by Judith Curry
Well, if you judge ‘sides’ by what climate scientists have to say about the science, it is getting difficult to tell.
Kevin Trenberth was interviewed on NPR last nite, the ‘balance’ for my interview. I found several statements in this story to be interesting in terms of trying to delineate my ‘skeptical’ perspective from Trenberth’s ‘consensus’ perspective.
The ‘pause’
From Trenberth’s NPR interview:
So will the oceans come to our rescue?
“That’s a good question, and the answer is maybe partly yes, but maybe partly no,” he says.
The oceans can at times soak up a lot of heat. Some goes into the deep oceans where it can stay for centuries. But heat absorbed closer to the surface can easily flow back into the air. That happened in 1998, which made it one of the hottest years on record.
Trenberth says since then, the ocean has mostly been back in one of its soaking-up modes.
“They probably can’t go on much for much longer than maybe 20 years, and what happens at the end of these hiatus periods, is suddenly there’s a big jump [in temperature] up to a whole new level and you never go back to that previous level again,” he says.
20 years!!! From his statement it is not quite clear what the starting date is for the 20 years: whether it is now and 20 MORE years, or whether it started in 1998 with 20 years presumably taking us to 2018. In any event, this is definitely not what the consensus said in the 2007 AR4 report, and based upon what I have seen of the AR5, this is not what I would expect the AR5 to say.
A reminder of what I said on this topic in my Congressional testimony:
When considering possible physical reasons for the plateau since 1998, it is instructive to consider the previous mid-century plateau in global average surface temperature. The IPCC AR4 explained this previous plateau in the following way: “the cooling effects of sulphate aerosols may account for some of the lack of observational warming between 1950 and 1970, despite increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.”
With regards to multi-decadal natural internal variability, the IPCC considers this issue primarily in context of detection of an anthropogenic warming signal above the background ‘noise’ of natural variability. The IPCC’s attribution of the late 20th century warming has focused on external radiative forcing, and no explicit estimate of the contribution of natural internal variability to the warming was made. A recent paper by Tung and Zhou suggests that the anthropogenic global warming trends might have been overestimated by a factor of two in the second half of the 20th century. They argue that a natural multidecadal oscillation of an average period of 70 years with significant amplitude of 0.3–0.4°C is superimposed on the secular warming trend, which accounts for 40% of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. Tung and Zhou identify this oscillation with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), although recent research suggests a more complex multidecadal signal propagating through a network of synchronized climate indices. Tung and Zhou argue that not taking the AMO into account in predictions of future warming under various forcing scenarios may run the risk of over-estimating the warming for the next two to three decades, when the AMO is likely in its down phase.
Consider Hurricane Sandy. Trenberth figures the storm was maybe 5 or 10 percent more powerful as a result of global warming. And sea level is 8 inches higher than it was a century ago. That doesn’t seem that dramatic, but he argues that made a huge and costly difference.
“I reckon that without climate change, we would not have exceeded thresholds that caused the flooding of the subways in Manhattan and the tunnels from Manhattan to New Jersey and to Brooklyn.”
Preliminary damage estimates rank Hurricane Sandy as the 2nd costliest Atlantic hurricane, only behind Hurricane Katrina. When Sandy made landfall, it had been categorized as a post-tropical cyclone with winds equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane. Sandy’s 13 foot storm surge arose from a combination of a very large horizontal extent of the storm plus high tide conditions.
The current elevated hurricane activity in the North Atlantic is associated with the warm phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which could continue for another decade or two. The recent transition to the cool phase of the Pacific Oscillation is associated with a greater frequency of La Nina events, which are associated with elevated hurricane activity and a preference for Atlantic landfalls (relative to Gulf landfalls).
JC summary: My position on extreme weather events and climate change is much more consistent with IPCC consensus as expressed by the SREX, than is Trenberth’s position. While Trenberth is quick to acknowledge the role of the multi-decadal oscillations in ocean heat storage, he neglects to consider that these same oscillations have a dominant control on the hemispheric weather patterns that influence extreme weather events.
Scientists engaging in policy/politics
From my NPR interview:
“All we can do is be as objective as we can about the evidence and help the politicians evaluate proposed solutions,” she says. If that means doing nothing, “I can’t say myself that that isn’t the best solution.”
And this is where Curry parts company most clearly with her peers. For example, the leading scientific organization for earth scientists, the American Geophysical Union, says in a position statement that climate change “requires urgent action.” It concludes that despite some uncertainties, there’s no scenario where climate change will be inconsequential.
“I don’t know how concerned I should be about it — on what time scale that might happen, whether that’s 100 or 200 years, what societies will be like, what other things are going on with the natural climate,” Curry says. “I just don’t know what the next hundred or 200 years will hold, and whether this will be regarded as an important issue. I just don’t know.”
By now, of course, Curry has strayed far from science and deep into public policy.
“But in terms of telling other people what to do, I don’t have any big answers.”
From Kevin Trenberth’s NPR interview:
Over the decades that he has been working on climate change, the role of scientists has gradually expanded. Prominent scientists like him are trying to reduce the risk of global disruption by pushing society to act. These are frustrating times.
“This is very much in the role of the politicians who are supposed to do what’s in the interests of everybody as a whole,” Trenberth says. “And I’m not so sure many politicians understand their role in this.”
But wading into this policy debate, Trenberth argues that the United States could and should lead the world toward a less dangerous trend.
“If you play the right kind of role, then other countries will follow,” he says.
JC summary: KT and JC obviously disagree substantially on the role of scientists in public debates about policy. KT aligns himself with the consensus in terms of ‘urgent action is needed.’ I stay out of making specific policy recommendations or urging action, saying that i don’t think this the role of scientists and that personally I don’t have any good solutions to this wicked problem. The bizarre thing is that Harris labels me as straying from science and being deep into the politics and in bed with the Republicans.
JC conclusions
I think that Richard Harris missed the real story here: the changing social dynamics of scientists in the climate change debate. What actually differentiates academic scientists in this public debate? It doesn’t seem to be the science.
Virtually all academic climate scientists are within the 97% consensus regarding the infrared emission of the carbon dioxide molecule and the warming effect on the planet. This includes ‘skeptics’ such as Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer, etc.
The uncertainties surrounding climate sensitivity are such that beliefs as low as 1C and as high as 6C cannot be judged as irrational.
‘Consensus’ scientists are busy investigating the pause cause, using arguments that have been skeptical talking points for several decades.
Few scientists are skeptical of the basic analyses and confidence levels put forward by the IPCC SREX regarding observationally-based assessments of linkages between AGW and extreme weather.
Trenberth has strayed from scientific arguments of the consensus; this seems to be ok if it is more alarming than the consensus.
So . . . what is the differentiator? Why is there such hostility between the two ‘sides’, even though there is little at this point to discriminate the two sides in terms of science? Why have I been thrown off the ‘consensus’ island? Here are my ideas on the differentiators, and they are social (not scientific). I use myself as an example here, since I don’t want to get into talking about or labeling other climate scientists in this regard.
1. Fear and loathing of skeptics, particularly Steve McIntyre (read the Climategate emails for evidence of this). McIntyre is symbolic of attacks against consensus science, and a number of scientists have taken this very personally. My engagement with Steve McIntyre was probably the impetus for my getting tossed off the island, which was very visible with the publication of my post-Climagate essay ‘On the credibility of climate research‘ on McIntyre’s blog.
2. Allegiance to the ‘consensus’ and the social contract between the scientists, institutions and policy makers that has been very beneficial to the field of climate scientists. I have raised concerns about the consensus approach in my uncertainty monster paper and my paper no consensus on consensus. I have also raised concerns about the social contract aspect.
3. The selling of the merchant of doubt and war on science memes, which made uncertainty and doubt dirty words. My uncertainty monster flew directly in the face of this.
4. Expectation of climate scientists to support CO2 mitigation policies. My position is that scientists should stay away from such advocacy unless they understand the policy process and advocate in a responsible way (as per the AAAS workshop guidelines.)
5. Others?
All of this is amplified by the consensus police and denial warriors surrounding the scientific community, including bloggers, the media, NGOs, politicians.
So I have committed 4 major ‘social’ faux pas against the the consensus. Maybe there are others. Tamsin Edwards has arguably scored on three of these; her continued stated loyalty to the consensus seems to have kept her on the island.
Or maybe things are changing? The whole issue of uncertainty seems to be growing in importance. Skeptics are increasingly getting their papers published (including some that have emerged from the skeptical blogosphere). The policy debate has broadened far beyond CO2 mitigation, although climate scientists don’t seem to understand this. Unfortunately, the ostracism of scientists that do not socially support the consensus continues. And the insistence on scientists supporting urgent action on CO2 mitigation continues unabated.
I realize that I am treading into the area of social psychology here, I am throwing these ideas out there in the hopes that some social scientists will pick up on this issue and investigate so that we can better understand the dynamics here, where the tribal differences on a scientific topic are not driven so much by scientific differences but by social issues. I would also like to hear more anecdotes in this regard from other scientists. I am concerned that the social psychology of the allegiance to consensus is getting in the way of moving climate science forward and providing useful information and analyses to support decision making by policy makers.
I would judge them both irrational for a scientist, as I would any value in-between. “We don’t know” simply isn’t consistent with “beliefs“
AK you picked on the point I was going to make. If we dont know what the value of the climate sensitivity is, but we believe it is positive, then the correct limits are not 1 to 6 C, but 0 to 6 C.
I was actually referring to “beliefs” in any one value. A PDF of some shape might be appropriate, although IMO a scientific attitude would still preclude any sort of “belief”. Personally, I’d say the current evidence probably supports a PDF with a small tail crossing 0, but I certainly wouldn’t apply the word “belief” to such a conclusion.
Dotcomming third eyes and crossing beliefs.
===============
JC…” Why is there such hostility between the two ‘sides’, even though there is little at this point to discriminate the two sides in terms of science? Why have I been thrown off the ‘consensus’ island?”
My assessment is that because you host a blog, whereon MANY of the conservatives ‘deniers’ post many reasons that support their (denying) arguments, many in the ‘consensus’ camp believe that you are also an AGW ‘denier’. And, the deniers who post here think ‘any enemy of my enemy is my friend’.
Taking you at your word, that you and the ‘consensus’ have little disagreement, I would point out that testifying before Congress (which is majority Republican, known for their anti-AGW position) puts you into the denier camp, just by appearing.
While we can agree that no climate model can possibly predict (accurately) what the weather will be at any particular place on July 1, 2020, because these models all agree that our globe is getting warmer, it is our politicians who must do ‘something’. That ‘something’ is passing legislation, no matter how draconian, to slow and stop GHG emissions.
I find it commendable that you believe that scientists should not get into the political arena; but if the scientists can clearly see that our worldly nest is getting fouled, who is going to scream and wave their arms to call attention to it?? I submit that with 97% consensus, and with IPCC releasing a report which indicates that the consensus are more confident in their assessment, taking action to slow and stop global warming is becoming more critical with each day.
But are these advocating scientists clearly seeing or do they need a good dose of humility? Trenberth clearly believes he sees more clearly than even the alleged consensus as represented by the IPCC and blithely steps out on a limb with his claims in the knowledge that he will be retired by the time he will be shown to be fool or sage.
Walter, rather than climate scientists “screaming and waving their arms to avoid fouling the nest”, why not put a massive effort into solving the climate sensitivity issue? My position as a sceptic is centered around the broad issue of feedbacks + or – and the value 0 or 6. There is plenty of tax payer money flushing through the climate science community to adequately address this issue. Reorganize it and get the answer. Until then I have little confidence in the assessments of the consensus!
I am ready to join but I need to see the work first.
The “97%” consensus is a propaganda figment created by the alarmists, one that has been debunked several times over, even by observers not in the skeptical camp.
The purported 95% confidence level in the upcoming IPCC report is probably more a reflection of so called “bureaucratic science” where the confirmation bias grows ever stronger, than anything else. At that confidence level, we are dealing with established dogma, no longer with science.
As JC has pointed out time and again -and which is the main reason she’s been punted off the island- is that if anything, we are in fact starting to realize -but necessarily acknowledge- how little we know and understand about our climate.
Keep in mind that Trenberth is a cardinal in the IPCC church, and he that he is straying into the realm of alchemy to keep the dogma alive. Most recently stating that while the temperatures have flat lined there are plenty of other “signs” that the earth is warming, and that these “signs” are “abundantly clear”. Not just alchemy as in oceans warming at -700m, but getting very close the shamanism, indeed.
In other words Walter, the folks you speak of ( along with yourself) are not capable of discernment.
If things aren’t put in nice, simple, tidy little boxes for you, you have trouble comprehending them. Which explains the simplistic, shallow assessment you’ve provided.
Walter,
I’m curious about your “no matter how draconian” comment. As I don’t believe you are stupid or an idiot, I am left with two conclusions. Either you can’t or won’t evaluate an issue beyond its simplest terms, or you fall into the category of true believer. (I can see where the two may overlap.)
Your no matter how draconian would put you into the latter category. It is a statement which places you out at the extreme. One analogy which comes to mind is the one where the doctor is congratulated on a successful operation and told it was too bad the patient died. Can you please explain why you should not be seen as an extremist after uttering such an extreme opinion?
Perhaps we should stick with a simpler question and have you show why using the 97% figure and calling people deniers doesn’t flush your credibility down the tubes.
In one paragraph you criticize her for testifying before Congress. In the very next paragraph you say that politicians must pass legislation. You don’t see that the first action is a prerequisite for the second?
Walter Carlson: I would point out that testifying before Congress (which is majority Republican, known for their anti-AGW position) puts you into the denier camp, just by appearing.
The Senate (which is majority Democratic) is irresponsible for not asking her to testify.
While we can agree that no climate model can possibly predict (accurately) what the weather will be at any particular place on July 1, 2020, because these models all agree that our globe is getting warmer, it is our politicians who must do ‘something’.
What the models “agree on”, if by that you take their mean, is wrong — at least up to now. It becomes more critical year by year to avoid taking action based on them.
My comments were written for Judith Curry, but since several have posted comments, I will try to respond to them:
Robert Austin: “But are these advocating scientists clearly seeing or do they need a good dose of humility?” This suggests that you disagree with the 97 %, et al. I think, therefore, that you are a ‘denier’, and no amount of scientific evidence can persuade you otherwise.
Hank Zentgraf: ” My position as a sceptic is centered around the broad issue of feedbacks + or – and the value 0 or 6.” I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. And, let me say, that on this blog, I have found many mysterious statements from ‘deniers’ that seem to only obfuscate the discussion.
tetris: “The “97%” consensus is a propaganda figment created by the alarmists…” if you say so. However, when all worldwide meteorological and climatological organizations (including AGU and UCS) make clear statements that AGW is unarguable, I see no reason to disagree. Obviously, the deniosphere does.
timg56-first comment is an insult, I am ignoring it. Second comment: “I’m curious about your “no matter how draconian” comment.” I haven’t thought through just how urgent politicial action is needed; obviously, IPCC’s AR4 has been ignored in US, China, Russia, and elsewhere, so our politicians may have to take more severe action to slow/stop AGW. One thing I would advocate is legislation to push modular nuclear power plants. Nuclear power has propelled US aircraft carriers and submarines. This same, or newer, technology could be mandated and funded.
Bill Woods…I don’t see my statements as criticizing Mrs. Curry for testifying, only that it causes an association with the deniosophere.
Mathew Marler: “What the models “agree on”, if by that you take their mean, is wrong — at least up to now. It becomes more critical year by year to avoid taking action based on them.” I find it amazing that AR4 synthesized results from 18 climate models used around the world and found that doubling CO2 would increase average world temperature about the same amount (3.6F to 8.1F) as Arrhenius, with hand calculations (8F). However, Arrhenius calculated it would take 3,000 year, not one or two centuries.
Walter Carlson: I find it amazing that AR4 synthesized results from 18 climate models used around the world and found that doubling CO2 would increase average world temperature about the same amount (3.6F to 8.1F) as Arrhenius, with hand calculations (8F).
You addressed “agreement” whereas I addressed “accuracy”. The AR4 ignored a good deal of information that has been acquired since the time of Arrhenius, so it isn’t that informative that they got a comparable result.
You’re also selectively forgetting the rest of the story. That Arrhenius’ estimate was immediately criticized by Knut Angstrom as way too high. Angstrom was closer to what the most current estimates is.
Also, Arrhenius calculated his absurdly high coefficient without any feedback. The IPCC’s high end estimates include huge amounts of feedback.
Arrhenius’ estimate means exactly bupkis.
Mathew, you did not use the word ‘accuracy’ and I don’t read minds. If you insist on nitpicking, we can’t have a meaningful discussion.
Harold…you forget that Arrhenius work was done more than a century ago; even back then, the level of CO2 was of concern. His idea was way ahead of the rest of the scientific community. Only ‘bupkis’ to the denier mentality !!
“ …but if the scientists can clearly see that our worldly nest is getting fouled, who is going to scream and wave their arms to call attention to it??” They have screamed and they have arm-waived, but it hasn’t been getting much traction. And when that happened they became bitter and screamed “denier!” at anyone who disagreed with them, which cost them even more traction. Scientists are supposed to be rational: when stuck in a hole stop digging it deeper if nothing else. Many of them still haven’t noticed that we live in a democracy, not a technocracy, and that most people don’t have a secret yearning to be governed by scientists. Science and those who practice it are largely regarded as a social utility, largely bought and paid for with public monies. This seems to be too unflattering a concept for many who practice science to accept.
Walter,
My apology for being insulting, though I will stand by the part about it being a rather simplistic analysis. You assign a value judgement based on which political party is asking questions. You broadly categorize people using a term some find insulting and make reference to the 97% figure which is a public relations artifact that has no real value except to sell a particular spin.
As to your response to the question on “no matter how draconian”, you pretty much side step it, with an “I haven’t really thought about it”.
However you scored major points with me on the part of the response about one recommendation you would put forth. I voted each time for a candidate to the House whose platform I was in disagreement with on more than half of the items. But because the two issues he was mosted interested in, education and business, were two I also believe strongly in and agreed with him on, I had no problem supporting the candidate from the other party.
I recommend you quit with the name calling and instead focus on finding areas of agreement. You don’t have to agree 100% with the other person or even 50%, so long as you can find something of importance to you both that you can agree on. For me, whatever your opinions and belief might be on climate change, I have no problem fully suporting you on what direction we should be taking in terms of lectircal generation.
Walter Carlson: Mathew, you did not use the word ‘accuracy’ and I don’t read minds. If you insist on nitpicking, we can’t have a meaningful discussion.
My bad — I usually refer to “accuracy/inaccuracy” of models and calculations. I am tending toward “wrong” as good enough in this case for “too inaccurate to be relied upon for policy”.
Ok, another response attempt:
Mathew: I understand, sometimes I misstate what I’m trying to say (I think we all do, occasionally). But we will have to continue to disagree in the matter of ‘models’; I’m a geologist, not a climatologist. However, when several climatologists have stated that various models come to close agreement, and they put forth a range of temperatures that would be associated with a specific CO2 level, I have to rely on their expertise.
timg, et al…It seems that you find the term ‘denier’ insulting. I’m sorry, I thought it was a descriptor, not a negative name. However, many, here, challenge the 97%, which I see as having more credibility than the 3%. Also, I find more supportive indications of AGW, than just climatologists and meteorologists. Example: a NPS Park Ranger, in Joshua Tree National Park told me that in the last decade, these cacti have been found further north than ever before-an indication that the climate has warmed. There are many other reported instances of rising temperatures: whales further north, coral bleaching, etc.
Glacial coring, over the past three decades have repeatedly shown high correlation between CO2 measurements and temperature, going back thousands of years. That and other studies I’ve read have given me cause for great concern that our world is warming because greenhouse gases (mostly CO2) are rising and, without measures to reduce CO2 levels, MANY unforeseen and unfortunate things may happen that are very bad for the world. Obviously, many here don’t see things the same way; Among scientists, disagreement can be a good thing, IF the reasons for the disagreement are treated as reasons to continue research. Nevertheless, I believe that politicians could take steps (i.e .pass legislation) to, for example, hasten building a renewable energy infrastructure that will be needed to power the air conditioners that a warmer world will need.
Walter,
Walter Carlson: However, when several climatologists have stated that various models come to close agreement, and they put forth a range of temperatures that would be associated with a specific CO2 level, I have to rely on their expertise.
We can explore this again when next Prof Curry has another thread about comparing models to data. The models agree amongst each other, they just have not provided accurate forecasts of the actual temperature trends that they ought to have predicted accurately. This thread has too many posts already.
Walter Carlson, I thought that you might not want to wait for a future thread devoted to model-data comparisons, so I found one that you might like:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/17/temperature-models-vs-temperature-reality-in-the-lower-troposphere/
If you go the the WUWT web site and search on “model versus data” you’ll be able to read through a lot of these. Don’t rest content with WUWT, follow the links to the original data sources.
Mathew…thank you for the link. I went to the article and checked the comments. What I found in the comments confirms my thinking that Watts has a group of deniers following him who have no appreciation of the time and effort that goes into climatology models. In their book ‘The White Planet’, Jouzel, Lorius and Raynaud compare their findings with models and report good agreement. While Watts is concerned with the accuracy of data, his response to BEST results (promising to accept them before being published, then disavowing them after) shows me that he and his blog are more concerned with negating scientific effort, than finding scientific accuracy. Now I need to find data v model reports.
“no appreciation of the time and effort that goes into climatology models”
This does bring a tear to the eye. No one appreciates the time and effort I put into my Space Cheerleaders Do The Asteroid Belt: Sensual Short Stories either. ;)
Andrew
Matthew…as I mentioned I’m a geologist, not a climatologist. Also, not a modeler. However, I googled about climate model accuracy and found that while models have done, according to the articles, a good job of predicting climate big picture, it is small picture, such as El Nino Southern Oscillations that have been less well predicted. My take on this is that discussion on model predictions should proceed, BUT, past analyses of models have shown that generally, they give good results. That is, I believe the predictions are good enough for politicians to take legislative action and I believe they should.
Walter Carlson: What I found in the comments confirms my thinking that Watts has a group of deniers following him who have no appreciation of the time and effort that goes into climatology models.
Those considerations are irrelevant to the issue of the accuracy of the models.
I overstated somewhat the degree to which the models agree among themselves: as you can see, some of the models are only a little off, whereas others are way off.
Walter Carlson: I googled about climate model accuracy and found that while models have done, according to the articles, a good job of predicting climate big picture, it is small picture,
As you saw from the data and models that I linked to, and there are many such for various attributes of climate, they have not even predicted the aggregate global mean accurately.
Walter,
I find it interesting that geology is your background. It has been my experience that the geologists I know (and a couple I know very well) tend to be rather critical of climate science. I attribute that to their experience with models verse the real world.
I don’t argue that climate is changing. Neither do I argue against there being little to no human contribution. I do question the surity of how big a percentage that human impact is and my willingness to believe it is considerably above 50% is checked by some of the other claims I hear.
10 to 30 to 300 ft of sea level rise, species extinctions, tens of millions of climate refugees, war, famine, plague, hell, all of the 4 horsemen, plus their extending families galloping towards us. That is just not credible without at least some evidence to back it up. Even small things, such as Dr Trenberth’s moving hot spot and all of the claims about extreme weather. For years the climate science community repeated stated that weather is not climate. Yet now it seems all we hear about from them is about the weather. When a person is not a subject matter expert, they have to rely on the experts. And in order to do so, they have to have some sense of the credibility of those experts. What I am seeing is credibility running full speed out the door.
BTW – the denier label doesn’t bother me. I am not denying anything. Even if I was, it wouldn’t bother me. I was about 6 or so when my folks taught me the lesson about name calling as something to ignore.
TimG56…regarding correlation between atmospheric CO2 and AGW. MY take on it is: a) humans have been mining coal (think of cubic miles) and petroleum (think of billions of barrels) and burning them most heavily within the last 50-70 years; b) humans have been growing in massive numbers (over 7 billion) and using coal to fire steel manufacturing plants (also, mostly within the last 50-70 years); c) in their book ‘The White Planet’, glaciologists Jouzel, Lorius and Raynaud describe coring Greenland Ice Sheet and West Antarctic Ice Sheet and correlating analyses by several countries in these projects-they show close correlation between CO2 and temperature measurements.(these cores begin with very recent and go back nearly a million years and NO CO2 levels have approached those of today). I’m sure there are those on this blog who find something here to disagree with, however, having read this and several other books on AGW, i’m convinced that there is a very limited time available for humanity to recognize the long-term significance of this threat and take measures to mitigate it.
So Trenberth thinks “climate change” made Sandy 5% to 10% worse. I have two comments.
1. I disagree. I think it made it 6.732% worse, or maybe 2.573% worse. None of the four guesses means anything.
2. Substitue “witchcraft” for “climate change” and it does not fundamentally change the meaning. Without strong evidence, simply repeating “climate change” as a cause also means nothing.
+1 Unsupported assertions don’t cut it around here!
“So Trenberth thinks “climate change” made Sandy 5% to 10% worse. ”
Actually, ~1.25% climate change, .765% Carbon Pollution, 2.2% Climate Disruption, 1.2% Global Warming and 1% Unicorn Methane Emissions, a deadly combination.
And where do these figures come from Capt? :)
How does Kevin Trenberth know that climate change caused by man or otherwise didn’t make hurricane Sandy 5 to 10% less bad?
Ak.
I dont know how tall you are. But I
believe you are between 1 and 10 feet tall. I Believe that if i plan on you being 6 feet tall i wont be too far off.
In fact we know very little and manage quite well with mere belief
I believe that the apollo command module we are returning from the moon in will enter the earths atmosphere between 0 and 90 degrees. Of course, too shallow an angle and we might not be captured by earths gravity and well skip off into space, and to steep and well burn up whilst being crushed by the g-forces.
Belief may be adequate a lot of the time, especially when the decisions are non-critical, but it is irrational to rely on them when they are not. I would have thought constraining climate sensitivity on more than a “belief”, in this case synonymous with “educated guess”, would be a case of the latter.
Steven,
We are probably getting close to the end of the Holocene based on previous cycle lengths. In addition, we are entering a low solar activity cycle that may be as bad as cycles associated with the LIA. In addition, the measured global heating has paused, or may be already heading down. Does it seem reasonable, based on these, to combat HEATING with these pieces of evidence? Cooling is much worse in effects (less crops, cold homes of poor cause many more deaths than hot). The belief you refer to may lead to making a bad situation worse. Unless we know much more, the best activity is to prepare to handle any emergency, not try to redirect climate. If the trend of cooling occurs, I would consider the activities of those pushing climate mitigation as criminal, as they would have pushed all of society in the wrong direction, and also made science less accepted by the majority of people.
