by Judith Curry
Mavericks once played an essential role in research. Indeed, their work defined the 20th century.
The Guardian
The Guardian has an article We need more scientific mavericks, which is authored by 30 very distinguished scientists (mostly from the UK but a few from the US and Australia). Excerpts:
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts,” said Richard Feynman in the 1960s. But times change. Before about 1970, academics had access to modest funding they could use freely. Industry was similarly enlightened.
After 1970, politicians substantially expanded academic sectors. Peer review’s uses allowed the rise of priorities, impact etc, and is now virtually unavoidable. Applicants’ proposals must convince their peers that they serve national policies and are the best possible uses of resources. Success rates are about 25%, and strict rules govern resubmissions. Rejected proposals are usually lost. Industry too has lost its taste for the unpredictable. The 500 major discoveries, almost all initiated before about 1970, challenged mainstream science and would probably be vetoed today. Nowadays, fields where understanding is poor are usually neglected because researchers must convince experts that working in them will be beneficial.
Agencies claiming to support blue-skies research use peer review, of course, discouraging open-ended inquiries and serious challenges to prevailing orthodoxies. Mavericks once played an essential role in research. Indeed, their work defined the 20th century. We must relearn how to support them, and provide new options for an unforeseeable future, both social and economic.
JC comment: I don’t know the fields of these scientists, although a number are Nobel laureates, FRS, etc. None are climate scientists.
Daily Caller
The Daily Caller has an article on this entitled Scientists: Government agencies use the peer review process to squash dissent. Excerpts:
Complaints that the scientific establishment is preventing dissenting voices from getting funding or published has been a major controversy among climate science. Dr. Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has argued that “global warming alarmism” has been damaged the integrity of science.
“Global climate alarmism has been costly to society, and it has the potential to be vastly more costly,” Lindzen wrote. “It has also been damaging to science, as scientists adjust both data and even theory to accommodate politically correct positions.”
“The scientific community is clearly becoming less ambiguous in separating views on warming from totally unreasonable fears for both the planet and mankind,” he added. “Environmental advocates are responding by making increasingly extreme claims
. Politicians are recognizing that these claims are implausible, and are backing away from both the issue and support for climate science.”
“The incentive is then for scientists to look elsewhere for support,” Lindzen continued. “Regardless of whether this will be sufficient, one can only hope that some path will emerge that will end the present irrational obsession with climate and carbon footprints.”
Beyond Groupthink
Cass Sunstein and Reid Hastie have an article published in the Journal of Institutional Economics entitled Garbage in, garbage out? Some micro sources of macro errors. The paper is behind paywall, but here is the text from the abstract:
Many institutions, large or small, make their decisions through some process of deliberation. Nonetheless, deliberating institutions often fail, in the sense that they make judgments that are false or that fail to take advantage of the information that their members have. Micro mistakes can lead to macro blunders or even catastrophes. There are four such failures; all of them have implication for large-scale institutions as well as small ones. (1) Sometimes the predeliberation errors of an institution’s members are amplified, not merely propagated, as a result of deliberation. (2) Institutions fall victim to cascade effects, as the initial speakers or actors are followed by their successors, who do not disclose what they know. Non-disclosure, on the part of those successors, may be a product of either informational or reputational cascades. (3) As a result of group polarization, deliberating institutions sometimes end up in a more extreme position in line with their predeliberation tendencies. Sometimes group polarization leads in desirable directions, but there is no assurance to this effect. (4) In deliberating institutions, shared information often dominates or crowds out unshared information, ensuring that institutions do not learn what their members know. Informational signals and reputational pressure help to explain all four errors. The results can be harmful to numerous institutions, including large ones, and to societies as a whole. Markets are able to correct some of these problems, but cascade effects occur there as well.
JC reflections
What Sunstein and Hastie describe seems very apt in terms of institutional/establishment climate science (e.g. IPCC, AAAS, RS/NAS). In their drive to develop a consensus around dangerous anthropogenic climate change, establishment climate science has failed to take advantage of knowledge from the broader community of scientists. More seriously, the process of peer review for funding and journal publication torques research in a particular direction. Hence there is unfunded and un-proposed research that could provide serious challenges to the orthodoxy of dangerous anthropogenic climate change. This is not a healthy situation.
With regards to my own evolution in terms of research funding. My government-funded research peaked during the period I was at the University of Colorado (1992-2002), when my annual research funding exceeded $1M in some years. I found myself writing proposals for research related to ‘big science’ for which there were specific calls for proposals, or submitting proposals based on research that I had already done. The struggle was to find time/resources to do the research that I really wanted to do.
While an administrator at Georgia Tech, I was provided with summer salary and a small amount of research funds. This in itself was quite liberating in terms of being able to pursue different lines of research. I collaborated with several self-funded researchers (one from Russia). Most significantly, I started a company Climate Forecast Applications Network, where I obtained some private sector funds to support research, and was able to use profits from the company to support some research. Hence at this point I feel relatively free to pursue my own research agenda.
We are also seeing the re-emergence of the so-called gentleman scientist (and of course gentlewoman scientists):
A gentleman scientist is a financially independent scientist who pursues scientific study without direct affiliation to a public institution such as a university or government-run research and development body. The expression arose in post-Renaissance Europe but became less common in the 20th century as government and private funding increased.
In the climate community, some examples are Nic Lewis, Steve McIntyre, Rud Istvan, Tony Brown, Bob Tisdale, Marcia Wyatt, and my Russian collaborator Vitaly Khvorostyanov. A few of these individuals are wealthy; others could definitely use some financial support.
We are also seeing the rise of philanthropic support for science (see also link).
And finally, while more scientific mavericks are needed, beware of the maverick-y.
Have pun, will travel.
========
Kim – showing age.
Hollywood created the American gun culture and sustain it today through cinematic visual arts which now includes video games. Given Hollywood infrastructure (actors, producers, directors, etc.) is pretty much owned and controlled by liberals who in real life are anti-gun it’s kind of weird they’re so ready to derail their own political ideology with their art.
I thought that was “Paladin”, not Maverick that had the travelling gun…
RePete, Memory!
The rodeo clown whose black
Was not tuxedo.
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The line for me was Maverick’s restating of his family motto. “He who turns and runs away lives to RUN another day.”
That was Richard Boone in “Have Gun will Travel”. I remember watching those in the late 50s and 60s.
Very interesting subjects but utterly acedemic. A distraction from the ongoing climate destabilization that the science is very clear is happening and will grow worse.
Incoming El Nino and very warm UK and arctic temperatures already.
I am getting my told you so’s ready.
We will be polite to some, others not so much.
Lolwot, academics historically conveyed unbiased information about reality.
That is the way to understand the real reason for global climate change.
Anybody who hasn’t been pushing hard for a “coordinated observational campaign” will be liable to accusations of wanting to hide a dud. We may not even know how much of one.
Maybe Chris Turney can get stuck from an unexpected movement of a thermocline.
==========
Weather, dear boy, weather. Very warm UK? You’re pulling my leg. It’s cold & wet now, northerly wind, hail, rain, sleet.
Arctic’s well below freezing, if it’s at 255K now, rather than 245K, does that matter?
I believe the USA is very cold currently, The Great Lakes have a huge amount of ice on them.
Incoming El-Nino? You’re getting desperate if you need a natural phenonimum to warm the Earth!
Lol
Arctic sea ice extent still on an upward trend as of today, later than recent averages. In coming years, the arctic will surprise
How do winds and albedo over the relevant part of the pacific and sea level in the indo-pac compare to prior the year or so before big el ninos?
If any of these things are low, I would expect a dud. Particularly if albedo happens to be high during the el nino. Without SW radiation to drive evaporation and keep waters warm, I think you could see a strong el nino fizzle fast.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/11/our-new-paper-el-nino-warming-reduces-climate-sensitivity-to-1-3-deg-c/
Warming during el nino also due to reduced low cloud cover. If another process mitigates the low cloud decrease (such as cooler air temps, winds moving aerosols to the region…), we’d see much less warming from a strong el nino. How might conditions related to PDO/AMO/SOI affect the atmosphere during el nino?
Much too late
I commented over a year ago that the CAGW advocates were just hanging out for the next Nino event. Gone will be bleatings about Nino/Nina oscillations “cancelling” each other out, or increasing in frequency (from when, pray tell ?). Just asinine variations of “I told you so”, as if another eventual Nino event is some big surprise
Now tell us how rising atmospheric CO2 levels cause Nino/Nina cycles. Jimmy old bean D failed miserably at that, many times
ianl8888, each El Nino and La Nina is against a warmer background. Here for example, you can even see the La Ninas getting warmer during the “pause”. It should be clear what the next +0.1 C El Nino perturbation will look like.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/trend/offset:0.1/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/trend/offset:-0.1
Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.
The question, Jimmy old bean, is to demonstrate that the Nino/Nina oscillations are caused by, or aggravated by, increasing atmospheric CO2 levels. This remains unaddressed … quelle surprise
Claiming that these oscillations are getting “warmer” over the last decade is not synonymous with that. Rubbing your hands with glee in anticipation of the next Nino event, wishing this is caused by, or aggravated by, CO2 levels is pathetic
Another miserable fail, Jimmy ol’ boy. This won’t stop you attempting to move the goalposts again, of course. Very predictable, much more so than the GCM models :).
I lay money on you, you’re that predictable
Great. Keep the warm UK temperatures going. We need them. Thank you, climate change!
PS was it the warm UK temperatures that gave Scotland one of its best winter sports seasons ever? Even better.
ianl8888, the only good from the next El Nino will be how its stops all this “pause” nonsense which is a complete sideshow in the big picture which looks like this.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vgl/mean:240/mean:120/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:240/mean:120/plot/hadsst3gl/mean:240/mean:120/plot/gistemp/mean:240/mean:120
We have a “body”, the IPCC, body devoted to collecting, assessing, observing, analyzing, relating, that which we can say we “know” about climate science.
More than more Mavericks, we need a universal, centralized, organized, recognized, indexed, collection of their efforts. We need an “Anti-Body”. A methodical organization of questions. A crowd sourced mystery unveiling. A body responsible for identifying questions to be included in any publishing of answers so relevance and confidence of the answers is transparent.
We need an organization of the collective works of all the “skeptics” questions, because the battle to finding the right answers, is asking the right questions.
Maybe a crowd sourced skeptics list of questions that get upvoted and downvoted, assessed, related, organized, would be a good start.
A Climate Anti – Wiki
Something like a Pinterest, but for climate questions, theories, proposed corelations.
i could start:
What percentage of the earths internal heat generation of 254.3 degrees come from which forcings, what percentages, what level of variability.
What amount of kinetic energy is lost through excited molecules reaching escape velocity, is it significant, does it vary, can we measure it.
What variation is there in lightning strike per year, how does it relate to magnetic field strength, solar activity, does it relate to cloud creation, or is it evidence of cloud creation, and what impact on greenhouse gas creation.
What causes the “wave” in overall solar activity, NOT the 11.5 year cycle, the minimums and the maximums, the cooling periods, and the warming periods.
Is the current believed limitation of variation of solar influence a valid number?
It could include a non-scientific collection of questions as well
Is a greenhouse a valid analogy for the earths climate and what can replace it, if not?
How to de-program/un-brainwash 600,000 Christians who have been indoctrinated from birth to believe climate change is a historical fact, has been caused by man’s cavorting and self-indulgent ways, and will be the the cause of another “purging of mankind”, unless we have faith, and live cleanly. (it’s in the bible, under Noah). (this is NOT a religious attack, it is a reminder to question where our “core programming” was formed, and why we choose to believe some of the things we believe, and a demonstration of how easy a mistake some beliefs may be, when they are closely related to our core programming.
How to be proponents of positive climate impact efforts, while being labelled as anti environment because we don’t believe CO2 makes a significantly relevant difference. (that S#!T is bad for reputation and credibility, and is a false attack on seekers of truth, vs blind misdirection).
How to best ask for and receive a “stay of execution” on unnecessary burdening of society through change, and environmentalist pressure, while a re-trial of CO2 is asked for, and undertaken.
:-)
Will the antibody arrive in time to save the children? It depends on the snow, more than the dogs.
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any climate wiki or answer site run by climate skeptics is doomed from the start.
Skeptics simply wouldn’t agree on anything and they wouldn’t be able to seek out a consensus on matters without fragmenting. For example under the topic of “Global Temperature” a good number of skeptics would argue that the whole concept of global temperature is false and doesn’t exist, whereas yet others would claim it does exist but it can’t be measured while other skeptics would say it does exist and has been measured and here is what it shows. A hopeless mess.
The only thing we want an El Nino for is to make a somewhat valid comparison to 1998, to show the “no warming since 1998” is bogus.
No it won’t be evidence of warming if we get a big El Nino, it’ll be the great climate shift of 2015.
Arctic sea ice extent down 150K since yesterday, easy come easy go.
but every El Nino and El Nina year are evidence that measuring global average surface temperature is not enough. we need to consider the water. but wait, if yes to considering the water, why not the rocks, the trees, the dirt, the crust under the water. why stop at “the moderating affect of water, and only water, will now be included in our assessment of the warming potential of Carbon.
the 11.5 year solar cycle matches, with a few years lag, the oscillation in the variation of global temperature. the lag in between is surely the “bounce back time” of all the moderating effects added together.
think of the heat waves generated by our core at 6000 degrees, travelling outward, and meeting incoming heatwaves from the sun. there will be “bow shock” in front of that wave, that oscillates back and forth with variations in pressure from either side. we live in that “temperature” bow shock. that “bow shock” is the stability we are sure we have, but haven’t been able to demonstrate/measure/define/conceptualize as yet.
Congrats to Bob Tisdale for his ‘financial independence’.
====================
The part Dr Curry doesn’t mention is Tisdale thinks global warming is caused by El Ninos.
gentleman science or amateur hour?
Yep, Tisdale certainly has gained a wide following among those with a certain “anything but CO2” mindset, but he has actually spread more confusion than clarity in many regards.
The “nothing but CO2” mindset is the more pathological IMO. I say that because “nothing but CO2” dogma came first and “anything but CO2” is simply a reasonable psychological response to the pathogical stimulus.
Wanna see amateur hour, lolwot? Amateur hour is the IPCC’s attempts to model sea surface temperatures over the past 3+ decades.
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/cmip5-model-data-comparison-satellite-era-sea-surface-temperature-anomalies/
The word that comes to mind is pathetic.
Data supports my understandings of ENSO.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/02-zonal-pacific.png
Data does not support climate models.
Have a nice day!
Watch the consensus claim global warming with the next El Nino. Naw, that’ll never occur to them.
=============
Your method of determining the warming is natural is pathetically naive.
And you can’t even compare models and observations correctly.
Graphing other people’s data and drawing unwarranted conclusions is all you’ve got. Sticking it in an e-book and trying to get people to pay for it is icing on the cake.
Show us your work, lollie. We could use some comic relief, while we await the next big El Nino. Don’t lose hope, lollie.
Watch the klandunsus claim global kooling with the next back-to-back La Nina events.
It’s that time. Last time klandunsus warned about global cooling was early 1970’s.
R. Gates: Yep, Tisdale certainly has gained a wide following among those with a certain “anything but CO2″ mindset, but he has actually spread more confusion than clarity in many regards.
I doubt you could make a case for that in one regard, much less “many”. Have at it. Don’t forget to quote him exactly.
lolwot: And you can’t even compare models and observations correctly.
Can you provide some examples?
Graphing other people’s data and drawing unwarranted conclusions is all you’ve got. Sticking it in an e-book and trying to get people to pay for it is icing on the cake.
Graphing other people’s data is one of the reasons that the other people make the data available for independent analysis. Some of the US Federal agencies require that the data be made available to the public. I have the bought the e-book, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about the measurement series relavant to ENSO.
lolwot | March 23, 2014 at 10:49 am |
The part Dr Curry doesn’t mention is Tisdale thinks global warming is caused by El Ninos.
gentleman science or amateur hour?
R. Gates | March 23, 2014 at 11:03 am |
Yep, Tisdale certainly has gained a wide following among those with a certain “anything but CO2″ mindset, but he has actually spread more confusion than clarity in many regards.
_________
The irony of lolwot and Gates reinforcing the messages in the original post by attacking vs. debating is, apparently, lost on them.
