pielke Sr. made many years ago and was ignored. My paraphrase again: “…hey guys, the oceans may have a role to play in the energy budget…”. Irony abounds. The alarmist revisionists are out in force rewriting fairly recent history. My paraphrase again: “Gosh, we always knew the oceans would be sucking up much of that energy imbalance we are convinced exists, just bear with us for a few years and until AR6 comes out and we will have the models and the “consensus” science all fixed up for you.” We skeptics already know what the new improved models will say: temperatures will be flat to declining until 2020 (maybe 2030) and they will then go near vertical to get to 2 degrees C warming by 2100. As a computer professional with a physics undergraduate degree, I know what I can make computer models do.
Great comment Robert.
But my opinion could be biased by the fact you cover much of why I became skeptical.
Doc Martyn
Any thought on the US ban on blood donations from people who spent a few months in Europe in the 80s?
I am English, Green Carded and working in Houston. I can’t donate blood or organs.
The vCJD epidemic should be as case book of who you can find what you want to look for.
To measure the depth & width of consensus in climate science, a questionnaire should be sent out to all active climate experts, defined as the set of researchers who have published on climate in any respectable journal in the past decade.
Questions:
1. What is the most likely value of equilibrium climate sensitivity (long term lower tropospheric temperature response to CO₂ doubling)
1.1 What are the lower & upper deciles (to indicate estimated range)?
2. What is the general shape of the step-response function?
2.1 Is it converging exponentially to equilibrium?
2.11 If so, what is the time constant?
2.12 If convergence is slower, like c/t^k, what are the most likely values of c & k?
notes:
a) Lower troposphere temperature is selected, as it is measured by satellites, it is global and is not contaminated by UHI
b) Shape of response function is more important from a policy-related point of view than equilibrium itself
c) Full list of names getting the questionnaire is to be disclosed
d) List of those explicitly rejecting to answer is to be published
e) List of those who have neither answered, nor rejected to answer is to be published
f) Anonymity of responses is not preserved, those who choose to supply numbers, are expected take full personal responsibility in public
g) Researcher are welcome to supply comments to their answers, which are to be published as well
h) Those who reject to give numeric values may supply public notes as for the reasons behind rejection
i) Set of “respectable journals” is defined as peer reviewed publications referenced in any one of IPCC reports (including AR5), NGO publications excluded.
k) All material related to this research is to be made available to all in a single website, in easily parsable textual format, with embedded link anchors at a fine resolution
m) Anyone is free to publish evaluations based on said sample on the strict condition it is put into the public domain and published on the web
n) Backlinks to such studies are to be published on the official site proactively, but especially on request, with no particular filtering whatsoever
This procedure would make it possible to assess the extent of actual consensus or the lack of it. Should a (statistically) identifiable consensus emerge (which is an open question at this point in time), it would still not guarantee its truth though. But, at least, a meaningful discussion of consensus would become possible.
Cant add anything to the comments today except, wow, lots of fun and very interesting read. I come away with a real respect for Dr Curry.
The irony is that cAGW is more closely related then Skydragonism and Lukewarmism is more closely related to conventional climate science.
In all, ECS = Forcing x (1/1-feedback)
In both catastrophic warming and those who claim CO2 has “no effect” on temperature, the claim is the same: that the feedback term *could* be some extreme value, either multiplying the effect ten-fold (f=.1) of could almost completely negate the trend (f=-10).
Although each extreme position could point to some evidence in its favor, the Italian flag evidence evaluation model (Falsify/Murky/Consistent) would lead to a reject, given current evidence set. Although characterized as “extreme” for their choice of f – which usually satisfies some agenda – one or the other may in the end be shown true.
Judith: In your closing comment, you wrote: “It is however dismaying to see that continued influence that the existence of a ‘consensus’ has on the politics (especially President Obama’s citing of the Cook et al. study).”
When did Obama cite Cook et al?
In a twitter, this is was all over the blogs, i don’t have the exact ref
Judith, it’s important to note the tweet did not actually come from Barack Obama. It came from a Twitter account he has blessed to use his name to promote his causes. That means Cook et al were wrong to promote the tweet as though it showed Obama was promoting their results (reminiscent of how Mann claimed to be a Nobel prize winner).
It doesn’t change much though. Obama did refer to the 97% consensus in a recent speech. He just didn’t refer to the paper by name/link.
Thanks Brandon.
I was going to point that out, but you covered it better than I would have.
Thanks, Brandon. That’s the point I was going to ,make.
Regards
I’ll repost what I said on the other thread. It came from his climate speech, The Twitter wording was more extreme.
Obama was criticized for quoting the 97% in the following.
“Ninety-seven percent of scientists, including, by the way, some who originally disputed the data, have now put that to rest. They’ve acknowledged the planet is warming and human activity is contributing to it.”
However, the way this phrase is put, it is accurate to the study, and includes all the skeptics that agree humans are contributing to global warming, which would include Spencer and certainly Lindzen. Given that it really is 97% who agree with this consensus, the initial outcry against Cook seems to have been misguided, and people are now realizing it was kind of obvious after all.