@Steven Mosher…
The cases aren’t parallel, as you know.
Your post is brilliant. Trenberth will understand his own statements better after reading your post. Harris will understand what he has done better after reading your post. Your post is an excellent summary of what has happened among scientists in the “climate wars.” Thank you so very much for your excellent work in behalf of science.
Theo, very well put. But will Trenberth or Harris see this? Perhaps Judith should e-mail them.
Your post assumes Trenberth and Harris are open minded. I don’t know either one of them to agree with this assumption.
Unfortunately neither Trenberth nor Harris will see this post or the comments here. Even if JC e-mailed them to both. They would not be able to read beyond the first paragraph, if that.
The reason is found in behavioral psychology and is known as “cognitive dissonance”. Cognitive dissonance -the effects of which are very real to those who experience it but which they may not recognize, and likewise to those who observe the ones experiencing it- occurs when ever more empirical data/facts compound to ever more contradict one’s world view and convictions.
The individual’s inability to acknowledge and accept those facts for what they are -verifiable facts- leads to a defense mechanism known as confirmation bias, where only those pieces of information that fit their world view/conviction are treated as real. Cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias are the polar opposite of the skeptical thinking and mindset required for proper “ol’ fashioned’ Popperian science.
Try asking the Catholic Church for an reasonable and verifiable explanation for the immaculate conception or the Trinity -which as an institution it can not because these constitute core tenets of the faith- or convince a devout Muslim of the fact that not only God is capable of making perfect things, but that man has learned to do so as well [e.g. C60], which he can’t because it is a core tenet of his faith and accepting that would constitute blasphemy.
Trenberth -with his alchemy-like musings about “missing heat” hiding at -700m, and his hallucinations about “abundantly clear signs” of [man-made] global warming [some of which according to him apparently are to be found in the upcoming IPCC report] in the absence of rising temperatures, is a textbook example of cognitive dissonance at work. Likewise, Harris’ more or less politely giving short thrift to JC and providing Trenberth with ample space to propagate his gibberish, says as much about how cognitive dissonance plays havoc with his integrity as a reporting journalist as it does about the NPR’s institutional cognitive dissonance which makes it a poodle mouthpiece for the alarmist credo in the US.
You hit the nail on the head. You don’t have to understand climate science, you only have to appreciate the sociology of science, to know who is credible and who is not in this field. The climate scaremongers have been shooting themselves in the feet for a long time now.
We have terrestrial temperatures for the past 100+ years.
We have upper air temperatures since the 1930s.
We got walloped by the 1983 El Nino and decided the ocean was worth sampling beyond the surface.
So let’s see what NOAA says about the ocean.
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/exploration.html
“To date, we have explored less than five percent of the ocean. The ocean is the lifeblood of Earth, covering more than 70 percent of the planet’s surface, driving weather, regulating temperature, and ultimately supporting all living organisms. Throughout history, the ocean has
been a vital source of sustenance, transport, commerce, growth, and inspiration.
Yet for all of our reliance on the ocean, 95 percent of this realm remains unexplored, unseen by human eyes.”
“You can observe a lot by just just watching.” Y. Berra
Mother Nature deals from any part of the deck she wishes and always bats last.
The ocean is the critical link in this planet’s climate and always will be.
The Yogi Berra quote is dead on as were most of his tautological tautologies.
You’ve posted on this both directly and indirectly many times, but whereas climate is a matter of science, climate debate is much more a social phenomena.
That’s phenomenon.
Heh, there are enough debates it could be phenomena.
====================
http://www.boredpanda.com/funny-chinese-translation-fails/?image_id=funny-chinese-sign-translation-fails-35.jpg
Professor Myles Allen – at the Oxford Union debate with Professor Lindzen:
Myles (at 32:20)
” I think we should emphasise the enormous amount we all agree on…”
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/headtohead/2013/06/201361311721241956.html
The interviewer was very aggressive to Lindzen and Myles stated how appalled he was by this at the Bishop Hill blog the next day
(and a lot was edited out, including me, asking where the interviewer had got his 97% of scientists agree statistic from)
“Trenberth seems to think that he understands what is going on in the ocean..”
Yes, it does seem that way. But on what basis? It’s a beautifully compelling example of motivated reasoning. WHen will the MSM/left wing media begin to understand that the when interviewing the same old cast of climate characters they are speaking with people whose reputations depend on their being right about climate change. One does not have to be a scientist to understand human nature.
ROTFLMAO !!
Walter Carlson, If you agree with incorporating modular atomic boilers in the energy mix then basically you are on a team here; for whatever your personal reasons for getting to the conclusion. Worrying about why is not as important as how to do it.
Indeed-how to get US and/or world politicians to develop legislation that would move the first world countries toward reducing CO2 emissions?? That is the big question !! My thinking is that with each summer getting warmer, the solution to more electrical power with less CO2 emissions should include nuclear reactors. Technology has advanced to the ability to design and build modular nuclear power pants. Those who fear meltdowns, such as Fukishima, have ignored that aircraft carriers have bweeb nuclear powered for decades. Why can’t that technology be applied to cities with smaller populations?? Installing two of these plants, for a city of 80,000-100,000 would allow the cities to own their own plants and lessen the need for stretching copper cables all across the US.
Walter
Imo, one of the major reasons that the technology you describe is not being used in developing countries is that the currently nuclear countries do not like the idea of nuclear material becoming available across the globe. The argument is that it will increase the probability that the technology and the waste materials can be used for undesirable purposes. Why do you think large commercial ships are not nuclear powered? Same answer.
Rob,
on why large commercial ships are not nuclear powered.
I’d have to do some digging, but I believe it has to do with life cycle costs.
Even the Navy has eliminated ship classes it previous utilized nuclear propulsion in. Now only carriers and submarines are nuclear.
That is a excellent question, Judith Curry!
The strongest rancor arises not between scientist-and-skeptic, but between scientist-and-denialist:
▷ Practicing scientists fear-and-loathe the willful ignorance and suppressive abuse that is associated to denialist demagoguery. Because willful ignorance and suppressive are the mortal enemies to the free inquiry that is the foundation of good science.
▷ Practicing ideologues fear-and-loathe the evidence-based judgments and open discourse that is associated to good scientific practice (thank you for this outstanding reference, Judith Curry!) Because evidence-based judgments and open public discourse are mortal enemies to the ideological purity that demagogues seek to sustain.
Conclusion When strong skepticism rationally confronts strong climate-change science, the result is plenty of interesting public discourse, but not much rancor, and all parties benefits. Whereas when ideology-driven denialist demagogues abusively attack the weaker elements of climate-change science, plenty of rancorous heat gets generated, but not much scientific light!
Fan, here is an example of true demagogues/religious zealots:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/24/day-of-the-ungreens-dreaming-up-scary-language-to-convince-people-global-warming-is-really-just-like-a-scary-movie/#more-92269
Basically a “how to” book,for spreading propaganda. Seen anything similar on the skeptical side?
A classic, courtesy of Pat Michaels:
> Make an argument that you can get killed on and you kill us all.
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/4027562164
Pat michaels is wrong.
skeptics can make horrible arguments all day long. some zombies never die
Mosher, pissing on people and telling them its raining isn’t a viable method for gaining trust or for ones chances of becoming an authority figure.
Whenever a patient is given a diagnosis for a terminal disease, the spend the week before visiting the specialist on the internet, doing all the background the can.
They visit the specialist, who 20 years ago would have have far more asystematic information, and bargain for their lives.
The oncologists tell me it is far better dealing with patients of today, who have spent days googling, reading trials announcements and medical textbooks, than it was before they had access to information and mis-information; at least now the patients already know the statistics and the timeline.
With ‘Climate Science’ we have a new field that only exists because of computing power; all the reconstructions and models can only exist thanks to number crunching. The problem is that many non-scientists can do the same sort of number crunching and have access to the same data. It is not like members of the public grow cancer cells and design their own drugs; but anyone can reanalyze climate data and statistical methods.
Many of the climate scientists hate that ‘anyone’ can second guess them and think this is demeaning to their profession, which is something medics have always had to live with.
And now to my point, as I really do have one.
Hospitals routinely give surveys to patients and ask them to rate their care, including what they think of their Doctor or Surgeon. Time after time departments get the same results for individuals, based on patient derived data. The ‘best’ doctors/surgeons are not the ones with the best outcomes, or who have the least complications or who even have the most senior positions; the ‘best’ doctors/surgeons are those who talk to the patient, those who visit the patient in pre-OP just before they go under, the ones who visit post-OP as the patient awakes AND those who pop-in for 10 minutes on Saturday and Sunday. If you doctor appears to care about you, talks to you, reassures you, you will rate the doctor as ‘Excellent’, no matter what happens to your treatment.
‘Climate Scientists’ should take note that even brilliant surgeons who come across as condescending, arrogant, jerks do not prosper.
thought of you doc
http://www.boredpanda.com/funny-chinese-translation-fails/?image_id=funny-chinese-sign-translation-fails-27.jpg
http://www.boredpanda.com/funny-chinese-translation-fails/?image_id=funny-chinese-sign-translation-fails-21.jpg
http://www.boredpanda.com/funny-chinese-translation-fails/?image_id=funny-chinese-sign-translation-fails-18.jpg
> The ‘best’ doctors/surgeons are not the ones with the best outcomes, or who have the least complications or who even have the most senior positions; the ‘best’ doctors/surgeons are those who talk to the patient, those who visit the patient in pre-OP just before they go under, the ones who visit post-OP as the patient awakes AND those who pop-in for 10 minutes on Saturday and Sunday.
Thank you, Doc.
Mosher,
You have to practice your head shots.
(Which goes against the tenet of aiming for center mass.)
Thank you Fan:
Hansen-style climate change science.
“Climate sensitivity depends on the initial climate state (1), but potentially (2) can be accurately inferred (3) from precise paleoclimate data.” – Hansen et al 2012-2013. Numbers added by myself.
1) Unsure as to what the initial climate state is, so perhaps we assume one.
2) Potentially.
3) Can be inferred, though the math is above me, it looked like using algebra, solving for one unknown, but that may describe the early work, if I am accurate, which I may not be. But what is looked to me like is, they had some data and plugged the CO2 in as the unknown variable. Based upon the long time understanding of it as a greenhouse gas, and its rising and falling with temperature.
Using qualification in the accounting sense, they have conservatively set things up by avoiding absolutes, at least in the one sentence above. They are describing their assumptions.
However, the more the qualifications there are, the less strong the conclusion would be. The strength of the first part (above) reflects on the strength of the second part (Conclusions).
I applaud Hansen et al for taking this conservative approach. But I have a hard time reconciling how much has followed from the core assumptions. How so much of our lives are tied what I quoted above. I would assume Hansen is an authority on Sensitivity. I keep reading, in this case, words signed off on, and I can’t see sufficient strength with it, based on the qualifications.
Qualification in the accounting sense means with reservations. An unqualified opinion means, without reservations. For example, here are my qualifications, a list of things that prevent me from endorsing these statements at the highest level. I apologize if this seems backwards.
“”Whereas when ideology-driven denialist demagogues abusively attack the weaker elements of climate-change science, “”
A fan…. Admitting there are weaker elements of “climate-changescience”????….
I would say that might very well be a flicker of scientific light right there! :-)
OK. I’m taunting a bit. Not usually my style. And I do apologize. But you did leave that bad curve ball right over the plate, and someone had to swing at it.
Since you did bring it up though…. I’m currious. What do you classily as the weaker elements of climate science?
Respectfully
Mike Alexander
Well the Powermad Carbon(C) of CatastrophicAGW has become the pusillanimous carbon(still C) plant food. It’s elemental, my dear WattSun.
====================
LOL… every scientist knows aphorisms like “wrong theories never die, but the theorists who believe them eventually do”
That is why another aphorism is “death-by-death, science advances.”
Thank you for asking, Mike Alexander:
▷ The Strongest Climate Science derives from thermodynamic considerations associated to conservation of energy and increase of entropy, augmented by radiation transport theory, calculated by slide-rule, and affirmed by paleo-evidence and by sustained observation of global energy imbalance. In summary, Hansen-style climate change science.
▷ Less-Strong Climate Science Massive computer models, in particular, models that attempt to model decadal-scale dynamics. In summary, IPCC-style climate-change science.
▷ Relatively Weak Climate Science Purely statistical models that presuppose the existence of “cycles” (commonly solar cycles and/or ocean-current cycles); also ad hoc models that ascribe climate-change to (e.g.) fluctuations in cosmic ray intensity. In summary, speculative climate-change science.
It seems likely that both Ehrenhaft and Millikan observed phenomena that indicated a fractional charge; Ehrenhaft honestly reported his and Millikan didn’t.
The Stanford Search For Isolated Fractionally Charged Particles group has been doing oil-drop experiments for a long while and they have noted that electron transfer between droplets, whilst rare, occurs and produces apparent fractional charges.
Do not forget Millikan deliberately excluded data points to reduce his error from >2% to 0.5%.
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/exp/mps/FCS/FCS_rslt.htm
BTW Ehrenhaft was right on the use of metallic colloids in Magnetolysis.
Fan:
“The Strongest Climate Science…”
Please Fan. Tell me my looking at the oceans is not in vain.
Don’t get kim started on the importance of water.
I think termites are important. If it weren’t for them little pests we would be butt-deep in dead wood.
Mold is good too. And bacteria. All good.
@jim d
Direct me please to the data that shows the oceans warmed by nearly a degree over the last century. It certainly seems odd, since that is more than the atmosphere did.
And if a 1C rise only produces 8 inches of sealevel expansion, we can safely write off sea-level rise as just a minor inconvenience.
Doesn’t leave much to scare us with. Better plant growth? Perhaps John Wyndham’s thriller The Day of the Triffids was a prophecy, not fiction?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/mean:120
a fan of *MORE* discourse: The Strongest Climate Science derives from thermodynamic considerations associated to conservation of energy and increase of entropy, augmented by radiation transport theory, calculated by slide-rule, and affirmed by paleo-evidence and by sustained observation of global energy imbalance.
These arguments are full of holes as well, especially if they ignore the thermodynamics of systems far from equilibrium. Ignoring non-radiative transport, clouds, and the UV radiation takes them farther from the truth. then there are the liabilities in the observation of global energy imbalance imbalance, which is non-constant and non-uniform.
The parts that you call “weak” were generally presented as “strong” until they had been disputed. Even today, some people believe the GCMs are strong evidence.
The WUWT/Watts site provides plenty of examples of “ideology-driven denialist demagoguery that abusively attacks the cherry-picked weaker elements of climate-change science”. It’s striking that the WUWT/Watts sites consistently refrains from engaging with the scientific reasoning and evidence of works like (for example) the multi-author multi-disciplinary 130-reference Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature
Conclusion No lasting benefit, to anyone, comes of flimsy willfully ignorant denialist demagoguery that exclusively cherry-picks and abusively criticizes the weakest elements of climate-change science.
That’s plain common-sense, right k scott denison?
Really? So there’s a manual on how to spread skeptical propaganda on WUWT. Funny, I’ve missed it somehow. Can you please supply a link as it seems you must have read it.
@A Fan etc
‘The WUWT /Watts site provides plenty of examples of
‘“ideology-driven denialist demagoguery that abusively attacks the cherry-picked weaker elements of climate-change science”’
It does? OK. Please can you illustrate your point with, say, three recent examples. I’d be particularly interested in seeing your commentary on the ‘ideology-driven denialist demagoguery’ that you can identify. It sounds like a lot of fun.
But you also raise an interesting point. Do the ‘weaker elements of climate-change science’ not deserve scrutiny? Why should they not be exposed as crap if crap is what they are? Surely that is the way that science progresses? Or is crap only to be exposed by approved climate crapologists, not by independent bloggers? Does one need a licence? And where should I apply?
> So there’s a manual on how to spread skeptical propaganda on WUWT.
In the words of Ron Broberg:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/24472458681
A pity top Fortune execs missed that training.
By serendipity some get daily practice.
Thank you for your politely-phrased request, Latimer Alder!
The lovely lass “Sou” regularly pillories Watts/WUWT on her abuse-exposing website “HotWhopper”:
▷ The UnGreens at WUWT – communicating with science deniers
▷ Spot the difference. Anthony Watts can’t!
▷ The negative bias of Anthony Watts, Hockey Sticks and the Dunning-Kruger Effect
There are dozens more, that no doubt you will find illuminating, Latimer Alder! Sou’s HowWhopper website is highly recommended to Climate Etc readers!
And just remember, Latimer Alder … Klingons never bluff!
Fan
You approvingly give three examples of watts being wrong, mostly centred on a curious blog that promotes the hockey stick and it’s spaghetti derivatives as being fine examples of science
Here is my own graph using these derivatives
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/clip_image0041.jpg
Taking a fifty year smoothing of data released by bits of wood unsurprisingly provide a curious static climate unknown in the real world where annual and decadal temperature is far more variable .
Tonyb
According to the blog’s author “Sou from Bundangawoolarangeera”, her motivation is definite:
Some recent examples:
▷ WUWT Policy Violation by a Clueless Female Eco-Nut
▷ A contrarian teddy bears’ picnic at WUWT – do science deniers believe in lizard men, too? (Yes, close enough anyway!)
▷ Wondering Willis as a concerned climate scientist (showing his sexism)
Gosh-golly … Sou sure hasn’t encountered much difficulty in finding examples of misogyny on WUWT, eh TonyB? Why do you think that might be?
Fan
Are you a closet ball room dancer? You have beautifully sidestepped the subject by introducing something completely unrelated to what was being discussed.
Tonyb
willard
“Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. ”
ya dont attack, CRU, IPCC, or NOAA.
TonyB, there’s nothing “curious” about websites that thoroughly expose Watts/WUWT (and similar websites) as devoted to ideology-driven denialist demagoguery that abusively attacks the cherry-picked weaker elements of climate-change science.
Are you entirely certain that you didn’t mean to type “laudable”?
Fan
You elegantly sashay seamlessly from one subject to another
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ball+room+dancing&client=safari&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=czgZUqvPCeLX0QWKzICoBw&ved=0CEgQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=672
Good night fan
Tonyb
“It’s striking that the WUWT/Watts sites consistently refrains from engaging with the scientific reasoning and evidence of works like (for example) the multi-author multi-disciplinary 130-reference Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature“
It is striking that you fail to see it was not a peer reviewed scientific paper, but a policy advocation piece, with plenty of references to stances taken by relegious organizations.
National Religious Coalition on Creation Care. LOL
Fan,
Do you see any irony in Miss Sou’s statement about denying climate science and misogyny in comparison to Dr Curry’s experience in the field of climate research?
In the event you do, you can earn bonus points in you can somehow tie it to Dr Hansen.
a fan of *MORE* discourse: . It’s striking that the WUWT/Watts sites consistently refrains from engaging with the scientific reasoning and evidence of works like (for example) the multi-author multi-disciplinary 130-reference Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature
You misrepresent WUWT.
Avoiding one work hardly constitutes “consistenty refrains from engaging with the scientific reasoning.” WUWT persistently quotes from peer-reviewed literature, accurately quotes climate scientists’ public comments and editorials, links to important curated data sets, and invites scientists to engage in the disputes.
Fan- from your link “This situation raises profound moral issues as young people, future generations, and nature, with no possibility of protecting their future well-being, will bear the principal consequences of actions and inactions of today’s adults. ”
What do you tell the millions of the current generation that are dying from cold(due to high energy prices), lack of food from unaffordable food costs(due to corn going for fuel instead of stomachs), loss of habitat in the tropics(palm oil plantations for biodiesel), lost opportunities from sale of carbon credits(benefiting the rich politicians and the poor not at all), poisonous pollution from solar cell factories, soot from coal plants(China and India). and on and on.
and “can push the climate system beyond tipping points”. Where? Yes there are climate tipping points. The ice core and geologic records are clear. The climate has tipped from glaciation to something like the current milieu and back approximately every 120,000 years- regardless of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
People are dying today because of efforts to control the climate. Which is more important? The people dying for sure now, or the ones who might die in the future?
Fan
You routinely overlook that 97% of climate “science” is just politically-funded and motivated demagoguery, serving chiefly to ramp up taxes and politics generally.
That’s what the clash between skeptics and and climate ‘scientists’ is all about.
The longer I watch the climate wars, the more I think that at its heart it all goes back to Mann vs McIntyre.
The failure to admit at the start that McIntyre was right and Mann was wrong was the critical error. The attempts to cover up that mistake, rather than admitting it, have led to a farrago of increasingly unconvincing special pleading. Anyone who points out that the Emperor Mann has no clothes, or who even suggests that his clothing might be less than exquisite, has to be expelled and anathematised, but as long as you genuflect before the Hockey Stick minor deviation is still permitted by the consensus police.
Does climate science want to regain its credibility and start being treated like a proper science again? Well of course it has to call off the witch hunt by the consensus police. But it also has to admit that McIntyre was right and Mann was wrong. And at the moment I simply can’t see how that’s going to happen.
Yes, and no. The M&M debacle marked an important isthmus, but the ikonic Crook’t Stick was necessary for the ‘Cause’, and still is. Trace the ‘Cause’ for the origin of incredibility.
===========
Exactly
It has been my conjecture for some time that the “team” realized long ago that future climate states were not predictable…….in the sense that the public would demand for such an issue. The team then needed a marketing tool, and that is all the hockey stick was ever meant to be.
I’ve never seen Jonathan Jones comment on Nick’s analysis:
http://moyhu.blogspot.ca/2011/06/effect-of-selection-in-wegman-report.html
The Auditor himself has been quite parcimonious in his throwing of W under the auditing bus.
Yes, but genuflexion,
Or fluorescent censored files?
=============
It doesnt matter whether McIntyre was right or wrong on the science.
Mann’s mistake, and Steig after him, was challenging McIntyre to do his own damn science and get it published. Mann lost that challenge, as did Steig. Mann’s other mistake was withholding data. even after he released it all, even after other analysis which vaguely supports his work, none of that mattered because he destroyed the brand of climate science. And finally, he destroyed the leverage we used to have by playing the oil shill card on mcIntyre when it wasnt true.
you read the climategate mails and ask yourself who made mann the head of communications and PR for climate science? nobody, he just took the role and screwed the brand into the ground.
Steve, you seem to be more interested in Mann’s personality than his work. I think you have to give him some credit as a scientists, even if you don’t like him. He won as award for his science.
But I’m no better than you when it comes to judging people. I don’t like McIntyre’s personality. I find him petty, tedious, and boring. I call him McIntyrsome. I may not be fair, but that’s how I feel.
you read the climategate mails and ask yourself who made mann the head of communications and PR for climate science? nobody, he just took the role and screwed the brand into the ground.
No, the people who screwed it into the ground are the 97% of so-called climate scientists who said nothing about what he was doing, thereby messaging the public being that fraud is part and parcel of consensus climate science.
Max_OK | August 24, 2013 at 7:04 pm |
I don’t like McIntyre’s personality. I find him petty, tedious, and boring.
>>
So exposing major, deliberate deception is petty tedious and boring to you.
I don’t think so. Your real problem is you want the deceptions to succeed.
I’m pretty sure whatever awards Michael Mann may have won weren’t because of any scientific prowess. Calling his work subpar is being kind.
max OK
http://www.boredpanda.com/funny-chinese-translation-fails/?image_id=funny-chinese-sign-translation-fails-28.jpg
I’d hate to see Mann scapegoated because there are thousands of others worthy of opprobrium. The big story is a follow the money story. The scientists are just so many pawns, patsies, fall guys, dupes. You can spin it as a Sophoclean tragedy and awe at the damage science has done to itself. Truth be told, however, it plays just as well as farce.
Max (self-awarded) ‘okay’
Actions/ evidence are the meat;n potato. Awards? Joseph
Stalin, fer example received many awards, The Order of
Lenin (3 times,) lots of Medals fer the Defence of many
things and Hero of this’n that from his team. Would you
trust that man?
jest a serf.
Steven, good one !
Memphis, McIntyre exposed himself as a biased nitpicker.
I expect true skeptics to be evenhanded, which IMO he sure ain’t.
Brandon envies Mann’s achievements and prestigious prizes. Brandon’s prizes have come mostly from Cracker Jacks boxes.
Beth Cooper said on August 24, 2013 at 9:48 pm
Max (self-awarded) ‘okay
___
Beth, the “OK” in “Max_OK” means my name is Max and I was born and raised in Oklahoma, not that I’m just an OK person. I’m better than just OK, but not by much.
Your comparing Michael Mann to Hitler and Stalin makes confirms my suspicion you are less than OK, a lot less.
You ask me who I would trust. Well, certainly not you. As I recall, you approve of hacking, which IMO, makes you no better than a thief. If you came to my house, I would ask you to empty your pockets before you left
@Max_OK
Brandon envies Mann’s achievements and prestigious prizes. Brandon’s prizes have come mostly from Cracker Jacks
In the same way we all envy the fancy cars and houses with which gangsters reward their henchmen.
@Max_OK
McIntyre exposed himself as a biased nitpicker.
That’s a baseless knee-jerk lie, a bankrupt outburst of a willful ignoramus.
Name even one such case.
You really need to work on your mind reading skills Max_OK.
Max,
Which award(s) are you referring to?
I would say that one aspect (and there could be more) in which Dr Mann has garnered respect is in his ability to draw research grant money. I mean that in a positive way. Without numbers to compare, I am only guessing, but my impression is that Dr Mann is (or was) an All Star in that area.
+1
Mosher,
I find the “we” in the last sentence of your first paragraph -where you talk about “oil shill” leverage- most revealing. Freudian slip, no doubt. Very telling, nonetheless. We, unless I’ve missed something, includes you.
Which explains your contention that whether the science is correct or wrong, doesn’t matter. That Mann, Steig, Jones, Trenberth and all the others sucked their climate “science” out of a unicorn’s teat or got it out of a 1450s alchemy handbook, doesn’t matter.
As long as the Team controlled the IPCC CAGW/CACC storyline, how it was served to and told by the MSM, and how to best wreck the careers of Balunas and a good number of others, smear Spencer, Lindzen, McIntyre and JC to name a few, everything was OK.