Tom Cruise is a Dianetic Scientist and his call sign in the movie Top Gun was Maverick. We need more of these?
As far as “independent” maverick researchers, only true “no strings attached” funded research changes the paradigm. If that kind of funding can be obtained, or one is independently wealthy, great– otherwise you are beholden to your funding source and you”ll pursue research that will support the dominant meta meme of that particular echo chamber.
A sign that the Human Carbon Volcano is about to erupt; I agree with the estimable R. Gates.
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“kim | March 23, 2014 at 11:02 am |
A sign that the Human Carbon Volcano is about to erupt; I agree with the estimable R. Gates.
============
That volcano has been erupting for many centuries, but is reaching new higher levels now never seen before. The total energy in the climate system is responding as the basic thermodynamics would indicate– higher and higher.
Laying in a layer of fat for the coming hibernation. Does this heat make my deep ocean look fat? No, I couldn’t think of a nicer place for it.
===================
Kim, glad you have some fat in your deeper ocean. Reminds me a bit of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMnjF1O4eH0
Heh, the Human Carbon Cushion makes the biomic world go wild.
===================
He thinks deep-ocean heating will be helpful when it comes out – some sort weird notion it will extend the Holocene. It will be utterly useless to anybody other than Frosty the Snowman.
Unfortunately basic thermodynamics can inform very little about the earth’s climate.
Gates is right: The signs of the first hot gas from the HCV are already becoming apparent (at least on this thread).
R Gates writes:
“As far as “independent” maverick researchers, only true “no strings attached” funded research changes the paradigm. If that kind of funding can be obtained, or one is independently wealthy, great– otherwise you are beholden to your funding source and you’ll pursue research that will support the dominant meta meme of that particular echo chamber.”
Is the necessary corollary that any federal funded research into climate change/global warming is also irredeemably tainted, since President Obama, Sec. of State Kerry and the more or less official policy position of the US Government is that climate change is essentially a “clear and present danger”? What else could being a “weapon of mass destruction” imply?
You are invoking the Golden Rule in research funding: “The one with the gold, rules” and gets the results they want and pay for, and researchers sell themselves as ivory tower tarts.
Seems like a rather blanket insult to all the NSF, NIH and other federally funded scientists on your part. My experience has been that the science is almost always good, and the scientists (usually) quite cautious about interpretation and extrapolation,
“Unfortunately basic thermodynamics can inform very little about the earth’s climate.”
____
That would be the hope of certain fake-skeptics. Actually, the climate system is best understood from a purely energy flow and energy budget perspective following basic laws of thermodynamics and fluid dynamics. Increase GH gases and more energy is stored in the system. Problem is– certain fake skeptics would like to equate this energy with sensible heat in the troposphere, which is such a tiny fraction of it actually.
@R. Gates
So if the energy you so fear ain’t in the troposphere but instead is hiding in ‘the deep oceans’, remind us all why we should care?
It ain’t going to come back out anytime soon…unless it can find a way to move spontaneously from colder to warmer.
But then, this is already magical energy. It has somehow managed to get from the atmosphere to the undetectable deep oceans without troubling any intermediate thermometers along the way…
And then again..if its presence doesn’t affect thermometers, why should we think its going to affect anything else at all …like us or plants or weather….?
LA, the oceans can only delay the CO2 equilibrium temperature. They can’t stop it.
-Jim D | March 24, 2014 at 1:00 am |
LA, the oceans can only delay the CO2 equilibrium temperature. They can’t stop it.-
It seems if ocean can delay for thousands of years, that should be close enough to stopping..
Is there a scientific theory for getting heat from the atmosphere into the deep oceans without passing through the first 2000 metres?
And if it is there, this heat, how is it going to come out, will it find it’s way to the poles and pop-out in one great lump? or will it find it’s way to the service of the sea and seep out?
R Gates echoes a certain echo chamber echo
@jim d
Your estimate for the length of the delay, please. Show your working.
J.C. says:
“Most significantly, I started a company Climate Forecast Applications Network”
Very interesting, you could benefit massively from my research into long range forecasts of short term solar forcing of the AO/NAO and ENSO.
Thanks for the kind words, Judith.
Bob gives his knowledge away, but his understanding requires great investment.
========
Kim’s fortune cookie estimate of Bob’s contribution is worth as much.
I overcelebrated my perfect bracket, now I have a perfect headache: What to do with all that money.
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R. Gates | March 23, 2014 at 11:16 am |
Kim’s fortune cookie estimate of Bob’s contribution is worth as much.
________
And the reinforcement continues.
Thanks, Bob, for freely sharing your knowledge of Earth’s climate.
Just a thought– with the rise of MOOC’s and data being made available via the internet, it seems we might be approaching a certain golden age for the gentleman/gentlewoman scientist. With online peer review included, hope can spring eternal that this golden age will actually materialize.
Thanks for the lead in: ‘Hope springs eternal in the human beast’.
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“I don’t know the fields…”
Very mixed fields. Big names. OTOH:
Colquhoun – pharma
Kroto – chemistry
Poliakoff – chemistry
Swinney – fluid dynamics
(you will meet Colquhoun at Nottingham in May).
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts,” said Richard Feynman in the 1960s.”
This rings the bell of truth. And yet, it’s not an effective argument against consensus thinking re CAGW when it comes to the general public, Every time I read a skeptical article invoking Feynman, I get a strong sense of futility. The implicit comparison between (a supposed) handful of skeptics (deniers) and Galileo is a real backfire, as it invites ridicule.
The only arguments that are going to carry persuasive weight concerning the alleged consensus are those which in one way or another effectively attack the consensus itself. It’s the beating heart of the warmist argument, and I have yet to read an alarmist screed which doesn’t mention the 97 percent myth, or at least contain an allusion to “an overwhelming consensus WRT CAGW.
We need more and better attempts at studies that try to get at the actual opinions of qualified scientists, using meaningful questions and solid statistics. It’s the only way to change the terms of the debate in a fundamental way, while we’re waiting for the pause to turn to actual cooling.
http://edge.org/conversation/heretical-thoughts-about-science-and-society
beth
Great essay by Freeman Dyson (now there’s a maverick!).
Thanks for posing the link.
Max
Fellow serf, Freeman Dyson was one I read on me road
ter Damascus.
The amount of money needed to fund science is pocket change to some of the big corporations. The fact that they are not funding their own climate labs, or even providing big research grants for teams of scientists, is very telling. They probably haven’t seen anything promising enough to fund that opposes the mainstream. All you have is graphology and over-simplified statistical models with no competing theory behind it. The mavericks don’t even believe each other, so it is just a complete disarray. You can see what they are looking at just by going to these blogs. No common theme, except to be anti-AGW. I would know I would be throwing my money away, if I was them.
The Koch boys did fund BEST, hoping of course for a different result. It was a sad day in Mudville for them and of course, A. Watts.
As it turns out it was a sad in Global Warming Scientismville because it confirmed 17 years (one santer) of no statistically significant global warming. LOL
A case of once bitten, twice shy, perhaps. Now they fund think tanks, not for new science, but just for opinion pieces that can distort the actual science enough that is digestible to their funded politicians and media.
Jimmy dee and gatesy are quite a team. I think gatesy is supposed to be the straight man.
Translation: clean off the socialist spin.
Check out Eilperin and the WAPO. What does her husband do?
===============
The bottom line is that the skeptics should be asking where is this supposedly suppressed anti-AGW theory? Why doesn’t anyone fund it? Instead they just fund pot-shots at the science that is being done, without providing their own counter theory. They throw up cosmic rays, clouds, ocean variability, planets, and who knows what, hoping something will stick. That is not science, but it is motivated reasoning.
Ah. You mean like CO2 was thrown up hoping it would stick. I see your point. It doesn’t look like CO2 was very sticky after all what with it pouring into the atmosphere (human carbon volcano) faster and faster over the past 17 years and no statistically significant global warming to show for it. Ouch. Better luck next time!
Maybe the big corporations think that climate science is complete bollocks and are waiting for the silliness to burn itself out, in a manner of speaking.
These people are running profit-oriented businesses. They don’t waste money.
As for the mavericks not believing each other, do you have a citation for that? The common belief, and it is a very entrenched one, is that the warming is being oversold by use of shoddy, unsupported science. The stasis in temperatures over the past 16 years, supports that view.
Big public corporations don’t have “climate labs” because there’s no shareholder value added therefrom. Public companies have a financial responsibility to the owners. What the hell is a “climate lab” anyway?
Yes, I’ve often wondered what motivates JD, RG, WHT and the like to waste so much of their valuable time here on the likes of us ‘deniers’
Perhaps they do it to make themselves feel clever
Or maybe someone’s paying them
pottereaton, the corporations think science is providing inconvenient results. It starts from there.
More socialist spin. Everybody here (well, almost) knows the skepticism focuses on the Industrial Counterrevolutionary agenda pushed by CAGW alarmists. Non-urgent AGW (IPCC anyone?) would allow for natural gas as a bridge.
BTW, aren’t the Koch Brothers getting into gas?
“Everybody here (well, almost) knows the skepticism focuses on the Industrial Counterrevolutionary agenda….”
—
Yes, a vast conspiracy.
DS, they could view their funded science as an investment in their economic future, which is threatened by established university and government science these days. It is an investment to try to cause doubt. We’ve seen this.
The point was: if the question is why doesn’t anyone have an anti-AGW maverick theory out there, it is not because it is suppressed, or due to lack of funding. It just doesn’t exist.
” It doesn’t look like CO2 was very sticky after all what with it pouring into the atmosphere (human carbon volcano) faster and faster over the past 17 years and no statistically significant global warming to show for it. ”
—–
Of course Springer wants to equate what goes on in the troposphere with the larger and more important issue of gains in Earths climate energy system. This is a wonderful, though relatively brief distraction as the atmosphere will always follow the warming oceans to higher temperatures eventually. Suffice to say the past decade has been warmest decade on instrument record,but even this fact must be ignored by the ignorant at all costs.
You are wrong as usual Gates. I’m using troposphere temperture because that has been the standard metric used by phucking everyone for many decades. It wasn’t until “the pause” that the usual suspects (and parrots of the usual suspects like you) decided to move the goal posts and focus on OHC in units so small that it’s like talking about Chris Christie’s weight in picograms. Homey don’t play that game, Gates. We’re keeping score with the air temperature in which the weather happens. Write that down.
More socialist spin. Dismiss anybody who points out the implications of your political agenda as a “conspiracy nut”. Well, there’s been a socialist conspiracy since the late 1800’s, proven historical fact. The only question is who’s part of it, and who are “useful idiots”?
phatboy, yes, I sometimes wonder why I spend time here too. However, in the years I have been on these, I like to look for the latest fad in skeptical arguments, which do change on a regular basis. Remember UHI? That, and GCRs were the big things when I started. Now its the “pause”, and after the next El Nino, it will move on again to who knows where. Must be hard for skeptics to keep up with what they are supposed to be agreeing with too, because the rug gets pulled out from under them every so often.
“The point was: if the question is why doesn’t anyone have an anti-AGW maverick theory out there…”
—-
That’s not quite true. The “stadium wave” might be considered one such theory. But even these don’t question the basic idea of GHG induced warming but only the relative contribution over any given time frame versus natural variability. Also, in the case of the stadium wave, a huge missing piece is how such cycles might actually be modulated by increasing GH gases of all species.
CO2 causes the warming, but dyed-in-the-wool warmists hope against hope for an El Nino. Hmmm … go figure.
It exists, and has been mentioned here many times
I’ve noticed any time data is trending against warming, money is thrown at a global warming SWAT team to tamp it out.
“phatboy, yes, I sometimes wonder why I spend time here too.”
—-
Where else do you find climate nerds hanging out– be they warmist or skeptic?
R. Gates, the stadium wave isn’t anti-AGW, but just proposes an additional 0.1 C 60 year cycle as internal variability. In the long run, this won’t do much if AGW says 3 C warming in the next century. What they need is a theory for lower sensitivity, or even a model showing it that also explains the last 60 years of warming (and I choose 60 years to cancel out the stadium wave). So, the stadium wave is independent, not counter to AGW.
jim2, skeptics put too much emphasis on short time scales, less than 20 years where you can’t separate the signal from the noise. It serves their purpose to do this, and it draws scientists in to try to defend AGW on this timescale rather than getting the skeptics to look at what has happened since 1950 for example. Short timescales offer “home-field” advantage for obfuscators. If you want to play that game, the next El Nino is the thing for you to look out for, but is a just a game that is irrelevant in the big picture, and that El Nino would be like an away goal in soccer terms.
Jim D | March 23, 2014 at 11:57 am |
pottereaton, the corporations think science is providing inconvenient results. It starts from there.
________________
Jim D, I work for a very large company with a large > $5B per year R&D investment, over 1,000 PhDs and locations around the world. Tell me, exactly how we would make money off a climate lab and I’ll pass along the message.
ksd, I don’t want to give you any ideas, but perhaps your best investment is to follow people like the Kochs to fund think tanks that talk directly to politicians, while also funding the politicians and select media outlets. It would be a risk to invest in science itself, as they found with the BEST study, because objective science may not come up with the results they hope for.
Haven’t you seen the latest memo from CAGW Chicken Little headquarters, jimmy dee? The Koch brothers have spent $BILLIONS$ on a secret project that has diverted the energy equivalent of 4 Hiroshima bombs per second to the deep frigid ocean abysses. That’s why the more frequent and stronger El Ninos promised by the CAGW Chicken Littles have not materialized. You will just have to wait for the Koch Bros. to run out of money, before you can be vindicated.
In case anyone has forgotten: the pause is killing the cause.
R gates
Actually the people who approved the funding
Knew absolutely nothing about the climate debate.
As with most foundations the founders do not control
The decisions. This is my experience in working with
Large foundations. In fact many on the right complain
About the direction of foundations that were started
With conservative money.
For grins gates share your experience when you met with
The clinton foundation or hewlett. Tell us what did you learn
Most of them follow the charter, Mosher. That’s why, for instance, The Michael and Susan Dell foundation doesn’t sponser research into adult onset diseases and such.
http://www.msdf.org/founders-letter-2013/
R. Gates, why do you think every social phenomena requires a conspiracy?
Your obsession with conspiracy theories concerns me.
Steven Mosher must be using some kind of poetry mode in his text, capitalizing the first word on each line. It is a bit distracting to read.
Jim D | March 23, 2014 at 1:03 pm |
ksd, I don’t want to give you any ideas, but perhaps your best investment is to follow people like the Kochs to fund think tanks that talk directly to politicians, while also funding the politicians and select media outlets. It would be a risk to invest in science itself, as they found with the BEST study, because objective science may not come up with the results they hope for.
___________
So in other words, Jim, you don’t have any ideas how my company would monetize a climate lab. Thanks for confirming that.
ksd, if they had any independent or neglected area of climate science in mind to do with it, sure they could fund a science lab. Many corporations have science labs which are investments in the future. The fossil fuel industry is interested in paleoclimate for obvious geological prospecting reasons, for example.
You are just getting deeper in the hole, jimmy. You should be quiet now. Start another thread with another of your senseless comments. This one is not amusing anymore.
Right you are Don. With friends like Jim D the global warming science community doesn’t need enemies. :-)
Jim D | March 23, 2014 at 2:04 pm |
ksd, if they had any independent or neglected area of climate science in mind to do with it, sure they could fund a science lab. Many corporations have science labs which are investments in the future. The fossil fuel industry is interested in paleoclimate for obvious geological prospecting reasons, for example.
_____________
Huh? More double talk. So what is the product or service that we can make from our climate lab?
Think this tells you why companies don’t invest in climate labs Jim. There’s no upside.
As I mentioned, the best way to go for corporations who don’t like the direction the science is pointing, is not to do science, because they would be incapable anyway, but to pay for politicians not to listen to the science, and for a support system of think tanks and media to back them up, also without doing any of their own science. It is a perfect self-enclosed system. Now, I suggested labs or research grants to actual scientists, but there seems to be a backlash from a few here against that for some reason.
The mistake that you are making, jimmy dee, is in thinking that corporations or skeptics have any interest in your coaching on how to spend money. You are just a mindless parrot for the climate consensus dogma. You are stefanthedenier’s counterpart. Are we clear now, jimmy?
Sorry
Phone
Posting
David Springer | March 23, 2014 at 2:22 pm |
Most of them follow the charter, Mosher
#############
Tell me about your experience. Who did you meet with and what did they say?