Jim D conveniently cuts out the sentence immediately prior to the one he quoted, one which says:
That, followed by his reference to the Cook et al results, creates the clear implication Cook et al’s results support this claim. The only way to say Obama’s representation wasn’t grossly inaccurate is to say the reference to Cook et al was simply a non-sequitir.
Jim D’s only possible defense against accusations of cherry-picking is that he thinks Obama’s speech writers are morons who can’t write a simple paragraph, or they intentionally created a misleading paragraph.
By the way, Obama’s claim that “chemistry and physics” has put to rest “the question [of] whether we need to act” is stupid. Chemistry and physics cannot possibly put that question to rest.
The Obama tweet was
“Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.”
Brandon, I think that part of the quote is also fine. What is your complaint about him stating his own opinion on this?
Jim D
First, President Obama is not your average “Joe Bloggs”. If he states “his own opinion” on a topic it is tantamount to stating the government line on this topic (after all, he is supposed to be getting top-notch advice from his “scientific advisers”).
And second, he’s got his statistic wrong: it’s not “ninety-seven percent of scientists”, but “ninety-seven percent of the papers published on climate” which agree that humans are causing part of the warming.
And this “ninety-seven percent” do NOT agree that (man-made) “climate change is dangerous”.
So it’s an erroneous quotation made by someone who should know better and whose opinion carries political weight.
Max
You quibble about 97% of papers versus 97% of scientists. What difference does it make? It could go either way from there. Perhaps the papers opposed to AGW have fewer different authors.
Jim D, it is not “stating his own opinion” to say the “overwhelming judgment of science” supports his position. It is not “stating his own opinion” when he then offers the Cook et al paper as evidence to show the “overwhelming judgment of science” supports his position.
There is nothing about that paragraph that even comes close to stating an opinion.
His opinion is that he is convinced by the evidence, and not surprisingly. Scientific societies and corporations have official statements on being convinced too, so attention turns from whether anything is happening towards thinking about future generations. He is trying to push the debate forwards because in some quarters (notably Congress) it is stuck on the whether-it-is-happening question.
Jim D
You ask:
You must be joking.
Of course there is a major difference.
if the same bevy of climatologists publish hundreds of papers, all adding the compulsory statement that humans are causing some of the observed past warming and the scientific journals are stacked with editors who demand such a statement, then you will get an overwhelming majority of published papers that state that humans are causing part of the warming. (Duh!)
This does not mean that 97% of all scientists agree with the CAGW premise as outlined by IPCC in its AR4 report (namely that human-caused climate change is dangerous, or potentially catastrophic).
The revised and up-dated Eli Rabett list (attributed to the office of Senator Inhofe) has 333 qualified scientists and meteorologists who have gone on public record that they do NOT support the IPCC CAGW premise.
I have seen no list of 11,000 who do. Have you?
Max
Anderegg and Schneider had a list of the several thousand objectively chosen top publishing climate scientists and 5% of those were on Inhofe’s or other skeptical lists. Inhofe’s list by the way includes people who would be in Cook’s 97%, because to qualify for it only needed one quote of a skeptical nature on a climate topic some time in their lifetime, not a paper, and even with this low bar he got few compared to the total. Other lists used included those who signed petitions that the IPCC statement was too strong, who may also qualify for the Cook 97% on a positive human contribution to warming.
Jim D, that may be Obama’s opinion, but it is not what he said. Given what he said in a major speech is the topic being discussed, I’d prefer to stick to it rather than your attempts at mind-reading.
If you think Obama was merely stating his opinion, explain how his remarks in the form of factual statements are merely stating his opinion. Explain how him claiming evidence supports his position is merely stating his opinion.
Failing that, acknowledge Obama made statements of fact that were wrong.
Brandon, his wording indicates he has moved on as the majority of the scientists have. No good waiting around for all the stragglers to agree.
Jim D, nice attempt at changing the subject. I assume that as you realizing you misrepresented Obama’s words in order to create a false dense and lack the integrity to admit it. Please tell me if I’m wrong, and you actually believe anything you’ve said has been responsive, much less true.
Brandon, I have given up guessing what you want me to say. It seemed you put up a quote about needing to act and not waiting for the final few skeptics, and I said yes that is what he wants out of this speech.
Jim D
You are confused again.
Anderegg & Schneider, which you cite,
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf+html
They then arbitrarily
thereby narrowing this group down to 908 researchers.
Of these 908, 817 (90%) agreed with the IPCC claim that
while the remaining 93 (10%) did NOT.
So even Anderegg & Schneider (who were trying to sell a bill of goods)only got agreement of 90% of a much smaller total number, using their skewed approach.
Fuggidabaoudit, Jim. The 97% claim is a red herring.
Max
Not only that, but how they categorized who was eligible to be a climate researcher was bizarre. Ecologists were included but not solar scientists (e.g. Akasofu).