Well, those days are gone and what’s left is going fast, whether that’s Mann’s doing or not. Thank god, because your and Mann’s brand of politicized climate “science” is not only worse than garbage; it has done more economic, political and social damage than most can imagine.
One good thing here though: your “we” above removes your mask once and for all for those who still hadn’t figured you out.
For some people I know, the fact that McIntyre is associated with the mining industry is enough in their minds to ignore him and his results. They are wrong, but there it is.
Jonathan Jones said on August 24, 2013 at 2:57 pm
The failure to admit at the start that McIntyre was right and Mann was wrong was the critical error.
______
Wrong? Are you sure McIntyre said Mann was wrong? I’m not a statistician, but I doubt you can use statistics to show Mann’s hockey stick is wrong because the temperature history looks like something other than a hockey stick. My impression is McIntyre took issue with Mann’s methodology, not his results, but he doesn’t whether the results are right.
Wegman in reference to Mann said something like wrong method, right results = bad science. I suppose right method, useless results is good science, but it’s not progress.
Max OK
Get with the parade. A leaked portion earlier this week at Reuters shows beyond much discussion that the IPCC now recognizes not only that the MWP did in actual fact occur, but that it was warmer then than now. At least one, if not two, cornerstones in the CAGW dogma have been removed
Look it up. From a “science” [such as it is] perspective, that means that Mann and other younger Hockey Stick purveyors have been thrown under the bus by the IPCC.
Good that tetris now believes the IPCC. Chalk another one up for the consensus.
But we know it was warm 1,000 years ago and less warm in the middle of the millennium. There are all sorts of correspondences with everything from cosmogenic isotopes to ENSO. If they’re claiming that this means that most recent warming is therefore CO2 – well you have to draw the line somewhere.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2013/04/21/blogs/dotkaufman.html
I think the “skeptical” logic goes like, because we don’t know exactly why it was warm in some places 1000 years ago, we don’t know why it is warm now even with more measurements and a CO2 theory that explains it.
What happened in the years 1976/77 and 1998/99 in the Pacific was so unusual that scientists spoke of abrupt climate changes. They referred to a sudden warming of the tropical Pacific in the mid-1970s and rapid cooling in the late 1990s. Both events turned the world’s climate topsy-turvy and are clearly reflected in the average temperature of Earth. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130822105042.htm
But we’re pretty sure that climate shifts have a lot to do with recent decadal warming and cooling. Mainstream science after all.
@Max_OK
I doubt you can use statistics to show Mann’s hockey stick is wrong
What McIntyre did, was show that Mann’s statistics (that produced a fake hockey stick) were flawed. To put it mildly. McIntyre is too polite to say “fraudulent”.
@Jim D
I think the “skeptical” logic goes like, because we don’t know exactly why it was warm in some places 1000 years ago, we don’t know why it is warm now even with more measurements and a CO2 theory that explains it.
That’s just the “scientific” view, whose logic goes like like, because we have measurements and a CO2 theory now, non-CO2 factors that caused warming 1000 years ago no longer happen.
Look at how fast the changes are. Reconstructions show less than 1C temperature difference between MWP and LIA. And that difference is over 10 centuries.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/recon_lj_with_others.png
0.1C a century.
Compare that with 3C warming from a doubling of CO2.
Hockey anyone?
Jonathan Jones: The failure to admit at the start that McIntyre was right and Mann was wrong was the critical error.
I sympathize, but McIntyre did not actually show that Mann was “wrong”, he showed that Mann was sloppy (not that unusual in pioneering research) and that Mann’s conclusion was not solidly based. McIntyre and McKittrick’s work was subsequently shown to have its own flaws. The correct response by Mann would have been for him to acknowledge the comments of McIntyre and work on raising the standard of his analyses. A la Gallo and Montanier they could have published a review jointly, and the dispute would have ended. Subsequently, Mann et al published corrections in response to M&M’s critique, without acknowledgement.
You forget or choose to forget that when you boil the Hockey Stick down to its essence, it blade is solely due to the cherry picking use of one [1] tree in the Yamal series, and the splicing, upside down, of the Tijlander series into the graph. Remove those two, and there is no more uptick in the blade area.
Also, as per my comment above, the IPCC has now thrown Mann and his “opus” under the bus, acknowledging that the MWP did in fact occur and that it was the warmer then than now. That pretty much takes care of the “never seen before temperatures” meme, and opens the door wide open to more questions about the role of natural variability, while putting a possibly -over time- terminal hole below the waterline in the “anthropogenic only” portion of the dogma.
No. McIntyre has systematically destroyed every attempt to resurrect the flat shaft of the Hockey Stick by pointing out the abuse of the same set of fatally flawed paleoclimate proxies. Recently he’s exposed blatant biases in data selection in newer papers. Commenters on McIntyre’s site also destroyed one peer-reviewed paper within an hour of its publication by showing that its authors had failed to follow the “new and improved” method they touted in their abstract and introduction.
There just isn’t credible evidence to disprove the long-believed MWP or to prove that recent warming is “unprecedented.” Despite what some (including McIntyre himself) believe, that claim was a linchpin of the case for Urgent Mitigation.
tetris said in his post of August 25, 2013 at 9:03 pm
“Also, as per my comment above, the IPCC has now thrown Mann and his “opus” under the bus, acknowledging that the MWP did in fact occur and that it was the warmer then than now.”
______
tetris, you have been misinformed about the IPCC leaks. Apparently, statements by Jason Samenow, the Washington Post blogger on the leaks, were mistakenly interpreted to mean the MWP was warmer. For an explanation, see Jason’s update to Anthony Watt’s post on the subject at WUWT.
You also are misinformed about Michael Mann. He doesn’t believe the MWP didn’t occur.
@matthew r marler
‘McIntyre did not actually show that Mann was “wrong”, he showed that Mann was sloppy (not that unusual in pioneering research) and that Mann’s conclusion was not solidly based.’
I am not an academic so maybe there is some ever so subtle convention or something that may mean a lot to you but is totally incomprehensible to Joe Public.
But if I turn up at a client with stuff that is ‘not solidly based’ and ‘sloppy’, he would be perfectly entitled to not pay my bill on the basis that it was wrong.
Or do climatologists have a different meaning for ‘wrong’?
‘There, there, just a climo having a rush of blood like anybody could have. A childish prankette perhaps.Lets still make him the poster boy of the ‘science’ for a year or two. And maybe give him a professorship. that’ll help him to calm down poor child’
tetris and stevepostrel,
On the whole I agree. I was thinking as I wrote of what I might call my opinion earlier. My opinions in the AGW discussion have been changing across time as some of the information takes a while to sink in. The long, detailed posts on Steve McIntyre’s blog are worth reading carefully, and I had indeed forgotten them.
Latimer Alder: But if I turn up at a client with stuff that is ‘not solidly based’ and ‘sloppy’, he would be perfectly entitled to not pay my bill on the basis that it was wrong.
Lots of pioneering research, like the original MBH1998, has serious flaws. You may know that there have been serious criticisms of the work of Milliken, Margaret Mead, Robert Gallo (who shared patent rights but not Nobel Prize with Luc Montanier), and Johannes Kepler. When McIntyre first criticised MBH1998, much good would have come if Mann et al had engaged them in a formal discussion (as was done later in Annals of Applied Statistics with McShane and Wayner, Mann and Schmidt, M&M and others.) As I wrote, the criticisms of M&M were themselves criticized by other statisticians (such as the claim by M&M that MBH1998 used an inappropriate criterion for choosing the number of prinicpal components to use.)
But that was then.
Matthew R. Marler, I think you’re way off the mark:
I don’t know which statisticians you believe said this, but as far as I know, none ever did. The reason for that is it would be a stupid thing to say. The people who said it mostly relied on the claim MBH used a particular selection criteria, but that’s known to be a lie as it wouldn’t have given the values MBH used. W&A came up with a different reason, but it had no basis in statistics. It was pure cherry-picking.
On top of this, M&M did not even say there was a right number of PCs to use. They discussed what happens when you select different numbers of PCs. They showed that the PC selection issue was irrelevant save in that you kept whichever PC had a particular set of tree ring data. It doesn’t matter how many PCs you kept. If bristlecones were included, you got a hockeystick. If they weren’t, you didn’t. M&M didn’t even have a selection criteria to criticize!
What statisticians do you think said this, or even other things criticial of M&M? The only one I remember even commenting was Ian Joliffe. And he commented in favor of M&M after people misrepresented him to claim he’d oppose them.
For the record, M&M did show Michael Mann was wrong. They showed his reconstruction had no statistical validity in the period used to make claims about it. They also showed MBH’s claims of robustness were completely false. They further showed the entire results depended upon cherry-picking a small subset of their data, something MBH did via incompetent methodologies.
MBH has no validity.
Brandon Schollenberger: I don’t know which statisticians you believe said this, but as far as I know, none ever did.
I am not sure which of these were ever published, but the presentations that I heard were made at the Joint Statistical Meetings.
tetris, brandon shollenberger, steven postrel and jonathan jones:
I usually imagine that there is a group of reasonable unbiased lurkers reading each thread, and I imagine myself writing to them, even as I address particular posts. today I must admit to them you have pretty soundly thrashed my assessment of the “sloppiness” versus the “total worthlessness” of Mann’s line of work. For more technical details there are the Annals of Applied Statistics publication of McShane and Wyner, and I recommend careful reading of all the commenters, M&W’s rejoinder, and of the supporting online material; then I recommend careful reading of the subsequent discussions on ClimateAudit where it is pointed out that Mann and others have contradicted themselves in their claims of whether their hockey stick is overly sensitive to a few chosen proxy series, and where there is a substantial case made that, in fact, the hockey stick does depend on data selection.
And it is true that the IPCC stopped using the hockey stick as an emblem, for good reasons.
Matthew R Marler, thanks for that reference. It was fairly vague, but I believe I know what you’re referring to (correct me if I’m wrong). There was a session at the 2006 JSM titled, “What is the Role of Statistics in Public Policy Debates about Climate Change.” It had two speakers who discussed the hockey stick (and a third who discussed a separate issue).
Assuming this is what you had in mind, I believe your memory or knowledge has failed you. The two speakers who discussed the hockey stick were Edward Wegman and John Michael Wallace. Wegman is a statistician, but he is highly critical of Michael Mann’s work. It is impossible to believe he’d have raised the issue you raised.
Wallace, on the other hand, is not a statistician. Wallace is a climate scientist. He may have raised the issue you mention here, but he is not a statistician, much less “statisticians.”
On top of that, Wallace was part of the group responsible for the North Report, a report which coincided with the Wegman Report. The North Report has been described as schizophrenic because it accepts many criticisms of Mann’s work yet somehow (a member’s description was they “winged it”) decided Mann’s conclusions were likely correct. And while they tried to minimize their criticisms of Mann’s work, when pointedly asked if they disagreed with any of Wegman’s criticisms of that work (which had all previously been raised by McIntyre), the chairman of the panel for the report said they did not.
There’s an interesting fact I don’t believe was ever highlighted at Climate Audit. Michael Mann actually admitted his original (MBH98) reconstruction’s results were dependent entirely upon a series, NAOMER PC1, in his book. He flat out said that even though MBH98 stated the exact opposite, as did many of the responses to his critics. You can find the full quotes here (I should find the uploaded pdf file of it though as it’s formatting is much neater).
It’s a shame they didn’t stop using it all together. Mann’s work was prominently displayed in the chapter on paleoclimatology in AR4, as was other work dependent upon his. And I know it was even used in the zeroth draft of the AR5. I don’t know if it’ll be in the final version of that, but clearly, nobody is too worried about using it.
Matthew R Marler, I should clarify something:
Jonathon Jones was talking about the beginning of the hockey stick controversy, referring to the original hockey stick. This was a temperature reconstruction published in 1999, and it’s referred to as MBH. It was published in two stages, one a 1998 paper (MBH98) and one a 1999 paper (MBH99).
What you’re referrering to is a paper published a decade later, Mann 2008. This reconstruction was said to validate the original one, but it basically just repeated the MBH problems on a larger scale. Oh, and it added new problems. One of my favorites is it used actual, recorded temperature data as a “proxy” for temperature data. That was the case in 71 of the 484 series that passed his (absurd) calibration test. 15% of the data contributing to his results was actual, measured temperature data!
Sorry. Mann’s work is so bad I have trouble reigning myself in. The point was just to make sure people remember the difference between the original hockey stick and the 2008 version.
Brandon Schollenberger: The two speakers who discussed the hockey stick were Edward Wegman and John Michael Wallace. Wegman is a statistician, but he is highly critical of Michael Mann’s work.
You might be right that I misremembered. I know some of Wegman’s work from way back, before he critiqued Mann’s work, and I read his critique of Mann’s work. The session that I remembered did not have Wegman, as far as I can remember.
One of the reasons that I bother to post is for the informative feedback. I must admit that in this thread my point of view has been thoroughly demolished.
Brandon Schollenberger: What you’re referrering to is a paper published a decade later, Mann 2008.
I was in fact referring to the 1998 paper. But as I say, I have been defending my earlier opinion that Mann et al’s work was “sloppy” instead of “worthless”. Mann et al would have done science a good deed if they had responded more constructively to the criticisms that they received. A decade and more later, my earlier opinion is untenable.
Mann and Schmidt strongly defended their work and criticized M&S. Subsequently, McIntyre and his readers read the Mann et al work, including the supporting on line material at Science, and showed that Mann was inconsistent in his claims about the selection criteria for the proxies, and some other stuff. I had read through a lot of that, but in the intervening time it seemed to have had less effect on my opinion. Well, that may be how it happened, but I have been corrected.
Matthew R Marler:
I don’t see how. McShane and Wyner examined Mann 2008 not MBH98. Given you referred to M&W and the responses to it, it seems you had to have been referring to Mann 2008.
Incidentally, the 1998 reconstruction only went back to 1400 AD. The 1999 followup extended it back to 1000 AD. Only the latter covers the MWP.
A couple minor nits. One, McIntyre’s work preceeded, not followed, M&W. Two, Gavin Schmidt was not an author of the MBH or Mann 2008.
Brandon Schollenberger: A couple minor nits. One, McIntyre’s work preceeded, not followed, M&W. Two, Gavin Schmidt was not an author of the MBH or Mann 2008.
McIntyre’s work preceded M&W. However, McIntyre also commented on M&W in the AOAS volume, helped M&W with that paper, and subsequently reviewed published and online comments by Mann and Schmidt.
Schmidt and Mann commented on M&W, corrected an error (acknowledged by M&W), and contributed to the large volume of supporting on line material that accompanied the publication. Schmidt subsequently critiqued McIntyre’s criticism of M&W at RealClimate. Some of Mann’s comments at RealClimate were subsequently critiqued by McIntyre at ClimateAudit.
I did initially address MBH1998, or so I intended, and I subsequently cited M&M’s commentary on M&W, which as you noted, referred back to Mann 2008 not MBH1998.
There’s lots more in this history and in my biography. I truncated them drastically, to no good effect.
Watch out for the Little People.
===========
Trenberth, the Frightened, returns to his bogeyman under the bed scenario, little realizing the surprise is Santa Claus and won’t come out ’til it’s cold. Maybe he should just put up his stocking, and behave.
==================
Judith, I think your analysis differentiators pretty much hits the bulls-eye. A way to look at it is that it’s not the differentiators that drive the ostracism, it’s the ostracism that drives the increasingly desperate need for some differentiators.
Fan,
I don’t think you realize that when you talk about ideological purity, you are clearly talking about people such as yourself, true believers in catastrophic man-made global warming/climate change.
Skeptics, (who you insist on calling “denialists” – which does not speak well of your commitment to truth, or to open discourse, but instead to your inability to resist using pejorative descriptors to marginalize those who disagree with you) are not the ones speaking of or insisting on purity, or consensus, or 97% of anything. There are many levels of skepticism out there, and none of these skeptics are trumpeting percentages of those in agreement, or claiming that the science is settled, or insisting on conformity, or commissioning studies to show that catastrophic AGW believers are conspiracy theorists.
Those who insist in purity are you and those who think and argue like yourself. You are simply projecting your own actions and practices on those you disagree with. Are you really so blinded by your own ideology that you can’t consider this as being a real possibility? It seems obvious to me.
Trenberth’s notion that the fugitive heat is camped out in the deep oceans – neat theory to salvage the consensus view, but, serly, how robust is the empirical data?
Not very, I’m assuming, or he would nail his colors to it – rather than trying to give this 20-year warning on atmospheric warming.
Trenberth believe that heat goes into the depths below 200 m, without manifesting itself in the first 200 m, and like a joker in a box will jump up, concentrating itself back up to a high heat density, then warm the surface.
How or why is never explained.
As Mosher says, its all unicorns.
Everyone who thinks that oceans have a major role in the multidecadal variability must agree with Trenberth on that. There are no other alternatives.
DocMartyn | August 24, 2013 at 5:39 pm |
Trenberths believe that heat goes into the depths below 200 m
>>
“Believes” ? Is this the climate ‘science’ alternative to measurements now ?
Pekka just when did you start using the term ‘multidecadal variability’ and giving it an credence?
Pekka Pirilä:
“Everyone who thinks that oceans have a major role in the multidecadal variability must agree with Trenberth on that. There are no other alternatives.”
I think it’s an interesting area. That the Oceans might change their heat energy transfer rate. Trenberth may be right or close to right.
I did some plotting comparing temperatures and PDO index several years ago, certainly similar to what very many had done before, but I didn’t know at the time. While it was clear that the data was not sufficient for drawing any strong conclusions some of the plots left the impression that there is probably something there.
Since that time I have considered it most likely that what we see is a combination of AGW and natural variability and that the natural variability has a strong component of multidecadal nature, to what extent that component is (quasi)periodic cannot really be inferred from the data. It could have an approximate period of about 60 years, or it could have less regular transitions that are spaced by a couple of decades.
If I would have to pick a length for each “half period” I would pick 30 years rather than the 20 years proposed by Trenberth, but give only little weight on that particular pick.
My view is that climate scientists should avoid picking some specific values unless they have real justification for those. If they make badly supported predictions about the future, they are likely to be proven wrong as often as right. That’s not good for the science. I don’t believe that any of the models can describe correctly the natural variability (i.e. get right results for right and understood reasons). It’s not just random variability around the trend, but there’s some real but badly understood dynamics involved. The present models do not agree with observations as discussed by von Storch at Kilmazwiebel.
I have written many times that the climate scientists should not belittle the uncertainties. Those who believe that immediate action is needed should explain why they believe so in spite of the uncertainties, as many certainly do.
@Ragnaar
I think it’s an interesting area. That the Oceans might change their heat energy transfer rate. Trenberth may be right or close to right.
So why doesn’t someone just take the oceans’ damn temperature and settle the issue for us for heaven’s sake?
Why are we reduced to people merely having ideas of what might or might not be happening ? Hardly a basis for political action forcing vastly more expensive energy on the world.
Hi Gina – up until recently everyone was measuring down to 700m and wondering why it hasn’t been warming this century. Kevin Trenberth looked at the CERES satellite data – noticed the trend was positive and declared the energy missing.
This is the CERES data. OLR is outgoing longwave radiation – the infrared everyone is concerned with. There is not of a trend with OLR. RSW is reflected shortwave – visible light reflected from clouds, land, ice, snow, etc. There is a trend to less reflection – so more energy in and a warming planet. The net is by convention up warming. It is all shown typically as anomalies – relative change – in Watts/^2. So this is the source of the missing energy.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES-BAMS-2008-with-trend-lines1.gif.html?sort=3&o=117
Transfer of energy between the oceans and atmosphere is largely variable because of ENSO. Explained here. http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/enso_variation_and_global_warm.html
In El Nino there is a reduction of cloud in the tropics and energy moves from the ocean to the atmosphere. As a result the planet cools. The reverse in La Nina.
The situation is shown here with spikes of OLR in El Nino and troughs in La Nina. The past decade or so have seen more cold water upwelling in the eastern Pacific. So the surface is cooler and the winds have picked up causing more eddies to penetrate deep into the ocean. There is a balance of processes here – warm water rises and eddies move surface water deeper. The stronger the wind the more eddies and the warmer the subsurface. The heat will come to the surface again as soon as the wind drops. Don’t let them tell you any different.
Karina von Schuckmann had the bold idea to interrogate ARGO data to 2000m . ARGO is a program involving some 3000 floats sampling temperature and salinity to 2000m starting in 2003. What she found was a modest increase in heat to 2000m. About 0.69mm/yr sea level rise from warming oceans – 0.55 W/m^2 increase in power in over the period and a small decrease in mass. The latter is ENSO related as well. The power trend is entirely consistent with CERES shortwave over the period. Voila – the missing heat.
There is a bit of a problem with ocean heat data before ARGO. The splice between the datasets is improbable to say the least. The dearth of prior measurements beyond 700m makes it all very hit and miss.
The most interesting thing about ENSO though is that it varies in intensity and frequency in periods from decades to millennia.
The decadal periodicity you can see for yourself. La Nina (blue) dominant to 1976, El Nino (red) to 1998 and La Nina again since.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ts.gif
This seems to have an impact on clouds as well – decreasing to 1998, increasing in the 1998/2001 climate shift and a slight increase in the ARGO and CERES period.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandlaken2013_zps3c92a9fc.png.html?sort=3&o=15
Pekka Pirila: Everyone who thinks that oceans have a major role in the multidecadal variability must agree with Trenberth on that.
Trenberth has made a somewhat more precise assertion than that; besides, he waited until after it was clear that the GCMs were inaccurate.
Hello Chief,
Thanks for the numerous considered replies.
(1) Ok so CERES tells us that while there is a trend in the net radiation budget in watts/m^2, making for a net increase in the planet’s e heat content, this is all down to RSW, since OLR shows no trend.
Now as I understand it, the basic mechanism of AGW is capture and restransmission of OLR, some of which heads back down to land and oceans, further warming them. But if OLR shows no trend while CO2 increases apace, does that not mean CO2 is off the hook?
Bingo Tom,
I’d like to see fan state exactly what I deny. I don’t even deny fan’s ability to post a worthwhile comment, despite his track record of not doing so.
Perhaps if we all acknowledged his man love for Dr Hansen, he wouldn’t feel the need to exhibit so frequently.
Trenberth is half right – as I was.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/DIETMARDOMMENGET_zps939fe12e.png.html?sort=3&o=10
The other half is what happens with radiative feedbacks to ocean and atmospheric circulation.
e.g. http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Loeb2011-Fig1.png.html?sort=3&o=53
Chief
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Loeb2011-Fig1.png.html?sort=3&o=53
Chief:
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Loeb2011-Fig1.png.html?sort=3&o=53
I have two statements and then two questions:
The LW TOA flux in graph (a) come from different measurement devices/systems.
Graph (b) has the same data but now “corrected”.
Query: The “corrections” are justified?
Query: How does graph (b) LW out show feedback?
I thought that Karina von Schuckmann found heat accumulating at 2000 meters and by-passing the first 700 meters. Right?
Feedbacks (which ones? clouds? air/ocean currents?) were doing exactly what? countering the accumulation by dissipating energy out? or providing a screen and reducing SW in?
In my head, and spending a bit of time at the sea shore, the heat accumulating during calm daytime weather gets mixed into deeper layers when the seas get rough. The heated surface water gets mixed to depth.
From what I perceived from ARGO data and what K v S was saying, heat bypassed the surface to 700 meters and went down to 2000 meters instead.
More likely than not, I am confusing SW heating with LW cooling as well as not addressing specific layers: TOA, Tropospheric, Surface (Land/Water), and Oceans including at depth.
If you find the time, might you re-guide me to some readings to help sort out this issue?
Regards
Judith, you write “So . . . what is the differentiator? Why is there such hostility between the two ‘sides’, even though there is little at this point to discriminate the two sides in terms of science?
`
Sorry, but there is an enormous lot of scientific difference between the two sides in terms of science. There may not be much difference between what you think is the correct science, and what Kevin Trenbeth thinks. But there is an enormous difference between the science of the true denier/skeptics and the ardent warmists. Let us start with your statement that “The uncertainties surrounding climate sensitivity are such that beliefs as low as 1C and as high as 6C cannot be judged as irrational.” The true denier/skeptic claims that the climate sensitivity is indistinguishable from zero. And the disagreements get greater from there on in.
The glass is at a level
Its estimate our aim;
Optimists observe,
Pessimists declaim.
==============
@jim cripwell
You say
‘The true denier/skeptic claims that the climate sensitivity is indistinguishable from zero.’
Can you provide us with the name of a ‘true denier/skeptic’ who claims this? I don’t think I’ve ever come across one.
And how would you categorise a sceptic who doesn’t make that claim? Are they ‘untrue’?
I fear that – like all believers in any religion – you think that all who don’t believe, do so for the same reasons. This is just not true.
Example. Many British football fans do not support Manchester United. But that does not mean that they all support a club called ‘Not Manchester United’. There are more than 100 professional soccer clubs in England. They are all not Manchester United, but they are all different.
Latimer, you write “Can you provide us with the name of a ‘true denier/skeptic’ who claims this? I don’t think I’ve ever come across one.”
Yes, me. I suggest you frequent WUWT, there are lots of commenters over there who agree with me.
You also write “And how would you categorise a sceptic who doesn’t make that claim? Are they ‘untrue’? .”
Sorry, I overhyped that bit.
Does the US still own Manchester United?
Latimer its called projection. Jim C cannot imagine the reasons why people have not joined his cult and therefore has to project beliefs onto them that preclude ‘deniers’ from coming over to the dark side.
Don, you write “Jim C cannot imagine the reasons why people have not joined his cult”
Wrong on all counts. I dont have a cult, and I could not care less whether anyone else agrees with me or not. All I am interested in, is getting my ideas as close to what the science actually is, as I can. I come onto blogs to throw out my ideas, and, hopefully, people who know more about the subject than I do, will tell me where I am wrong. If in this process, there happen to be people who think I might have a point, well then maybe I have advanced the cause of science.
Jim explains science reminds me of this
http://www.epicfail.com/2012/05/14/translation-fail-3/
@capt dallas
I believe the majority shareholders in MUFC are the Glazer Brothers, who are American. That is not quite the same as being ‘owned by the US’.
But it is clear that the Glazer Bros. are just a front for the Koch Bros. and that Old Trafford is little more than a badly disguised payout window for the Big Oil Denier Machine, Frack the Planet, Drown the Polies and Roast Babies Alive UK branch.