R Gates says “the atmosphere will always follow the warming oceans to higher temperatures eventually”. No, that’s the wrong way round. CO2 warms in the atmosphere, and the heat then flows into the ocean. In AGW, the atmosphere leads, and the oceans follow.
No dude, you’re wrong. The air above ocean is, for all practical purposes, a tiny bit cooler than the ocean surface. A cooler mass can never heat a warmer mass. Ostensibly CO2 restricts the radiative path from sea surface to outer space impairing the ocean’s ability to cool off which causes its temperature to rise according to Stefan-Boltzman Law (ofter refered to as simply T4) which neutralizes the impairment.
Mike Jonas, no, the surface warms from increased insulation, then the atmosphere warms. The insulator doesn’t have to be warmer first, just more of it.
Who’s on first?
Jim D | March 23, 2014 at 3:36 pm |
As I mentioned, the best way to go for corporations who don’t like the direction the science is pointing, is not to do science, because they would be incapable anyway, but to pay for politicians not to listen to the science, and for a support system of think tanks and media to back them up, also without doing any of their own science. It is a perfect self-enclosed system. Now, I suggested labs or research grants to actual scientists, but there seems to be a backlash from a few here against that for some reason.
________
Thank you for making my point, which is (in case you missed it), is the private corporations could give a rip about climate science. Why? Because there is no there there in terms of doing what their shareholders want, a return on their capital.
That you project that corporations don’t like climate science results is laughable and IMO pathetic.
In short, Jim D, there is no vast anti-climate science conspiracy.
Jim D – I was attempting to point out the inconsistency in R Gates’ argument. After perenially supporting the idea that the warming is CO2 -> atmosphere -> ocean, it was interesting (to say the least) to see R Gates saying ““the atmosphere will always follow the warming oceans to higher temperatures eventually”. Hopefully most here get it, even if R Gates doesn’t.
ksd, you are right, for once, that most corporations don’t care about climate science enough to want to influence the policies that may come out of it. Some do, but most don’t. Those that remain, which are few now, attack the science with the idea that no policies that are not in their own business interests can then come out of it (forget the environment).
” No, that’s the wrong way round. CO2 warms in the atmosphere, and the heat then flows into the ocean.”
____
Completely impossible. The net flow of energy on a global scale is always from ocean to atmosphere. Increasing CO2 acts in various ways to restrict the flow of energy from ocean to atmosphere to space, sometimes in quite remarkable ways. Take for example the increased precipitation around Antarctica from higher CO2 in the atmosphere. How could the freshening of surface waters from this increased precipitation actually warm the ocean? It does it by preventing heat from flowing out. Read and be amazed:
http://news.yahoo.com/global-warming-slows-down-antarcticas-coldest-currents-211258845.html
Springer said:
“I’m using troposphere temperture because that has been the standard metric used by phucking everyone for many decades.”
____
Oh, you do not think for yourself (as a real maverick) and see the absurdity of relying of sensible tropospheric heat as a proxy for energy in the whole system? It’s like trying to tell how much water is in a pool by seeing what drops fall along the concrete at the edge.
I know you are smarter than that Springer Tropospheric sensible heat is one the smallest and lowest thermal inertia parts of the energy in the climate system. It might tell us something as a decadal or multi-decadal average– maybe– but as a proxy for energy gained or lost by the system it is pathetic. C’mon Springer– be a maverick..
I think the virtue of not switching horses in mid-stream is self-evident. We have been using air temperature near the surface measured with thermometers for hundreds of years. CET I think goes back almost 500 years. It’s the best proxy we have. OHC is too recent and too esoteric.
Springer said:
“We’re keeping score with the air temperature in which the weather happens.”
____
Hopefully, most people see how absurd this statement is. The oceans drive the weather for the most part Springer. A cooling or warming of the IPWP for example, has more effect on global weather and climate than pretty much any other single dynamic. But don’t worry yourself about such details. The oceans are the dog that wags the atmospheric tail Springer. You keep watching that tail.
What people see, Gates, is global warming scientists suddently wanting to ignore surface temperature anomalies and focus on ocean heat content anomalies measured in Joules. No one is fooled by this. If it weren’t for the hiatus in surface temperature rise the usual suspects in the global warming science industry would still be harping on surface temperature rise.
And talk about hypocritical… I can’t count the number of times you’ve used Arctic sea ice extent. If the ocean is the dog, and the atmosphere is the tail, then Arctic sea ice is a flea on the dog’s tail. You’re intellectually dishonest Gates just like the people you mindlessly parrot.
@jim d
Why on earth would a corporation want to fund a climate lab? Corporations generally like to be doing useful stuff. Publishing papers – which are the only ‘work products’ of climatology is not a useful activity.
LA, you can also tell the Kochs that they needn’t fund their think tanks and mavericks in that case, if climate science is so inconsequential. They are just wasting their money, I would agree, but not for the reason that the science isn’t important to them.
The Koch Bros are apparently the biggest landholders in the Canadian Tar Sands wilderness.
Perhaps the Canadian Auditor can Gentlemanly Audit that fact.
Jim D, what would you expect, when you get the “defenders of the faith” on the one side, with their narrow view, and the rest of the world on the other side, with wildly disparate views?
@jim d
You were discussing ‘climate labs’, not think tanks. And your criticism was that corporations don’t fund them.
Please explain why you think they should. What benefit would there be to a corporation to have such a lab? Or an individual?
I’m also curious as to what physical form such a ‘lab’ might take. I imagine some form of underground bunker – definitely no windows allowed, placed as far as possible from the sea, and populated by pointy-headed individuals (bearded if male) glued ot various computer displays. In the corner lies the supercomputer ‘Deep Terrify’ which churns out modelling results with distressing regularity. And each time , the pointy-heads withdraw further into their collective paranoia about CAGW and sealevel rise and ocean neutralisation and all the stuff that they worry about.
Occasionally they issue a press release
‘People of Earth…those that haven’t drowned under the sea’s inundation of all lowlying lands nor fried in the fearsome heat of a British summer. If any of you are left. Pay attention to we who foretell the future. You will all be consumed by the fiery furnaces of hell unless you stop doing whatever it is we disapprove of this time around.
And we know this to be so because our computer (blessed be its name) tells us so. We have forsaken those tedious and ancient practices of he old, decadent ‘science’ like testing DS’s results against your bourgeois ‘reality’. In the new climate world, Mother Gaia and her outmoded ‘temperature measurements’ have no place. We will be guided by New Science…and New Science is subservient to no such dated conventions.
You have been warned. Whatever it is you are doing out there..STOP IT AT ONCE’
Meanwhile outside the climatology lab/bunker, life goes on pretty much as normal……..
WebHubTelescope: The Koch Bros are apparently the biggest landholders in the Canadian Tar Sands wilderness.
Apparently not. WaPo was duped.
” the 1.1 million acres leased by a Koch subsidiary represent less than 3 percent of the oil sands (which stretch over 35 million acres).”
That sounds like a fortune to me.
3% of the money that will be made
3% of the environmental devastation
3% of the GHG contribution
Like the Bush National Guard story weasel attorney Hinderaker audits the tiny bits and not the larger truth.
Land plus refineries
Will McIntyre now jump in?
Web, Web, Web; one of my clues to probity is the admission of errors. You need to reconcile ‘3%’ with ‘largest landholder’. I gave you a clue above about Eilperin and her husband.
==================
I absolutely agree, though I would add that a gracious admission of error is far more helpful.
Heh, fake and inaccurate, with malice aforethought. Yes, Web, I see the similarity.
===========
It goes without saying that the the Canadian government collectively holds the most land in the tar sands wilderness. I did ask you to audit the assertion did I not?
Tsk, tsk. More clues
Concerning Koch’s refineries
http://www.startribune.com/business/250897141.html March 19,12014
Where do you think that natural gas comes from? Via pipelines.
Koch started as an oil and refining company, don’t you know.
They have their fingers in every piece of pie, don’t you know.
Would you like to do some more auditing?
More stuff to audit.
Is Hinderaker’s law firm on retainer to Koch Industries?
Did Hinderaker disclose that his law firm works with Koch?
Get busy gentlemen auditors. Hup two.
Do you suppose the brothers are Peak Oilers? Aren’t we all?
================
Hmmm, re: Flint Hills. No expertise, here, none, but that seems like a hedge that the tar won’t flow to New Orleans or China. Those boys are risk takers, by gum. At least they’re not using other peoples’ money, like mine.
============
Don’t worry, said Doctor M. a long time ago, let’s see how far we can go.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10717566/Aborted-babies-incinerated-to-heat-UK-hospitals.html
My friend Peter Bocking once said that if Al Gore’s hair were set on fire it would provide enough heat and light for a small English village.
===========================================
And don’t you worry, Web, I have it on reliable authority that the WaPo will cheerfully retract, and whistle bravely away from the graveyard.
=============
Will John Hinderaker disclose his legal connections?
TitForTat
And remember I said “apparently” and I asked you all to do your due diligence wrt auditing the facts.
It is indeed interesting that the Powerlineblog is the political equivalent of the Climate Audit blog. Always ready to spring into action and don their green eyeshades to … protect their clients best interests? Who knows?
” It’s the best proxy we have. OHC is too recent and too esoteric.”
______
Extremely poor answer and excuse for not trying to use a better proxy for gains and losses of energy in the climate system. OHC is hardly “esoteric”, though much more difficult it has been to get a system in place to measure it directly. But we have it now, and it is getting better all the time. Also of course, we have several proxy measurements for OHC, and multi-proxy approaches over a wide geographical area of the IPWP have yielded consistent results for determining what the IPWP has been doing prior to direct measurements.
CET sensible tropospheric heat measurements would overall be even worse than globally averaged sensible tropospheric measurements for determining the gains or losses of energy in the climate system. Since the ocean dog wags the tropospheric tail ALWAYS, why not measure the dog itself rather than a hair on the dogs tail (which is what CET essentially represents).
No sale. Global warming has been gauged by temperature records since forever. Your attempt to switch to a new metric is a transparent attempt to avoid the harsh reality of the pause. No one is fooled by it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record
Jim D – what you and the other chicken littles fail to understand is that the skeptics are not the ones calling for all kinds of mitigation efforts to stem some mythical calamity brought on by burning fossil fuels. Those who make the claims and demand that we destroy our economies so that we might save the planet are the ones who need to prove their point. All skeptics need to do is poke holes in your theories, which has been done to the point of making your theories more analogous to swiss cheese than science. The only thing AGW’rs have proven is how foolish their claims are.
WebHubTelescope: That sounds like a fortune to me.
Me to.
Your claim was “biggest landholders”. That claim was false.
The relative freedom from want that modern society affords comes with a loss of perspective. Take for example the ‘science’ of Michael Mann that passes for erudition in the realm of Western academia that has people like Al Gore as a patron saint. Who could be impressed with such examples?
The relative freedom from want that modern society affords comes with a loss of perspective.
+1
Fortunately the perspective has gone to China, India, etc. They are not about to attempt some sort of starve-yourself-fitter carbon-free diet.
Just as they did not accept the concept of the “White Man’s Burden” in the days of Rudyard Kipling, the Chinese, Indians, Brazilians, et al. are not going to embrace todays “rich white man’s guilt-driven obsession with CO2” if it stands in the way of their own economic growth and improved quality of life for their populations.
Since these are the folks that will be emitting most of the added CO2 over the course of this century, it is unlikely that global CO2 mitigation will occur, and anything we do in the industrially developed world will have little if any impact on our climate and simply make our economies uncompetitive and our populations poorer.
So, no matter how much Jim D squirms, it just ain’t gonna happen, and he’d better start thinking of moving to Plan B.
Max
There is a reason that smart leaders, in group meetings, solicit suggestions from the lowest ranks first and work up to the highest.
The book, Wisdom of Crowds, has a lot of good info on the ways that the dynamics of committees often sabotage their efforts.
The Daily Caller links to an essay by Lindzen, which is worth a read. It was published last fall to little fanfare, I suppose:
http://www.jpands.org/vol18no3/lindzen.pdf
peer review, and other deliberation are structurally the problem that cause academic groupthink, in many if not all domains, as soon as an established consensus is challenged by facts without usability that make it unavoidable.
This is clear from Roland Beanbou theopry of groupthink and Mutual Assured Delusion
http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/Groupthink%20IOM%202012_07_02%20BW.pdf
the more the groupthink is ruining ones life, the more the victim is defending it, that is mathematical!
another problem well theorized in that french book
( http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.esprit68.org%2Futopies.html&sandbox=1 too bad it is hard to read even in French)
is that big media, like science journals, kills new ideas as soon as the community get big.
the current problem of science is international community, internation hight impact journals, and even the EU funding agencies follwing DoE fashions, or IPCC/UNO directions…
Science should be balkanized with communities of less than 100-1000 scientists who are impacted by a given decision maker (so he can make real decision, not fast screening and biased choices)
“8. Mass communication stifles new ideas.
That widespread communication is a barrier to new ideas at first seems to be a rather stupid. Unfortunately, this fact is a fact.
Imagine a newspaper (or library) that would collect all the ideas formulated at a given reference point. We have already seen, in speaking of the problem of access to the beginning of this chapter, it would be virtually impossible to find any topic in such a collection.
To make the material accessible to the reader of the ideas contained in a newspaper or library, there is only one way: the mass of material to be reduced. A selection must be made, but this selection can only be made ill by the publishers or by the censors because they, too, will be able to read such a mass of information to only a select few. In addition, this selection will be more difficult to operate for new and unusual ideas, their terminology is not yet have been established, and they require some time for reflection. Editors or censors responsible for the selection automatically retain the most poor and already known material, and reject any new idea. We can see this fact daily in our newspapers, on our television screens, etc.. Now consider another example – reverse -: the newspapers affecting only 2 000 to 5 000 people, provincial newspapers, professionals, etc.. They will never make known all the new ideas, but they will surely publish any new proposed by one of their readers among those few thousands, and these ideas will be accessible to other readers. If we now assume that each community from 5 000 to 10 000 members can have his diary, we can be sure that any new idea will be published, although it is not necessarily read by all inhabitants of the globe. As simple as this process is, the rejection of new ideas, however, is more hindered, and a variety of subcivilisations may result.
I wanted to show through this example, imaginary, that widespread, contrary to popular belief communication, does not serve the cultural development or the knowledge of man, but on the contrary, is an average depletion.
The most effective communication seems to remain that of face to face 3 .”
No amount of academic harangue will change the direction of earth’s climate the current PDO points. In part, reality, and in this case, the fiercely cold winter in which we are still enveloped, provides “cover” for people, gentleman scientists, academic scientists who express ideas outside of the consensus. The consensus makers and keepers resort to a more strident voice as the sands of time and reality slip through their fingers. Their nonsense becomes more evident to more of the public whom they wish to influence.
Federal research funding, as this is a public role, will take some time to accommodate reality, not so much as the public needs to be awakened, rather, Federal agencies have institutional inertia, bureaucracies intended to maintain the status quo. 20 years seems to be the time required to move Federal funding agencies from one paradigm to another, but it does move.
The public by enlarge prefer an arm’s length approach to science research and its funding, as the necessary understanding of the science requires a lot of work, a distraction from the humdrum business of getting on with out lives.
A segment of the public, citizen scientists as mentioned above like Tisdale, Lewis and others, driven by the passion of investigation, possibly fortuitous by being old enough, retired, etc to devote the time to science for science sake, may be the demographic which will lead science out of its current wilderness. It seems that many of the denizens who populate this blog are either in the latter stages of their professional careers or now fully retired. This is akin to “academic tenure.” It doesn’t matter what the “boss” thinks, and this new found freedom answers the question: “what am I going to do when I retire, I’m not going to sit around.” Nothing like having the time to pursue an idea or thought like you want or deem best. The internet is your library, your lab bench, and sounding board. Of course there are those who still get caught up in the “office politics” which blogging provides an cornucopia of outlets.
While waiting for the Federal bureaucracy, not so much its leaders as this seems to be a revolving door, to evolved to a new paradigm and funding, let us publicly recognize and applaud those citizen scientists that grow in number as our society ages. Demographics are on our side.
What science (including climate science) needs is fewer people quoting Feynman, and instead doing science like him.
There is only one thing that will win the debate — producing good science. Everything else is just noise.