Anderegg also put his database online and it expanded to 3000 researchers annotated by the groups I mentioned, so you can examine it for yourself. It might take some digging around to find it again. I would prefer a poll, but this is what we have.
Jim,
What is it with this continuing attempt to give any sort of credence to Cook’s paper?
It is poor work whose only value is as lesson in how to f up a research project.
Obvious but quite pointless.
What’s missing is the most momentous 21st century climate event. The 1998/2001 climate shift.
‘Figure 3. Earthshine changes in albedo shown in blue, ISCCP-FD shown in black and CERES in red. A climatologically significant change before CERES followed by a long period of insignificant change.’ It is before ARGO as well.
http://www.bbso.njit.edu/Research/EarthShine/
This is not 97% at all but the new climate paradigm.
Chief
Agree that the Earthshine findings shed a totally new light on the impact of clouds on our climate (IPCC’s admitted “largest source of uncertainty”).
Of course, the 97% appear not to have gotten the word on this yet (and since these new data do not support the “majority mantra”, they probably won’t be able to grasp it).
Max
As I have mentioned on this before. The reduction of clouds in the 90’s was far from enough to cause the warming of that decade. More likely it shows a small positive cloud feedback to a warming by other processes, just as the GCMs predict too, by the way.
Jim
‘With this final correction, the ERBS Nonscanner-observed decadal changes in tropical mean LW, SW, and net radiation between the 1980s and the 1990s now stand at 0.7, -2.1, and 1.4 W/m2, respectively, which are similar to the observed decadal changes in the High-Resolution Infrared Radiometer Sounder (HIRS) Pathfinder OLR and the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) version FD record…’
http://www.image.ucar.edu/idag/Papers/Wong_ERBEreanalysis.pdf
Very significant cooling in IR – and very significant warming in SW. Far more significant than any change in greenhouse gas forcing in the period.
However – the relevant point is the climate shift after 1998 which is the most significant climate event yet this century. .
Jim D
You may have “mentioned this before”, but you are confused again.
(BTW, we have gone through this discussion with the Chief once before)
I’m sure you are aware that it is estimated that the reflection of incoming SW radiation represents around -79 W/m^2 in the so-called “global energy balance”. A 5% change in reflected incoming SW radiation (-4.0 W/m^2) would have a slightly greater impact than a doubling of atmospheric CO2 (+3.7 W/m^2).
We know from ISCCP observations (Pallé et al. 2006) that the global monthly mean cloud cover decreased by around 4.5% between 1985 and 2000. As a result the Earth’s global albedo decreased by the equivalent of around –5 W/m^2, i.e. decrease of reflected SW radiation (= heating of our planet). Over the period 2000 to 2004 the cloud cover recovered by around 2.5%, with an increase in reflected SW radiation of around +3 W/m^2 (= cooling).
The Chief has some interesting thoughts on what caused these changes in cloud cover, although the jury is still out on the exact mechanisms, as far as I am aware.
But there is no question that, if the ISCCP observations are correct, these changes could have had a major impact on our global climate.
Max
Don’t they give error bars? Yes, low cloud-cover decreased. It was responding to something, and is consistent with GCMs. You would likely find that 1.4 W/m2 is not a sustained decadal forcing, if you examined the wiggles more closely. However, more recent studies show an imbalance near 1 W/m2, so there is something there showing that the earth’s warming can’t keep up with the forcing.
The cloud changes are related to shifts in ocean and atmosphere circulation. That much is obvious.
e.g. http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Clementetal2009.png.html?sort=3&o=59
The shifts are deterministic chaos – that seems pretty obvious at this stage as well.
We have the 1976/77 ‘Great Pacific Climate Shift’. What should we call the 1998/2001 climate shift?
There are good reasons for cloud cover to decrease when the land is warming faster than the ocean too. Have you ruled that out?
‘…the large natural variability in the Earth’s radiation budget due to fluctuations in atmospheric and ocean dynamics complicates this picture.’
http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~jnorris/reprints/Loeb_et_al_ISSI_Surv_Geophys_2012.pdf
Data trumps ‘reasons’.
But again – what I am really interested in is the change in cloud in 1998/2001 and the implications of that. This is not global warming but abrupt climate shifts.
This is the way science should work through disagreement.
http://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/documents/STM/2005-05/loeb_earthshine.pdf
When talking about cloud cover we must of course always include discussions on total aerosols if the goal is to find out how much actual SW is reaching the ground, Here the picture gets cloudy– and dusty:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/323/5920/1468.short
R. Gates
Of course cloud cover includes both the very large albedo from natural clouds as well as the very much smaller albedo impact of human aerosols.
Palle et al did not separate these out (not possible to do), but the Chief’s explanation makes sense to me, and it does shine a whole new light on what is causing our climate to change (as a self-proclaimed “skeptic” you should remember that IPCC’s “largest uncertainty” was the impact of clouds).
Max
The early Palle study is definitively wrong. Ironically – so was the CERES data for the period.