While ‘The Team’ on the pitch are busy winning European Cups and the like as a distraction, the hordes of red-scarved individuals at the ‘match’ are in reality queuing up to get their orders from Mr. Big (or Sir Alex Ferguson as he used to present himself) about which ‘weaker cherry-picked parts’ of the Climate Science Empire to attack next.
Half-time ‘Team talks’ consist of re-propagandising the sceptic masses with new ideology driven denialist demagoguery. And the crowd’s apparent joy at the final whistle when United overwhelm another side of patsies is nothing to do with the result but the knowledge that 5pm is payout time.
At that appointed hour Sir Alex (or his latest incarnation – David Moyes) presses the big Green (ironic huh!) button to send the unthinking knuckle dragging slavering sceptic adherents their bribe money for the fortnight. And to unleash yet more terrible damage on the peaceful and unsuspecting Climos whose only wish in life is to advance the cause of Modelled Truth and the Rights of Mann.
But all that is way to the North of me. I am not a Manchester United fan. My team is rather more obscure and rather less successful. ‘Tis only the slavering and the knuckle dragging and the ability to be bribed that we agree on.
(BTW, I can provide documented proof for only the first paragraph. But I have a model that has sometimes given results ‘not inconsistent’ with the other findings.So I’ll call those ‘experimental evidence’ shall I? One has to be very careful with literal transatlantic minds).
Steven, you write “Jim explains science reminds me of this.”
Our hostess says she has a hide like an allegator. I am a lot older than she is, and I have a hide that is 10 times tougher than an allegator’s. I am proud of what I write. Just remember “He who laughs last, laughs longest.”
I don’t think I can ever stop laughing at Adler’s stuff.
=========
He who laughs last, laughs longest.”
not really. it depends when you start laughing.
“Our hostess says she has a hide like an
allegator”
As in, a person who makes allegations ?
Fear and loathing of sceptics?
When I started observing this discussion about 5 years ago, the loathing was very apparent.
Part of it seemed to come from the Team being completely aghast that anyone who was not a full time academic would have the bare-faced cheek to challenge their work. Climategate makes it very clear that they felt they had control of all the important levers of power of the academic publishing machine, that no junior climatologist would have the cojones to risk a ruined career by asking awkward questions and that basically what they said went. The subtitle to their one to many propaganda mouthpiece ‘climate science from climate scientists’ says it all. ‘We tell – you peasants just hear The Word and Obey’ is what it is meant to convey.
And then along came McSteve. A Canuck and not an academic so completely unfazed by the normal niceties of career and tenure and status and approval and citations and all the things that the Team were used to have working in their favour. And worse still , despite his background as a mining engineer (can’t you just hear the academic contempt dripping from those words?) he seemed to know a lot more statistics than Mann and co did (35 years experience of using them in reality counts).
None of this would have mattered much if he had no voice. But the internet and blogging was just starting up, And however much the journals might have been in The Team’s pocket, the blogs weren’t.
Mr McIntyre is unfailingly courteous. But also like Benton Fraser in Due South he never gives up. And as Jonathan has so correctly pointed out he was right and the Team were wrong. And in their heart of hearts everybody knows it.
The loathing part is easy – he outsmarted and outstatisticked and outpublicised them
But its only in the last couple of years that I have started to detect the fear. Because many climatologists have seen the recent pause and the lower sensitivity estimates as real threats to their existence. Its a simple equation, if climate isn’t going to cause global death and destruction by next Tuesday, then people aren’t going to be prepared to spend so much public money on researching it and the number of posts will decline..as will the once high status of climatology. And especially people will ask why so much blood and treaure is spent on so many climate models that have blatantly failed to do their job despite huge ‘investments’.
Uo until say, Copenhage, climatology and its associated hangers-on was a real growth industry. Fast expanding into new fields. And fast expanding its total revenue. It was a bubble.
But since Copenhagen that’s changed and the industry is hitting a round of what is politely called ‘consolidation’ and less politey called redundancies.
Sceptics have little to fear by this process. In the main they are not academics – or at least not full-time climatologists. And, despite endless attempts to pretend otherwise, there really is no Big Oil Denier machine funding their work. Just an interest in seeing science done properly and in drawing appropriate conclusions from the very rickety evidence. And its probably true that many have had reasonably successful careers in other fields and are not shrinking violets over-impressed by status or titles or the other gongs so revered within academia. They do not respect or observe formal hierarchies or shibboleths or conventions. They are outsiders..and increasingly powerful ones.
Perhaps the best example of their increasing power was the sad tale of Gergis et al…a paper that after passing all the ‘quality control’ of the academic machine was published with great fanfare – and lasted less than a week before its fatal flaws were exposed in the sceptical blogosphere.
So they loathe the sceptics because they are often right. And they fear them because they cannot be controlled. Barbarians at the gate. Ripping down the walls of the nice comfy controlled academic environment.
Lets reconvene in 10 years and see what the GAT is doing, how many full-time climatologists there are (fewer than now) and how much notice the general public and pollies take. It’s a dying industry.
+1
To infinity and beyond.
=================
Latimer is right on the money.
The precocious behaviour of “Climate Scientists” of the IPCC team persuasion,destroys their credibility.
Climategate only confirmed the doubts that they created.
Data unavailable, attack the inquirer, ignore the question, sneer, demean and avoid.
They are doomed to fail as public attention focusses upon climate science, they sense this.
Otherwise the gatekeeping they practise, makes no logical sense.
Reading some of the earlier work of Travesty Man and friends, shows they had no evidence of global warming, never mind man caused global warming and actually published these papers acknowledging this.
@ John Robertson
Its a wonderful irony that many sceptics cite being blown off, or treated with arrogant contempt and disdain by (for example) the denizens of Real Climate as the tipping point that solidified their doubts.
Their huge hubris thus unwittingly engineered the means of their own downfall. Just like the Greeks thought…Hubris followed by Nemesis. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh……
+100,000,000
Interesting thoughts.
(35 years experience of using them in reality counts). That is exactly right! Experience can’t be learned overnight.
> Mr McIntyre is unfailingly courteous.
Le mot juste:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/3785579961
***
To determine and examine the networks involved, it might suffice to note who says what about whom or what.
Language is a social art.
@willard
When your post comes with an English translation, I will have some time to read it. Until then, my diary is booked. Sorry.
Dear Latimer,
Let me try again:
1. Your claim that the Auditor is “unfailingly courteous” is patently false.
2. Until you concede, I could quote counterexample after counterexample.
3. I’m not bluffing – only trying to help.
That was the first part of the comment.
Please tell me if that’s clear enough for you.
Hope this helps,
willard couldn’t appreciate the politesse of the like of McIntyre.
===========
@willard
Excellent!
See – when you put your mind to it, you *can* write in relatively clear understandable English. If you practice this skill more often you might find more people stop to read and fewer just have you on permanent scrollby.
Writing in obscure allusions might give you the impression that you are a great intellectual in the French tradition, but actually persuades everyone else that you are incapable of expressing a sensible thought or following a logical argument.
Maybe you have some examples where Mr McIntyre has been less than courteous. Perhaps he used a cuss word when a hammer fell on his toe or whne The Team hid their dodgy data from him for the fifteenth time.
I will rephrase my remark to ‘Mr McIntyre’s default position is to be extremely courteous’. Happy now? Has it changed the thrust of the argument one iota? Nope.
But keep on with the English practice. It’s obviously doing you good.
McIntyre, relative to the Hockey Team, is extremely courteous.
> I will rephrase my remark to ‘Mr McIntyre’s default position is to be extremely courteous’.
Good. Let’s see the effect:
Let’s go back to Latimer’s claim:
> Has it changed the thrust of the argument one iota? Nope.
Was this description part of an argument? Some might disagree about that. In any case, the “default position” signals the excuse that Steve’s lacks of courtesy is explained by the behaviour of his opponents, i.e. the famous You Made Me Do It of transactional analysis.
Also, the claim that Steve is extremely courteous sounds quite subjective. Considering that it applies to some kind of the idealization of a “default position”, it might very well be empty. From what we can gather, many “default positions” from the Auditor were certainly not extremely courteous. Mike’s & Phil’s “default positions” were also quite courteous, as we can read in our beloved Bishop’s political hit job.
***
Speaking of “the Team”, some might prefer The Kyoto Flames:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/5874729706
Courtesy of the Auditor, of course.
Latimer,
You said it all in a nutshell. And the tremds lend support to your last sentence. It is the trend of rapodly dying interest that is scaring the CAGW doomsayers.
You said:
Sure is and this demonstrates how rapidly it is dying:
Climate Change
http://climatechange.carboncapturereport.org/cgi-bin/topic?#activitytimeline
Carbon credits
http://carboncredits.carboncapturereport.org/cgi-bin/topic?#activitytimeline
Alternative energy
http://alternative.carboncapturereport.org/cgi-bin/topic?#activitytimeline
Wind energy
http://wind.carboncapturereport.org/cgi-bin/topic?#activitytimeline
Latimer Alder:
“Sceptics have little to fear by this process. In the main they are not academics – or at least not full-time climatologists.”
Excellent point. It’s the attributes of the players. The Skeptics can freestyle, make their own decisions, take bigger risks, are less encumbered. The Scientists work under less flexible conditions. A more structured system.
Sceptics have little reason to fear losing their jobs as the memes implode. You have entirely missed the context.
@ragnaar
Seems to me that a 40 year-old redundant climate modeller is going to be pretty much unemployable.
The private sector won’t want such an individual because an entire career spent in academia is no preparation for doing commercial work, and a great in-depth knowledge of a completely failed modelling regime is of limited to zero useful value. Commerce places a great value on getting real practical things right and none on writing papers. The academic world has the opposite idea.
Academia will be reducing, not increasing posts, and modellers are the obvious candidates to go. Despite huge investment their failure has been so universally big and so universally apparent.
Maybe there’s some thinktank halfway house inbetween the two that will take a few of the better candidates, but overall its a pretty bleak lookout for them. No wonder they fight tooth and nail to keep the ‘consensus lifeboat’ afloat. It’s all they have between them and burger flipping.
+10. Mirrors my thoughts a well. Overwrought experts under siege by the intellectually curious, rather than the energy-funded special interests they perceive.
We could just name this post “A Summary of the History of Climate Science” and make it a sticky top post for newcomers.
A good coverage of the “debate” from the viewpoint of a sceptic. I think that choice of adjectives and the ascribing of motives could have been left out but hey, its a good read!
My impression is that Trenberth has never behaved in a way that had led to the animosity between the main stream and skeptics. I don’t understand his thinking on the extreme events, but his views in that area could not maintain the animosity.
There’s some truth in the observation that Mann vs. McIntyre had a major role in the development. Reading the book of Mann on the fight tells certainly more about his role than that of the others, but several more people from both sides have certainly been needed. It’s typical of many of those that they see all kind of evil motives for their opponents behavior.
@pekka
I trust you have also read Mr Montford’s book The Hockey Stick Illusion which tells the story primarily from McIntyre’s viewpoint. And, I’d suggest, is rather less self-serving.
I haven’t read that, but I believe that I have read enough on views of various people involved. What was striking in Mann’s book is that it presents so direct evidence on his own prejudices and readiness to draw conclusions about the motives of other people.
A book written by a third party is of less interest to me, I have no need to learn about Mr Montford.
it’s clear that McIntyre can control himself better than Mann. Digger deeper to what he has done might, however, reveal behavior that deviates from the formal politeness shown on the surface. (I wouldn’t write that unless I had perceived some sign of that, but on that I may also err.)
Mr Montford writes as a historian and explainer. I don’t think I learnt anything about him as an individual (as it should be). But an awful lot about the events that led to the debunking of the Hockey Stick and the Team.
Pekka
Yes, there’s no real need for anyone to know anything about Mr Montford.
But I suggest there is a real need to know what he wrote, an account of deep-seated institutional climate science corruption, as revealed by Climategate and the subsequent attempts to sweep it under the mat.
A good writer with an agenda can make you learn both what’s true and what’s not without helping in seeing what’s what. Worse writers like Mann are often much more revealing when they write about themselves.
Memphis,
I’m pretty sure that i wouldn’t learn anything by reading Montford’s book. I have read quite a lot about the case elsewhere, and I have done that having the possibility to contrast opposing claims and to interpret original material keeping some balance in the selection process.
Adding to that his book would not be likely to make me accept any claim that I haven’t already accepted.
Another point is that I have been involved in science for decades. I have seen that scientists do not always behave properly in any field. Building a carrier in science is highly competitive. In a highly competitive environment all kind of tricks are used, and people are also surprisingly good in making themselves believe that they have not done anything wrong.
Scientists are human, and often pretty strange humans, science as a process is successful in spite of that, and perhaps sometimes because of that.
The way climate science gained rapidly prestige made the situation somewhat worse than in most sciences, but not really unique.
@pekka
You seem strangely resistant to reading what has generally been acknowledged as a classic.
How about ‘The Age of Global Warming’ by Darwall. Has this got on to your reading list?
By whom?
The main point is that I want to have the control of my sources. I don’t trust a selection of sources by anyone else, in particular not by anyone whom I suspect of having an agenda.
“Another point is that I have been involved in science for decades”
Me too. I have see things which lead me to believe that it is not only cream that floats to the top.
However, what independent analysis of our respective fields can we judge the fields of Physics, Biomedical Science and Climate Science since Hansen 1981?
Well, the pursuit of science in physics and biomedicals has produced a huge amount of technology. Humankind has been enriched by the spin-offs of research physics and in biomedicine. Just what has Climate Science given us? Seriously, what do we know now that we didn’t know before, that can enrich our lives? I think changing the death rate of childhood leukemia from>90% to the present <10% is a rather good payoff.
Do tell me what the period of 30 years has given us?
New statistical methods?
Better instrumentation?
A better thermos flask?
Just what have we got for the more than trillion dollars spent?
I cannot see much return on the investment. Spending it on Dementia research or curing river blindness or malaria would have given us something.
But, after a trillion bucks, just WTF is the 'equilibrium' climate sensitivity?
Pekka Pirilä | August 24, 2013 at 5:14 pm |
I don’t trust a selection of sources by anyone else, in particular not by anyone whom I suspect of having an agenda.<<
The obvious one being the IPCC.
Pekka Pirilä | August 24, 2013 at 5:14 pm |
Oh, please, Pekka … Your biases are showing, again! Gaia forbid that you should read anything that might show your “suspicions” to be unfounded!
Yet, you dutifully read Mann’s latest creative writing exercise in self-promotion. Did you not “suspect” that Mann might have had (and continues to be driven by) an agenda?! An agenda, one might add, that Mann has shown to be about as far from the practice of “communicating” credible and trustworthy “science” as it could possibly be.
DocMartyn,
People in general obviously have a psychotic compulsion to act irrationally from time to time. In some cases, it appears cultural. The “potlatch”, when accompanied by the destruction of the goods received, and the beggaring of the giver, is but one example.
The amount of time, money, and effort, devoted to climatology has produced, as you point out, precisely nothing of value.
Furthermore, the whole charade has been based on an hypothesis, which has been demonstrated experimentally to have no merit whatsoever. In other words, the GHE effect purely does not exist.
Any experiment which sets out to show the existence of such an effect, shows its non-existence. This is how science normally advances. Climatology, however, appears to be a form of infectious delusional psychosis. Impossible, but apparent to an objective observer.
A self proclaimed “climatologist” like Trenberth, is now apparently claiming that the ocean has entered one of its “soaking up” modes. Such is climatological science. The supply of climatological duct tape used for repairing the creeping, slowly collapsing Juggernaut, pushed by the CO2 worshippers, appears to be diminishing.
Obviously I support your comments fully.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Doc @ 6.01, Latimer throughout: excellent.
> You seem strangely resistant to reading what has generally been acknowledged as a classic.
If resisting is a behaviour, why use the precautionary “seem” to describe it?
Heh, I haven’t read the Bish’s Tender Tome, but it’s the next best thing to being there. A word to the Perspicacious Pekka.
============
Pekka Pirila,
You again expose your pro CAGW doomsayer bias. You say:
So you admit you read Mann but wont read “The Hockey Stick Illusion – the corruption of science”
You read only what supports your already formed views. You read Michael Mann and believe him, yet you won’t read “The Hockey Stick Illusion – the corruption of science”. What a joke.
How do you expect people to take you as anything more that a partisan, CAGW doomsayer and scaremonger?
> Mr Montford writes as a historian and explainer.
See for yourself:
Thus concludes Bish’s Tender Tome.
Rather less self-serving indeed.
Pekka wouldn’t sound like such a naif about all three if he’d followed Climate Audit such that he wouldn’t need to read the Bish’s Tender Tome. willard, it’s still there.
===============
“The main point is that I want to have the control of my sources. I don’t trust a selection of sources by anyone else, in particular not by anyone whom I suspect of having an agenda.”
This is conscious avoidance of critical thinking in a nut shell. Typical behavior of a default progressive, who has been taught since elementary school not to think for himself.
Contrary thought is dangerous, and to be avoided at all costs. The only way to view it is through the filter of approved progressives filters, like progressive media, Think Progress, Skeptical Science….
As a contrary example, when I want to know what the “consensus” thinks, I go to their sources. The New York Times, Huffington Post, Real Climate, Skeptical Science, etc. When I was studying history and economics, I didn’t learn what progressives thought from conservative media. (Well, there really wasn’t any except the Wall Street Journal editorial page and National Review.) I read Marx, and Lenin, and Mao, and Alinsky, and others.
When kept hearing how fascist conservatives were, I didn’t just read the rantings on the left making the charge, I read Mussolini, even plowed through Mein Kampf, the most boring book ever written. If you want to learn what other people think, you have to have the intellectual courage to read what they themselves say about it. Otherwise, when you make your decision, you are merely regurgitating what someone else told you to think.
Oh, and I read all those before making up my mind about my political/economic beliefs, which started out considerably more progressive than they are now.
I would be embarrassed to admit that i was afraid to read what someone else wrote on a topic in which I was interested. But that is unfortunately the norm for most progressives, “moderates,” “independents,” and libertarians.
Pekka presumes to speak of the corruption of science without having read the most lucid and most recent exposition. Sure, Pekka, it’s a simulacrum, of the twisting, the wrenching, the tormenting destruction of the highest enlightenment principles; skip it, not worth your bother.
Nor have I read it; no need.
=========================
GaryM,
” I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing”
The Importance of Being Earnest.
Oscar Wilde
> [I]f he’d followed Climate Audit such that he wouldn’t need to read the Bish’s Tender Tome.
If purple was the colour of his true love’s airs, it would.
Doc, I’ve long said the internet is a wonderful place where people can violently disagree without coming to blows, or worse yet, descending to agreement.
=============
Pekka Pirila,
What arrogance! What ignorance!
Pekka Pirila,
Rephrased: You want to filter so you read only what supports your beliefs.
We’ve seen that many times on past threads in discussions about energy, mitigation policies, carbon pricing policies and renewable energy.
Pekka’s most egregious ignorance is at the depth of his credibility loss among skeptics if he is not intimately familiar with the details of this most impressive corruption of science, and policy. Sure it’s a tall order, but it’s a short book; taller and shorter than willard.
===============
Doc martyn
+1
> What arrogance! What ignorance!
I think I can prove that Pekka could learn at least one thing from reading our beloved Bishop’s political hit job:
On page 27-28 there is the Deming Affair. It is claimed that “Lindzen of MIT has confirmed that the email was written by Jonathan Overpeck.” But note 12, which follows this claim, points to an Arxiv document authored by Lindzen. There is one mention to Overpeck in that document: a signature to an international conference invitation. The only mention of “getting rid” of MWP cites (Deming, 2005) as authority.
Here is when the Auditor might revive yet another introduction to check-kiting.
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/15401067079
@willard
You quote the last three sentences of 449 pages of Montford’s book. And the final section from which it is extracted is called ‘Where do we stand now?’ .Seems not unreasonable for the author to finally express his opinion at this point.
I think my suggestion that it is ‘rather less self-serving’ than Mann’s book will stand up well to rigorous scrutiny if this is the best you can do. We can do a page-by-page comparison for ‘self-serving’ and keep score if you wish.
@willard
‘If resisting is a behaviour, why use the precautionary “seem” to describe it?’
1. To show that it is my opinion. Short for ‘seem to me’
2. To recognise that English is not Pekka’s 1st language and that there may be a translation difficulty.
3. To avoid stupid irrelevant nit-picking arguments from folk such as you.
But MWP!
=======
> To show that it is my opinion. Short for ‘seem to me’.
It does seemed that way to me too, Latimer. If we are right, then even behaviours such as resisting does seem to go through some kind of interpretation from the observer. Which means that to interpret Pekka’s behaviour as resisting, you need to work with much more than his speech patterns. In a nutshell, you need to work out a model of Pekka’s mind. This model can rest on a simulation, a theory, or whatnot:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-representation/
This does not matter for my point, which was to hint at a second refutation of your argument elsewhere in the thread about fear and loathing.
I hope this is clear enough as it is. But I can rephrase more carefully if need be.
> [I]t’s a short book.
I would not call a 482 pages’ book a short one.
There might be better ways to convince Pekka. Here’s a quote from the cover:
> … one of the best science books in years … deserves to win prizes.
Thus wrote Matt Ridley, in Prospect magazine.
The text from the quote is in red.
Some might have preferred purple.
> [I]t’s a short book.
I would not call a 482 pages’ book a short one.
There might be better ways to convince Pekka. Here’s a quote from the cover:
> … one of the best science books in years … deserves to win prizes.
Thus wrote Matt Ridley, in Prospect magazine.
> [I]t’s a short book.
I would not call a 482 pages’ book a short one.
I didn’t read the book, but I read McIntyre’s account of the e-mails on his website, and I think it was good. It showed that Mann was somewhat a hothead and proactive with the hockey stick. There was a lot of push back on how weak the hockey stick was among his peers, including the way they talked among themselves about Mann’s attitude, and they were especially concerned about convincing Richard Alley’s independent NAS committee who were skeptical of tree rings anyway. In the end, tree rings back in Mann’s 1998 and 1999 papers were weak evidence alone.
I wrote it in one line: The Piltdown Mann’s Crook’t Stick.
=================
Tree rings are a pretty tough sell even within the climate science community. The divergence problem was their main concern, mostly because they didn’t have an explanation of why tree rings showed “cooling” when the climate was clearly warming. The e-mails make this quandary clear.
It wouldn’t have been a quandary except for the need to defend the most important icon of CAGW. Had there been no ’cause’, they’d have figured out the flaws in the proxies, at least their own ‘proxies’. You are getting warmer, Jim D, some thoughts worth pursuing there.
============
AR3 became a big deal possibly because of the hockey stick. It was an advertising job to be able to say warmest in a millennium because that was Mann’s new result. By AR4 the MWP had made a return among the uncertainty lines, so it was short-lived. Climategate came out after AR4, and those e-mails were already 10 years old, and their actual effect had already faded. As I said, I am skeptical of tree rings unless they are backed up by other evidence. AGW doesn’t need them. The other part of Climategate was that Jones didn’t like McIntyre, who thought he was hiding something, but in the end BEST confirmed Jones’s land record a few years later.
Jim D | August 24, 2013 at 11:30 pm |
Tree rings are a pretty tough sell even within the climate science community. The divergence problem was their main concern, mostly because they didn’t have an explanation of why tree rings showed “cooling” when the climate was clearly warming,
_______
According to kim, more CO2 makes plants grow faster, but the stupid trees ignored the rising CO2 and grew slower. kim should give those trees a good talking to.
It was just one tree. We think someone forgot to water it.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/most-influential-tree-3501.jpg
@willard
Call me if and when you come back up from your rabbit hole. I don’t plan to chase you there. Have fun
HR writes
You haven’t obviously not read at all what I say about that book, and about what the book tells about Mann.
You have only noticed that I have read the book, and you have your prejudices about me.
I have bought a few books related to the controversies. Other authors are Hulme, Pielke Jr., and Leframboise. Hulme and Pielke Jr. are interesting and their books contain a lot of good thinking (while I don’t agree on everything), Mann’s book is rather bad but revealing, Leframboise is just unbearable for me.
Hah, the crimson on the thin ice ain’t berry juice.
==================
@Willard
our beloved Bishop’s political hit job:
A undisputed account of what happened is a “hit job” is it?
Doubtless you prefer to shoot the messenger, and go with the political cover-up jobs run by the organzations involved, that investigated and exonerated themselves, using taxpayers’ money to bribe their pals to run these shams.
Pekka and willard both shudder and shy at the book; it’s changed too many minds for their appetites.
=================
McIntyre’s viewpoint is one of a wealthy former Canadian mining executive.
As the tar sands operation in Canada is likely the world’s largest mining operation ever conceived, and he never seems to give an opinion of that debacle, I would think he is not the most objective participant in the debate.
The statistics of the energy return on energy invested for a low-grade fossil fuel such as tar sands would seem a natural fit for a statistician of McIntyre’s caliber. Yet he doesn’t seem to want to lift a finger and help estimate how much more carbon emissions that enterprise would add due to its low efficiency. I wonder why that is?
The only answer I get is that he can do whatever he wants. Well, so can I and I do get a kick out of continuing to point out the stunning hypocrisy of the denier camp.
Reading at Hilary’s blog the following, re the IPCC documented ‘pretended response’ to IAC recommendations concerning
panel members avoiding conflicts of interest by reviewing
their own or employers’ papers, is enough to make yer weep
at such prevarication, ( ter put it politely.) bts
http://hro001.wordpress.com/2011/05/21/ipcc-and-conflict-of-interest-tapping-into-the-team-work-side-step/
Gergis alone odorizes the rot way over, and I can smell it all the way over here.
============
Web smears tar
On the walls where
Minnie’s hottah,
Not at Torontah.
============
> Seems not unreasonable for the author to finally express his opinion at this point.
Perhaps, but this “opinion” contradicts the claim that our beloved Bishop wrote his political hit job “as a historian and explainer”.
And if that’s not enough, lots of such “opinions” drip page after page. Let’s try to find one by opening the pamphlet almost at random (with thanks to Beth for inspiration):
This was on page 305, in the middle of the political hit job.
Here are some comments on this old episode of ClimateBall.
***
First, note 198 leads to the citation, and nothing else. That is, no other references are made about this episode. Here are two important links:
http://climateaudit.org/2007/11/20/something-new-in-the-loehle-network/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/past-reconstructions/
Notice the dates. There are many others. In what Latimer considers the work of an historian, our beloved Bishop does not refer to his material. This is not the only place he forgets his references.