I believe you missed the whole point of the original post, which actually agrees with your sentiment while pointing out why it doesn’t happen.
No David, the only thing that will win the debate is observational data. Eventually the temperatures will destroy the warmists faith based theories.
nottawa rafter wrote:
Eventually the temperatures will destroy the warmists faith based theories.
As if you can read the future.
But I suppose that’s one way to save face — postulate you’re right, and then brag on it.
David Appell
Agree.
Producing good science = observational data.
As nottawa rafter has commented.
Max
Look at the experience of science mavericks 25 years ago today. Fleischmann and Pons were ridiculed and vilified for announcing observations which did not fit with the prevailing theory. (Repeat observations, with a very candid admission that the science behind these observations was not understood). Instead of their observations (after five and half years’ careful study using their own money) becoming a challenge for the scientific community they were seen as a threat by the many vested interests. Despite many replications of their experiments since, the demolition done in a matter of weeks in 1989 is still being felt today. Only the intrepid few pursue research into cold fusion, despite its being perhaps one of the most challenging and promising areas of science.
In the corrupt world of today’s (and yesterday’s) science, mavericks are not welcome.
Fleischmann turned into a krank. I once presented a talk at an invited conference and during the after-talk Q&S claimed that my research had been done in the early 1900s. Yup, sure, they had UHV systems back then. What a jackass.
Part of the reason that I hang around these sites is to rebuke the frauds when I see them. I have plenty of experience dealing with the type.
Cold Fusion marches, well crawls really, along. I still don’t have that cold fusion water heater I was promised.
http://lenr-canr.org/
Status of the Field
Before considering ICCF18 in detail, it is useful to give a very
brief summary of the three major parts of the field, namely science, engineering and business. The topic by any name has been a field of science since before the remarkable press conference by Fleischmann and Pons on March 23, 1989. The two parts of the science of LENR, experimental and theoretical, are very different in their state of development. In the almost quarter-century since the announcement, excess heat has been observed hundreds of times in very different
experiments in laboratories in several countries. The data shows that it is possible to produce nuclear reactions at ordinary temperatures. But, although the experimental situation is very solid, the theoretical side of the science is still quite wide open. There are very roughly three dozen theories on the mechanisms behind LENR. But, none of these has been adequately tested, and there is no consensus on the theoretical aspects of LENR. It might be that one or more of the extant theories turns out to be the needed conceptual and computational explanation of LENR. Alternatively, the key insight might remain to be published.
The engineering side of the field also has two parts. The design, fabrication and testing of experimental LENR systems is very well developed. Over two decades of attacks by critics, and good laboratory practices by experienced and skilled researchers in the field, have resulted in some very sophisticated and well-engineered laboratory systems. Their
use has also been first-rate in many cases. In contrast, the prototypes revealed by a few of the companies seeking to develop products for a large market have been relatively crude. This is primarily due to the apparent haste with which those companies are seeking to develop shipped products. It is highly likely that the actual first generation products will be much better engineered.
The business of LENR has yet to develop. That is, no one is making money now by mass marketing of products based on LENR. There are two types of companies involved in the field to very different degrees. Small companies, mostly start-ups, are devoted entirely to the development and commercialization of LENR. These companies vary widely in their size, funding and approaches to selling LENR heat or electrical generators. Some large companies are monitoring very closely the current progress in LENR science, engineering and business. A few are actively involved in the field, but most of the big companies are watching and waiting until it
is clear that LENR generators will be adequately controllable, safe and reliable to receive serious market acceptance.
http://infinite-energy.com/images/pdfs/NagelICCF18.pdf
the situation about Fleischman&pons “consensus” is even worst tha on climate.
F&P were top electrochemist, and Fleischman was greatly honored.
Cherles Beaudette in this heavy and amazing book details well the story, the human and technical point. A must to read, with many citation that are missing in most others books. (he donated his huge library to a university).
He was simply an engineer, retired who realized that despite all he have heard, there was no evidence agains F&P results, that it was a serious research domain… he investigated and wrote that book: “Excess Heat”
http://iccf9.global.tsinghua.edu.cn/lenr%20home%20page/acrobat/BeaudetteCexcessheat.pdf (free pdf from the editor, but you can get paper book)
You cannot have an educated opinion on F&P without having read that book.
Basically in 1996 there was only 4 written (yes FOUR).
The first by lewis, claiming stirring problems was immediatly proven false few days after with colorant, and with more detail in 1992 with 0.01C measurement… Nathan Lewis was imply incompetent, and it is logical sine he was not a chemist.
Hansen later moaned agains recombination in a second critics. He failed like Lewis by assuming F&P were yound students while they were competent. Of course the recombination was measured during refilling, and moreover as measured when correctly done it cannot be above 1%.
Morrisson critics is simply misunderstanding and is abandoned.
Wilson critics is very detailed, and show good competence. First he refute the critics of Lewis and Hansen as any competent chemist would do.
Then he introduce some possible corrections to the result.
His error is claiming it refute F&P result, while it is only challenging the weakest results, but not the huge heat production, above 50sigma.
all other critics are either conspiracy theory (Huizenga and Gary taubes used much ad hominem and conspiracy theories), and theoretical arguments.
moreover there are cross replications with different protocols immune to Lewis and hansen argument :
McKubre measured heat in isothermal retroaction, with flow calorimetry in closed cells with recombinations.
Oriani (whose paper was peer-reviewed bu not published for strange reason, pretended theoretical) did Seebeck calorimetry with separated gases.
Miles also measured heat with various method, and then organized a doubleblind protocols with Bush of Texas AM, proving that Heat and Helium4 in the effluent are commensurate.
the evidence are huge.
the argument of difficult replication, of failures are pathetical for a scientist used with chemistry experiments, for a semiconductor experts, for catalyst chemist, for a biologist…
moreover the reason of hard replication are nearly well know today, linked not only to loading, current density, loading variations, but also to impurities and to surface cristallography state, as it is detailed in cross-atlantic studies between SRI, Navy NRL, ENEA https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10355/36833/ExcessPowerDuringElectrochemical.pdf?sequence=1
Beaudette summarize the situation that way:
“Unfortunately, physicists did not generally claim expertise in calorimetry, the measurement of calories of heat energy. Nor did they countenance clever chemists declaring hypotheses about nuclear physics. Their outspoken commentary largely ignored the heat measurements along with the offer of an hypothesis about unknown nuclear processes. They did not acquaint themselves with the laboratory procedures that produced anomalous heat data. These attitudes held firm throughout the first decade, causing a sustained controversy.
The upshot of this conflict was that the scientific community failed to give anomalous heat the evaluation that was its due. Scientists of orthodox views, in the first six years of this episode, produced only four critical reviews of the two chemists’ calorimetry work. The first report came in 1989 (N. S. Lewis). It dismissed the Utah claim for anomalous power on grounds of faulty laboratory technique. A second review was produced in 1991 (W. N. Hansen) that strongly supported the claim. It was based on an independent analysis of cell data that was provided by the two chemists. An extensive review completed in 1992 (R. H. Wilson) was highly critical though not conclusive. But it did recognize the existence of anomalous power, which carried the implication that the Lewis dismissal was mistaken. A fourth review was produced in 1994 (D. R. O. Morrison) which was itself unsatisfactory. It was rebutted strongly to the point of dismissal and correctly in my view. No defense was offered against the rebuttal. During those first six years, the community of orthodox scientists produced no report of a flaw in the heat measurements that was subsequently sustained by other reports.
The community of scientists at large never saw or knew about this minimalist critique of the claim. It was buried in the avalanche of skepticism that issued forth in the first three months. This skepticism was buttressed by the failure of the two chemists’ nuclear measurements, the lack of a theoretical understanding of how their claim could work, a mistaken concern with the number of failed experiments, a wholly unrealistic expectation of the time and resource the evaluation would need, and the substantial ad hominem attacks on them. However, their original claim of measurement of the anomalous power remained unscathed during all of this furor. A decade later, it was not generally realized that this claim remained essentially unevaluated by the scientific community. Confusion necessarily arose when the skeptics refused without argument to recognize the heat measurement and its corresponding hypothesis of a nuclear source. As a consequence, the story of the excess heat phenomenon has never been told.”
and he describes the skeptics (deniers I would say):
“In general, skeptics display the following habits.
1. They do not express their criticism in those venues where it will be subject to peer review.
2. They do not go into the laboratory and practice the experiment along side the practitioner (as does the critic).
3. Assertions are offered as though they were scientifically based when they are merely guesses.
4. Questions are raised that concern matters outside of the boundaries of the claimed observation.
5. Satire, dismissal, and slander are freely employed.
6. When explanations are advanced for a possible source, ad hoc reasons are instantly presented for their rejection. These rejections often assert offhand that the explanation violates some physical conservation law.
7. Evidence raised in support of the claims is rejected outright if it does not answer every possible question. No intermediate steps to find a source are acceptable”
I confirm that observation.
to compare with LENr Denial, climate scientist are in much better situation facing at least some uncertainty against their theory. As Judith say, the problem is over confidence, emerging dissenting data, and massive lack of data, not undeniable contrary evidence.
there is no uncertainty in cold Fusion reality. It is plain old science, plain old calorimetry.
All was proven since 1992 (As Heinz Gerischer admitted it), when real chemist and not physicist, did the chemistry work… because Cold fusion is pure chemistry experiment.
The scientist who failed are the physicist who still did not find an explanation for the chemistry evidence.
we are in better condition than AGW challengers because we have a chance to make something work, unlike with AGW that can be a doubt for a century. We know that the only exit will be a reactor that works, because no scientific evidence will ever be accepted by those groupthink victims.
I see them facing reality with incredible delusion…
Cold fusion is getting industrial, and soon you will see big names (if National Instruments, Toyota, STMicro,Mitsubishi,Baoding HIDZ, Cherokee fund, Sunrise securities, Nasa, Navy, SRI, ENEA, Elforsk, are not enough)…
http://www.lenrnews.eu/lenr-summary-for-policy-makers/
I work on it. the delusion is over among big corps CTO.
Not yet among journos and tawkers, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb denounce.
DrJohnGalan: Despite many replications of their experiments since, the demolition done in a matter of weeks in 1989 is still being felt today.
That is false. No replication of their experiments has ever demonstrated a net energy output over and above the electrical energy put in during the startup. No reliable evidence of fusion has ever been found in one of their devices during operation (e.g. radiation of gamma in the proper energies.) Had their device worked, you’d be able to buy a heater or motor at Home Depot today, or watch one heating the water in an aquarium, or powering a small shopping mall.
There are small scale working fusion devices, but they are net consumers of electricity and they produce isotopes for medical uses.
Pons and Fleischman were mavericks who stimulated a spurt of research whose results disputed their claims. They were not ignored or stifled..
AlainCo:Cold fusion is getting industrial, and soon you will see big names (if National Instruments, Toyota, STMicro,Mitsubishi,Baoding HIDZ, Cherokee fund, Sunrise securities, Nasa, Navy, SRI, ENEA, Elforsk, are not enough)…
http://www.lenrnews.eu/lenr-summary-for-policy-makers/
Can you give us a hint on “soon”? Commercial working devices were promised by 1990. There was another of those famous bets where a backer promised a working go-cart motor by year’s end. (The letter announcing that the bet had been lost by the promoter was written by Richard Garwin and published in Science Magazine.) They have been promised “soon” annually since then. The devices touted at lenrnews over the last few years are cheap to build and test, and yet they still do not accomplish even one useful task in public.
So, …, how about 2020 for “soon”? Is that too soon for you? Would you get behind 2030? That’s only 16 years from now.
Fleischmann actually did worthy research earlier in his career, observing
surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy for the first time in 1973. My team actually used this technique and I have at least one paper using this approach. So he actually did something innovative early on. That work provided credibility for his later “findings”, and that’s partly why many people got sucked into the cold fusion work.
Related to this is that their cold-fusion competitors at the time happened to be Steven E. Jones, who was at BYU which was in the same state as Pons. No doubt that this rivalry to who would get bragging rights lead to the press-release style reporting of the cold-fusion results. Jones was “scooped” by Pons and Fleischmann, but then later on Jones happened to be one of the co-founders of Scholars for 9/11 Truth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Jones
It makes one wonder about what these people are all about, achieving fame or doing the science?
Matthew R Marler | March 23, 2014 at 4:18 pm |
“No replication of their experiments has ever demonstrated a net energy output over and above the electrical energy put in during the startup”. Suggest you read Edmund Storms’ book, “The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction” where the many papers from all over the world describing excess heat, helium and tritium production as well as transmutation are set out.
DrJohnGalan: Suggest you read Edmund Storms’ book, “The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction” where the many papers from all over the world describing excess heat, helium and tritium production as well as transmutation are set out.
Everyone always claims something new and wonderful, and no working device ever emerges.
What I wrote was that the Pons and Fleishman reports were never confirmed, and they were not. Had they been, there would be facilities all over the place running on devices based on their results.I did note that energy consuming bench top devices have generated isotopes for medical research.
The first 5 are clowns. Someone like Nick Stokes could outmatch that team with one hand tied behind his back. Or consider Clive Best on the skeptic side. The difference between someone that knows what they are doing and a wannabe is immense.
If you really want to understand what one independent researcher can do, consider the case of Nathan Myrhvold. Look up the name and consider if you want to collaborate with him.
[1]K. Caldeira and N. Myhrvold, “Projections of the pace of warming following an abrupt increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration,” Environmental Research Letters, vol. 8, no. 3, p. 034039, 2013.
Gee. I guess it’s pretty much impossible that Myrhvold might want to make money on global warming. Sure. Sure it is.
WebHubTelescope (@WHUT) | March 23, 2014 at 1:36 pm | Reply
“Nic Lewis, Steve McIntyre, Rud Istvan, Tony Brown, Bob Tisdale, Marcia Wyatt, and my Russian collaborator Vitaly Khvorostyanov”
The first 5 are clowns.
________
Webby joins lolwot and Gates on the irony express, choosing to attack in order to suppress and, thereby, reinforcing the original post.
“Nic Lewis, Steve McIntyre, Rud Istvan, Tony Brown, Bob Tisdale, Marcia Wyatt, and my Russian collaborator Vitaly Khvorostyanov”
The first 5 are clowns. Someone like Nick Stokes could outmatch that team with one hand tied behind his back.”
More gutless sneer and smear, Web. It’s so effective.
PG, What do you know about evaluating science? Do you know how to pick out the krackpots?
Have you dealt with kranks like Fleischmann first hand? Do you actually read books such as Voodoo Science by Robert Park?
The problem is that you think that this is about manners and civility, yet look at what budding engineers and scientists have to go through at a university. It’s very common to find undergraduate classes that weed out up to 50% of the students that the professors deem not fit to continue on in that discipline. What makes you think that such a process has to stop ?
Call out the pseudos for what they are and keep doing it. There are no letter grades here so that’s all one can do.
webby, webby
Simply branding the first five as clowns is not evaluating science. That is sneer and smear. Pokerguy called you on it. It’s that simple.
Lewis — low-balled TCR by 50%, letter grade = F
McIntyre — he’s just an auditor, N/A as a real scientist
Istvan — he writes books on topics, where is the research?
Brown — a historian, not a real scientist
Tisdale — WTF is that all about ? He claims that global temperature is the result of integrating the PDO. That is so clearly wrong.
The acid test of good research is whether one can build from their work. No way that I can see.
webhubtelescope: McIntyre — he’s just an auditor, N/A as a real scientist
He has, I repeat, published in the peer-reviewed literature. He has found serious contradictions in the writings of Mann. And he published an important corrective to a paper by Eric Steig about temperatures in Antarctica.
Who exactly is going to build on their work?
Contrast that to Wyatt, who actually did some interesting research and reported results that can actually be built on. That is how scientific breakthroughs come about.
BTW, mathematical physics is about understanding curves in the context of some manifold. If you have problems with curves, you are not fit for the major leagues, DonnyBoy.
“Voodoo Science by Robert Park”
Interesting cite. AGW theory, focussing almost exclusively on carbon dioxide and relying heavily on the GCMs, has attributes in common with Park’s voodoo science:
– Evidence for the theory has huge signal-to-noise ratios.
– Some of its effects are at the limits of detectability (sea level rise, ocean acidification).