But if we are looking for the most significant climate event this century – it is the 1998/2001 climate shift.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandlaken2013_zps3c92a9fc.png.html?sort=3&o=14
As an honest skeptic, I entertain all possibilities. If we knew for certain what the total SW reaching the surface was during any period, it would be wonderful. Better still, tell me how much is reaching specific parts of the planet during some time frame. But we don’t know any of that. We have models and estimates.
When looking for internal variability due to ocean/cloud interactions, you also have to see if it has had any effect larger than a few tenths in the past. These tend to be self-canceling in the long term. If it was possible for this to have even a 1 degree effect, it would have shown up like the LIA for example, which appears more likely external forcing. Inventing an internal process that never occurred in this millennium until now needs an explanation as to why now when external forcing is clearer, and then also why not the external forcing that is plainly there?
‘Extension of this analysis to the entire 20th century as shown in Figure 1 (bottom) reveals three climate shifts marked by breaks in the temperature trend with respect to time, superimposed upon an overall warming presumably due to increasing greenhouse gasses. Global mean temperature decreased prior to World War I, increased during the 1920s and 1930s, decreased from the 1940s to 1976/77, and as noted above increased from that point to the end of the century. Insofar as the global mean temperature is controlled by the net top-of-the-atmosphere radiative budget [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007], such breaks in temperature trends imply discontinuities in that budget. Such discontinuities are difficult to reconcile with the presumed smooth evolution of anthropogenic greenhouse gas and aerosol radiative forcing with respect to time [Hansen et al., 2005]. This suggests that an internal reorganization of the climate system may underlie such shifts [Zhang et al.,
2007].’
ftp://starfish.mar.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/pub/ocean/CCS-WG_References/NewSinceReport/March15/Swanson%20and%20Tsonis%20Has%20the%20climate%20recently%20shifted%202008GL037022.pdf
There is nothing new in this – but data at toa is the only way to get a handle on it. The 1998/2001 climate shift is the most significant climate event yet this century – and understanding climate without accepting that this happened is impossible. It is hardly likely to be the last climate shift this century. .
Jim D
Which is the cause and which is the effect?
[Hint: Less cloud cover => lower albedo =>warming]
Or is it like Spencer & Braswell found over the tropics:?
[Warming => increased cloud cover (negative feedback)]
An enigma.
No wonder IPCC conceded that the impact of clouds “remains the largest uncertainty”.
Max
Wait. What kind of warmist freakshow is this.
Steven Mosher suggests “SM Entertainment” (his company probably) starts marketing climate science to the gullible public, using tricks he learned from watching K-Pop?
I am not entirely sure whether you’re joking. Maybe you want to become the next Fenton Communications.
But the competition is stiff; there is already a K-Pop version of An Inconvenient Truth; it’s by climate scientist Roland Emmerich.
DirkH,
I guess the following quote from Feynman is partially relevant : –
” . . . reality must take precedence over public relations for Nature cannot be fooled.”
K-pop marketing tricks notwithstanding.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Lighten up Dirk.
And lay off K-Pop. I find it great for exercising to.
+1
sorry, long ago when I went to try to get the name SM entertainment, I found them. Curious, I looked at what they did. Genius. I admire their work. It is also fascinating to me the way Korea media companies work to explicitly re inforce certain cultural values.
there is a interesting academic question here: how do you sell science?
Now dont be naive and argue that we should not sell science, as if it were holy.
And at the other extreme dont suggest that we should sell science like pop music. ( i was half kidding )
get where Im going?
Sell science to be done or science done?
On how do you sell science.
You start with grades 1 thru 12, you get them doing hands on science, and you ensure they have fun.
It sells itself.
timg56
Definitely one place to start. Now about the lost masses…maybe they just are.
Steven Mosher | July 28, 2013 at 10:53 pm | Reply
“there is a interesting academic question here: how do you sell science?
Now dont be naive and argue that we should not sell science, as if it were holy.”
Steven, why does the state have to sell the science he funds with taxpayer money back to the taxpayer?
I will answer that question myself.
Because it is made-to-measure propaganda; designed to give the predetermined policies that the state desires a veneer of credibility.
Your job as a salesman is then to stop the credibility of science to drop to the level of journalism – which has been used by the state before, and which is now recognized as propaganda by everyone.
Good Luck.
You might want to read a certain 1928 book by Eddie Bernayse.
On how do you sell science.
You start with grades 1 thru 12, you get them doing hands on science, and you ensure they have fun.
It sells itself.
##########################
really, so if I just put climate science in journals people will go out and read it and understand it? You realize that “selling itself” is a marketing technique. We can use that technique when the customer has a known problem we are solving or desire we are fulfilling. They come looking for us all we have to do is make our stuff easy to find.
It can vaguely align with the difference between push marketing and pull marketing.
when you have a problem you are unaware of or we want to create a desire within you, we push. When you are looking for solution we can use pull techniques.
In some cases science can use PULL techniques. But in the case of climate science, the issue is you have to make people aware that there is a potential problem. Which means you are selling on fear.
There are huge problems with that not the least of which few of the people buying will see the fear removed. When I sell insurance , for example,on fear, your fear is relived once you buy. not so with climate science.