My favourite is when he uses a “forum” to refer to the Climate Sceptics mailing list. This led to a very interesting discussion at Lucia’s a while ago. Another time, perhaps.
***
Second, the Auditor’s position on Loehle’s paper was far from being as critical as portrayed. See for yourself:
http://climateaudit.org/category/multiproxy-studies/loehle-2007/
Third, the claim that “the more substantive criticisms of the paper related to the absence of any estimates of errors” is quite subjective. Gavin does seem to hold, in the post cited above:
Validation does seem to be quite crucial. Our beloved Bishop may very well be swallowing more than he can chew here.
***
Third, this episode is narrated to show that this was an example of 21st century science. As an aside, Bishop notes that, notwithstanding the contrarian criticisms, Loehle’s main findings “still stood”. This is clearly a subjective interpretation of the episode.
While I find sympathy with the argument for blog science, I also think that Bishop’s story romanticizes a lot what was happening during these discussions.
***
Fourth, readers should appreciate how our beloved Bishop shifts the readers’ attention from the Auditor’s behaviour and the ones of the contrarian crowd. If readers can find criticisms from the Auditor on Loehle, that would be appreciated. Here are the posts at Steve’s tagged “Loehle 2007”:
http://climateaudit.org/category/multiproxy-studies/loehle-2007/
***
All in all, we should always be circumspect in our interpretations, and always have in mind Bender’s advice:
> Read the blog.
Unless, of course, we’re more interested in hagiography than history.
So McIntyre not applying himself to analyzing the CO2 implications of tar sands, is an example of “denier hypocrisy”, says Webhub.
Astounding drivel, even by his standards. Weblogic, let’s call it, a product of the vino no doubt.
And Loehle gets funding by the paper and pulp industry, I.e. the Koch brothers.
Like I said, stunning hypocrisy.
@Jim D
The other part of Climategate was that Jones didn’t like McIntyre, who thought he was hiding something
Jones WAS, for years, hiding something. The data.
He resented McIntyre for asking for it, rather than take his (Jones’s) word on what it contained.
And Jones’s epitaph will one day be his most memorable comment, capturing the essence of the cargo-cult alarmist ‘consensus’ :
“Why should I show you my data when I know you’ll try and find something wrong with it?”
He’ll be remembered for his contribution to the exposure of the vacuousnes of the peer/pal review system too.
Here’s how Fred Pearce – no dyed-in-the-wool sceptic he – put it in the Guardian:
‘The most startling observation came when he was asked how often scientists reviewing his papers for probity before publication asked to see details of his raw data, methodology and computer codes. “They’ve never asked,” he said.’
Jones has published over 200 ‘peer-reviewed’ papers in the last 25 years In all that time, nobody bothered to check any of his work. And yet it is used as the basis for the understanding of recent temperature changes via the HADCRU datasets.
That’s not a way to run a whelk stall, let alone a ‘science’.
Ref: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/cif-green/2010/mar/01/phil-jones-commons-emails-inquiry
Latimer
That sort of lack of scrutiny (and many other things) does set me thinking (again) as to whether climate science is a real, legitimate and separate branch of science in the manner of other more established scientific disciplines.
tonyb
What counts is the strongest climate-change science, not the weakest. That’s why climate-change skepticism that confines its attention to the weakest climate-change science amounts to a particularly timid, feeble, futile variety of climate-change denialism.
That’s plain scientific common sense, right tonyb?
Fan how do you judge the strength of climate science? Odor?
@tonyb
Again and again, I contrast the appallingly low professional standards that academics accept with those of the outside world.
In the OW we long ago recognised that humans are fallible and can make ‘mistakes’ either by accident or by design. And in response we implemented systems that try to identify and eliminate such errors. Simple things like double entry bookkeeping, auditing, witnesses for wills, double independent signatures, rest breaks for drivers, two pilots in a cockpit and so on and so forth. All of them (fallible though they still are) designed or evolved to reduce the risk and impact of human errors. Most have been learnt the hard way – with death and destruction in their wake.
And one might think that when working on ‘the most important problem humanity has ever faced’, our gallant academic seekers after truth would have been eager to adopt all the best lessons of hundreds of years of failures to ensure that they have the best possible data, conduct the best possible experiments, invite and encourage the deepest level of scrutiny and independent checking to come up with the most robust conclusions.
One might think so, but one would be sadly disappointed. The reality is that there is almost no ‘quality control’ in academia, and the culture of secrecy and of ‘why should I show you MY data’ is rampant.
An academic’s number one objective is to get something published. Whether it is any good is very much a secondary issue. And once published the chances of it getting any subsequent QC checks are minimal. Its in the sacred ‘literature’ and will stay there forever, no matter how much crap it may be.
Jones once again summed up the quality hurdle such papers need to overcome. ‘I read the papers on the train, and pass them if they feel right’.
And its quite reasonable to assume (since he leaves no audit trail of his decisions) that he used the same ‘method’ when ‘adjusting’ raw data to enter into his HADCRU datasets.
But we will never know because, like the careful custodian of the world’s most important data that he and his hapless colleagues are – they’ve lost it all in an office move. Surely only the late Tom Sharpe could do real comic justice to their ineptitude, and even he would be stretching the reader’s credulity.
Whether climatology deserves to be a ‘science’ is a moot point. But it is clear that the public – all of whose climate it is too – deserve far better professional standards from their advisers than the current academic model provides. they would be completely unacceptable in the outside world.
What counts is the strongest climate-change scepticism, not the weakest. That’s why climate-change ‘science’ and its apologies that confine their attention to the weakest climate-change scepticism, amounts to a particularly timid, feeble, futile variety of climate-change credulity.
You know the kind I mean – standard FOMB fare.
Lati,
Good point.
Why can’t orginial scientific thought be done like a recipe book?
Michael,
Lati and his recipe book will figure out how his home country can make up for a huge deficit in home-grown oil, natural gas, and coal production.
Not being able to come up with a solution, he and his mates down at the pub will then blame his ills on “my obsession”.
@michael
‘Why can’t original scientific thought be done like a recipe book?’
Might be nice if the cook had some decent guarantee of the quality of the raw ingredients though. That the white crystals really are sugar and not salt.
And if you’re going to suggest that we all spend vast quantities of blood and treasure on a problem you think your ‘original scientific thought’ has detected, I’d want a slightly better double check than ‘I read it on the train and it felt right’. Or even ‘and I told my mate down the hall about it and he agrees’.
If you want to do academic speculative ‘science’, that’s fine, But don’t then try to pretend that the ‘results’ are anything better than speculation too.
@webbie
You flatter yourself hugely if you think that the denizens of the Dog And Duck willl give you a first thought, let alone a second one. We won’t.
Lati,
You’re confusing a scientific publication convention (peer review) with the science itself.
Your long rant above was similarly confused/ill-informed/careless/wrong.
Climate scientists confused pal review with peer review. The review now is not by their peers.
==============
But you just did give me a first thought, Little Lati.
Here are a few other links to the North Sea oil problem.
and also
I am sure you have a solution, and it likely has something to do with the shale potential under Blackpool.
But don’t forget about Poland!
Any second thoughts, Lati?
@webbie
As promised.
No.
@michael
Science is based on observational data. If your data is bad, so will be your science.
One might think that ‘scientists’ would go to great lengths to ensure that they have good data. It seems that in climatology this does not apply. ‘It feels right’ is good enough.
Again, Lati confuses science and the process of peer-review.
Lati, I will continue to hold out hope for the pensioners of the UK and that they will continue to be able to afford to heat their homes in the winter.
Fortunately, the alternative and renewable energy industry will continue to make strides and provide the population with cheap energy in the coming years.
Cheers.
Owen Paterson went to Lithuania.
H/t the Bish’s Tender Toots.
==========
“Why can’t orginial scientific thought be done like a recipe book?”
Michael, the idea of ‘QC’ and ‘original scientific thought’ are two separate and distinct things. For QC, think ‘document and data control’. What kind of policies and procedures are in place to ensure traceability? How do you control for revisions? How do store and secure data and information used to form conclusions? Willard should know something about this. There are ‘recipes’ on how to do these things. Quality management systems are a dime a dozen as well as third party registrars. None of this has anything to do with ‘original scientific thought’. This is the same misunderstanding Pekka has long had with me on this issue, or at least that is my interpretation of it. Quality management has really nothing to do with the creative ideas of research, but it has everything to do with the housekeeping one should keep when doing it.
Dang, that was supposed to be ‘the Bish’s Timely Toots’. Check out the timely reminder @ his Palace. Frack it again, frack it again, louder, louder.
===========
@michael
No confusion here, mon brave.
But if you are so convinced there is no problem please guide me (for example) to where I can find a description of the QC methods used in the production of the HADCRU datasets. And the independent auditors report on how well they have been adhered to.
Make up your mind Lati, are you lecturing us about how to do science, or how to store the pencils?
> How do you control for revisions?
I hope scientists do use a control version system. And if they do, they should use Git. Imagine the IPCC creating the trunk and the Auditors creating branches.
(Everything could be done in Python… OK, I won’t push the daydreaming.)
***
I don’t think the Auditor used a CVS:
http://climateaudit.org/2011/05/29/mosher-on-the-provenance-of-said-et-al-2008/#comment-285334
***
Also, let’s recall one of our first comment at Steve’s, in the comment thread of an op-ed Judy just quoted:
http://climateaudit.org/2009/11/22/curry-on-the-credibility-of-climate-research/#comment-203085
Putting the two thoughts together, we get that to know exactly if and how Wegman did run Steve’s code, we’d need to have the correspondence between the two.
***
When we get to this part of the stories, we usually hear a chorus of crickets.
“Putting the two thoughts together, we get that to know exactly if and how Wegman did run Steve’s code, we’d need to have the correspondence between the two.”
Look… Squirrel!
I’m glad to see you don’t disagree with the other general principles I made.
W,
This is the vanishing point of ‘data whining’.
Crickets chirp and chat,
In the echo chamber file;
Flourescent Censor.
=============
“Make up your mind Lati, are you lecturing us about how to do science, or how to store the pencils?”
My guess is you make judgement calls and important decisions every day based on how people store their pencils. My guess would be you put your trust into those that know how to store their pencils vs those who are too dumb to know how to do it. How stupid do you have to be if you don’t even know how to store your pencils? Are those the people you hire to make sure things get done right?
You wanna watch the ones who know how to sharpen pencils.
=============
> Look… Squirrel!
Should readers notice fear from your reaction, John?
You know I disagree: there is a relationship between quality control and this aspect of l’affaire Wegman.
Proselytism about fully open audits carries its load of responsibilities.
***
Anyway.
If you prefer a more philosophical comment, here’s an example to show how we could reconcile both Pekka and your position.
Ludics is a framework to connect two types of work in logic: proof theory, which is traditionally syntactical, and game semantics, which develops the intuition that truth is the result of the interaction between some moves. Here’s the foundational paper:
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=80083
Here’s an outline:
http://ls.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/prodi/slides/Lecomte.pdf
Sorry for the formalism. Sometimes, it’s useful.
***
There are many ways to prove theorems. This is a problem: how to keep track of all the proofs? A possible solution is to abstract away from how a proof is done and keep track of what the proof does exactly.
This relates to the discussion the following way. Pekka wants to focus on results. You, John, wants to focus on processes. What I’m suggesting is that you both should focus on finding a framework whereby we record results by way of their processes.
Of course, I’m not suggesting that we should do all this in Ludics. What I mean is that we should not forget that the content layer (the data) is never independent from the logic layer (the theory).
***
At this point, I would turn it over to archivists.
Finally, please bear in mind that V&V might very well be impossible, considering the current technological state. At least, that’s what Steve Easterbrook maintains.
Also, we should bear in mind that all this should cost many times the actual IPCC budget.
John,
I place a bit more import in what people do with their pencils.
Maybe I’m crazy.
‘data whining’.
Boo hoo, the bank dropped a few zeros from my balance. Guess they don’t store their pencils too well. Oh well, at least I still like their logo and marketing.
Do you have access to a fully open audit report of the costs of Occupy Irak, John?
I can find other examples if you fear squirrels.
Beware your wishes.
A slam dunk. Pencils swivel through the net.
==========
Thanks willard – there’s the rub.
Joking aside, I don’t have any problem with what John is suggesting.
But someone’s gotta pay.
When it’s a choice between paying your grad students/jnr researchers a decent wage and a 24 carat archiving and verifcation processes……if someone can make this happen, great, I’ll have a pony too.
Our beloved ‘skeptics’, who commonly exhibit traits suggestive of free-market fundamentalism, anti-government, anti-regulation obsessions, could get on board and acknowledge that some more of the latter elements might be required to achieve what they proclaim they want.
What you don’t get, willard, and maybe won’t because you can’t, is that the statistics were ‘garbage’ in Jean S’s memorable words, and the echo chamber of climate science amplified to an unsustainable screech the signal of catastrophe.
All the sophistry in the willard world isn’t going to change that.
===========
“This relates to the discussion the following way. Pekka wants to focus on results. You, John, wants to focus on processes. What I’m suggesting is that you both should focus on finding a framework whereby we record results by way of their processes.”
Willard, that is the whole point. If you don’t control the processes used to obtain the results, the results are not worth much. Calibration, traceability to standards etc… Are necessary for all measurements made. Results obtained otherwise are questionable. Even original research into unexplored ideas and methods need to obey this idea and find a path to it. Otherwise it does not stand on familiar ground that we can agree on.
“I can find other examples if you fear squirrels.”
No fear in squirrels, Willard, just annoyance at the distraction they pose from the original topic of discussion. Perhaps I misunderstand the true meaning of the phrase you coined.
kim,
you remind me of those halycon days of the ‘skeptics’ demanding the “raw data”.
Ah, good times.
Fan
Now, that is one of the most revealing things you have ever written here.
So what do YOU consider to be the ‘weakest climate change science?’
We need some guidance as we obviously want to concentrate on the most vulnerable of the many achilles heels.
Please restrict the examples of weak climate science to no more than 100, as our Big oil funding will only permit us to employ a few dozen researchers at a time.
tonyb
“But someone’s gotta pay.
When it’s a choice between paying your grad students/jnr researchers a decent wage and a 24 carat archiving and verifcation processes……if someone can make this happen, great, I’ll have a pony too.”
Michael and Willard, the ‘it’s too expensive” argument is not a convincing one. Archiving and storing data digitally is not bank breaking. I also said nothing about audit/verification processes. Being prepared to be audited and actual auditing are not the same. Having a system in place that makes a verification/audit process go smoothly is not the same as having an audit/verification performed. It’s when the pencils are not stored correctly that the audit/verification process becomes burdensome and costly. If you have a system in place that recognizes what auditors will be looking for, then most of the work has already been done. Just putting the right answer down when asking for a derivation on a test does not get you any credit, you have to show the work. Keeping records of how you show your work is not overly expensive if it is built in as part of the system FROM THE START. Getting started does have costs associated with it and their certainly costs associated with maintaining the system, and doing it all after the fact can be quite burdensome. What cost do you put on lost trust for work that has been performed, appears to be genuine, but can not stand up to scrutiny? Those costs are not easily measured, but are costly nonetheless.
John,
You misunderstand.
The argument is not “it’s too expensive”, simply that the cost must be borne and those footing the bills need to accept that as part of the cost of doing science.
This is not commonly the case at the moment.
“John,
You misunderstand.
The argument is not “it’s too expensive”, simply that the cost must be borne and those footing the bills need to accept that as part of the cost of doing science.
This is not commonly the case at the moment.”
Yes, I do understand and we are in agreement. I appreciate your response.
I’m glad that we’re all in violent agreement about the financial problems “Calibration, traceability to standards etc…” seem to impose, John.
The point I’m trying to make is that “Calibration, traceability to standards etc…” can be used to refer to the ideal of truly open audits, in which case the Wegman Affair illustrates that even the Auditor is far from it. If you prefer, we could take the interview between Harris and Curry: do we have access to the raw data? How could we replicate Judy’s judgement without it?
Unless you come up with specific requests, you have no business telling me these are squirrels. And in fact, as soon as you’ll into specifics, my guess is that the ideal of truly open audits should reveal to be the myth it always were.
Here what the myth looks like, in reality:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/54294182943
I think Judy said something about impugning motives to scientists.
***
Speaking of which, have you read a discussion of this judgement at Steve’s?
Seems that the Auditor prefers to build timestamps chronologies.
At Judy’s, perhaps?
Yes, but green line tests.
Longer Michael
‘I have a great lawyer. I really do. His courtroom skills are legendary.
And I know that if he’d remembered to turn up on the right day at the right court and hadn’t lost the court papers, nor prepared for a different case entirely, then he’d have been able to sweettallk the jury into finding me not guilty straight away.
But as it is, I’ve only another three years to go until I’m released and I can tell him face to face just what a great lawyer I think he is’.
Being professional in what you do is not just about storing pencils. That this concept seems to be beyond you suggests that you must be a climatologist.
@michael
You make a powerful case for doing less, but better climatology. Sounds good.
And just what I’d expect in a period of consolidation.
Perhaps we should start by closing down the teams that don’t adhere to minimum professional standards.
John,
I wonder, what you mean by that in a comment that is in full agreement with my thinking.
One possible reason for thinking that we disagree may be that I have emphasized some additional points:
1) When the exploration goes into new territories, it may be impossible to define QC procedures. Such procedures are useful only when enough is known about the issues studied ahead of the time. It’s clear that great care must be applied under such conditions, but trying to follow a QC handbook may be simply impossible.
2) For genuinely new results the best assurance is obtained by independent repetition by other scientists. That’s an essential component of the scientific process, not of any specific study.
When I have tried to explain to my students how scientific work differs from engineering, I have certainly not indicated that the requirements for quality control would be less. They may sometimes be less formal, but not less in any other sense.
Sometimes it’s justified that scientific results are published when significant uncertainties on their reliability remain, but that must then be stated very clearly in the paper. The progress of science may be sped up significantly by that as that may lead other scientists to a solution not found by the original author. That’s naturally applicable only, when the results are of exceptional significance if found correct.
I noticed that Willard is trying to redirect the approach to a logic-based system and perhaps consider different approaches to simultaneously tracking process and research in an optimal fashion.
One of the current trends for scientific process control is to use workflow systems such as Kepler. This can capture the provenance of an established process, allowing others to duplicate the work.
Gotta check out what I am working on, which is a semantic-web based knowledge and simulation server described at http://ContextEarth.com.
This built on a first-order logic framework, and is compatible with workflow-based schemes. All open-sourced and with version control at GitHub.
No squirrels over here. Collaborations welcome, as this is going to transform into an industrial strength server over time.
“Unless you come up with specific requests, you have no business telling me these are squirrels. And in fact, as soon as you’ll into specifics, my guess is that the ideal of truly open audits should reveal to be the myth it always were.”
Ok Willard, look. I was responding to Michael in reference to QC measures, ‘recipes books’ and ‘original scientific thinking’. I reread the beginning of the thread to try to understand your persistence with my squirrel comment….so i see where Jones was being crucified for not producing whatever, you offered McIntyre and Wegman as a counter example. That may be relevant to that discussion, but as far as the point I was making, which was generic and neutral with respect to climateball, it was a ‘look squirrel’ comment. I don’t think anything I said would be any less applicable to McIntyre than it would be to Jones. The fact is I was not directing my comment to any particular side of the debate or any individual specifically. And though the idea of truly open audits may be an ideal, it is one that all sides should aspire to conform to. No question that it is an unattainable ideal, but the spirit of the idea should live on both sides. Arguing over who did what and when and whether so and so also did it (mommy mommyisms) does not advance the ball. That must be painfully obvious to you. Bringing it up as you did to my comment is nothing less than ‘look squirrel’. I’m looking to get beyond that, beyond citing and counter citing examples in ways that provoke. Not to say I don’t provoke, I was trying to provoke Michael to think harder about the position of data housekeeping as it pertains to trust and its relationship to QC systems. In the end he agreed to that principle.
So, how are things going to change that advances the ball? QC management systems might offer some insights to the research academic world where it has been successful in the industrial world. Perhaps it is worth looking into?
“When the exploration goes into new territories, it may be impossible to define QC procedures. Such procedures are useful only when enough is known about the issues studied ahead of the time. It’s clear that great care must be applied under such conditions, but trying to follow a QC handbook may be simply impossible.”
Pekka, this is a good point. My stress on having a quality management system does not mean we disagree about this as your second point shows,
“For genuinely new results the best assurance is obtained by independent repetition by other scientists. That’s an essential component of the scientific process, not of any specific study.”
This is a path for standardizing. Once replication of a process or idea is realized, standardization can naturally evolve. With standardization comes requirements to meet the standard. To show how requirements are met, measurements and methods must be traceable. This takes time, effort and cooperation between all interested parties. In the end you are left with a higher level of trust and confidence between participating members. Heh, a consensus is formed.
Pekka, perhaps I was wrong to say we ‘disagree’. Perhaps you misunderstand the value, in my opinion, that a research program based on an established quality management system might bring to the table. Perhaps quality management system is the wrong term to apply as well, but at the moment I don’t know of an alternative example.
John,
In this kind of open discussion everyone frames the question differently, therefore the answers are also different even, when both would agree totally, when the framing is the same.
More specifically our experience comes probably from different research questions (mine is from elementary particle physics in my younger years, but closer to engineering, economics, and systems analysis more recently). Formal QC is essential in many laboratories, but much less, when other uncertainties are so large that potential errors of measurement make no difference.
One description of scientific work that I have given to an experienced engineer interested in writing a doctoral thesis is that in engineering the requirement is often that a good enough solution must be found with sufficient certainty, while a scientist given the same problem must do his utmost to find out whether the solution is the best available and to find ways to compare objectively alternative solutions. The scientist mus also report his whole reasoning.
Thanks Pekka, well stated.
“When we get to this part of the stories, we usually hear a chorus of crickets.”
huh. Its pretty simple. your next step would be to write to wegman and ask for what you want. pretty please with sugar on it.
Then you need to research your legal avenues if you have any.
Then you need to follow what legal avenues are open to you.
Then you need to follow up and get others to follow you.
In the end mails may be liberated one way or the other. ask gleick for help.
The bottom line of course is that wegman doesnt matter because Mann and the HS dont matter. not to the science at least. Mann’s mistake was thinking that he was protecting something that was worth protecting.
he was wrong. you see sometimes symbolic battles can be more trouble than they are worth.
But folks who would like to continue the wegman battle are welcome to do what I did. Im dumb founded that folks havent. Put mashey on it, then of course have somebody translate his work into something digestable
@WebHubTelescope
Lati and his recipe book will figure out how his home country can make up for a huge deficit in home-grown oil, natural gas, and coal production.
Not being able to come up with a solution, he and his mates down at the pub will then blame his ills on “my obsession”.
The obsession in question would be the bizarre insistence that all energy be home-grown. Autarky.
Any other goods and services you feel should be home-grown rather than traded for ?
Obviously you need BOTH grad students AND archiving systems.
The trick is to get the right balance.
Well, moshe, what’s nauseating is the waste of talent it took to swallow that ‘garbage’.
============
John,
No time now. Will reply later.
***
Web,
Thanks for the link.
John,
Sorry for the delay. School starts this week around here. Made lots of notes, but will try to offer an outline, as it’s already too late for discussion. It’s a long comment, but my notes are ten times that long.
***
Basically, what I want to say is that however good can be our scientific book keeping of the data, if we don’t have an objective way to settle our interpretations, the audit will never end. Having a tool like Kepler would be a good thing, no doubt about that. But this ain’t what determines Jones’ or Wegman’s responsibilities, to take the two examples from this subthread.
I don’t think that asking Wegman to clean up his act, asking for legal advice, or sending FOI requests will help bring the audits to an end. In fact, we can clearly see that legal retaliation has become an end by itself. It provides a steady stream of PR brownie points, which in other ventures could be considered harassment.
Personally, I have nothing to gain from such endeavour. In fact, the Auditor himself might have more to gain by throwing Wegman under his auditing bus. One does not simply try to portray oneself as being an over-conscientious auditor while relishing in competitive sports and espionage in cases whereby one is both judge and party.
Anyway.
***
I agree that your idea is neutral with respect to Climateball. But to appeal to them does imply connotations which advocate from one stance, as I’ve already said. So referring to Wegman helped me illustrate how having all the data would not be sufficient to prevent people from playing Climateball, exactly because it shows that this game could be played from all sides, but is not.
Why is that? Because quality controls, while being welcome, might never be enough to produce objective judgments. In fact, they might never be as central to produce science as the fact that it’s the cost of reproducing results that matter. If redoing an experiment from scratch is less expensive than producing quality-controlled experiments, that’s where science will go. Free science may not be free for everyone, at least that’s what the scientific industry seems to say.
Think of doing science as easy as doing 3D printing. It might be the case that getting free templates is the way to go. It might also be the case that getting proprietary one buck templates is also the way to go. What matters, in the end, is not that everyone reproduce exactly the same stuff, but that the most people get to agree that what they reproduce agree with each other. (In matters of economics, let’s say that I’m a pluralist.)
This is why I took the example of Ludics. The idea is that besides the content, you’d need the logic. This is the only way you’d be able to settle in an objective way. You need to have a way to compare one product to another. That is, not only you need a way to validate a product P, which is what QC does, but to verify it. This is the only way that will ever stop the never ending audit: by determining how judgements cohere with one another.
It is quite clear that we can’t wait for climateballers to fulfill their self-avowed commitments. Nor can we wait for everyone to arbitrate themselves or one another. Blog science needs a constant feed of outrageous news to keep climateballers happy.
***
We can’t expect any comment thread to settle everything, ever. And this is why I can only leave it at that, and move to the next op-ed. There are already two others, and that’s just at Judy’s.
The whole business blog science is quite unsustainable as it is. Perhaps it’s part of the fun. The fact that there’s no real QC may be another part of it.
Thanks for your openness,
w
I too caught the irony of Harris labeling you as diving deep into the politics by stating you don’t know what the future will look like or what actions need to be taken and then identifying Trenbreth as simply wading in while he acts as a responsible scientist trying to protect us.
Had it not been radio, Richard Harris may have suggested to Dr Trenberth that he borrow Scott Mandia’s Superman suit.
Yes, this irony gets a special lighted case in my museum. What does Harris wonder at the need for framing? Do journaloids dream of a world without framing?