– There is much speculative theorizing involved in AGW (tree rings; Bern carbon cycle model; Revelle factor; cloud effects; aerosol effects; lapse rate feedback).
– There is a pathological adherence to the “Hockey Stick” and to the GCMs’ forecasting abilities.
– Some criticisms are met with ad hoc excuses (the missing heat is being sequestered in the oceans; different forcings were the cause of previous temperature rises; we don’t know that the MWP was global).
– The research seems to be strongly driven by political, ideological and perhaps even financial motives.
– The MSM often report on AGW as infotainment.
Too bad you don’t understand what the book Voodoo Science is about. It actually addresses the pseudo-science as exemplified by the climate science contrarians.
However I am glad that you provide bullets that are easy to refute:
Although the global surface temperature looks noisy, that signal is actually composed of factors that have straightforward explanations. This makes it very easy to extract the GHG attribution.
Your point is refuted.
Global land surface temperature rise close to 1.3C over the last 130+ years is very detectable.
The Bern carbon cycle has the long tails characteristic of a diffusive process. Only kranks believe that diffusion is inoperable.
What is the hockey stick but a large recent spike that is easily detectable, see previous point.
What missing heat?
http://contextearth.com/2014/01/25/what-missing-heat/
That is an assertion not borne out by any evidence.
Science is fun, not boring.
Although the global surface temperature looks noisy, that signal is actually composed of factors that have straightforward explanations. This makes it very easy to extract the GHG attribution.
The ‘attribution’ misses all of the most relevant data in the satellite era. This makes it questionable at best – and most likely I corrigibly incompetent.
Global land surface temperature rise close to 1.3C over the last 130+ years is very detectable.
The surface (@ 2m) temperature over land depends on water availability and therefore latent heat movement. It is of no relevance to tropospheric or global temperatures. Why this should be of any interest to any rational observer of climate is a mystery we shall never solve.
The Bern carbon cycle has the long tails characteristic of a diffusive process. Only kranks believe that diffusion is inoperable.
Elements of the carbon cycle are not known to more than +/-20% – diffusion may have some significance for chemistry but is a minor part of changes in the carbon cycle. An exclusive focus on this is dishonest or ignorant.
‘What is the hockey stick but a large recent spike that is easily detectable, see previous point.
The hockey stick purported to eliminate earlier warming and cooling. It was incorrect and it is still unclear whether modern temps exceed those of the Medieval Optimum.
What missing heat?
http://contextearth.com/2014/01/25/what-missing-heat/
Webby has not the slightest clue about what the ‘missing energy’ was or where it was or wasn’t found.
That is an assertion not borne out by any evidence.
Pot calling the natural philosopher black.
Science is fun, not boring.
Not as webby does it.
@WHT
In what way is Tony Brown a clown?
Hmph, seems to me, though jest a serf, that doing science is about
seeking explanations for physical puzzles framed as testable
hypotheses or guesses about the world.
Seems to me, t-j-a-s, that well verified observations in the historical
record, observations like glaciers advancing or retreating, records
of disastrous droughts and crop failures et al link historic data to
other lines of enquiry, data that can be cross referenced to the
science.
So to git back to ‘explanations’ of physical phenomena … what
about model hind-casting and projection as ”explanation’ in
climate science? How does this measure up as explanation of
physical phenomena? Where are mechanisms demonstrated?
And in addition, don’t modellers sometimes feel the need to tweak
and adjust for surmised unsatisfactory weaknesses of past
temperature measurements … and how subjective is that? Give
me the ship records of sea ice, skin in the game need to keep
yr ship afloat, farmers almanacs of crop planting dates, skin in
the game keeping up food production, as more reliable than
modellers in cloud towers likely allowing con-firm-ation bias to
creep in.
Hey, that rhymes. Must be true (according to the rules of kim).
@wht
Though I am delighted that you find my mellifluous prose style pleasing to your ear, your reply has completely – and I suspect deliberately – failed to answer the question.
In case you missed it:
You declared a list of people to be ‘clowns’. Among them Tony Brown.
Please explain to us all how Mr Brown…who does sterling (and I think original) work in researching past climates through the written records of contemporary sources..is a ‘clown’.
TIA
WebHubTelescope: BTW, mathematical physics is about understanding curves in the context of some manifold.
What bunk. You do not need that to understand that the GCMs are overpredicting warming; that the Arctic and Antarctic ice changes are balancing out; that there is no increase in cyclonic storm energy dissipation related to increases in CO2; or that the “pause” was unpredicted by the alarmist scientists.
Raised another strawman, eh, Marler?
The outputs of GCM’s are curves.
Ice changes over time are analyzed as a plotted curve.
The “pause” is observed as a curve.
WHT –The problem is that you think that this is about manners and civility…
Ideally, a scientist is not a goon. Both make compelling arguments, but methods and goals are incompatible.
If you are looking for a clown try that one from Greenpeace of the we know who are and where you live debacle.
Now that is a real clown.
WebHubTelescope: The outputs of GCM’s are curves.
Ice changes over time are analyzed as a plotted curve.
The “pause” is observed as a curve.
Now tell everyone about the manifolds. And when the curves do, and when the curves don’t, have to be understood in the context of manifolds
@web hub telescope
In your busy schedule of sniping at others and self-aggrandisement, your diary secretary seems to have failed to remind you that you owe an answer to my question
‘Why do you think Tony Brown is a ‘clown’?
WebHubTelescope (@WHUT): “Tisdale — WTF is that all about ? He claims that global temperature is the result of integrating the PDO.”
Once again, WebHubTelescope, you elect to misrepresent or express your misunderstandings about my work. I suspect it’s a combination of the two.
Adios!
As a scientific heretic myself, I can only agree with the subject line of the thread. The amount of groupthink in the field is stunning, particularly for such a new field with so many unanswered questions.
I will say, however, and I’m sure our gracious hostess would agree, that being a scientific maverick regarding climate is not all sunshine and rainbows. I get ridiculed and vilified on a constant basis. However, as someone said, when you’re getting flack it means you’re over the target …
w.
Yes, Judith forgot to mention you. Maybe if you worked on some of your personality disorders and character flaws you would see more sunshine and rainbows. It ain’t all about your sometimes interesting efforts at science.
And Don jumps on the irony express right behind Webby. Well done Don! Thanks for reinforcing the messages from the original post.
Gladly Don. Your comment, like Webby’s, lolwot’s and Gates’ was a personal attack on a skeptic designed to suppress their voice.
While my first response is in moderation, I will state it another way. You ain’t very bright scotty.
Yup, double down Don. Well played.
OK, scotty. You got me. I am all about suppressing skeptic voices, although I don’t know how that particular comment could have had much effect. I guess I will have to stop it now. Am I forgiven? I’ll send willis some bright daisies. Where is your little friend joshie? I hope he is not sick. Let me know when you are in the mood to talk nonsense again, scottyboy.
Don Montfort: OK, scotty. You got me. I am all about suppressing skeptic voices, although I don’t know how that particular comment could have had much effect. I guess I will have to stop it now. Am I forgiven?
You don’t seem to get it. Your comment had little “effect”; it moved you a litter farther along in the direction of people whose comments can always be skipped because they are never about science.
Just because you are over the target doesn’t mean you have a bomb to drop.
Now Mosher is suppressing skeptic voices. Let’s see what knee-jerk reaction from the willis fanboys this evokes.
Willis
As you see, the flack is coming in.
But hang in there.
I don’t always agree with everything you write, but a lot is spot on.
Max
mattie, mattie
I see that Judith has censored my reply to your threat to skip my comments. I only suggested that you commence your skipping. Didn’t call you a clown, or anything like that. Whatever. Judith doesn’t like me anymore.
Anyway, I will expound. Most of the comments on this blog are either not about the real sciency science , or they are repetitive regurgitations of partisan talking points, with a link or two to an allegedly supportive chart or paper thrown in. I follow the sciency discussions and sometimes ask a question of Pekka, or Mosher, or one of the two or three other people who have some knowledge and a bit of intellectual integrity. I keep an open mind, but I haven’t seen anything new in the last few years that could move me out of the militant lukewarm, lukewarmer camp. I am here mostly, because I am a people person.
Bottom line: the putative scientific discussions here are generally not worth the bandwidth they are written on. If you want to pretend that the science is being advanced, or that anyone’s mind is being changed by the participants talking past one another, enjoy. And if you skip my comments and the others that are not sciency enough for you, you will have time to take up another hobby.
“I am here mostly, because I am a people person.”
I spit coffee all over my laptop upon reading that. Thanks.
Yo, Max!
Did you ever express disagreement with willis? I hope you were wearing your flak jacket.
Steven Mosher | March 23, 2014 at 5:04 pm |
True ‘dat … and just because you are posting a comment doesn’t mean you have a valid point and have gotten it across.
Your point would be …? I mean, if it’s meant as an insult, what are you accusing me of? And if it’s meant as a wry or humorous comment, well, don’t quit your day job for a career doing stand-up quite yet …
w.
PS—As I’ve said before, you don’t do yourself any favors with your one-line drive-by posting style. You are a very smart guy, and your science-fu is strong. But this kind of one-line comment? Bad for both the digestion and the reputation … yours, not mine.
Don Monfort | March 23, 2014 at 2:19 pm |
Don Monfort | March 23, 2014 at 9:59 pm |
First, Don, if you are going to insult me, a citation would be useful.
Second, I have no problem with disagreement. That’s what science is all about. But I am techy on the subject of honor and honesty. People who attack my honor or my honesty get their faces slapped, and their flak jacket doesn’t protect them.
I’m also techy on the subject of people just slinging mud without quotations, citations, or any attempt to support the claims, as has been your habit in this thread. It’s an ugly and underhanded thing to do, to accuse a man of a host of unspecific wrongdoing without even attempting to back up your claims.
I practice karmic comments, Don. I return like for like. For people who have questions and answers, I have answers and questions. That’s the game and the joy of the kind of science that I do, that I have so many people I can learn from.
On the other hand, for those who specialize in unpleasant personal hand-waving accusations, for those who step into the conversation by skipping the science and claiming that I have “personality disorders” and “character flaws”, for folks like that I have little but contempt and pity, and, as you point out, not much compunction about expressing either one.
w.
Don
some people cant take a joke.
Don Monfort: Did you ever express disagreement with willis? I hope you were wearing your flak jacket.
I have done that. His replies are always responsive, polite and on point. He doesn’t always agree with me, I think I said once that he “got his hackles up”, and that’s true. If you are going to disagree with him, you better have a good, well-formulated point — and quote him so that he and everyone else knows what you are responding to.
I don’t has to show you no stinking citations, willis! Anyone who has observed your act for more than a few minutes has seen you go off. The fawning willis fanboys excuse your behavior because you feed them a steady diet of what they like to eat. And as I said, I find some of your stuff interesting. It ain’t about the science. I hope you get it together. You could be a better man.
Geez, Monfort, that’s total BS.
And willis the valid point is this
1. If you are getting flack you can be somewhat confident you are over the target
2. Just because your over the target doesnt mean you have any ammunition to fight back (drop a bomb)
for example: tallbloke gets a lot of flack
for example: mann gets a lot of flack
for example: lewandowsky gets a lot of flack
for example… you get the idea
it doesnt take skill to draw fire..
Steven Mosher | March 24, 2014 at 12:24 am |
Ah, I see the problem, which as is often the case is my lack of clarity.
Tallbloke and Mann and Lewadowsky get their shabby attempts at science ripped to shreds, because, well, their attempts richly deserve it. I don’t call that flak. I call that the normal process of science.
Mann also gets attacked for scientific malfeasance, like advising people to delete emails sought under a FOI request. Again, that’s not flak. That’s a man convicted by his own words.
On the other hand, I get accused of having “personality disorders” and “character flaws” … and bizarrely, you seem to be chiming in.
You see, Mosh, what I call “flak” is when people stop attacking my science and start attacking my character or my personality.
Because when that happens, it lets me know that I’m not only over the target … I’m hitting the target.
Thanks for your explanation of your meaning,
w.
I never said your personality disorders and character flaws disqualify you from practicing DIY climate science, willis. I find some of your efforts to be interesting and even plausible. But then, Mosher knows more about the science than I do.
Don Monfort | March 24, 2014 at 1:21 am |
Good heavens, Don, whose comments are your reading? Surely not mine. I didn’t say a single one of those things. Not one of them.
I didn’t mention WUWT, or the fact that it’s been voted best science site on the web three times. I didn’t discuss the New York Times, nor did I say one word about Energy and Environment. I did not claim to be a “gentleman scientist”, much less a “famous gentleman scientist”. Where is this nonsense coming from?
In fact, you’ve made a sleazy personal attack up out of the whole cloth, pretending that I said a whole list of things that have nothing to do with anything I said.
I fear this is totally unclear. To whom do I owe an apology, and for what? To you? To Cass Sunstein? To our esteemed hostess? I am happy to apologize for things I’ve actually done, but your vague handwaving doesn’t provide the slightest clue as to what has your knickers in such a twist.
w.
Don Monfort: Yes, Judith forgot to mention you.
That is a red herring raised by you, not by Willis.
First, comparing him to Feynman …. BwaHa LOL.
Next, Feynman did not submit unserious work to research journals.
Please read:
http://www.amazon.com/Feynmans-Lost-Lecture-David-Goodstein/dp/0393319954
Feynman’s lost lecture
If WUWT is essentially a comix page, it all makes perfect sense.
What you laughin bout, Springer? I am a people person. And I treat all with the respect they deserve. The bad ones I chew up and spit out.
I didn’t see willis slap you for accurately and succinctly summing up his existence; dishonorable dropout itinerant handyman? He doesn’t do so well without Anthony’s protection.
Being a people person means treating people with respect even when they don’t deserve it. You are what I’d call brutally honest which is how I’d refer to myself so consider it a compliment.
WebHubTelescope: First, comparing him to Feynman …. BwaHa LOL.
Next, Feynman did not submit unserious work to research journals.
“Compare” here is off: all I said was that their sex lives were irrelevant to the evaluation of their work.
Feynman, alas, is not here to tell us his ruminations on the CERES data or the problems of H2O feedback generally. But you can learn something about those topics, and others, by reading Willis Eschenbach’s posts. I skip his autobiographical reports.
Could you possibly quote some of Willis’ data analyses and show us where he is wrong?
The etc. part of “Climate Etc” doesn’t need to extend to the sex lives of the scientists; who cares any more that Pierre Langevin and Marie Curie had an affair? Appropriately, it does not affect our evaluation of their scientific work. We could write the same about that famous Maverick Ben Franklin.
“Could you possibly quote some of Willis’ data analyses and show us where he is wrong?”
Sure. His latest screed about CERES data mining. rgbatduke smacked him upside the head. It’s a recurrent theme. Doh!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/24/water-vapor-feedback/#comment-1597419
When Rob Brown at Duke University speaks you’d be well advised to listen. Eschenbach is not well advised of course. Even little old amateur me instinctively knew you can’t very well deduce water vapor amplification from only clear sky data. 70% of the earth’s surface is covered by cloud at any one point in time, duh. RGB quantified the boner from a top ten university physicist’s POV. RGB also reiterated a point I’ve been making for years that CO2 warming is best studied in the driest atmospheres we can find. And, near as I can tell, when we compare wet to dry atmospheres at the same latitude and elevation (tropical ocean vs. tropical deserts) we find that the dry climate has the higher mean annual temperature which seems to me like very compelling evidence that the net effect of liquid H2O on the surface is cooling which I guess also handily explains why we sweat water instead of sand. LOL
His Gaia-like theory of a governor controlling the climate is obviously wrong. We wouldn’t have around 1.3C of land warming if that was the case. And besides, that is just another variation of Lindzen’s iris theory which was invalidated years ago.
Yes of course. There’s only one climate control knob and its name is CO2. No other governors allowed.
ROFL
You should listen to yourself. It’s really comical.
“I never said your personality disorders and character flaws disqualify you from practicing DIY climate science, willis. I find some of your efforts to be interesting and even plausible.”
Willis, you obviously have a great deal to offer. The main trouble is you’re ridiculously thin skinned. Anger management might be worth looking into.
it’s odd, because your temperament sometimes seems more typical of the more strident warmists.
Have fun, will travel.
==============
Surely the end of the story is when one of us bursts into tears.
As my moderamaitresse gently weeps.