“how do you sell science?”
Another classic from the Climate Etc. Obscurantist in Chief. (CEOIC)
What science?
To Whom?
What do you mean sell?
What the question really probably translates into is the eternal consensus question: “How can we reframe CAGW to convince the stupid voters to give us control over their energy economy?”
To ask the question clearly is to invite the same answer it is always does (ala DirkH above).
But there is no way to tell that from the question itself. Which is why it is drafted to be so…obscure.
Steven Mosher
7/28 10:53pm :
“there is a interesting academic question here: how do you sell science?”
…
“get where Im going”
——–
7/29 1:00pm :
“really, so if I just put climate science in journals people will go out and read it and understand it? ”
——-
=======================================================
The question slowly unfolds, it just needed a little prodding.
Mosher
Few HS seniors read journals. Elementary school kids even less so.
Quite the rollicking conversation today. Not to agree with the, It’s in the deep Ocean argument but. if the Oceans mix more, it’s my understanding this brings cold water to the surface and would take heat back down. The data including down to 700m and 2000m are recent and the further we go back, the less data points there are. One data point always sticks out for me, 1998 and some attribute that to El Nino. It’s one data point or X amount of months, but what a huge blip that was. I lean towards Pielke when he asks, should we be measuring the Oceans heat content? If the question is what caused the pause, and admiting I don’t know much about transfer rates between the Atmosphere and the Oceans, perhaps it’s one factor of significance. Just to restate, I am not with, It must be in the deep Ocean crowd. Dae too thin data to say that maybe. I am starting to get to where it seems the Atmosphere reacts significantly to what the Oceans are doing.
This thread has out-weirded me Judith.
I know when I’m beaten.
Navy sonar used to love this stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocline
Does it still count at all?
Tom,
Sub sailors are the ones who love it. Makes it easier to do the things we do.
“There are two types of ships in the world. Submarines and targets.”
The above is a statement of fact which requires no consensus. Not believing it does not make you any less of a target.
I knew an ET from the Baya, but he didn’t mess with the sonar; just the rest of the boat’s electrons and wires and tubes.
==================
Somewhere in the US Navy records are the polar sea ice thickness measurements they made throughout the Cold War. They sent SSN’s out to scout for thin ice that the boomers could breakthrough and launch.
Decades of sea ice measurement, sitting around.
I believe there was a volcanic eruption in 1999 along the Gakkel Ridge which might have opened the Arctic Sea above it. The nature of the clouds which overlay the area at the time would determine whether there was open sea or not. The photographs exist; they are not easy to find to be looked at.
============
Better: Photographs of the clouds exist; they are not easy to find to be looked at.
=======
“JC comment: This is an important point. In my No consensus paper, I argue “the consensus building process employed by the IPCC does not lend intellectual substance to their conclusions. “
The way the IPCC was formed by poliricians uding public servants from their employ made it difficult for the latter.Most were distinguished scientists but not research scientists. and the physics of climate science in a new age of computer simulaiion of mathematical models was new to them.
Instead of having 20 supposedly different models, they should have called tenders for one good, validated model. Had they done so it is likely that we would now have a model that could explain the presrnt ‘pause’ and the earlier (1940 to 1970) temperature fall. Such a model would have true random elemhts reflecting the random events in the atmosphere and oceans.
When you start with flawed theory, you cannot build a model that works until you go back and fix the theory. When a model does something different than what the real data shows, you go back and look at the basic theory. There is plenty of good data. Look at what has happened in the past. You could pick any starting point in the last ten thousand years and the current models would warm above the upper bound without a lot of tweaking. Every year, they tweak because they always show more warming that did not happen.
Fix the theory first. After every warm period, a cold period follows. They say what always happens will never happen again. They say that what happens next will be something that has not happened in a hundred thousand years, What are the odds that something different will happen in the same cycle that they started their consensus? The doomsayers have always been with us, but this time they have computers that they really have not learned to ride right.
GaryM | July 28, 2013 at 12:12 am |
This thread is like walking into the bar scene in Good Will Hunting where a bloviating grad student is trying to impress a girl by showing how much he has memorized about what others have written. Except here we have a pompous bag of wind, who doesn’t have the excuse of being a young, or a student, regurgitating the dogma he has imbibed against a published professor who at least tries to engage in critical thinking.
It’s like watching Pee Wee Herman try to pick a fight with Chuck Norris. On the one hand you want to feel sorry for the pretentious runt. He doesn’t even know enough to be embarrassed by his lack of class. On the other, you know he deserves to get his ass kicked for being such an obnoxious snot.
And we get a ring side seat! (as I sip a glass of wine all bundled up on my porch while expecting temps in the mid 50s at the end of July in Middle Tennessee). No pause here! Gobal Cooling is what I am worried about!
Shameless self promotion time! A post I submitted to WUWT is now online. It starts off with this description of Cook et al:
you liked your comment so much you turned it into a post.
the image of rampant dishonesty behind a fig leaf was odd.