=============================
> Fear and loathing of skeptics […]
I vaguely recall something about mind probing. It was a long time ago. Let me search my memory. Oh, yes, that:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/21/arctic-sea-ice-and-weather/
INTEGRITY ™ – The Credibility Race
Umm
Fear and loathing are observable behaviours. To say that they exhibit fear and loathing says nothing about the causes (motivation) of those behaviours.
Your post fails.
> Fear and loathing are observable behaviours.
Not exactly. They can be described using behaviours, but they serve as causal posits to explain these behaviours. One does not simply sees fear – one infers it from observations.
The same applies to motivation, or more precisely intention.
+1
“Fear and loathing of skeptics, particularly Steve McIntyre (read the Climategate emails for evidence of this). McIntyre is symbolic of attacks against consensus science, and a number of scientists have taken this very personally.”
McIntyre’s attacks have essentially been on blatant attempts at deception.
Those who resent him self-identify as supporters of deception.
BFJ seems to think if I don’t like who he likes I’m a supporter of deception. That doesn’t seem fair.
I believe he was referring to one person w.r.t. one topic.
BFJ : McIntyre’s attacks have essentially been on blatant attempts at deception.
Those who resent him self-identify as supporters of deception.
Max_OK : BFJ seems to think if I don’t like who he likes I’m a supporter of deception. That doesn’t seem fair.
Expert misreading.
Or are you going to try and tell us you resent McIntyre for his bad haircut?
I’ve watched this debate for nearly a decade and a couple of things have stuck out.
First, the IPCC was conceived politically rather than scientifically and therefore the language and attitudes of the IPCC and its supporters tend to be political. Words like consensus, dissent, skeptic and denier are all profoundly political.
Political discourse is very different in intention than scientific discussion: in politics the objective is to win and have your views implemented. In science, at least science before politics get involved, the objective is to find out what is true about nature.
If you make a mistake in politics your enemies/opponents jump on it and try to use it to destroy your credibility and people’s trust in you. In science mistakes are part of the process and, while you want to avoid them, do not harm reputation if they are made intelligently.
There is some truth to the idea that the rancor in climate arose because of the McIntyre/Mann tussle. People like Hansen, Jones, Trenberth, Gavin and so on lined up behind Mann despite knowing that his science was not terrifically robust. This was not a very scientific thing to do.
The situation was made much worse by the non-scientific cheersleaders like Joe Rohm and the zealots at Desmog and ScepticalScience. Once they became engaged what had been a semi-scientific discussion became polemical.
From a scientific perspective, given the state of the evidence and the relative immaturity of the various models, it would have been wise to avoid making broad claims or suggesting certainty in all but the most trivial areas. However, politically, modest claims hedged with uncertainty was not what was required to push the IPCC agenda.
Which, in turn, made it very easy for skeptics to ridicule the more outlandish claims. It also made it pretty much inevitable that Nature itself would refute or call into question the “certainties” which the more political scientists had been feeding to their political masters.
The “pause”, the stubborn persistence of Arctic ice, the expansion of Antarctic ice, the rise of non-CO2 based explanations for observed warming, the absence of abnormal sea level rise and the ongoing downward revision of CO2 sensitivity have all undermined the authority of “mainstream” political climate science.
The fact is that climate science was and remains too immature to bear the huge political weight the “greens” have placed upon it. Intelligent climate scientists implicitly recognize this as they seek the political neutrality of uncertainty. In hindsight, I suspect many climate scientists rather wished they had never forsaken the perfectly respectable “uncertain” position which an infant discipline should adopt in the face of the unknown.
While uncertainty will not satisfy the eco warriors it has the virtue of being intellectually honest. A virtue which a scientist should prize far beyond the transient satisfactions of policy advocacy.
@Jay Currie
+1
“From a scientific perspective, given the state of the evidence and the relative immaturity of the various models, it would have been wise to avoid making broad claims or suggesting certainty in all but the most trivial areas. However, politically, modest claims hedged with uncertainty was not what was required to push the IPCC agenda.
…
The fact is that climate science was and remains too immature to bear the huge political weight the “greens” have placed upon it. Intelligent climate scientists implicitly recognize this as they seek the political neutrality of uncertainty. In hindsight, I suspect many climate scientists rather wished they had never forsaken the perfectly respectable “uncertain” position which an infant discipline should adopt in the face of the unknown.
While uncertainty will not satisfy the eco warriors it has the virtue of being intellectually honest. A virtue which a scientist should prize far beyond the transient satisfactions of policy advocacy.”
Spot on, Dr. Curry. Once the history of this mess is settled, it will be recorded in these words. The great fault of Alarmists has been to claim too much for a science that is in its infancy.
Theo, this is a good post, but “Jay Currie” is not our beloved Dr Judith Curry, as you appear (from using “Dr Curry”) to assume.
Faustino,
Thanks. Up too late again. Though I continue to applaud the remarks that I quoted.
“the stubborn persistence of Arctic ice”
This folks is why climate deniers have little credibility.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MbmDA5AtX08/UFsjFj7yA4I/AAAAAAAAFAE/6uYIZp33KrM/s640/6a0133f03a1e37970b017744cf5360970d.jpg
+10 Another one right on target – well said.
> Allegiance to the ‘consensus’ and the social contract between the scientists, institutions and policy makers that has been very beneficial to the field of climate scientists.
If true, that would provide a motivation for some climate scientists.
INTEGRITY ™ – Never Attack Motivation, Describe It
To understand Mosher’s relationship with the consensus community one must understand that when God was handing out integrity Steven thought He said ‘regularity’ so when Steven got to the head of the line he asked God for Metamucil instead of a spine. The results are especially evident on this blog.
http://media.lolwall.co/c/2012/10/funny-chinglish-sign-fail-do-not-empty-your-dog-here-by-signfail_253054-670x.jpeg
http://www.boredpanda.com/funny-chinese-translation-fails/?image_id=funny-chinese-sign-translation-fails-18.jpg
While the ocean is complex and both JC and KT have focused on that in their careers and discussion, the land is simpler to follow as only the top few meters interact with the atmosphere on decadal scales, no circulations or deep interactions, etc., and more direct observations. We can look how the land temperature has been changing, for example here.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vgl/mean:120/plot/hadsst3gl/mean:120
We see that the last 30 years that the land (red) has been warming twice as fast as the ocean (green). Its rate corresponds to 4 C per doubling. I think more attention is needed to land temperatures as they respond to forcing more quickly, and this type of plot graphically displays something new going on since 1980.
Jimd
If we look at a single temperature record instead of the noisy global one we can see that the 1980 rise has reversed itself
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
Tonyb
I think you are joking, so I won’t respond.
“. I think more attention is needed to land temperatures as they respond to forcing more quickly”
Bollocks. There has been no change in rate of warming, Tmax, and rate of cooling in Antarctica. Any CO2 driven photon reccing mechanism should increase the rate of summer warming, increase the Tmax and slow the rate of cooling.
If you believe in ‘global warming’ explain the differential response to the same “FORCING”, in the two hemispheres, and do so using normal thermodynamic and kinetic descriptions and not the ‘climate science only’ nomenclature.
Just as summer warms more over land, so climate warms more over land. It is quite easy to see how thermal inertia is important in response rates. The hemispheres are consistent with their land fractions, and the land furthest from the ocean responds more, which also favors the northern hemisphere.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/24/who-is-on-which-side-in-the-climate-debate-anyways/#comment-369159
CH, unless they can explain how the land warming leads the ocean warming in this last phase on my graph, what they are talking about has no relevance. I think they are just talking about seeing short-term El Nino signals over land which I don’t disagree with, but when it comes to decadal trends, it is a different story as we see from the graph.
‘CH, unless they can explain how the land warming leads the ocean warming in this last phase on my graph…’
It doesn’t Jim – you’re imagining things. This comes from eyeballing in woods for dimwits graphs with 10 year smoothing.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1970
‘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.’
‘It’ is not all that relevant.
The idea is to bring some actual knowledge and science to the table. Not simply pull it out of your arse. If you took any time at all to review the Dietmar Dommenget paper you would see that it has absolutely nothing to do with ENSO and everything to do with long tern data and modelling periods of up to 2000 years.
CH, that explanation is consistent with thermal inertia if you think about it. It is easier to heat the land because it can lose less heat by evaporation. Drier land responds most to forcing, e.g. deserts.
Yes all – or thereabouts – the thermal inertia is in the oceans.
CH, good, thermal inertia explains why land warms more in the daytime, in the summertime, and under any other positive forcing. This was my point. The land warming more is a signature of positive forcing.
‘In fact, after the sea surface temperature, soil wetness and snow mass
are the most important “memory” mechanisms for time scales ranging
from weeks to seasons.’
http://www.ecmwf.int/newsevents/training/lecture_notes/pdf_files/PARAM/Rol_land.pdf
Water availability is the prime factor at low levels (not in the troposphere) over land as the Dommenget study says – but by far the ‘memory mechanism’ (80% to 90%) is oceans. Oceans drive land temperatures.
Through the larger area of oceans and greater thermal inertia and with greater water availability over oceans to transport energy. Fundamental and not secondary processes.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/DIETMARDOMMENGET_zps939fe12e.png.html?sort=3&o=10
JimD clearly has the stronger scientific argument in this case. To argue against it, you must come up with an alternative model, but all the Chief can do is unintentionally reinforce the low-thermal-inertia land heating model..
Oceans maintain a store of energy that moderates temperature changes globally. Oceans force global temperatures.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/DIETMARDOMMENGET_zps939fe12e.png.html?sort=3&o=10
The difference in surface temperature is the result of reduced water availability over land. It influences surface temperature but not tropospheric temperature – as suggested by the Met Office notes supplied.
‘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://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/2009JCLI2778.1
I have as usual supplied peer reviewed science that directly addresses the issue. Webby and Jim as usual supply nothing but what they pull out of their arses – webby enters the twilight zone by calling for citations below. These guys are a science free zone.
Chief, you lost this one too. I am curious when you will become angry and adopt one of your other sockpuppet names to express your outrage.
Very Hulk-like in the way you respond to getting feedback.
Larrikins like to mock, but they can’t handle it when the tables are turned.
Webster – you routinely miss the central concept in any discussion. You then p_ss around calculating climate trivia and ponce around as if you have then discovered quantum mechanics. The sad fact is that you then get the climate trivia wrong – as in the 5E+22 J/yr increase in ocean heat content just yesterday. I usually wonder how you possibly survive as an engineer with such utter mathematical incompetence. I can only think you have a severely limited range of expertise and just do the same thing over and over using a cook book. Either that or you are simply a ‘manager’.
I had a discussion on the last open thread on the statistically nonstationary nature of the ENSO time series. You repeated – amidst abuse – that the series reverted to the mean without obviously having any idea the statistical meaning of monstationarity. Finally – your claim was that something stopped ENSO from reverting to the mean and that I believed in perpetual motion.
‘There are a couple of ENSO theories – chaotic oscillator or stochastically forced. – http://www.pims.math.ca/files/kleeman_3.pdf – In either case the statistical series is non-stationary over decades to millennia.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/23/open-thread-weekend-29/#comment-369132
WebHubTelescope (@WHUT) | August 25, 2013 at 12:58 pm |
Chief, it always reverts to the mean.
What causes the mean value? It’s the forcing, stupid.
What a large tool, and multiple sockpuppet abuser you are
WebHubTelescope (@WHUT) | August 26, 2013 at 8:58 am |
‘Chief, Something causes reversion away (sic) from the mean.
You are like a believer in perpetual motion machines.
Chief is a multiple sockpuppet abuser and believer in perpetual motion — what a combination.
So forcing causes both reversion to and reversion away (sic) from the mean.
Your ignorance and dishonesty is astonishing.
I said that was a big number and then the original commenter corrected it by saying they intended to say it was 5E+22 J/decade. Per decade, not per year.
Chief, you are a gutless wonder. A gutless wonder is somebody that is all talk and no action. I doubt you could do any kind of model on your own.
“Please put the amount you so frequenty cite – 5 x 10^22 joules per annum in context. “
That is a big heat sink, see this
http://theoilconundrum.blogspot.com/2013/03/ocean-heat-content-model.html
And of course I avoided your silly little blog – I always do these days. Your ‘model’ vaguely reproduces ocean heat content – smooths and simplifies and has absolutely no point at all.
I of course model many things – floods, groundwater, water quality, estuaries, waves, sediment plumes, biology even. I just don’t incorrectly calculate climate trivia – like incorrectly derived dry adiabatic lapse rates – and then ponce about like I’ve discovered quantum mechanics. Give it a break – you are fundamentally shallow and irrelevant.
Sure you do. Probably with play-doh and a garden hose.
What a poseur you are Chief.
Jim D | August 24, 2013 at 5:17 pm
I think more attention is needed to land temperatures as they respond to forcing more quickly, and this type of plot graphically displays something new going on since 1980.
>>
So you’ve found something the alarmist Establishment has missed ?
No, they haven’t missed it, but the “skeptics” have avoided it in their chaos/uncertainty ideas that are completely associated with the ocean. Meanwhile we have this land signal that is even bigger and clearer and not discussed. The elephant in the room.
The pink elephant in the room.
Nonsense. The skeptics haven’t discussed it (land temperatures) because the “scientists” haven’t pinned much on it. You really do seem to think you’ve found something the motivated alarmist Establishment has missed.
Yes folks, what he’s found is that well-known pink elephant in the room. The one that also has the power of aviation, much like its porcine cousins.
But of course! The ‘D’ in “Jim D” stands for Dumbo.
Heck, Jim, why not just post as Dumbo from now on?
So, out of interest, what is the “skeptical” explanation for why the land is warming at a rate of 4 C per doubling (0.3 C per decade). I don’t think I have seen it, unless UHI is alive and well and living in Siberia.
JimD,
Evaporation from oceans 361*10^12 m3 per year
Precipitation on to oceans 324*10^12 m3 per year
Evaporation from land 62*10^12 m3 per year
Precipitation on to oceans 99*10^12 m3 per year
Average rainfall on Oceans p.a. 1.1 meters
Average rainfall on Land p.a. 1.5 meters
So we have incoming radiation being converted to latent heat over the oceans, then moving over the land, then being converted into sensible heat. So the system can be in steady state and yet have a differential thermal gradient.
Ain’t physics fun when you have a dynamic, non-equilibrium system.
DocM, but the graph shows it is not a steady state. It is diverging. The ocean can’t keep up with the land warming. At some point, the land will be so much warmer than the ocean, the clouds and rain will reduce over land drying it and making the situation worse, possibly.
Jim D, do you know what a steady state is?
Do you know the difference between a steady state and an equilibrium?
Have you perchance noticed the change in temperature between 5 in the morning and 2:30 in the afternoon?
You might also note the difference in ‘average’ temperature between summer and winter.
Note also that the interplay between components of the planets is continuous, and not based on a generalized average over a year, decade or century.
Have a little think and work out why there is more rainfall over land than over water, and see if this is due to a difference between ‘yearly averages’ in some measurable parameter.
DocM, I know a divergence when I see it, and that is not a steady state. The temperature gradient is growing seemingly linearly without slowing leading to a different world from before 1980 when the temperatures moved more in sync. The relative humidity over continents has to drop with this divergence, and I think that is starting to be observed.
Well JimD, I just plotted HADCRU SST vs. BEST for the period 1850-1980 and for 1980-2012
SST = 0.4388*(BEST) – 0.05; R² = 0.7787 (1980-2012)
SST = 0.4223*(BEST) – 0.1373; R² = 0.5478 (1850-1980)
Where is this decoupling of land from ocean?
DocM, here in case you missed it.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vgl/mean:120/plot/hadsst3gl/mean:120
It is quite obvious. I use CRUTEM not BEST as it includes more recent years. According to your numbers the land has always warmed at twice the rate of the ocean? Weird. It doesn’t look like it when you plot it against a time axis. They look to be 1:1 most of the time before 1980 then 2:1. See what I mean?
@Jim D
So, out of interest, what is the “skeptical” explanation for why the land is warming at a rate of 4 C per doubling (0.3 C per decade). .
So, out of interest, why have you still not told us the explanation for why the mainstream climate “science” largely ignores this alleged winning point, while you alone trumpet it ? Could it be that this is stretching things even more than they do, if that is possible?
If it wasn’t coupled, we would need a different model.
It’s good that the deniers want to talk about the divergence between land and ocean temperature temperature rise. That leads naturally to an explanation of how the ocean heat content is rising at the rate it is.
You see, the ocean’s heat capacity is masking the sea surface temperature rise by absorbing the excess heat. As JimD continues to point out, the land has no such mechanism, so its temperature rises approximately twice as fast as the SST does.
I will patiently wait for an alternative model that can explain this divergence in rate, replete with citations to scientific research. One just can’t say that the land is warmer, but it is the rate that needs explanation.
Gina is right. It is a winning point that the land is responding to the forcing on its own and obviously faster than the ocean. Thermal inertia is a little hard to explain to Joe Public, but I would say that the daytime heating of the land is faster than the ocean, the summertime warm-up is faster too, both due to the lower thermal inertia of land. In fact land responds more quickly to any forcing and is a meter for any changes in forcing. So, like daytime and summer, it responds to climate forcing faster too. it doesn’t have internal circulations to confuse the picture either. It is a very direct measurement.
Regarding the above, poetically you might call climate change “The Endless Summer”. With a tendency towards hotter, drier, less cloudy conditions than before in continental areas, if this divergence continues.
@Jim D
Gina is right. It is a winning point that the land is responding to the forcing on its own and obviously faster than the ocean.
So how do you explain the failure of the motivated alarmist consensus to seize on it ? Why is it only you ?
Are you even more committed to proving CAGW than they are ?
Or do they, as much as they want a winning point, realize yours is worthless ?
Heh, Human Heat Islands.
====================
“So how do you explain the failure of the motivated alarmist consensus to seize on it ? Why is it only you ?”
It isn’t only him Gina, you need to pay more attention. Less reckless abandon and blind denial please, this is the future of our planet we are talking about.
My apologies, it’s not only Jim D that is pushing the land temperature issue – lolwot is now lending a hand.
The Human Heat Island Effect will be pusillanimous against glaciers. We’ll still have to retreat to the Equatorial Cities, modeled after jellyfish. Get the first issue of the new journal; the next issue will explore implanting the human genome directly into jellyfish.
Oh, hi there Danny Bloom.
==========
Here is the plot of sea surface temperature and land temperature, for the northern hemisphere, from 1851-1970 and from 1970-2013.
(CRUTEM4 and HADSST2 data)
http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w318/DocMartyn/NHSSTvsNHCRUTEM4_zps9ed3f286.png
One can observe that the coupling of the two temperature series is both tight and is unchanged either side of 1970.
The SH is less clean, mostly because of the noise and there are steps i the SST around 1897 and 1944. But there does not appear to be a clean transition in coupling in the modern period.
Gina brings up a point that nobody else is trumpeting the land only warming as indicative of climate sensitivity. I would add that not only did the experts not highlight the ocean compared to land divergence on the GISS web page they also deleted it. Why hide such good evidence?
What are you talking about? James Hansen has been pushing this idea for years. Look at his figure showing what happens when the ocean sinks the heat (I added data points to his original 1981 paper)
http://imageshack.us/a/img802/3918/hansen1981.gif
More info here:
http://theoilconundrum.blogspot.com/2013/03/stochastic-analysis-of-log-sensitivity.html
Little steven, you really are quite the fool. Don’t have the wherewithal to elaborate on your thesis as a real scientist would, so you keep blabbering on and on.
Web, saying that the warming of the land will be faster than the warming of the ocean is not the same thing as saying the land will warm while the ocean stops warming. If I were a fool I’d love to have invented you as my joke but I’m afraid that one has been told so many times now it has stopped being funny and is now just a nuisance.
The oceans will continue to absorb excess heat and the SST will continue to rise, but at half the rate of the land.
That is the theory and it has been borne out by observations.
Watch what happens.
Hansen in his 1981 paper used a ‘box model’ to distribute heat between the atmosphere and oceans. It assumes diffusion from the atmosphere to the oceans. The actual physics don’t work like that – and I assume Hansen understands that because the concepts are ultimately very simple. Webby has a problem with reality however – he substitutes his own.
The oceans and the land are heated by shortwave radiation. The oceans warm until the losses to the atmosphere are approximately equal to the gains from sunlight. The oceans provide a source of warmth that is there regardless of changes in incoming and outgoing energy. Land gains and loses energy with very little thermal inertia. It warms and cools with higher ranges and retains little warmth. The oceans moderate global temperature.
This is the real science of the land/ocean contrast.
‘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.’
Emphasis mine. Continental warming is 80% to 90% forced by ocean warming.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/DIETMARDOMMENGET_zps939fe12e.png.html?sort=3&o=11
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI2778.1
Although ‘contemporaneous ocean warming’ at the end of the last millennium seems more driven by positive changes in net forcing at toa – which is entirely in the shortwave.
e.g. – http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Wong2006figure7.gif.html?sort=3&o=129
This is what science and the data actually says. Webby is so bizarrely unable to process anything that doesn’t agree with his internal narrative. He is an interweb nut case complete with incompetent and simplistic web science and absolutely no real climate science in sight. If you discount Hansen’s 1981 study which he misinterprets.
Don’t listen to what The Chief Impediment says as it is completely wrong.
The Chief is an impediment to understanding. He does this stuff because he has this constant urge to mock authority.
The other deniers encourage him because he adds to the FUD.
Object to actual science webby? I’m not surprised.
Gina, as I mentioned, the reason land is not gaining much traction is that Joe Public doesn’t understand thermal inertia. Some of the “skeptics” still want UHI to explain it (even in Siberia and interior Canada), but they are just waiting for Watts to figure out how to “adjust” his station data in the correct way to show it.
Jim D,
The question you keep ducking, is not why Joe Public has not latched on to the land temperature issue, but why the government shills haven’t. Why are the climate “scientists” overlooking this “winning” point of yours?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:120/plot/crutem4vgl/mean:120
It is hard to overlook that the green (land) line is twice as steep as the red (global) line in the last 30 years and its trends lead the rise in 1970. I predict they will pay more attention to this if the “pause” goes on, but the “pause” could break first. Maybe they would be accused of changing horses in the middle of the race if they switch to land as the main measure now.
Judith you can say all sorts of things and remain inside the consensus because the consensus is underdetermined by the science. What you cannot do is cross certain thin green lines: you cannot talk about climategate in the way you do and you cannot criticize the IPCC except where it is too “conversative” such as in ice loss. And you cannot talk to skeptics or give them a place to demonstrate their nonsense
Is this intended as helpful advice or something else?
something else.
Lets put it this way. Judith wasnt kicked off the island because of her science, because the island is not defined by “the science”. She was kicked off for breaking certain rules that have nothing to do with science:
talking to McIntyre, taking a hard line on climategate..
Im not suggesting she change anything. Im pointing out that island climate is not defined by adherence to certain science beliefs.
Its kinda the same with Island skeptic.
The difference is, there’s no consensus on Island Skeptic, and thus no process for tossing anybody off.
“The difference is, there’s no consensus on Island Skeptic, and thus no process for tossing anybody off.”
Yeah well, I’m not sure there is a process for tossing people off island climate either, just criteria. Where there may be an island climate, it might be more accurate to say there is an archipelago skeptic.
> I’m not sure there is a process for tossing people off island climate[.]
Scientists vote with their citations.
Wegman’s fluorescent echo bubble chamber.
============
Folks
Just to alert you that in the UK ‘being tossed off’ has an alternative meaning that may mean something different than you mean.
But then, on reflection, I am in some sympathy with the idea that those who required Judith to leave Consensus Island are indeed a Bunch of Tossers
Getting kicked off the consensus island is like getting kicked off Gilligan’s Island. It’s hardly a loss to leave behind a bunch of intellectual Gilligan’s (Michael Mann) and Thurston Howell IIIs (Algore).
GaryM,
Bad move, citing Gilligan’s Island. Your side has characters the likes of Captain Dallas and Captain Kangaroo (the sockpuppet known also as Chief Hydrologist, Dr. Dunderhead, and Generalissimo Skippy) trying to steer your ship.
Those are the captains of industry that are taking you way off course and stranded on a deserted island.
It is all so very comical.
“Yeah well, I’m not sure there is a process for tossing people off island climate either, just criteria.”
It works better if there ISNT a process or set of criteria.
There will of course be exemplars for exile. Do X and you are history.
But it works better if there is no clear criteria. That way people are reticent to test boundaries and they look to others to figure out what is allowed and what is not allowed.
then there are groomers like willard
The other way you can look at this is the process must be opaque. Its something that cannot be discussed because if you discuss it they it becomes readily apparent that the tribe is not what it purports to be. iThe more arbitrary the application of power to marginal members the better.
You see other people looking at judith and wondering ‘what did she do?”
And each will try to explain which rule she violated. There isnt any chief to say which rule, so of course everyone who sees the exile moderates their own behavior based on their interpretation. So its vital that her sin never be named. To her it must look arbitrary that way she cannot figure out a way back in. To others in the group, they must come to some interpretatioin so they can avoid the same fate, and the arbitrary nature of the excommunication serves to homogenize group behavior.
This islands model works for other tribes as well. Who in the news was tossed off Hispanic island?
Mosh
Are you on your phone again when posting this?
What on earth does this cryptic comment mean?
Tonyb
Long ago I used to say this
Global warming is true and Mann was wrong to call McIntyre an oil shill.
Now of course the second part has nothing to do with the science. But if you belong to the consensus you cant utter that sentence.
The consensus “appears” as a body of scientific knowledge when it fact it is not. To belong to the consensus you have to believe certain science things that almost no one denies, but more importantly you have to avoid certain topics or hold the party line on those topics.
So, if you take a position of climategate as Judith and I do, which is outside the official line, then they will treat you like you disagree with the science. They have to pretend that the consensus is about the science when it is not. And you can prove its not about the science by taking certain positions across the thin green lines. AGW is right, Mann was wrong. If you cross that line it doesnt matter what your science position is
So what Judith, Tamsin, and Muller all did was they crossed certain lines that are utterly unrelated to the scientific truth of global warming. On the science they are “in the tribe” but the tribe isnt defined by that science, the center is hollow and vapid, what defines the tribe is adherence to a set of behaviors that have nothing to do with the founding principle.
Think of it this way. Judith is like an uncircumsized jew. She may believe in the core religion, but shes need to visit the Mohel and get a bit of symbolic flesh removed at least in the eyes of the tribe. She wont belong until she follows certain rules that have nothing whatsover to do with the science
What I am saying is that the things Judith does ( talk to skeptics, critcize the IPCC, talk about climategate ) are
1. utterly unrelated to the science
2. the very actions that make people think she is outside the consensus
of science.