============
David Springer | March 24, 2014 at 4:43 pm |
You should take a deep breath and let the dust settle a bit before posting. As I pointed out to RGB, whose opinion I always listen to very carefully, the idea that clear-sky absorption of upwelling longwave maps the amount of water vapor (which you and RGB think is oh so wrong) is not my idea. It is Ramanathans, you can all read about it here.
SO … nice try on showing where I was wrong, but to date the only person you’ve attacked is Ramanathan …
w.
That the clear sky determination of water vapor amplification is Ramanathan’s idea instead of yours increases the odds by orders of magnitude that it’s right. From 0.0001% to 0.01% I’d say. Just a rough estimate. Duh.
David Springer | March 24, 2014 at 5:09 am |
Classy, David. Real classy.
As I said, “I get ridiculed and vilified on a constant basis”. Your latest unpleasant farrago of misrepresentations, insults, and faux outrage merely proves my point, and the irony express rolls on …
w.
Ah, so. Willis can’t be wrong, cause he got the idea from Ramanathan. If somebody is wrong, it’s got to be Ramanathan. Willis is in the clear. He gots nothing to do with the idea. He just borrowed it and will give it back, if it don’t work. Well at least he is not pretending he came up with it on his own, this time.
WebHubTelescope: His Gaia-like theory of a governor controlling the climate is obviously wrong.
He might be wrong, but I don’t think it is obvious.
David Springer Sure. His latest screed about CERES data mining. rgbatduke smacked him upside the head. It’s a recurrent theme. Doh!
Did you read Willis’ post, rgbatduke’s comment, and then Willis’ reply to rgbatduke? Unless you think “you need to get your common sense recalibrated” was a terrible insult, it was a quite informative and polite exchange.
You called it “data mining”, but it was a straight forward response to a published paper.
The end result was that Willis had written a modest improvement over published work. When people criticized his claims, he defended his claims well. As Lord Monckton wrote, it would make a nice, short contribution, should Willis choose to write for publication. Ironically, for this thread, it is “normal science”, and not like a “maverick” at all.
Let me correct a mistake I wrote above: It was Paul Langevin, not Pierre Langevin, whose affair with Marie Curie was incidental to their scientific work.
“The end result was that Willis had written a modest improvement over published work.”
No he didn’t. He blogged about some data mining and a qualified peer reviewer didn’t just say it was wrong it was mocked. Rob Brown is Duke physicist, magna cum laude from Duke no less, with decades of experience. If he bitch slaps Willis’ uneducated scientist-wannabe carpenter ass you can be sure Willis deserved it.
His latest post essentially recreated
[1]V. Ramanathan, P. Crutzen, J. Kiehl, and D. Rosenfeld, “Aerosols, climate, and the hydrological cycle,” Science, vol. 294, no. 5549, pp. 2119–2124, 2001.
which is a landmark paper in showing the positive feedback of water vapor.
If he keeps doing this paper by paper, he will eventually have to accept AGW. It seems an odd charade.
It wasn’t a terrible insult, mattie. But coming from a wannabe DIY scientist in response to generous good faith mentoring from a real scientist, it was very ungrateful and tacky. You are an enabler of willis’ nastiness, mattie. Check yourself.
‘Suppression of precipitation in the updrafts of very deep clouds, especially in the tropics, can also transport more water and aerosols into the upper troposphere and the lower stratosphere. The accompanying increase in the upper troposphere water vapor greenhouse effect can counter some of the aerosol cooling effect.’
http://ramanathan.ucsd.edu/files/pr108.pdf
You’d think the title would give it away. It is not about water vapour at all – apart from this one mention.
Not sure we need a major paper to show warm air holds more moisture – but how much? Minschwaner and Dessler from 2004 (from memory) might be of more assistance here.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WaterVapor/water_vapor3.php
Webby is astonishingly full of it. Is it that he will say anything to make a point? Doesn’t matter if it is true or not because you can always call someone a schizoid denier?
Lapse rate feedback. Greater surface evaporation with little change in temperature reduces lapse rate putting more total water vapor in the column but not greater relative humidity. Vapor must then rise farther for adiabatic cooling to reach the dewpoint. The clouds, now at a higher altitude thanks to increased CO2, have a less restrictive radiative path to space because there’s less air above them and a more restricted for reheating the surface because there’s more air below them. Ostensibly this creates the notorious mid-troposphere “hotspot” referred to as the fingerprint for anthropogenic warming.
Recent measurements and reanalysis of old data is coming up with evidence that lapse rate feedback has been underestimated in the models and average cloud height is indeed changing. Underestimating lapse rate feedback by a small amount puts clouds in the negative feedback column instead of positive which is all it takes to screw the pooch in long term temperature trend from global warming climate models.
Of course – if you want to look at clouds and water vapour – http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/files/brt18.pdf
Here’s the clear sky IR anomalies.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES_EBAF-TOA_Ed27_anom_TOA_Longwave_Flux-All-Sky_March-2000toJune-2013_zps64e01a6c.png.html?sort=3&o=47
So what changes?
Don Monfort | March 25, 2014 at 2:29 am |
Don, above you recommended I apologize. I asked for what … no reply from you.
This accusation is even more bizarre. I have a very high opinion of Dr. Robert Brown of Duke. He, on the other hand, at least appears to have a high opinion of me. I listen to him carefully, his science-fu is very strong.
However, in this case I thought he was wrong, and wrote to him about it. I thought my response was somewhat humorous. If in fact my response were “ungrateful and tacky”, Dr. Brown was certainly free to bring it to my attention. And if he does so, I would certainly apologize, as that was not my intention.
Until he does so, however, I have no intention of letting some puffed-up popinjay demand an apology on his behalf. Dr. Brown is a very strong individual, capable of making his own case. Me, I never believe some joker like yourself who is whining and clutching his pearls, not on his own behalf, but on behalf of someone else who is quite capable of defending themself … if the someone else were truly injured, they’d let me know, they don’t need you to complain and whimper on their behalf.
Finally, you call me a “DIY scientist”. In fact, I have a peer-reviewed piece published in Nature magazine. A small piece to be sure, a “Communications Arising”, but most assuredly peer-reviewed. I also have a peer-reviewed piece in Diversity and Distributions.
How many pieces of peer-reviewed scientific work have you gotten published in Nature magazine, Don, of any description?
You also say:
Don Monfort | March 24, 2014 at 8:22 pm |
Don, I can assuredly be wrong, and have been many times. If, as you state, you think that Ramanathan is wrong, then you should make that case. Me, I think he is right. All you’ve done to date to show that Ramanathan is wrong is flap your gums … not very impressive.
As to your underhanded accusation of prior plagiarism, like the majority of your bogus claims I notice this one is also uncited. You like to slime your way under the door by using such clever misrepresentations. If your claim relates to Roy Spencer’s statements about my acknowledgements of Ramanathan, I deny it entirely as I have done in the past.
w.
Willis your thunderstorm thermostat hypothesis is not new. In fact it was even tested in 1992.
Fu, Rong, et al. “Cirrus-cloud thermostat for tropical sea surface temperatures tested using satellite data.” Nature 358.6385 (1992): 394-397.
“Tropical convection” certainly includes tropical thunderstorms. What exactly do you imagine is new in your 2010 paper and why didn’t you at least cite this as prior art?
You are an angry little dude, and confused. I did not recommend that you apologize to anybody. I said “maybe if you apologize”. Your comprehension-fu is not strong. You also missed the sarcasm. If you want to know why someone might have the opinion that you might owe Judith an apology, start with ” I love you Judith, but…” And you completely made up the crap about me demanding an apology, on Dr. Brown’s behalf. Try to get a grip on yourself, willis.
The DIY thing I just throw in to get under your thin skin. You are too easy. I don’t know how many times I have to say that some of your science-fu is interesting and plausible. I never said that you were wrong on the science in your recent little inconsequential disagreement with Dr. Brown. I tend towards believing that you are more right than Dr. Brown. But you are still petulant, nasty and ungrateful. Is that clear now, willis?
I didn’t accuse you of plagiarism, any more than your beloved Dr. Spencer accused you of plagiarism. “I love you Dr. Spencer, but…” “I love you Dr. Brown, but…” I love you Dr. Judith, but…” Notice a pattern there, willis? Probably not. Your self-awareness-fu is very, very weak.
Now, I will readily admit that your science-fu is stronger than mine. You have a couple-few of the peer-reviewed dealies and I have none. However, Drs. Brown, Spencer and Curry have hundreds of peer reviewed papers compared to your two or three more than my zero. In my favor, I will point out that I didn’t drop out of a top-tier university like U.C. Berkeley and end up with a massage certificate and a useless psychology degree from Sonoma freaking State. I am not doing carpentry work to survive. I got myself a very useful MBA and made millions, after I served my country with honor and distinction. Shall we compare our service medals, willis? Do you have anything that says awarded by the President of the United States for conspicuous gallantry in action, above and beyond the call of duty, or anything like that? On you lengthy (some would say comical) CV you list every little menial job that you held for more than a few minutes, except for your stint in the U.S. Army. Why is that, willis?
David Springer | March 25, 2014 at 5:18 pm |
David, I went over this at great length with Roy Spencer … were you sleeping at the time? Ramanathan and Collins hypothesis was that tropical cirrus ciouds “might act as a thermostat” to limit the SSTs to 305k.
My hypothesis is that the changes in the daily time of emergence of thunderstorms and time of emergence of other thermoregulatory phenomena (e.g. El Nino, PDO) acts as a thermostat to limit the temperature for the entire planet.
I said nothing about tropical cirrus clouds. I said nothing about the 305K limit on tropical SSTs … I’m sure if you try real hard you can see the giant space between my hypothesis and that of R&C.
Now, after laying all of that out in the paper I cited above, the paper you condescendingly sneered at upthread, you come along to prove that you either can’t read, or your didn’t bother to read the citation. My hypothesis, as I said to Roy, is nothing at all like that of Ramanathan and Collins WHICH IS WHY I DIDN’T CITE THEM.
Dr. Roy in his foolishness made the mistake you are making. He either didn’t read or didn’t understand my work. He accused me of plagiarism for not citing Ramanathan, which was not just wrong but hilariously wrong.
Now you come along to prove that you’re not following the story either … ah, well, should have been expected I suppose given your general habits.
w.
So basically I’m in agreement with a PhD climate scientist with decades of experience in his profession, another who is an even more distinguished physicist at Duke University, both of whom have published scores of papers in their respective fields and, on other hand, in disagreement with you who are an undistinguished nobody with delusions of grandeur derived from getting free reign to post whatever thoughts flit through your handyman head on a blog and a host of similarly unqualified sycophants in the comment section of said blog whose motivated reasoning causes them to shower you with compliments.
I’m comfortable with that. If you don’t like it you can lump it.
And no I wasn’t sleeping. I read Spencer’s rejoinder to you, agreed with him, and disagreed with you. Your arrogance and lack of integrity simply prohibits you from believing that anyone who read and understands what you have to say cannot possibly disagree with you. And that is why you’re an unpaid blowhard posting on a blog while Spencer & Brown are PhD’s getting paid handsomely for their intellectual output. Get a grip on reality, Willis. You’re not a player you’re a member of the peanut gallery.
You are getting trounced here, willis. Maybe you should go back home and attend to your water vapor feedback thread. There are some comments you should reply to, if you want to be considered a real scientist. Her’s one:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/24/water-vapor-feedback/#comment-1598259
Or have you moved on to your next big discovery? It would not be unusual for you to abandon one of your sermons, when inconvenient issues are raised.
I have to disagree, Don. Dropping out of UC Berkeley is characteristic of giving up when confronted with anything too challenging. After all it’s not like he dropped out because he had a vision and went on to found Microsoft or Dell like some other dropouts I know.
Back to the thermostat paper it gets worse. Roy Spencer was being very kind to Willis and the ungrateful little tool has the stones to call Roy foolish.
Eschenbach’s thermostat paper was published in Energy & Environment.
Check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_%26_Environment
According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2012 impact factor of 0.319, ranking it 90th out of 93 journals in the category “Environmental Studies”.[7]
E&E is almost perfectly positioned at the very bottom of the barrel. How apt is that?
But wait, it gets worse.
Ibid:
According to a 2011 article in The Guardian, Gavin Schmidt and Roger A. Pielke, Jr. claimed that E&E has had low standards of peer review and little impact.[10] In addition, Ralph Keeling criticized a paper in the journal which claimed that CO2 levels were above 400 ppm in 1825, 1857 and 1942, writing in a letter to the editor, “Is it really the intent of E&E to provide a forum for laundering pseudo-science?”[10][11] A 2005 article in Environmental Science & Technology stated that “scientific claims made in Energy & Environment have little credibility among scientists.”
Psuedo-science and pseudo-scientists. Too funny.
And yet I also have peer-reviewed science published in Nature magazine … a fact which must gall you immensely.
All you’ve done is to prove that you are a fool to consider WHERE something is published. Is my piece in Nature somehow right and my piece in E&E somehow wrong because of where they were published? That’s nonsense and you know it. Science stands on its own, nullius in verba, my studies are either right or wrong regardless of where they were published.
It also doesn’t matter whether I agree or disagree with a given PhD. As Feynmann remarked, science is the belief in the fallibility of experts. For example, both RGB and Ramanathan have PhDs. Regarding atmospheric water vapor I agreed with Ramanathan and disagreed with RGB … and no matter which side you take in that debate you are doing what you accuse me of doing, of disagreeing with a PhD. And in that regard, I once again invite folks to read the issues and make up your own minds.
All that matters, David, is whether the science is right … and in that regard, you’d much rather talk about E&E and which PhD I supposedly disagree with and the Vietnam War and where my work has been published and what I did a half-century ago when I was 18. You’d pull up any of that extraneous nonsense rather than to even begin to touch the question of whether my science is right or not.
Let me close this by looking at how I opened this, which was that I said:
I would say you and Don and the others have certainly proven that I was 100% correct in that assessment. And I have to say, your charges against me are pathetic.
JC SNIP – off topic
w.
Bah, I get my answers where I find ’em, and there are precious few in this subthread.
=======
Kim no like when Team Denier score own goals.
I posted a link to this Wall Street Journal article the other day, at the end of a long thread. But I think it goes to the heart of the issue of this post – why there aren’t more “scientific mavericks.” And in my opinion, it is not an accident.
https://psscra.org/how-to-reverse-the-graying-of-scientific-research/
(The link is to a repost of the article – so no subscription needed.)
“The National Institutes of Health reports that between 1980 and 2012, the share of all research funding going to scientists under age 35 declined to 1.3%, from 5.6%. During the same period, the number of NIH awards going to scientists age 35 and under declined more than 40%, even as the total number of awards more than doubled.
The numbers are similarly unsettling for the NIH’s premier research grant, called the R01, a highly competitive, peer-reviewed grant that supports independent, investigator-driven science. From 1983 to 2010, the percentage of R01 investigators under age 36 declined to 3% from 18%. Principal investigators who were age 65 or older received more than twice as many R01 grants in 2010 as those 36 and under—a reversal from 15 years earlier. The average age at which investigators with a medical degree received their first R01 grant rose to 45 in 2011, from 38 in 1980.
Considering that many of the most significant scientific breakthroughs were made by the 36-and-younger set—from Albert Einstein developing his special theory of relativity at 26 to James Watson at 25 and Francis Crick at 36 discovering the DNA double helix—we deprive young scientists of funding at our peril.”
The key concept in the article: “Nevertheless, history has shown that it is often the youngest scientists who defy orthodoxy and shatter paradigms.”
The mavericks in science historically have been the young. They were not just at the peak of their intellectual powers, but they were not invested in the existing “consensus” on science.
The real problem now is that government controls the vast majority of research in certain areas (think climate science), and the funder has a vested interest in avoiding challenges to the status quo. Why would government fund research by those who might challenge one of the strongest claims made today for even more government?
Scientific research is graying because (progressive) government wants it to.
“The mavericks in science historically have been the young”
One irony here is that skeptical climate scientists tend to be older. At least that’s my strong impression. The simple explanation is they’re often free from the constraints of their younger colleagues, many of whom might well share their views.
I love Max Ok’s explanation though…Skeptical scientists tend to be older because “old people” don’t care about what happens to the world after they’re dead.
Skeptical scientists tend to be older because “old people” don’t need to cater to the Consensus to have a job.