“figleaf of deniability” is pretty bad
combining a cliched concrete image ( figleaf) with an abstract concept
“deniability” is what we would call “bad poetry”.
ask yourself: what does a figleaf of deniability look like.
no ideas but in things
write that down.
Not really. I’ve wanted to discuss this issue for a while. The comment was just one expression of that desire. When I decided to write a post about the issue, I thought that comment would make a good intro for it. It had nothing to do with liking the comment “so much.”
As for your commentary on the phrase I used, I can’t say I care. If people want to criticize me for repeating a phrase I’ve heard many times on poetical grounds, they’re welcome to. I’ll happily admit I’m terrible at poetry.
I’m here to say that he’s admitted the same to me, but I don’t believe it.
==========
The later Climategate releases made no headlines but showed that even within the science community Mann’s work was not a slam dunk. One prominent expert called it crap in as many words in a later released email, and Mann’s result had disappeared by AR4. The fact that the dissenting and debating voices were hidden in the first Climategate release gave an impression that the releaser carefully crafted by email selection, and people were had.
How deep into the ARs has the hockey stick persisted, always with inadequate proxies? Please, don’t be disingenuous; I’d prefer it was ignorance.
============
Did you see it in AR4? AR5 is reviving it perhaps, because we have seen some more work in recent paleoclimate. I hope we see Marcott’s Holocene work and other broader reconstructions like Kinnard for sea ice.
Heh, the hockey stick was there whether or not it was Mann’s Crookt One or not. It’s in the models, the more’s the hilarity.
And you think bringing up Marcott is still credible? I’ve got a tree for you in Siberia that is worth its weight in gold.
======================
Did I see the hockey stick in AR4? Uh, yeah. NAOMER PC1, the source of the hockey stick, was displayed in Box 6.4, Figure 1, labeled “W USA.”
Of course, I actually read up on this issue. You should try it next time Jim D. It may prevent you from asking stupid question.
Brandon and Jim
The infamous hockey stick also reared its ugly head in AR4 WG1 Ch.6 Fig.6.10. (p.467), conveniently spliced onto the instrumental record after 1850 for scare effect.
Max
manacker, I’m not sure why I forgot that. I’ve discussed that figure multiple times, and it’s on the same page as the one I referred to. I guess I just focus more on PC1 because it’s where the data of interest lies whereas the final result has a lot of unimportant data added in.
Nice catch.
Some people didn’t notice that the MWP is higher in AR4 than in AR3. It is also known as the broken or bent hockey stick.
The Obama tweet : he carefully avoided saying the said consensus was all funded by government, and that government stands to gain spectacularly from an acceptance of this bought-and-paid-for consensus.
It’s as if there’s no such thing as vested interest.
Tomcat
Course he avoided saying that – he’s a politician, and he’s trying to sell a “bill of goods” that will give more power to politicians.
Max
curryja…What is your opinion of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project result, which supports the ‘hockey stick’ analogy? And, if the ‘97% concensus’ is wrong, where is it wrong?
Walter
See my article ‘noticeable climate change’ carried here recently
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/26/noticeable-climate-change/
Especially note Figure 4. The Hockey stick and other paleo proxy reconstructions use a modelled 40 year smoothing technique and thereby completely fail to pick up the annual and decadal temperature variability in the real world we all live in, as typified by Central England Temperature. (CET)
The Hockey stick does its uptick only because that is when the instrumental record is spliced on, thereby emulating the natural variability we can observe in the other instrumental records superimposed on figure 4. The biggest hockey stick update comes several centuries before the most famous one-from around 1680.
CET and BEST show very similar characteristics throughput their length as can be seen here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/14/little-ice-age-thermometers-historic-variations-in-temperatures-part-3-best-confirms-extended-period-of-warming/
tonyb
I’m sorry, but I can’t see your answer as anything more than a diversion. The BEST ‘hockey stick’, as I understand it, was based upon 1.2 BILLION temperature measurements-more than any other study. The ‘hockey stick’ shows some small variations, until 1950, when it turn upward. Then for the next sixty years slowly climbs. Although it may not scream cause, CO2 measurements by Charles Keeling, starting in 1958 show the same upward trend (from about 180 ppm in 1958 to nearly 400 ppm now). I’ve seen NO reason to suggest the upward trending of CO2 and Earth temperature would be limited by any natural activity. So, I have to wonder whether a ‘tipping point’ may exist for CO2, where global warming may be unstoppable and result in few organisms surviving !!
Local temperatures like CET are too noisy to see climate change, but a remedy is to take a longer time average, like a 60-year running mean, and then the hockey stick comes out complete with the flattening around the 1960’s.
I meant a 30-year average gives the flattening. I guess 60 just gives a hockey stick.
Jim D. I’m sorry, but your explanation, when compared to the billion plus measurements of the BEST report, also seems a diversion. Unless the BEST report is refuted completely, I see no reason to act on its findings. So, I ask again: could there be a ‘tipping point’ where AGW cannot be stopped??