@Mosh
What I am saying is that the things Judith does ( talk to skeptics, critcize the IPCC, talk about climategate ) are
1. utterly unrelated to the science
2. the very actions that make people think she is outside the consensus
of science.
>>
Only if you think the *process* of science is unrelated to the science.
mephis
“Only if you think the *process* of science is unrelated to the science.”
Lets see.
1. Co2 causes warming
2. Judith invites Mcintyre to georgia tech
3. Did C02 change it’s radiative powers?
Les see
1. The planet is getting warmer
2. Phil Jones violated FOIA rulez
3. Did that change the historical temperatures.
yes the process of science is important, that process would in fact explain why and how judiths actions are utterly UNRELATED to the science, to the facts of the matter, and that she was banished from the island for matters utterly and totally unrelated to anything connected to the science.
Boys can behave badly, but not girls.
Mosher said:
“Think of it this way. Judith is like an uncircumsized jew.”
___________
An amazing trick !
‘So what Judith, Tamsin, and Muller all did was they crossed certain lines that are utterly unrelated to the scientific truth of global warming.’
When Judith talks about climate shifts we are no longer in Kansas – Toto – although it might take some time for the threshold to be finally crossed. .
My favorite line is Toto’s note to Dorothy: ‘Took the shoes. Find your own damn way home’.
==============
Of course McIntyre is not an oil shill. He is a tar sands mining shill.
Big difference between drilling and mining.
Shills.
The worst of all are the government shills. You know, the Consensus.
Or as Willis said, you can talk to the hand.
Mosh, given other comments, I will say that your intent was clear to me. Although I think you meant “undetermined’?
No, Faustino:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underdetermination
Just like Jennifer Francis said:
> A very different interpretation of the results could be made.
thanks for that link willard. it had one of my favorite words
‘equipollence’
long ago I had an editor remove that word because he said it wasnt real
“Lets put it this way. Judith wasnt kicked off the island because of her science, because the island is not defined by “the science”.” – Steven Mosher.
Agreed.
“They deny that the scientific method can challenge scientific authority — that the institutions of science have more to say than the process of doing science.” – Ben Pike.
Interesting take on it here: http://www.climate-resistance.org/2013/08/science-without-an-object.html
The way I read Pike is, They pick up the Consensus stick and wave it around. If you look at the stick, there’s a note taped to it that reads, This I Is The Science, but it’s really not there. The Science is with the Scientists. Let’s look there.
Dr Curry, you seem mighty bothered and hurt because you have been thrown off the “consensus island”. You shouldn’t be. You are right, they wrong. You did what all scientist should be doing: be faithful to science and facts, to the best of your ability and conscience.
It is the “consensus” crowd who have thrown the science under the bus, and put advocacy before science. Shame on them, not on you.
Lest my comment should sound too flattering I would add this: it took you quite long to find the right way.
You would be very much in the minority then Jim. On the wrong side in the climate debate?
‘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=10
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/2009JCLI2778.1
Ah Chief, that was a paper anyone can understand so must be wrong. You need a super-computer and years of training the program to run proper models
willard (@nevaudit) | August 24, 2013 at 4:30 pm |
That is in the 1971 book “Rules for Radicals” by Saul Alinsky. You didn’t know that?
Wrong. This is knowledge required to climb the corporate ladder. A senior VP at a Fortune 500 therefore must have it to get where they got.
David, you will find that it is generally people who can command loyalty, respect and can also pick effective subordinates who clime to the top.
Indeed, and some studies show that leaders are more likely to be sociopaths:
http://bigthink.com/videos/leaders-are-more-likely-to-be-sociopaths
That’s true Willard – I’m sure a lot of politicians are sociopaths also.
Seems that somebody somewhere agrees with you, jim2:
http://underthemountainbunker.com/2011/07/10/machiavelli-would-be-envious-of-todays-republican-party/
Has someone done an analysis of the mental health of sociologists?
Willard, let me ask a question.
Why do you think most clinicians are so aloof?
> Why do you think most clinicians are so aloof?
It varies, I suppose, but one might guess a mix of self-awareness and non-judgementality, which are acquired through the necessary experiences of a wounded healer:
To represent this, the Greeks left us the myth of Chiron, the centaur who could cure anyone except himself. Chiron is essential to understand how astrologers talk of Sagittarius, i.e. the daily ruler of Jupiter. It’s at the basis of the “I’m only trying to help” I alluded to the other day.
Interestingly, this only can help explain why there was so much debate to settle Jesus Christ’s birthday under the influence of this sign.
It is a pity that scientists do not study these concepts.
TL;DR; — I don’t know. Who cares? Here are some stories that structure our collective minds instead.
This is absolutely hilarious.
“And this is where Curry parts company most clearly with her peers. For example, the leading scientific organization for earth scientists, the American Geophysical Union, says in a position statement that climate change ‘requires urgent action.’”
…
‘Curry says[,] I just don’t know what the next hundred or 200 years will hold, and whether this will be regarded as an important issue. I just don’t know.’
By now, of course, Curry has strayed far from science and deep into public policy.”
Curry has strayed far from science and deep into public policy? The AGU says CAGW “requires urgent action,” aka decarbonizatiohn, and Dr. Curry says “I don’t know” enough to make such a radical policy prescription. But it is Dr. Curry, not the AGU, who has abandoned science for public policy?
I swear, it’s the deaf interviewing the blind, being supported by the stupid.
Are you calling the taxpayers stupid?
Stupid sound a bit harsh:
http://news.muckety.com/2013/07/29/us-companies-offshore-tax-shelters/43481
Sucker might be more accurate, but it does not result from the most advanced mediarology. To that effect, we await our Fortune top 500 execs’ suggestions.
Meanwhile, for more on mediarology, cf.
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Mediarology/Mediarology.html
willard,
An uneducated member of the public who falls for the CAGW propaganda can properly be called a sucker. But for the educated “elite,” like the reporter who interviewed Dr. Curry, stupid applies. Not in the sense of lacking intelligence, but in lacking common sense. Willfully ignorant. Stupid.
Harold,
No, I don’t consider most voters stupid. When theya re told what you progressives really want, they reject you in huge numbers. That is why decarbonization is called mitigation, or resilience, or protecting the children. because if you told them you wanted to charge them so much for gas and oil that they could no longer afford it, you would never win another election.
My comment expressly related to CAGW “supporters.” meaning the drone reporter, and most pro-CAGW commenters here.
Nope, the nature of the framing required by Harris precludes ‘Willfully ignorant, stupid’. Generally the same question, the same question, is ‘ignorance or disingenuousness’. In this case, it’s the same answer, the same answer: Disingenuousness.
Sadly, it’s blatant. When will they ever learn, ever learn?
============
kim,
I rarely disagree with you, but here I do. Oh I agree the reporter is disingenuous. But that does not mean he is not willfully ignorant/stupid as well. The dishonesty is a tactic. The motivation is the blind acceptance of that which any amount of critical thought would demonstrate was false.
But modern education, and modern progressive media, drives into default progressives the need to avoid critical thought. Read Pekaa Pirila’s comments elsewhere on this thread about not being willing to read Montford’s book.
Dishonesty and stupidity are not mutually exclusive.
Oh, sure, I guess the question is not really an either/or one.
============
> Willfully ignorant. Stupid.
Whatever the mental property, I think Judy’s observation applies when it’s used to characterize scientists:
Populists like GaryM are well advise to extend this observation to the public in general.
Heh, ignorant and disingenuous both apply here.
=========
Stupid is as stupid does.
Damn I should have finished your article before I piped up.
Let me touch on one point we made in our book
“3. The selling of the merchant of doubt and war on science memes, which made uncertainty and doubt dirty words. My uncertainty monster flew directly in the face of this.”
It did more than this. By positioning the opposition as merchants of doubt, the first law of marketing implies that the consensus is a merchant of certainty. Now note nobody ever says this, but our binary ways of thinking tend to trap folks into this conclusion. If I position my opponent as Expensive, you are naturally going to think that my product in in expensive.. even if its not.
To make matters worse this stealth message that the consensus is certain was buttressed by things like “the debate is over” the science is settled.
listen to experts. In short the science and what people say about it gets hi jacked by the first law of marketing. There is no helping it. It has a mind of its own which is ground in some of our most fundamental ways of thinking about things..
As I’ve said before I think a better description of skeptics is that they are merchants of confusion. In this schema their confusion is countered by “or best explanation” or merchants of clarity. In this opposition science gets to keep its sub brand of “uncertainty”
You, Tamsin, Muller have all crossed certain thin green lines. Whether its criticizing Mann, talking to McIntyre, challenging the temperature record, refusing to take a policy position, talking about uncertainty too much these lines are all boundaries that you cannot cross. And if you are already on the margin due to your gender, any flirtations with boundary crossing will be seen as dangerous ( and holy by others )
some things to consider
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality
also, the figure of the trickster.. When Hansen called the folks at CA “jesters” I had a long deep chuckle
The other day willard recommend Girard, I would second that.
Frankly – we have rarely seen such an abundance of pop psychology claptrap in a single comment.
Judith
You may appreciate then how it is used in a modern pedagogical framework – http://www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/~mflanaga/thresholds.html
Other than that Mosh’s comment seems merely another of the symptoms of groupthink.
1. Illusion of invulnerability –Creates excessive optimism that encourages taking extreme risks.
2. Collective rationalization – Members discount warnings and do not reconsider their assumptions.
3. Belief in inherent morality – Members believe in the rightness of their cause and therefore ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions.
4. Stereotyped views of out-groups – Negative views of “enemy” make effective responses to conflict seem unnecessary.
5. Direct pressure on dissenters – Members are under pressure not to express arguments against any of the group’s views.
6. Self-censorship – Doubts and deviations from the perceived group consensus are not expressed.
7. Illusion of unanimity – The majority view and judgments are assumed to be unanimous.
8. Self-appointed ‘mindguards’ – Members protect the group and the leader from information that is problematic or contradictory to the group’s cohesiveness, view, and/or decisions.
Point 4 is relevant. Using terms such as ‘confusion’ and ‘jesters’ to describe opposition. Other groupthink practices inhibit the ability to grow in knowledge and understanding – thus are inimical to passing through conceptual gateways to open up new vistas.
‘Threshold Concepts’ may be considered to be “akin to passing through a portal” or “conceptual gateway” that opens up “previously inaccessible way[s] of thinking about something” (Meyer and Land [9]).’
Thus ‘consensus science’ ceases to be science at all and is instead an expression of a psychopathology.
> [S]ymptoms of groupthink […] an expression of a psychopathology.
The alternative is to consider these traits as pervasive in group dynamics, as we can witness Denizens exhibiting most these items daily.
The link does not lead to the typology, BTW.
The link leads to a modern pedagogical application of the idea of liminality.
Try this instead – http://www.psysr.org/about/pubs_resources/groupthink%20overview.htm
Sceptics may individually certainly talk from a position of somewhat common cultural values – but the group dynamic applies especially well to the cult of AGW groupthink space cadets. There is no equivalence as I am fond of telling Joshua.
Thanks for the cite, Chief, and for this:
> [T]he group dynamic applies especially well to the cult of AGW groupthink space cadets.
which does sound like a stereotyped view of an out-group.
So I agree with you: the #4 is quite relevant.
Although you should really look at the symptoms as a package.
CH, you miss something else. My wife started out as a research scientist and gave up research, like many do, because she found it hard to deal with failure. Most of the things we do fail, they fail because most of our guesstimates are wrong. We design experiments to test our postulates and normally our postulates are demolished. If you have the sort of personality that doesn’t mind failure, your in. If you get depressed that you quite beautiful hypothesis is complete tosh, you crumble.
The temptation is not to test your postulate at all, but to just make your hypothesis more and more complex; epicycles on epicycles.
At the moment we have the ‘pause’.
The longer it goes on the lower the estimate of ‘climate sensitivity’ must be. The models are being tested by nature, and not the modelers, but testing is occurring.
The non-experimentalists will be buttressing their crumbling ivory towers using dust, black carbon, volcanoes, sulfates, CFC’s, sub-aquatic heat sinks and all manner of epicyclic tricks.
However, the post-Doc’s and the young, freshly minted, untenured professors are becoming restless. These are the people who know where all the bodies are buried, they know all the fudges, approximations, simulations that give the ‘wrong’ results and what the older generation has been getting away with. The quickest way to rise is by stepping into dead-mans shoes and these people know where the daggers are.
DocMartyn
“At the moment we have the ‘pause’.
The longer it goes on the lower the estimate of ‘climate sensitivity’ must be. The models are being tested by nature, and not the modelers…..”
A good comment but shouldn’t we consider that CS is a field in a Hilbert space and thus a vector rather than as a singular constant?
Doc, please curb those grocer’s apostrophes dude.
“Doc, please curb those grocer’s apostrophes dude”
I was never taught English Language at school, so I have tended to make up rules for writing as I go along.
Steve, I think you are quite correct as to the green lines; but I don’t think it is marketing, rather it is the political purpose which has underlain the IPCC process.
As I said above, the IPCC was and is a political not a scientific organization. As I write, political people are editing the 5th IPCC report. They are not editing with an eye to making the science clearer. They are editing to try to bring the science into conformity with the IPCC agenda.
Critically, the IPCC’s mandate is to explicate “man made” global warming. It is there to provide the scientific ammunition to buttress “solutions” to the “problem” posed by CO2 emissions. Now, politically, science which suggests that there is no problem or that the problem is not terrifically serious is unhelpful. Unhelpful science will tend to be left out of the IPCCs reports. Whether this is done at the lead author level, the reviewer level or in the political “edit” is immaterial.
Thus, the political goals of the IPCC shape what counts as consensus science. If someone does a scientifically rigorous analysis which proves that CO2 sensitivity is .5 degrees per doubling, the political goals of the IPCC mean that this science will be depreciated at best, ignored at worst.
Sceptics take a lot of stick for pointing out that the 1992 Rio conference had an essentially predetermined environmentalist agenda. However, a close look at the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development which includes the precautionary principle makes that agenda clear.
So, the consensus itself is a political construct having very little to do with science. In fact, the consensus operates as a filter on the science designed to screen out science which is unhelpful to the IPCC agenda.
Testing by nachur
is best,
never mind
the rest,
appeal ter
consensus,
adjustment
or buttress,
methodoligically
worthless
and finally
fruitless
bts
Bingo !! Spot on !
This is the most difficult issue for people to acknowledge.
That the IPCC by design was explicitly a political process (with a preordained desired outcome), not a scientific one.
I myself struggled mightily to reject this conclusion, because it required me to overturn some cherished beliefs of my own.!
@brent
The ‘I’ in ‘IPCC’ makes it clear.
It is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
By its own name it is a political body. And though carefully selected and government-approved scientists have an important input to its work, the finished product is essentially a political document.
That there’s stuff goin’ down in naychur we don’t know is
recognised by the methods and skepticism of science.
Naychur rules This in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean,
posted in comments at Jennifer Marohasy.
http://news.discovery.com/earth/oceans/atlantic-ocean-floor-unexpectedly-pumping-iron-130820.htm
The summaries are, indeed, finalized by government representatives, but not all of them are on the same side in the debate, and the final outcome is a compromise acceptable to all.
The working group reports are written by scientists, but governments participate in the review process and have trough that some influence on the outcome. All formal decision making of IPCC is done by government representatives. Thus they decide also, how the authors are selected. One problem is that some chapters may have an authorship where too few are really active and dominate too much when some of the others just fill the quota. This is a problem in all international collaboration.
Thanks Jay Currie your comments about the IPCC were always obvious to me. Organizations (Business or Gov.) tend to do what they say they will do.
a new word, liminality, i like it :)
You’ve probably heard it before, Judith, in the word “subliminal”, meaning “below the threshold” (usually of consciousness). Climate science, it could be argued, is also subliminal in the sense that it’s below the threshold of being a mature science–unlike, say, chemistry.
preliminary – liminary – postliminary
‘Liminal states: This space is likened to that which adolescents inhabit: – not yet adults; not quite children. It is an unstable space in which the learner may oscillate between old and emergent understandings just as adolescents often move between adult-like and child-like responses to their transitional status. But once a learner enters this liminal space, she is engaged with the project of mastery unlike the learner who remains in a state of pre-liminality in which understandings are at best vague. The idea that learners enter into a liminal state in their attempts to grasp certain concepts in their subjects presents a powerful way of remembering that learning is both affective and cognitive and that it involves identity shifts which can entail troublesome, unsafe journeys. Often students construct their own conditions of safety through the practice of mimicry. In our research, we came across teachers who lamented this tendency among students to substitute mimicry for mastery.’ http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/24/who-is-on-which-side-in-the-climate-debate-anyways/#comment-369403
http://www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/~mflanaga/thresholds.html
The most interesting characters are liminal.
you can think of liminality as the space in between. neither outside nor inside, but able to occupy both.
a liminal character may be viewed as polluting or dangerous. Note Judith that your old student was most concerned about the effect your words might have on others.. on the flip side they can be seen as holy.
hence the difficulty people had placing you as either saint or heretic.
Think about the inititiation process for a scientist..
hmm maybe we need to talk about the “mad scientist” character in fiction and what they represent..
‘Meyer and Land [12] have likened the crossing of the pedagogic threshold to a ‘rite of passage’ (drawing on the ethnographical studies of Gennep and Turner in which a transitional or liminal space has to be traversed; “in short, there is no simple passage in learning from ‘easy’ to ‘difficult’; mastery of a threshold concept often involves messy journeys back, forth and across conceptual terrain.’
By definition it is a threshold – a portal – a passage. The passage may be messy – but once traversed there is a sense that there is a new heaven and new Earth. There is no going back. Adorning this idea with notions of saints and sinners seems quite unnecessary. They could be insiders – in the way of arcane knowledge in a field, as an adult for instance or as an initiate of some sort. They could be part of one of competing groups with disparate knowledge – old and new paradigms.
Mad science – or the fear thereof – has a different wellspring.
Let’s clear something up here about the war skeptics are waging:
It’s a war on corrupt science, and the politicized Merchants of Credulity who market it.
> It’s a war on corrupt science […]
A noble cause indeed.
Indeed, and swirlingly cleansed of corruption itself, such a cause, dontcha know?
=========
Anti-science ideologues posing as skeptics don’t stand a chance in a war against science. They will get their sorry butts kicked.
Memphis,
I’d say, for the vast majority of people, it’s not about the science at all, its about the economics and human well being.
It’s a war on waste – enormous economic waste on hugely expensive mitigation policies that would deliver no benefits.
Max_OK
“Anti-science ideologues” on either side of the debate do not have a chance against good ol’ Mother Nature (who still rules the climate game).
Max_CH
Max-ok,
The real problem we face is anti-science ideologues posing as scientists. Politically-funded climate scientists working to a politicizing agenda, pretending it is science. The IPCC lot, with their left/totalitarian outlook.
That’s who skeptics are bringing to book. As amateurs, they may lack the hard science, but unlike the scientists they actually know how the process of science is meant to work – to advance objective correctness, not political correctness.
>> Skepticism is a war on corrupt science […]
@willard > A noble cause indeed.
Yes. Quite distinct from Noble-Cause Corruption, such as that buttressing CAGW.
> Quite distinct from Noble-Cause Corruption[.]
How so, Gina?
Also note Chief’s typology:
There are ethical and moral consequences in your decisions, Gina.
Willard asks what the difference is between pursuing Noble Causes
(a) without
(b) with
the use of Corruption.
If we take her to be a typical alarmist, it does go some way to explaining the nonchalant attitude to tactical fraud in the whole Consensus edifice.
Thank you, Gina.
So, your war is noble, and your noble war does not contain any kind of corruption. That makes it an interesting kind of war.
Please tell me more about how you fight your war.
You feign ignorance of what I speak? Why?
What is so complicated or mysterious about trying to keep government climate science honest?
> [A] better description of skeptics is that they are merchants of confusion. In this schema their confusion is countered by “or best explanation” or merchants of clarity.
The subtitle of Oreskes & Conway is How a Handful of ScientistsObscurred the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming:
http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/keydocs.html
Also note that the usual concept is FUD, an acronym which stands for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt
Auditors might wonder who would like to brand oneself as a merchant of uncertainty.
Come to think of it, the never ending audit could very well be transposed in a formal dialog between Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.
This would be a bit less formal than Pinter’s own method:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html
Willard
How about “merchants of false certainty”?
(Example: IPCC)
Max
Where there is no real understanding, those like Oreskes who claim otherwise are the frauds. The skeptics are who point this out do us all a service; they spotlight rather than sow the confusion.
So you reckon the alarmists cannot themselves be guilty of FUD?
Merchandizing uncertainty irremediably portrays the opposition as selling certainty, perhaps more certainty than the opposition is willing to sell, e.g.:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/mains2-2.html
This “very likely” does not express any certainty.
> So you reckon the alarmists cannot themselves be guilty of FUD?
Fear, mostly. That’s why they are called “alarmists”, phatboy. They are being accused (not guilty, labels being just words) of exaggerating.
Please mind that a counter reaction to alarmism (i.e. exaggeration) is called minimization:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimisation_(psychology)
***
Now, please tell me who’s Uncertainty and who’s Doubt.
No need for “guilty of”.
Thank you for your concerns.
“The subtitle of Oreskes & Conway is How a Handful of ScientistsObscurred the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming:”
I should not have to school you on the un importance of sub titles.
You of course are entitled to your own facts, but you’d have to be a dunce to not recognize the shortcomings of merchants of doubt, when doubt and uncertainty plays such a visible role in science.
you should sit through brand building exercises, since language is a social art I will suggest that you might benefit from sitting and watching folks who practice that art for pay. whats the harm?
The subtitle may be just an interesting coincidence.
I think Oreskes & Conway used the expression “merchants of doubt” because of the famous 1969 Brown & Williamson document.
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/302809431
I would have talked of Smoke and Mirrors (NA has a tag for it), but I think that “merchants of doubt”, considered with this connotation in mind, has merits. It would be interesting to know which branding efforts are associated with doubt. It would be even more interesting to know which ones are associated with uncertainty.
Do you think that uncertainty is Judy’s product, Moshpit?
***
Now to the main argument. Recall that FUD “is generally a strategic attempt to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information.” We’ll make three observations.
First, note that we’re talking about perception here, not facts as we usually understand them. There’s no way to stop interpreting perceptions. It leads to what Stevan Harnad called, in another context, a hall of mirrors:
http://philpapers.org/rec/HARLIT
Second, note that one uses FUD to brand the competition. That means a brand is thus the result or two opposite marketing efforts. If I were a Fortune Top N exec, I might feel lukewarm to take the branding effort of a black hat marketer at face value, however charming may be his platonician theory of marketing by opposites.
Third, Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt are three interrelated roles. Doubt will accuse Fear of selling fear, while Fear will accuse Doubt of selling doubt. What’s the role of Uncertainty in that trio? Overton may have a question like this in mind when he invented a window that could be stretched:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
***
In a nutshell, here’s what’s happening.
Climateballers are raising concerns about other Climateballers’ credibility. It may look like an exercise of Monday Morning Quarterback (we are indeed monday morning), but that is the game that is being played. It looks like a fight, but it’s also a race to more credibility.
The fight looks like a comedy of menace. The race looks like waiting for Godot. This is why I say that Climateball is basically a comedy of menace while waiting for Godot.
***
Another word would be socialization, as such power struggles intensify around fourth grade:
http://www.pbs.org/parents/raisinggirls/friends/elem1.html
This kind of explanation has more bite than any islander analogy.
I cannot tell you how fascinating it is to watch Mosher deconstruct progressive propaganda cum marketing with such precision, when he so often engages in the same obscurantist tactics himself. Particularly in defense of all things modular.
This is what the “consensus” really has to fear. If any of the key members, Jones, Schmidt, Trenberth, ever had a come to Jesus – sorry, come to Gaia – moment, the party would be over. It’s what prosecutors call flipping an insider. Mosher hasn’t actually really flipped, and isn’t really an insider, but he has his moments. And they’re fun to watch.
Mosher’s a lot more complex and interesting than the Jonses and Schmdts, but it wouldn’t matter which side he flipped on anyway.
The ‘insider flip’ happened years ago, and he said “Harry Readme”. It might be dramatic if he decloaked, but it wouldn’t change anything. Frankly, nothing will change anything. Like Al Queda, too many people are ‘all in’ for anything to make any difference. The warmist ‘team’ will always be there, even through the next ice age. Waiting for the Great Pumpkin.
Waiting for willard to wonder well. Irrigating the little green sprouts in with the squash and the cukes.
=============
Harold,
HarryReadMe was not what I mean by a flip. And the anonymity of the releaser prevented it from having the impact that the flip of a major player would have.
Nor am I predicting anything of the kind. Though I think Jones gave it real consideration when he first got nailed after climategate. But now that they have survive that, and Mann and Gleick keep their positions in the field, and the IPCC keeps staggering along, the prospects are slim. But still possible, and fun to contemplate.
> Irrigating the little green sprouts in with the squash and the cukes.
Your Evil Clown act is getting boring, Koldie.
wee willie has sounded the full depth of tedium and triviality long since.
Thank you for the kind words, Chief.
Here’s an experiment. I won’t open or comment on any new topics in this thread. I reserve the right to comment if a commenter either reacts to my previous comments or invokes my name. That does not mean I will reappear, as I think I contributed more than enough so far.
You can have all the dancing floor to yourself, now.
Go ahead, show us some moves.
‘Wee Willie Winkie rins through the toon,
Up stairs an’ doon stairs in his nicht-gown,
Tirlin’ at the window, crying at the lock,
“Are the weans in their bed, for it’s now ten o’clock?”
some think this is related
The road to Damascus is a road not often travelled by climate scientists it appears, at least not until they approach retirement anyway. As for Voltaire, its best to cover all bets before one dies? ;)
More like plucking for the harmonics, moshe.
=============
Both ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ are apprriate answers to the climate debate. Remember the debate is about climate, not models. Yes is appropriate for 1910 to 1940 and 1970 to 1998 and No to the rest.
As a scientific debate it is silly because it was confected by politicians.
So from 1900 to the present: 58 years of Yes and 55 of No. Is there a winner?
And it looks like the “Nos” have it at the moment.
But who knows for how long?
(not even kim)
Max
This was a fantastic summary of perspectives. It would be nice to think that Trenberth might actually take the time to read it, though that is unlikely.