“The National Institutes of Health reports that between 1980 and 2012, the share of all research funding going to scientists under age 35 declined to 1.3%, from 5.6%. During the same period, the number of NIH awards going to scientists age 35 and under declined more than 40%, even as the total number of awards more than doubled.
More and more of the younger scientists are not willing to go along with the consensus and therefore, they are not going to get funded.
The numbers are similarly unsettling for the NIH’s premier research grant, called the R01, a highly competitive, peer-reviewed grant that supports independent, investigator-driven science.
Wow! Competitive, peer-reviewed grant that supports independent, investigator-driven science.
Peer-reviewed and independent never work together.
The NIH system favors funding people to do work that they have already done.
So people will large lab and adequate funding do the work and then show the data, then ask for funding to do the work. This way NIH panels know that you will be successful, if they fund you to do the work that you have already done.
NIH will not fund a proposal if you cannot prove that you can hit key stages; they will only fund you if they know that the proposal will work, and if you have not already done it, then it is possible that you can’t do the work.
If you have a good idea, little funding and little preliminary data, then you have to present your idea to NIH, have it read by your better funded competitors, and then have it rejected because it lacks preliminary data. You are asked to perform 1-2 years work, to show that the approach is viable and get preliminary data, before they will give you 2 years funding to show that the approach is viable.
You publish your initial work in a peer-reviewed journal and then the NIH referees down mark your re-submission, because it is not innovative, as you have already published work in this area.
Thanks for the mention Judith. Yes, funding is definitely required so alternative views can be presented.
It takes me a year to research major articles. I am currently working on the period 1200 to 1450Ad. Its not easy to extract information and highly time consuming.
Tony Brown
Tony,
To aid in your research, I don’t know if I shared this with you, but there there is some data in this paper covering the period of 1200 to 1400 AD that may be of interest to you:
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lowell_Stott/publication/256496759_Climate_and_hydrographic_variability_in_the_Indo-Pacific_Warm_Pool_during_the_last_millennium/file/504635231ffb69ec3e.pdf
The IPWP is probably the single best proxy for what is going on globally with the climate energy budget.
R. Gates: The IPWP is probably the single best proxy for what is going on globally with the climate energy budget.
What are the desiderata that lead you to conclude that IPWP is the best single proxy, and what are the 20 runners-up? It would have been most helpful if that had been identified as the best single proxy 30 years ago, instead of all these references to randomly scattered big storms, droughts, polar blocking events, Arctic and Antarctic ice loss, reduced Karakoram glaciers and stuff. Should it be added to WebHubTelescope’s csalt model, if it’s best?
” It would have been most helpful if that had been identified as the best single proxy 30 years ago.”
______
We did not have 3600 Argo floats taking measurement of the global oceans 30 years ago. Science progresses.
But even at that, the role of the IPWP in driving much of the weather and climate has long been recognized as it is the largest single mass concentration of measurable climate energy. Some excellent recreations of the IPWP over the past 1K, 2K, and even 10K years have been done, and they tell a pretty consistent and fascinating story about the role of the IPWP and the various forcings that have come and gone over those periods of time. It is also quite interesting that some of the largest volcanoes to have erupted in the past are smack in the center of the IPWP. There is a disproportionate effect on the IPWP at times because of this proximity.
“We did not have 3600 Argo floats taking measurement of the global oceans 30 years ago.”
Yay! You made a true statement!
The implication of that is we can’t compare apples to apples if one of the apples is ARGO and the other apple is older than about 10 years. Climate change requires we have climate now and climate past in order to see what changed. We have no good data for OHC before ARGO so how do we know what changed compared to say 30 or 130 years ago with regard to OHC? Answer, we cannot. OHC is a red herring designed to take attention away from the fact that the primary metric used to guage global warming since forever is now failing to show any warming. So a different metric that shows some tiny amount of warmiong, couched in Joules to make it look significant (anomaly = X * 10^23 Joules) is such a transparent attempt to reframe the entire debate it’s ridiculous.
Say, I just read today that Chris Christie’s lapband surgery has been super sucessful. Chris has lost 4.53 * 10^16 picograms so far! Astounding!
“Should it be added to WebHubTelescope’s csalt model, if it’s best?”
____
Any climate model better be able to model the comings and goings of energy into and out of the IPWP. Given that the IPWP is the energy source that drives El Nino events (and much of the other weather around the world), understanding at least these periodic releases of energy from the IPWP can be useful.
R Gates: We did not have 3600 Argo floats taking measurement of the global oceans 30 years ago. Science progresses.
Fair enough. Perhaps you can provide the links that substantiate your inference that the IPWP is the single best proxy.
“Given that the IPWP is the energy source that drives El Nino events (and much of the other weather around the world), understanding at least these periodic releases of energy from the IPWP can be useful.”
Yes, but it should also be noted that these aren’t simply releases of heat, the conditions actually cause warming. The warm waters at the pacific and decrease in low cloud cover during el nino actually are a forcing, decreasing albedo and increasing evaporation.
“Yes, but it should also be noted that these aren’t simply releases of heat, the conditions actually cause warming. The warm waters at the pacific and decrease in low cloud cover during el nino actually are a forcing, decreasing albedo and increasing evaporation.”
_____
The release of latent and sensible heat from the ocean is the biggest single cause of warming during an El Nino event. We can see this directly in the loss of energy from the IPWP and the gain in energy to the troposphere. Other effects, as in changes in cloud cover, are either related to the energy flux from ocean to atmosphere, or are minor– certainly orders of magnitude less than the actual flux of energy from the IPWP to the atmosphere. If there was one single proxy for energy in the climate system (keep in mind, I don’t recommend a single proxy), it would probably be the energy of the IPWP. External forcings to the climate system determine if the IPWP is gaining or losing energy over longer periods and even shorter periods.
The fluctuations in the IPWP are best reflected in the SOI.
There is growing evidence that the SOI may be predictable based on anharmonic wave theory and given that we have over 130+ years of measurements to draw from.
Of course the nay-saying neoLuddites will butt in here and claim it is impossible to predict this.
Links?
WebHubTelescope: There is growing evidence that the SOI may be predictable based on anharmonic wave theory and given that we have over 130+ years of measurements to draw from.
Can you provide a link to a paper?
With 130 + years worth of data, it should be a relatively straightforward exercise to compute non-parametric estimates of the first and second derivatives and relate those to other observables. The next question will be whether the resultant dynamic model survives comparison with the relevant data of the next few decades.
Don’t use the first derivative. Only the second because these curves are sinusoidal like. However since they are not anywhere near periodic, the coefficients multiplying the second derivative increase in number the further ahead that you need to project to. I worked this one out and can show a graph later.
“Other effects, as in changes in cloud cover, are either related to the energy flux from ocean to atmosphere, or are minor– certainly orders of magnitude less than the actual flux of energy from the IPWP to the atmosphere.”
I don’t buy that (entirely). Without radiation driving evaporation, I don’t think there’d be nearly as much heat flux. What happened with the el Chichon super el Nino?
‘The use of a coupled ocean–atmosphere–sea ice model to hindcast (i.e., historical forecast) recent climate variability is described and illustrated for the cases of the 1976/77 and 1998/99 climate shift events in the Pacific. The initialization is achieved by running the coupled model in partially coupled mode whereby global observed wind stress anomalies are used to drive the ocean/sea ice component of the coupled model while maintaining the thermodynamic coupling between the ocean/sea ice and atmosphere components. Here it is shown that hindcast experiments can successfully capture many features associated with the 1976/77 and 1998/99 climate shifts. For instance, hindcast experiments started from the beginning of 1976 can capture sea surface temperature (SST) warming in the central-eastern equatorial Pacific and the positive phase of the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) throughout the 9 years following the 1976/77 climate shift, including the deepening of the Aleutian low pressure system. Hindcast experiments started from the beginning of 1998 can also capture part of the anomalous conditions during the 4 years after the 1998/99 climate. The authors argue that the dynamical adjustment of heat content anomalies that are present in the initial conditions in the tropics is important for the successful hindcast of the two climate shifts.’ http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00626.1
‘El Niño and La Niña represent opposite extremes in the naturally occurring climate cycle referred to as the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO). They are associated with opposite extremes in sea-surface temperature departures across the central and east-central equatorial Pacific, and with opposite extremes in convective rainfall, surface air pressure, and atmospheric circulation, departures in the Tropics from Indonesia to South America (approximately ½ the distance around the globe).’ http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensofaq.shtml
Both ENSO states are significant – rainfall doesn’t seem to change all that much but the locations radically change between states. La Nina brings biological fecundity as nutrient rich cold water upwells and cools the planet. The timing of ENSO changes is highly variable and the intensity and frequency of ENSO events shifts every few decades and over much longer periods. This makes it technically non-stationary rather than anharmonic.
Cloud cover changes dramatically in the tropics – but it depends on the location. Overall – there is less tropical cloud in an El Nino and more in La Nina – in the tropics this leads to net tropical cooling in El Nino and net warming in La Nina.
e.g http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Loeb2011-Fig1.png.html?sort=3&o=134
Although global cloud cover seems more attuned to the stadium wave signal.
I think if you are going to discuss ENSO – you should make some effort to understand it first and not make to facile and misleading statements. As it is this is so far from a sophisticated discussion that it is utterly laughable.
Dispersion of heat.
Lithium batteries boil?
Rosenthal research.
================
Also, see Roy Spencer’s analysis of el Nino warming.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/11/our-new-paper-el-nino-warming-reduces-climate-sensitivity-to-1-3-deg-c/
Is there anyone more schizoid than a guy that claims no warming for 20 years while also suggesting multiplying chaotic climate risks ?????
But of course, FUD is what they are after, so this sits well with Team Denier.
A vigorous spectrum of interdecadal internal variability presents numerous challenges to our current understanding of the climate. First, it suggests that climate models in general still have difficulty reproducing the magnitude and spatiotemporal patterns of internal variability necessary to capture the observed character of the 20th century climate trajectory. Presumably, this is due primarily to deficiencies in ocean dynamics. Moving toward higher resolution, eddy resolving oceanic models should help reduce this deficiency. Second, theoretical arguments suggest that a more variable climate is a more sensitive climate to imposed forcings (13). Viewed in this light, the lack of modeled compared to observed interdecadal variability (Fig. 2B) may indicate that current models underestimate climate sensitivity. Finally, the presence of vigorous climate variability presents significant challenges to near-term climate prediction (25, 26), leaving open the possibility of steady or even declining global mean surface temperatures over the next several decades that could present a significant empirical obstacle to the implementation of policies directed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (27). However, global warming could likewise suddenly and without any ostensive cause accelerate due to internal variability. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, the climate system appears wild, and may continue to hold many surprises if pressed. http://www.pnas.org/content/106/38/16120.full
It is mainstream science and the new dominant climate paradigm. Webby’s problem is that he has such little understanding of Earth sciences or complexity theory – he is merely hanging on to a wrong headed idea.
Although the minor paradigm shift did not affect any of ERS’s fundamental assumptions about the nature of the universe, it still required five observations that conflicted with the old paradigm before ERS was convinced that a new paradigm was needed. This is indicative of the difficulty that new paradigms usually have in being accepted.
Because many scientists are extremely reluctant to change their fundamental assumptions about the Universe, major paradigm shifts are often delayed until the older generation of scientists dies. It is customary to refer to scientists who adhere to the old paradigm as “dinosaurs.” Note that scientists with new-fangled ideas that conflict with the correct paradigm should of course be referred to as “crackpots.”
http://members.verizon.net/~vze3fs8i/air/paradigm.html
JC SNIP
The guy can’t even explain clearly his own viewpoint. Voices in his head are telling him to assert that there will be one or three decades of non-warming — and the counter voices tell him to refer to multiplying chaotic climate risks.
Deep down he probably wishes the voices will stop.
Seriously Judith? Saying that someone is an intellectual dinosaur in the context of a joke study is more heinous than schizoid – hearing voices – or whatever other nonsense webby comes up with? Webby attitude is nothing less than contemptible nonsense with little enough of any meaning other than to whine about deniers.
So yours is a quite pathetic excuse for moderation – why don’t you do something useful instead?
Webby has little understanding of Earth sciences and none at all of complexity theory. It makes him an intellectual … with little to offer and much to disregard.
As Swanson et al say – decadal cooling and chaotic variability are sides of the same coin.
Something wrong with this guy. On the one hand he says that there will be no warming for decades, but then he says that the climate is a wild beast that shouldn’t be poked with a stick, otherwise it will apparently go out of control.
Its called talking out of both sides of his mouth. Why he constantly asserts these contradictory statements we will probably never figure out. You really just have to ignore him.
So here’ some modeling work – http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/abs/nature06921.html
Here’s some more recent modeling work.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00626.1
Here’s the NAS.
‘What defines a climate change as abrupt? Technically, an abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold, triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause. Chaotic processes in the climate system may allow the cause of such an abrupt climate change to be undetectably small.’
So we have small changes that trigger climate shifts at multi-decadal intervals. The current mode is cool – and the last cool period lasted 30 years.
Is that so difficult to understand? I am sure it must be for webby. But what he needs to do instead of waving his arse about in the wind is to introduce some credible science that falsifies any of this new climate paradigm – something other than his physics ‘intuition’.
Here’s the NAS again.
‘The new paradigm of an abruptly changing climatic system has been well established by research over the last decade, but this new thinking is little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of natural and social scientists and policy-makers.’
That was in 2002 – but webby is yet to catch up and he essentially pulls out bonehead assertions laced with juvenile insult as a substitute for rational scientific discourse. it is all immensely tedious.
It is explicitly discussed in the Swanson et al paper I quoted.
http://judithcurry.com/2014/03/23/more-scientific-mavericks-needed/#comment-502424
Yet he continues in a ludicrous farce.
WebHubTelescope: Something wrong with this guy. On the one hand he says that there will be no warming for decades, but then he says that the climate is a wild beast that shouldn’t be poked with a stick, otherwise it will apparently go out of control.
Its called talking out of both sides of his mouth. Why he constantly asserts these contradictory statements we will probably never figure out. You really just have to ignore him.
It is always worthwhile to read Robert I Ellison’s posts and the papers that he links to. I have disputed this and that in some of his posts, but they are always informative and papers at the links even more so.
WebHubTelescope: I look forward to it.
Agree totally Matthew Marler. The Chief is always a good read and his science is much more plausible than most others.
Like I said there is something wrong with this guy. On the one hand he says that there will be no warming for decades, repeating over and over that there will be no warming for a decade or three. Google that phrase, “a decade or three”, and you will find hundreds of hits by BobbIE.
Yet then he says that the climate is a wild beast that shouldn’t be poked with a stick, otherwise it will apparently go out of control. He says this over and over again as well.
These two do not reconcile.
Its called talking out of both sides of his mouth. Why he constantly asserts these contradictory statements we will probably never figure out. You really just have to ignore him.
WebHubTelescope: Its called talking out of both sides of his mouth. Why he constantly asserts these contradictory statements we will probably never figure out. You really just have to ignore him.
Those are misleading paraphrases about conditional dependencies. That becomes clear to anyone who reads the references that he cites. Also pay attention to the definition of “abrupt” in the phrase “abrupt change”.
A certain chaos scientist says his work is not about abrupt climate change, which is obvious.
The SOI has abruptly changed. Lol.
WHT needs to understand that “The term is also used within the context of global warming to describe sudden climate change that is detectable over the time-scale of a human lifetime. One proposed reason for the observed abrupt climate change is that feedback loops within the climate system both enhance small perturbations and cause a variety of stable states” (wikipaedia) So, 1 to 3 decades is within a human lifespan is it not?
The guy keeps on saying that the climate is a beast that shouldn’t be poked with a stick. Read what he writes:
Yet he says that “the world is not warming for a decade or three”
This suggests that the climate is impervious to stick-poking.
And as JCH says, the ENSO is right there with its pointy stick, while the CO2 is casually riding the climate up the hill.
I have no words other to say except that this Aussie character is like Raymond the Rain Main, muttering the same thing over and over to himself, that he’s “an excellent driver”.
But he keeps on saying that climate shouldn’t be poked at with a stick. What else is doubling the concentration of CO2 but poking the climate with a sharp stick?
He is just doing word salad and all his “fans” are gullible for falling for his schtick.
Web should perceive the blunt mote in his own eye rather than the sharp stick in mine.