Also, Walter, Keeling’s measurement in 1958 was about 315 ppm, not 180.
Walter, no, the CO2 rise is limited by what Man puts into the atmosphere, and its self-feedback due to ocean outgassing is limited, so it stops when emissions stop, unless we get volcanoes or methane as new sources. There was a thread on the methane Arctic bomb recently, but that was also limited, not a runaway effect.
Walter
You seem to see what you want to see . Temperatures have been rising for centuries. Prior to that they had dropped from another high level during the MWP and there had been similar fluctuations prior to that to the Roman Warm period and similar oscillations prior to that in reaching the heights of the Minoan warm period.
In missing out the real world temperature fluctuations we see on an annual and decadal basis the hockey stick takes a 40 year smoothed figure. So of course it leaps upwards when it then reflects the much more variable instrumental record.
tonyb
CR…I think we all see what we want to see, to some extent. However, what I want to NOT see is mankind making his home unlivable. While scientists quibble about the 30 year trend, decadel analysis, CET characteristics, etc. NOBODY has answered my question: is there a CO2 tipping point?? Mining and burning cubic miles of coal and pumping out and burning billions of barrels of petroleum-has to have consequences which mankind could not anticipate a century ago. IF climatologists keep arguing over semantics, which model to use, etc, the POLITICIANS who make decisions about electric power generation will continue to avoid making those decisions !! So, as temperatures keep rising (11 of the hottest years on record have occurred since 1998), glaciers keep melting, a large variety of plants/bugs/animals keep moving northward, while politicians cater to coal/petroleum lobbyists and make no attempt to ameliorate CO2 generation nor requiring power plants to be wind/solar/nuclear, could we not be heading toward a tipping point that may doom mankind?? Now, I’m sure there are enough deniers here at this blob to jump all over my statements, just like there are millions who deny evolution; but should the deniers be wrong about AGW, our legacy to our children might be an uninhabitable world. Can you live with that??
tcflood…you are correct, I stand corrected: the 1958 CO2 reading was 315 ppm. And in April 2013, 398.
Walter, speaking for myself, we feel it is the wrong size.
Tom…the hockey stick, or the temperature rise?? [:)
Both.
Members of the public are not experts on scientific matters. Rather they are experts in figuring out who the experts are, and in discerning what the practical importance of expert opinion is for the decisions they have to make as individuals and citizens.
Scientists are also members of the public. The circles I am in are full of Scientists. Our Climate study group has scientists and engineers from many fields. We have scientists and engineers who put men on the moon and brought them back. We have Climate experts and Oil experts and more. We are also members of the public. Consensus Climate people seem to think no one else can learn about climate unless they pass through a 97% school. They do not seem to realize that science is always skeptical. The maintain their 97% by not including anyone who disagrees and by preventing publication of papers that disagree. This is not science, this is criminal.
Another key point about the consensus became clear to me in a recent conversation that I had with a science journalist colleague: I often follow the crowd, but never because it’s a crowd. As I wrote in the Wall Street Journal:
“Last week a friend chided me for not agreeing with the scientific consensus that climate change is likely to be dangerous. I responded that, according to polls, the “consensus” about climate change only extends to the propositions that it has been happening and is partly man-made, both of which I readily agree with. Forecasts show huge uncertainty.
Besides, science does not respect consensus. There was once widespread agreement about phlogiston (a nonexistent element said to be a crucial part of combustion), eugenics, the impossibility of continental drift, the idea that genes were made of protein (not DNA) and stomach ulcers were caused by stress, and so forth—all of which proved false. Science, Richard Feyman once said, is “the belief in the ignorance of experts.
My friend objected that I seemed to follow the herd on matters like the reality of evolution and the safety of genetically modified crops, so why not on climate change? Ah, said I, but I don’t. I agree with the majority view on evolution, not because it is a majority view but because I have looked at evidence. It’s the data that convince me, not the existence of a consensus.
My friend said that I could not possibly have had time to check all the evidence for and against evolution, so I must be taking others’ words for it. No, I said, I take on trust others’ word that their facts are correct, but I judge their interpretations myself, with no thought as to how popular they are.”
http://rationaloptimist.com/blog/i-may-follow-the-crowd,-but-not-because-it's-a-crowd.aspx
Thanks Matt, good post
“My friend objected that I seemed to follow the herd on matters like the reality of evolution and the safety of genetically modified crops, so why not on climate change.”
The herd on evolution is not seeking (additional) hundreds of billions of dollars in tax money, or control of the energy economy.
There are some areas where you have to trust the physics. For example the consensus says the sun gets its energy from fusing hydrogen atoms, which comes from physics. Does the layman take this as a scientific fact, or try to understand how fusion works from first principles before accepting it?
Jim D,
The layman doesn’t give a rat’s a** how the sun generates energy. Now, if you start telling that layman he can’t drive to work or heat his home because of the nature of that process, I think you will pique his interest.
Exactly, just like evolution and plate tectonics don’t affect their day-to-day life. It is just part of science, that they choose to accept. More to the point, do they personally have to understand how a thunderstorm works in order to believe a weather forecast? Points to ponder.