Regarding oceans, the energy flux between ocean and atmosphere and the “pause”, don’t know exactly where Trenberth pulled the 20 year figure from, except that was roughly the time between the 1976/77 climate shift and the reversal of 1998. If we suppose, as Trenberth seems to, that oceans have been in a accumulation mode since 1998, then 2018 or 2019 might be time for another period of dicharge to begin. But this would only be if we’re looking at the Pacific only. As pointed out, the AMO could shift to a cool mode, and really complicate things. But what seems to missed by all sides currently is the affects that increasing GH gases may have on these ocean cycles. The assumption that we can simply extrapolate the future from the past clearly is completely wrong-headed when considering the substational external forcing that the human carbon volcano represents.
R Gates views the Human Carbon Cornucopia through smoked lenses.
===============
“The assumption that we can simply extrapolate the future from the past clearly is completely wrong-headed when considering the substational external forcing that the human carbon volcano represents”
You sort of know that all science based predictions about the future and based on an understanding of the fundamental drivers of past events?
Is it only in climate we are to throw our hands up in the air and say ‘anything can happen, but whatever happens will be bad’? Are our children going to turnout ‘bad’ because the grew up in a completely different society to their parents? Can we make no predictions about the best way to raise them in the internet age, because never before has humanity had the internet?
Do you know that the spiral arm that the Earth belongs to was in this position, 225 million years ago, we were within 25 million years of two extinction level events? Should we be fearful?
We jest can’ predict and experts ain’t no better than the rest.
Thomas Sowell and Nassim Taleb check out the record of
the Ideas’ professions’, not so good.
No matter, there’s little built in accountability in the ideas’
profession, unlike fields of engineering and medicine,
feedbacks don’t matter What counts is oracular profundity.
Why, yer Erlich or yer Hansen can jest go right on prophesisin’ dooms-day till the cows come home, (or don’t.) Then there’s
them Intellect-chual pundits welcoming peace in our time
agreements, confidentaly forecasting the length of an impending
world war, foretelling visionary Utopean outcomes ter Stalinist or
Maoist political experiments or long range forecasts fer every
other goddam political interackshun ……….. ‘n if their wrong,
jest fergit about it or innoculate yer theory. Not ter worry.
bts
What I am getting at Doc is the notion of the perturbing a chaotic system by an external forcing, and thinking that you can predict what will happen based on the history of that chaotic system just prior to perturbing it. The natural cycles of PDO, AMO, ENSO, can’t be expected to guide us in our predictions for the future as those cycles themselves will experience the perturbation.
R.A. Gates, look at this:-
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/DSCN1739-thomson-tide-machine.jpg/400px-DSCN1739-thomson-tide-machine.jpg
It is a Thomson Tide Machine (Lord Kelvin) and successfully predicts the tides and tide levels, using reduction gears.
Now just because you throw the word ‘chaos’ around doesn’t mean you know what you are talking about.
This isn’t Jurassic Park and you are no Jeff Goldberg.
That’s a very nice machine Doc. Too bad chaotic systems do not operate like machines, eh? They are just as deterministic as your nice machine, but far too many variables, feedbacks, etc. to model accurately. Hence why climate models will always be wrong in specifics, even if they have general dynamics correct.
Yes, I am no Jeff Goldberg, as he is an actor who learned some lines to make it sound like he was actually knowledgeable about Chaos theory. It was all an illusion to fool and entertain the audience. I prefer actually knowing something about it, for my own enlightenment.
“…these oscillators (PDO, ENSO, NAO, NPO) are in reality not causally independent but they are ALL just emergent local manifestations of GLOBAL dynamics of the system.” – Tomas Milanovic.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/01/04/scenarios-2010-2040-part-iii-climate-shifts/
I am no Jeff Goldblum. I am more like that guy who focused on raptor 1 and didn’t see raptor 2 until it was too late.
Off topic perhaps Ragnaar’s picture de jour: http://oceanmotion.org/images/impact/95324main_v39n2-big.gif
Showing Ocean currents around Greenland. Does anyone care to enlighten me if those currents meander more at times and less at times?
The other thing the picture says to me is spend research dollars here. It would seem to be as seeing that the narrow Bering Straight is the only other outlet for the Arctic Ocean, there’s a lot going on here.
Doc Gates,
The great thing about complex non-equilibrium thermodynamics is that it can make really smart people look like idiots. The wrong assumption here, poor choice of reference there, next thing you know you have the signs wrong.
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/08/what-sign-was-that-again.html
Like land use for instance. :)
Captain, one of the oddities of chaotic behaviors is that they are not chaotic on all scales; the dripping of a tap is a classical chaotic system. The frequency of drops exhibits chaotic behavior, BUT, the overall flux through the system is zero order. One can simply model the system in terms of flux at larger time scales but not short ones.
The interesting points about Judith’s head post to me are the large areas of common ground that exists between the two sides, especially wrt the science, but any attempt by sceptics to bring this up is given short shrift by mainstream climate scientists.
The difference between JC and KT in terms of confidence in the projections of the climate models is striking IMO and this seems where advocacy has supplanted scientific objectiveness with a normative approach to the evidence we are all considering.
The sociology of the climate science has provided a fertile ground for the study of tribal behaviour and the staying power of motivated reasoning in the context of what everyone should be agreeing on: that is that climate/weather is a prime example of complex and dynamic systems interacting in unpredictable ways.
I think your second paragraph provides an explanation for your first one, Peter.
How would you react if I told you we almost share all our beliefs, but that most of our disagreements are based on the fact that you lost your objectivity, are being judgemental, and act like a tribesman?
I hope you do realize what being called a tribesman implies and that the accusation of being “normative” carries its load of irony, considering the accusations I just made up for illustration’s sake.
Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Agreed Willard. Reality is in constant conflict with human perceptions and any confluence usually is unrecognised in one’s thinking. A good step forward is always taken when one recognises that their biases need to be allowed for when they make decisions or express a POV.
I concur, Peter, and would add that we should acknowledge that sometimes, people are just not made to be in speaking terms. We all have our elective affinities. I enjoy your peaceful detachment, for instance.
Style matters.
I always enjoy your contributions Willard and while I sometimes find myself not agreeing with your POV on some topics, I still find that I am learning something from you, in contrast to some others, whose names shall not be mentioned.
You have invested much time and mental energy in this and other discussions around the blogosphere and your sources and links are always much appreciated.
As for being detached, I am endeavouring to control my emotions as much as I can so as to make more reasoned conclusions on what I am perceiving of the world around me and to influence the people with whom I engage to do likewise. I feel like a juror about this debate and I am still out.
Funny – I always find him trivial and specious. Perhaps I’m more objective.
Your POV on science and philosophy and your poetry is one of the main reasons that I keep coming back to this blog Chief but on the subject of Willard’s contribution I disagree. I enjoy Willard’s posts and particularly appreciate his tweets.
Perhaps its hard to be more objective about one another when you have exchanged insults numerous times in the past?
I do appreciate Chief’s tenderness, Peter, especially in his poems.
I almost appreciate his dismissiveness, even when directed at me.
What I appreciate less are the repetitive ringtones.
And I say this as a Philip Glass fan.
JC wrote: “I realize that I am treading into the area of social psychology here, I am throwing these ideas out there in the hopes that some social scientists will pick up on this issue and investigate so that we can better understand the dynamics here, where the tribal differences on a scientific topic are not driven so much by scientific differences but by social issues. […] I am concerned that the social psychology of the allegiance to consensus is getting in the way of moving climate science forward and providing useful information and analyses to support decision making by policy makers.”
I very strongly share the concern expressed in the last sentence.
– –
JC wrote: “‘Consensus’ scientists are busy investigating the pause cause, using arguments that have been skeptical talking points for several decades.”
That made me laugh. (It’s so true.)
– –
JC wrote of poor understanding of “[…] the mechanisms of vertical heat transport in the ocean”
Multivariate evidence considered collectively suggests very clearly that the role of equator-pole-temperature-gradient-driven-wind has been severely underestimated. (Temperature, mass, & velocity are coupled.)
Sober, appreciative attention to natural sun climate attractors is due now. (Further delay is unethical at this point.)
The Pause Cause is skeptic caws.
==============
Could it be that the thanksgiving turkey of certainty’s
goose is cooked?
Heh, no leering and frothing @ ClimateEtc? I tell you again, my best stuff gets deleted, even by my finest editor, StevieMac.
================
I guess kim hugging and kissing kim is OK.
Steven Mosher | August 24, 2013 at 6:12 pm |
Good, now you state a clear position. However, that position is that “the consensus on climate change” amounts to an unspoken conspiracy to promote a policy agenda while carefully avoiding genuine engagement on the issues. Well, it is that or, as another said above, a kind of psychopathology. Now we are clear on your view of the matter.
But what about Dr. Curry who has done her dead level best to engage Trenberth and others on the science and, perhaps more important, on the boundaries between science and advocacy? You seem to have nothing to say about that effort. Given your silence and your opinion of consensus science, my guess is that you believe that any attempt to address ethics in science is just another example of King Lear raging against the thunderstorm. Right?
Theo Goodwin >> …that position is that “the consensus on climate change” amounts to an unspoken conspiracy to promote a policy agenda.
“Conspiracy” Government is funding a climate science that argues for more government. Exactly as you’d expect, government is first and foremost looking after itself. What else do you expect? And how do you manage to shoehorn “conspiracy” into the picture?
I wanted to suggest that on the matter of ethics in science that Mosher’s position is nihilistic or, what amounts to the same thing, postmodern. Such a view makes attention to ethics something like a symptom of immaturity. From your post, it seems to me that you hold a nihilistic position.
Theo
“But what about Dr. Curry who has done her dead level best to engage Trenberth and others on the science and, perhaps more important, on the boundaries between science and advocacy? You seem to have nothing to say about that effort. Given your silence and your opinion of consensus science, my guess is that you believe that any attempt to address ethics in science is just another example of King Lear raging against the thunderstorm. Right?”
well you didnt read my book so you are forgiven.
The boundary between science and advocacy?
lets see if I can help
start with three words: activism, advocacy, advise
before we try to draw a boundary between advocacy and science I would think we want to know what advocacy is relative to other closely related words.
lets assume you can define advocacy. Comes the question
Does a scientist have the right to advocate. seems so
Does he have a moral obligation to advocate: probably not.
And so the question is does it make practical sense to advocate. that is do you do harm to “science” do you diminish “trust” or can you change the world! yippee
I see the decision to advocate as a practical pragmatic decision. Its not an issue of rights, its not an issue of oughts. Its an issue of will you achieve your ends. So I am quite happy with Judith advocating and not very happy with Hansen advocating.
I try to avoid advocating because I have no experience doing it. But its hard to avoid advocating ( we should do something, data should be open, scientific ethics should be followed )
So I dont have a problem with scientists advocating, cause its hard not to and its hard to draw lines, but pragmatcally speaking certain people need to shut up,, mann, trenberth, and let some newer voices have a go..
When the the climate scientists can give the economists a prediction with small enough uncertainty that the economists can use it with a reasonable discount rate and show future costs of different choices of actions with acceptable ranges of certainty the politicians will have something to work with. Until then scientists should stick to science and truth detection and avoid activism. The obvious exception to this is the requirement for activism to keep the politicians from running ahead before they have sufficient info to make an informed decision.
Yep, it’s a runaway horse and carriage sort of situation.
================
DMA
+1
The science can already provide a number such as 1 degree C for every 2000 Gt CO2 burned, which should be a useful and very direct measure. It is about as far as the science can go. Then it becomes a balance between Gt CO2 burned and degrees C warming, and everyone has their own idea of the optimal compromise.
Jim D
“CO2 burned”?
As I recall from Chemistry 101, CO2 doesn’t “burn”.
It is a product of burning fossil fuels.
You cite a number of 1 degree C for every 2000 Gt CO2, which sounds OK theoretically but you should add “all other things being equal”, shouldn’t you?
The rule of thumb fits for the past record, if we accept that human CO2 was responsible for 97% of the forcing since pre-industrial days, as IPCC claims in AR4.
Max
‘The science can already provide a number such as 1 degree C for every 2000 Gt CO2 burned’
It can? Wow. I thought we’d need to have an accurate understanding of climate sensitivity to do that. Do we have such a thing? How was it experimentally determined? How much has been burnt in the last 15 years? How much did the temperature rise?
Jim D
Typo:
Should read:
“if we accept that human CO2 was responsible for
97%93% of the forcing…”Max
Latimer Alder
Jim D’s 1 degree C per 2,000 GtCO2 (all other things being equal) is based on the estimate by IPCC in AR4 that 93% of the observed past warming can be attributed to forcing from CO2.
It stands or falls with the accuracy of that statement.
IPCC concedes in AR4 that its “level of scientific understanding of natural (solar) forcing is low” (it also concedes that “clouds remain the largest source of uncertainty”.)
There are many studies that have concluded that around 50% of the past warming can be attributed to the unusually high level of 20th C solar activity (highest in several thousand years). This has now ended.
The current “pause” despite unabated CO2 emissions and levels reaching record heights (and IPCC projecting warming of 0.2 degrees C per decade) adds even more uncertainty
So there is a lot of “uncertainty” (as our hostess has emphasized repeatedly), and If these solar studies are correct, Jim’s number must be revised downward, say to 0.5 degrees C per 2,000 GtCO2 (or even less).
Max
I was saying that as an example of what the consensus could say at this point. Rather than 3 C per doubling, which is too sciencey, or even 2-6 C by 2100 depending on emission scenario, they could say 1 C warming per 2000 Gt CO2, which is practical information directly linking effect with cause. It gives a true sense of control of the destiny.
DMA, don’t underestimate the value of uncertainty. I fear making decisions, so uncertainty is my friend.
Max_OK
Uncertainty is there (and it’s big). (Judith)
Predictions are inevitably wrong, and this gets worse the further out the time period goes (Taleb)
But judgment helps make decisions despite this.
The “no regrets” policy and technology proposals included in the ASME “position statement” you cited a few days ago are a good example.
After going through this report in some detail, here are the major “take homes” for me.
– The ASME recommendations do not include the implementation of any direct or indirect carbon tax, but list some other policy proposals and then concentrate on specific “no regrets” technical actions to reduce CO2 emissions.
– Without the implementation of these specific technical actions (business as usual), and with population increasing to 10.9 billion by 2100 (latest UN estimate) plus per capita CO2 emissions increasing by 30%, the atmospheric CO2 concentration could likely rise from 394 ppmv today to around 650 ppm by 2100.* At this CO2 concentration the theoretical greenhouse warming from added CO2 would be between 1.3 and 2.3 ºC, depending on the assumed 2xCO2 climate sensitivity.
– Approximately 125 ppmv CO2 increase could be averted by the implementation of specific “no regrets” technical actions in the power generation and transportation sectors plus various energy conservation initiatives, bringing the 2100 level well below 550 ppmv, which is seen as a goal. Over 60% of this reduction comes from the replacement of most new coal-fired power plants with nuclear plants. The theoretical warming from added CO2 by 2100, which could be averted by implementing all the actions being considered is estimated to be between 0.6 and 1.0 ºC, depending on the assumed 2xCO2 climate sensitivity.
*[The ASME report includes much higher estimates, whereby the world-wide average per capita CO2 emissions would rise to a level by 2100 that is over 4 times as high as today and even higher than the per capita CO2 emission in the USA today! This obviously does not pass a “reality check”.]
The report does not go into cost/benefit analyses, but since the proposed CO2 reduction initiatives chosen to achieve these CO2 reductions are all “no regrets” actions (that essentially pay for themselves), no separate cost/benefit analyses are needed.
Good stuff. Thanks for giving me the link.
Max_CH
manacker said August 25, 2013 at 4:41 am
Uncertainty is there (and it’s big). (Judith)
Predictions are inevitably wrong, and this gets worse the further out the time period goes (Taleb)
______
And you are certain about that? Ha Ha !
I don’t agree about the predictions. It’s just a good excuse for doing nothing because you are certain nothing is going to change,which of course, also is a prediction.
The notion “predictions get worse gets worse the further out the time period goes” sounds good, but is it true?
Max_OK
You ask
A classical example of this are the predictions, made in the mid to late 1800s, that London, New York and Manchester would be inundated in meters of horse manure by 1930 or so resulting from the rapidly increasing number of horse carriages.
“Climatologers” (like city planners, “astrologers” or fortune tellers) are only as good as their “crystal balls” (or GCMs).
These cannot predict the future.- and the longer the time period, the less likely they are to guess it right.
Facts of life, Okie. Read Nassim Taleb, if you don’t believe it.
Max
Max_OK
The ASME “position statement” has a lot of good information in it.
Of course it contains a lot of “motherhood and apple pie” and the obligatory statement that humans are causing warming and this could become problematic (all things outside the mechanical engineers’ area of expertise).
But the specific proposed technical solutions are worth looking at seriously.
I’ve picked out the ones, which I could identify as “no regrets” initiatives (i.e. actions that make economic sense on their own merit).
These are
– Replace most new coal-fired power plants with non-fossil fuel plants (I’ve chosen nuclear for most of this, because this technology is available and cost competitive today). Where nuclear does not make sense (proliferation concerns or sitting on top of a gas field) a smaller part would be replace by combined cycle gas-fired plants, where technology is also available and cost competitive today). These two actions alone would give us an estimated 2100 reduction in CO2 of around 89 ppmv, or ~70% of the total reduction from all actions.
– Replace three-fourths of all light gasoline (or Diesel) driven vehicles with state-of-the-art hybrids; switch half of all heavy vehicles from Diesel to natural gas. Again, economically competitive technologies exist today. These actions would give us an estimated 2100 reduction in CO2 of 18 ppmv.
– Other climate initiatives to reduce waste and improve energy efficiency, such as waste recycling, building insulation, “lifestyle changes”. Based on studies made in Germany and the USA, it appears that these could reduce 2100 CO2 level by another estimated 19 ppmv.
The total savings from just these actions could reduce 2100 CO2 level from an estimated 650 ppmv (without these actions) to around 525 ppmv (with all above actions).
And, using the IPCC AR4 model-based estimate for 2xCO2 climate sensitivity (3.2C) for the upper end of the range of the temperature impact and the conclusion of several more recent observation-based studies as the lower end (1.8C), I arrive at an estimated net theoretical reduction in 2100 temperature resulting from all these “no regrets” CO2 reduction actions at 0.7 to 1.3C.
This should make you happy, Okie – but somehow I sense that you are not happy knowing that there are “no regrets” actions based on a serious report by an engineering group, which could result in a theoretical reduction of global warming from CO2.
And I’m having trouble figuring out why this is so.
Help me out.
Max_CH
manacker, to achieve 525 ppm, the global carbon footprint would have to drop to 2.5 Gt CO2/person by 2100 from its current 5, even as the population increases and development continues. The US footprint is 20 GtCO2/person, Europe is about 10 Gt/person, China is about 7. It is a lot to expect.
Solar powered electrolytic hydrogen and “bio-methane”. Both should be hitting their stride by 2040. Easily mature and rolled out in time for your deadline, unless some other, better, technology is used instead.
…of course my units should have been tonnes CO2 per person.
The notion “predictions get worse gets worse the further out the time period goes” sounds good, but is it true?
Lyapunov’s Theorem and the Perron effect are well known, the temporal horizon for instability being less then 0.2 time units.
There is a nice example of the application to a climatic series in Nicolis and Nicolis [foundations of complex systems pg 220]
Slutsky used LT in his seminal papers update on economic time series (1927),
Lyapunov’s Theorem is a bound on predicting when your prediction becomes unstable.
It isn’t really a prediction at the longer term, it is a change in the equilibrium climate. The sensitivity is the only parameter required in addition to the CO2/GHG concentration. No time integration is needed. These are two steady-state solutions, a current one and a perturbed one. The perturbation in forcing is about 1%.
Jim D
You say:
Your figures are totally goofy, Jim.
Here are some better figures (from Wiki and CDIAC):
World average per capita CO2 is 4.7 tons today; it was 4.6 in 1980 (increase of 3% over the 30-year period)
Nations that were highly industrialized in 1980 had pc CO2 of 12.4 tons in 1980; they have 10.4 today (16% reduction)
This includes North America, all the EU nations at the time, other W. European nations, Japan, Australia and New Zealand
The highest pc CO2 in 2010 was the USA at around 17 tons, down 20% from 1980 at around 21 tons.
All other “non-industrialized” nations had a pc CO2 of 2.3 tons in 1980; they now have a combined pc CO2 of 3.8 tons (increase of 65%)
The per capita CO2 generation in China has increased eight-fold from around 1.0 tons in 1980 to around 7.9 tons in 2012
The per capita CO2 generation in India has increased three-fold from around 0.5 tons in 1980 to around 1.6 tons in 2012
World population grew from around 4.4 billion in 1980 to around 7.1 billion today
Above “industrially developed” nations have grown from around 0.8 billion in 1980 to 1.0 billion today
All other nations have grown from around 3.6 billion in 1980 to 6.1 billion today
World population is expected to reach 10,854 million by 2100 (latest UN estimates)
This represents an exponential growth rate of 0.48% pa, as compared to a 1980-2012 growth rate of 1.47% pa
The “industrially developed nations” are expected to grow in population from around 1 billion in 2012 to around 1.2 billion by 2100 (~20%)
The “non-industrially developed nations” are expected to grow in population from around 6.1 billion in 2012 to around 9.7 billion by 2100 (~60%)
The pc CO2 of the “Industrially developed” nations will likely continue to decrease slightly from 10.4 to 9.5 tons (further 9% reduction)
Including future growth in China, India, etc., the per capita CO2 emissions of the “non-industrially developed nations” will continue to increase sharply in the future, from today’s 3.8 to a future 5.7 tons CO2 by 2100
On this basis, the global per capita CO2 emissions will increase by around 30% from today to 2100
This compares with a 3% increase over the 30-year period 1980-2010
This will result in cumulative CO2 emissions of 4,000 tons from today to 2100, with atmospheric CO2 rising to around 650 ppmv
If “no-regrets” actions listed in the ASME report are implemented, this could be reduced by around 125 ppmv.
Max
manacker, your numbers aren’t far off mine, but now you can see how hard your previous 525 ppm would be to achieve. It is half the rate to get from 400 to 650 ppm, and even that is optimistically low for no mitigation policies or energy transitions to renewables, adding other GHGs natural or not, etc.
Re Manac 4:58 PM post on Aug 25, 2013
Max_CH, I’m glad you found the ASME statement interesting. I think we can agree that many of the recommendations are good.
However, I’m not as keen on nuclear power as ASME, you, and Hansen (see his video).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZExWtXAZ7M
I can’t dismiss the potential for nuclear power disaster from terrorists attacks. There is just no guarantee these power plants will always be indestructible.
Tax policy was beyond the scope of the ASME statement. As you know, I believe a revenue-neutral carbon tax is a no brainer.
We have all seen Hansen’s video. At least I saw the first less than a minute. Nothing at all new – move on to something more interesting. Very few of us are at all impressed. It is just the way it is – that doleful voice and the lugubrious expression.
The new generation nukes are in fact a whole lot better at protecting the environment. Instead of having 270,000 tons of nuclear waste sitting around in leaky drums and tanks – e.g. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/21/us-usa-nuclear-leak-idUSBRE95K18720130621 – it can use the waste burning up the remaining 97% of fuel left in the waste and converting it to much less long lived products.
e.g. – http://www.ga.com/energy-multiplier-module – http://www.ga.com/websites/ga/docs/em2/pdf/FactSheet-TechnicalFactSheetEM2.pdf – http://www.ga.com/websites/ga/docs/em2/pdf/EM2_presentation.pdf
These are to be manufactured in a factory, delivered sealed to site where they are placed in a concrete bunker and run for 30 years before being taken back – still sealed – to the factory. They can’t melt down. The waste is a small percentage of conventional waste and dangerous for hundreds and not hundreds of thousands of years. It is a sealed system in first of all super tough ceramics and then an outer bunker of concrete. The coolant is helium in a closed cycle, high efficiency gas turbine. No radiation can possibly escape. Much better.
Taxes are idiotic and eventually deliver – if they are high enough and actually work – higher energy costs, no tax revenue and permanent damage to your economy. Nothing the rest of the world would like more – feel free.
Chief Hydrologist said:
“We have all seen Hansen’s video.”
“Very few of us are at all impressed.”
_______
Chief, I’m impressed with your ability to see into peoples’ minds. That must come in handy.
Jim D
Glad our estimates now agree.
It remains to be seen whether we (everyone on this planet) will generate around 4,000 GtCO2 from today until 2100, following more-or-less a business as usual approach, and arriving at around 650 ppmv CO2 or we will adopt the “no regrets” approach outlined in the ASME paper of aggressively implementing all those technology proposals that reduce CO2 emissions, which also make economic sense, thereby reducing the CO2 by 2100 by 125 ppmv to around 525 ppmv.
No direct or indirect carbon tax would be necessary to implement these “no regrets” proposals.
As pointed out, these will have a theoretical impact on the global average temperature by 2100 of between 0.7 and 1.3 deg C.
I do not think it is realistic to talk about “reducing CO2 by 2100 to 350 ppmv or even 450 ppmv”, because I do not believe China, India and all the other nations that want to develop their economies who will follow, will abandon that objective and there is no way for them to achieve it without developing an infrastructure that guarantees reliable low-cost energy, which will be at least partially based on fossil fuels.
I think replacing two-thirds of all new coal-fired power plants with non-fossil fuel generation (principally new generation nuclear) and half of the rest with combined cycle natural gas (where there are proliferation concerns or natural gas is locally available) is a pretty aggressive goal. This major step alone could achieve 70% of the above reduction if implemented.
There are, of course, substantial political hurdles, which would need to be resolved.
The remaining initiatives in the transportation sector or reducing waste/improving efficiency are no-brainers.
This is all based on technology, which exists today; any additional reductions that could possibly result from new technology innovations, which do not yet exist, could add a bit to the estimated CO2 reductions.
Max
Is that what you take away Max. Hansen starts talking about 4th generation nuclear and I turn of? Mind reading? I don’t need a 100 minute video on 4th gen nuclear. I’ve actually read quite a lot. I very kindly give you a potted version and a few links to what I think is the leading contender. GA is investing $1.8 billion their own money on developing what is already a workable design from the LANL. On what is actually an improvement in nuclear safety in doing something rational with all that gunk sitting around.
You don’t even thank me. Just behave like the ungracious dimwit that you are. Go figure.