Jim D,
All of which begs your initial question: “There are some areas where you have to trust the physics.”
CAGW is not one of them, because it is not just about physics. AGW, as the term is used (in it’s non-obscurantist iteration) is about physics. CAGW is not.
Drop the demands for decarbonization, massive taxes, intrusive regulations, massive subsidies to crony fascists, and the climate scientists can debate climate sensitivity, measurement vs. estimation, paleo proxies etc., to their hearts content. Without interference from us irritating skeptics.
Gary M ++++++++++++++
If AGW says it will be 4 C warmer in 2100, that is where the science gets us. The problems from this 4 C rise can also be partially predicted by science. The solutions can only be sorted into those that are effective and those that are not by the science. If you say no planning is needed for climate change, I disagree, and you will find that governments and industries are planning already on the assumption that what we have seen so far is just the start.
“There are some areas where you have to trust the physics.”
Yes, but climate change rigor is closer to that of homeopathy than that of physics.
“For example the consensus says the sun gets its energy from fusing hydrogen atoms, which comes from physics. Does the layman take this as a scientific fact, or try to understand how fusion works from first principles before accepting it?”
The layman first notes that there is no blatant vested interest from those funding physics, in holding how the sun gets its energy.
Would anyone who has read the majority of this thread, ANYONE, care to say that their opinion has changed as a result of reading anything on it.
If it has, well then good. If it has not, then one might consider methods of dialogue.
Perhaps a few today have reviewed other writings to get a greater or more complete understanding of whatever point they are trying to make.
I will consider some more points being made more fully at a latter time.
But what I have learned most is that 1) some people must have found cockleburs in their underwear today 2) Dr. Curry is amazingly patient and shows a quality of character to emulate. To which point, I believe a quality dialogue and perhaps some persuasion might occur if the same content was presented in a much different manner. Then again, I am old school.
Personally, I never respond positively to intimidation.
I am trying to avoid the image of some bloggers being the victim of playground bullying and are now in a virtual bar room throwing verbal darts.
There are dangers here in that some areas of science are going the way of current politics in the United States. Divisive, stubborn!
I am sure everyone here has heard messages from people who consider themselves to be scientists, humanists, people of religion, journalists and more. However, if one wants to really -as they say-be the best; then at the end of the day, everyday, a person must look at ones own work or understanding up until that point and work to increase or improve upon it.
Inherit in that thinking is determining where and to what degree one may be wrong. That is a fundamental and crucial part of what is supposed to be the scientific method. Instilled in me a long time ago.— as is addressing someone of Dr Curry’s stature with respect. (that is not to say one cannot disagree)
Instead, it seems that there is an ever increasing circling of wagons, and when someone might be breaking though the perimeter it is not welcomed as it should be, but is met with ad hominem attacks.
Then that would all depend on if three days ago, it was a Friday?
There are very good reasons for the increasingly desperate rush to stress ‘consensus’ :
The CAGW story is clearly unravelling right now, so advocates like Cook who want political action for its own sake (95+% ? of alarmists), want legislation entrenched asap in case CAGW completely falls apart, and they are then left stranded needing some other ‘reason’ to raise taxes and generally further their totalitarian agenda.
+1 * 10^150
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If you look at natural variability for the past ten thousand years and compare modern temperature to the last ten thousand years, climate sensitivity to everything else is in the noise. Consensus Climate People tell us that this time would not have had the warming that happened every time in the past ten thousand years if we did not cause it. The have never explained why what is happening is not supposed to happen this time and why what always happens is not supposed to happen.
The tell us that what happens next is because of us and they tell us it is going to happen soon and every year, when they are wrong again, they tell us that it is still going to happen, just a little later than they thought. This little later was extended from 7 to 12 to 15 and now to 20, 30 or 50 or more.
What is going to happen next is what has always happened next in the last ten thousand years.
When it is warm and Polar Waters are Thawed, it always snows more and a cold period ALWAYS follows a few hundred years later.
They really do not understand the Polar Ice Cycles. They teach 97% agreement and only allow 97% people to graduate. Andy D said that Rocket Scientists disagree with too much and would not pass his basic Climate Course. He is right, we question everything like a real scientist or engineer always does. I would never want a Consensus Degree. I could never pass a Consensus Class. I never was taught Consensus. I was always taught Skeptical Science and Engineering.
Skeptical scientists and skeptical engineers took us to the moon and back. Consensus Climate People have built Models that have failed for decades. We could have done that but we would not have ever even got to Lower Earth Orbit.
Consensus is fine when you are working on something that really does not have an influence on anything important.
When you propose to do something stupid to fix something you don’t understand and you don’t understand the possible results of what you are proposing do and you don’t recognize that much of the rest of the world knows better and the smart ones are not going to follow you to self destruction, why would you continue to shoot yourself in the foot while you have races you need to win.
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I have a willing synthetic attention to get details and can foresee problems before these people occur.
Yes! Finally something about golden retriever mix puppies.