==========
“What else is doubling the concentration of CO2 but poking the climate with a sharp stick?”
It’s meaningless poetry presented by trolls.
Andrew
“..is like Raymond the Rain Main, muttering the same thing over and over to himself, that he’s “an excellent driver”.
That’s kinda funny Web, as that’s essentially what you do. “Of course, I’m the smartest guy in the room.” That’s your essential message.
The rest, as they say, is commentary.
That’s funny that you mention “smartest guy in the room”.
That happens to be Rob Bradley, former honcho at Enron, who comments here.
The Enron guys were referred to as the smartest guys in the room because of their arrogance. Put your trust in what Rob Bradley says and it will be deja vu.
—
What is lacking is logic and reason, which is in astoundingly short supply among the deniers such as the Aussie. He tries to both claim a stable climate and a climate on the verge of an abrupt change, but that this has nothing to do with AGW.
They probably were the smartest guys in the room the vast majority of the time. The way Texas-based Enron gamed California’s energy market was a thing of beauty that brought tears to my eyes.
The SOI always changes abruptly – it has 2 states but also changes in frequency and intensity. It is the perfect example of chaotic system. Complex. dynamic, multiple positive and negative feedbacks, emergent properties and abrupt change between states.
Climate is stable until it shifts – and then it is not stable. I suppose he just doesn’t get it – but that is what science says. It is not even controversial – it is mainstream science and the dominant paradigm. No one serious disputes chaotic and emergent properties in climate. Webby has nothing but bare assed assertion and juvenile insults to counter this.
That’s why ya wanna shake the dice.
===========
‘Finally, the presence of vigorous climate variability presents significant challenges to near-term climate prediction (25, 26), leaving open the possibility of steady or even declining global mean surface temperatures over the next several decades that could present a significant empirical obstacle to the implementation of policies directed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (27). However, global warming could likewise suddenly and without any ostensive cause accelerate due to internal variability. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, the climate system appears wild, and may continue to hold many surprises if pressed. http://www.pnas.org/content/106/38/16120.full
This is pretty much the central message – in black and white – utterly explicit peer reviewed science – it can’t be said any more clearly or succinctly. Go away webby – the nonsense you are spouting is palpable.
I get it just fine. I was making fun of the way you use abrupt.
How much did the climate change in the 20th century?
Webby
I fail to see what you are getting so worked up about, issuing “duplicity awards”, calling out “nay-saying neoLuddites” and all.
The Chief has simply pointed out that the late 20thC warming coincided with an extended regime of strong El Ninos and a period of reduced cloud cover. This regime has now reversed itself and the warming has stopped for now.
We all know that a relatively small change in cloud cover can result in a large change in albedo and reflection of incoming solar radiation (i.e. an increase in net solar forcing), so it is reasonable to ASS-U-ME that some of the late 20thC warming came from this added solar forcing (unfortunately IPCC seems to have missed this).
This has now reversed itself, for how long no one knows. The Chief tells us this could again shift rapidly, but it’s anyone’s guess when this could occur.
His educated guess is not for a couple of decades – but who knows?
There is nothing inconsistent with the Chief’s position, as far as I can tell.
The current pause in warming could change abruptly tomorrow or it could continue for another two or more decades.
If this does not make sense to you, it would be better for you to point out why you think so, backing your opinion with some sort of scientific evidence, rather than simply tossing out insults to everyone who disagrees with you.
It would make you look more grown up.
Don’t you think?
Max
‘What defines a climate change as abrupt? Technically, an abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold, triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause. Chaotic processes in the climate system may allow the cause of such an abrupt climate change to be undetectably small.’ NAS
And I was ignoring you. Chaotic processes – in the sense it is understood in complexity theory – leads to abrupt climate change. Being silly about it doesn’t change that.
Anastasios Tsonis, of the Atmospheric Sciences Group at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and colleagues used a mathematical network approach to analyse abrupt climate change on decadal timescales. Ocean and atmospheric indices – in this case the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation and the North Pacific Oscillation – can be thought of as chaotic oscillators that capture the major modes of climate variability. Tsonis and colleagues calculated the ‘distance’ between the indices. It was found that they would synchronise at certain times and then shift into a new state.
It is no coincidence that shifts in ocean and atmospheric indices occur at the same time as changes in the trajectory of global surface temperature. Our ‘interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Tsonis said.
Four multi-decadal climate shifts were identified in the last century coinciding with changes in the surface temperature trajectory. Warming from 1909 to the mid 1940’s, cooling to the late 1970’s, warming to 1998 and declining since. The shifts are punctuated by extreme El Niño Southern Oscillation events. Fluctuations between La Niña and El Niño peak at these times and climate then settles into a damped oscillation. Until the next critical climate threshold – due perhaps in a decade or two if the recent past is any indication.
JCH
You ask an interesting question
Seen in the context of our planet’s long-term climate (as we think we know it), I’d say “not much”.
“Global average temperature” increased by 0.7C, but this occurred in multi-decadal spurts of warming followed by multi-decadal spurts of slight cooling, and seems to be a continuation of a long, slow thaw, as we’ve emerged from a colder period in the 17th to 19thC called the Little Ice Age.
Landed non-polar glaciers continued their decline, which started from a multi-millennial high point around the mid 19thC
.
Sea level has continued rising (as it has for centuries), in decadal spurts varying from 5mm/year rise to 1 mm/year decline.
The record shows that there was a net reduction in severe tropical storms over the century, but I do not know if these data are statistically significant.
There does not seem to have been any statistically significant change in droughts, floods, etc. or other “extreme weather events”
There have been no cataclysmic abrupt changes.
Tony B can probably give you more input on how the 20thC compares with earlier centuries, but I’d say it’s been a century of “business as usual” for our planet’s climate.
What do you think?
Max
Max – I rarely have a chance to agree with you. I do not think the average lower-48 farmer from ~1900 would find much to prevent him from farming his fields pretty much the same way in 2000. Might be had to get him the antique seeds. Whatever adjustments he would have to make would be minimal.
The Aussie asserts that there will be non-warming for a decade or three, while the paper he links to suggests a possibility.
Big difference between an assertion and a possible projection. It is this romper stomper reckless approach that the Aussie takes that makes it an ultimately useless exercise, unless his goal is to create FUD.
See what introspection will do? You actually try to interpret the words as written and you realize how hollowthe meaning behind the bluster is.
Here’s a modeling study that ‘suggests’ cooling for a decade.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/abs/nature06921.html
I suggest that these scientists and many others would not be ‘suggesting’ this in peer reviewed studies without substantive justification.
The Pacific is in a cool mode. Measurements and proxies show that these last for 20 to 40 years. Could it shift into another mode before then? Yet cooler? Warmer?
Difficult to tell ‘as the future evolution of the global mean temperature may hold surprises on both the warm and cold ends of the spectrum due entirely to internal variability that lie well outside the envelope of a steadily increasing global mean temperature.’ http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.380.7486&rep=rep1&type=pdf
To say that a study ‘suggests’ something about the future – and that therefore the reasons for the ‘suggestion’ can be ignored as it is only a ‘suggestion’ – is utterly spurious. What we can absolutely expect without any doubt at all is surprises.
Take it up with WUWT if you don’t like it. They are the ones handing out the awards. I am just nominating the Aussie.
The Aussie is duplicitous because he claims “no warming for a decade or three” while at the same time saying that the environment is sensitive to being poked with a sharp stick, whereby it can undergo abrupt climate change.
What is a doubling of CO2 over the course of 200 years but a very sharp stick? Answer that.
The Aussie’s dull schtick is getting very tedious.
Webby
Something that happens “over the course of 200 years” (a good part of which has not even happened yet) doesn’t sound to me like something “abrupt”.
The jury is still out on whether “a doubling of CO2 over the course of 200 years is a very sharp stick”. Maybe it’s just a tickler, instead.
That’s called “uncertainty”, Webby.
Max
‘This report is an attempt to describe what is known about abrupt climate changes and their impacts, based on paleoclimate proxies, historical observations, and modeling. The report does not focus on large, abrupt causes—nuclear wars or giant meteorite impacts—but rather on the surprising new findings that abrupt climate change can occur when gradual causes push the earth system across a threshold. Just as the slowly increasing pressure of a finger eventually flips a switch and turns on a light, the slow effects of drifting continents or wobbling orbits or changing atmospheric composition may “switch” the climate to a new state. And, just as a moving hand is more likely than a stationary one to encounter and flip a switch, faster earth-system changes—whether natural or human-caused—are likely to increase the probability of encountering a threshold that triggers a still faster climate shift.
We do not yet understand abrupt climate changes well enough to predict them. The models used to project future climate changes and their impacts are not especially good at simulating the size, speed, and extent of the past changes, casting uncertainties on assessments of potential future changes. Thus, it is likely that climate surprises await us…
Abrupt climate changes were especially common when the climate system was being forced to change most rapidly. Thus, greenhouse warming and other human alterations of the earth system may increase the possibility of large, abrupt, and unwelcome regional or global climatic events. The abrupt changes of the past are not fully explained yet, and climate models typically underestimate the size, speed, and extent of those changes. Hence, future abrupt changes cannot be predicted with confidence, and climate surprises are to be expected.
The new paradigm of an abruptly changing climatic system has been well established by research over the last decade, but this new thinking is little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of natural and social scientists and policy-makers.’ http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10136&page=R1
He can’t quite get it. Small and slow changes push the system past a threshold – a tipping point – where internal processes determine the trajectory and speed of climate changes. Can’t quite imagine how that works aye webby? Not my problem.
If he actually read some of this stuff maybe he could get it – but that is probably no guarantee. Just yesterday he was posturing about a landmark paper that demonstrated the water vapour feedback. This has been pretty much understood for centuries – but the clincher was the paper was not about water vapour at all but about aerosols. It is far from the first time that he utterly and astonishingly misses the point. I doubt it will be the last. You need to be able to review your assumptions to avoid the worst of it. That seems in short supply with some people.
Typical denier that thinks 200 years — with much of the increase accelerating over recent decades — compares to the slow geologic processes that interact with gradual orbital changes producing the paleo temperature record. Deniers really have a screw loose in their facilities for reasoning.
‘Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread climate changes have occurred with startling speed. For example, roughly half the north Atlantic warming since the last ice age was achieved in only a decade, and it was accompanied by significant climatic changes across most of the globe. Similar events, including local warmings as large as 16°C, occurred repeatedly during the slide into and climb out of the last ice age. Human civilizations arose after those extreme, global ice-age climate jumps. Severe droughts and other regional climate events during the current warm period have shown similar tendencies of abrupt onset and great persistence, often with adverse effects on societies.’ NAS
so the Aussie is arguing for extreme climate sensitivity .. let’s watch what happens when we stimulate the atmosphere with a doubling in persistent CO2 concentration.
‘In a truly nonlinear setting, indeterminacy in the size of the response is observed only in the vicinity of tipping points. We show, in fact, that small disturbances cannot result in a large-amplitude response, unless the system is at or near such a point.’ http://arxiv.org/pdf/1003.0253.pdf
Sensitivity is dynamic – it is low away from tipping points and high at or near such a point.
Tipping points happen on decadal scales and seem related to small changes in solar activity – especially UV. They are quite natural. They happen of course on longer scales with changes in thermohaline circulation and related feedbacks in ice and snow.
‘The climate system has jumped from one mode of operation to another in the past. We are trying to understand how the earth’s climate system is engineered, so we can understand what it takes to trigger mode switches. Until we do, we cannot make good predictions about future climate change… Over the last several hundred thousand years, climate change has come mainly in discrete jumps that appear to be related to changes in the mode of thermohaline circulation. We place strong emphasis on using isotopes as a means to understand physical mixing and chemical cycling in the ocean, and the climate history as recorded in marine sediments.’ Wally Broecker
In the longer term – changes in ice and snow and therefore albedo dominate the energy budget. In the short term – the evidence shows a large role for cloud changes.
The current cool decadal mode seems likely to last for 20 to 40 years from 2002. This is a new way of thinking about things – the correct way – abrupt climate change rather than global warming. Understanding how the global system actually works is a prerequisite to understanding anthropogenic influence. Simplistic global warming memes are so last decade.
The Aussie argues for practical and pragmatic mitigation in a multi-gas strategy in a context of strong economic development and accelerated technological innovation. Something that is likely to be effective – in strong contrast to the failed strategies of carbon taxes and caps.
‘Lorenz was able to show that even for a simple set of nonlinear equations (1.1), the evolution of the solution could be changed by minute perturbations to the initial conditions, in other words, beyond a certain forecast lead time, there is no longer a single, deterministic solution and hence all forecasts must be treated as probabilistic. The fractionally dimensioned space occupied by the trajectories of the solutions of these nonlinear equations became known as the Lorenz attractor (figure 1), which suggests that nonlinear systems, such as the atmosphere, may exhibit regime-like structures that are, although fully deterministic, subject to abrupt and seemingly random change.’ http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1956/4751.full
I have a very old fashioned idea of science. It exists in peer reviewed literature, there are reputable sources on the one hand and there is the blogosphere and ‘science communication’ on the other. Putting it all together in a big picture way is what used to be called natural philosophy. Proceeding from observation to synthesis by way of inductive logic. This requires above all a proper understanding of observation – it’s uncertainties, it’s limits and what is missing from the records – to appreciate the strength of the synthesis. In climate it is all synthesis.
Like all of the climate debate – the debate about models seems to miss the point entirely. Models miss or models hit depending on the ideological baggage it seems. The reality of models seems utterly different from both cases. The reality is the ‘fractionally dimensioned (state) space occupied by the trajectories of the solutions’. There is only the probability that the solution – one of many potential solutions of any particular model – is close to the evolution of the climate system. There is little enough known about other potential solutions of the non-linear maths that those probabilities are not coherent. Perhaps there is an alternate universe for every model probability not realized.
Julia Slingo and Tim Palmer establish the other reality of climate – quite apparent from observations – that climate is a multiply coupled non-linear system. This proceeds from observations of regime change in atmospheric and ocean circulation. Climate is a globally interconnected network system with coherent patterns of nodal behavior. We call them oscillations of various sorts and tend to ascribe natural climate variability to one or another. The stadium wave is an attempt to understand the network system rather than just the chaotic nodal oscillators.
Contrary to assumptions the decadal regime changes in ocean and atmospheric circulation seem associated with changes in cloud – which in turn influences to the global energy budget. This seems to be a relatively robust finding from different strands of evidence. It seems as well prima facie to be reasonable that cloud changes with changes in ocean and atmosphere regime changes. It grows more certain with accumulating – and more precise – evidence.
‘The top-of-atmosphere (TOA) Earth radiation budget (ERB) is determined from the difference between how much energy is absorbed and emitted by the planet. Climate forcing results in an imbalance in the TOA radiation budget that has direct implications for global climate, but the large natural variability in the Earth’s radiation budget due to fluctuations in atmospheric and ocean dynamics complicates this picture.’ http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~jnorris/reprints/Loeb_et_al_ISSI_Surv_Geophys_2012.pdf
Regime changes are not merely mainstream science but the new climate paradigm. Decadal regime changes are perhaps the most interesting and fruitful area of current climate science. Predicting these – and how they interact with lower frequency changes and global energy budgets – is the problem de jour. Lower frequency changes seem linked to regime changes in thermohaline circulation. Where might that take us is quite uncertain
For policy – the implications are clear. Complexity theory suggests non-warming – or even cooling – for decades. The current cool mode is associated with much more frequent and intense La Nina over decades. Yet the blogospheric debate seems to about the next El Nino – they will say I told you so if we have another.
The current warming is some 0.08 degrees C/decade – although I doubt that the 20th century pattern will be repeated in the 21st century. At any rate – relatively slow and likely to be overtaken by technological innovation by the middle of the century. One would hope in the context of a multi-gas strategy in a comprehensive social and development strategy.
The real climate policy problem is in the uncertainty of regime change – something that needs to be factored into calculations of risk and consequence. Something that probabilistic climate forecasts might one day assist in.
Less maverick and more fundamental understanding of the nature and vagaries of scientific observation – and humility in the face of the immense complexity of the system we are attempting to understand – would seem to be in order.
‘Thus these results point towards the possibility of routine decadal climate predictions. Using this method, and by considering both internal natural climate variations and projected future anthropogenic forcing, we make the following forecast: over the next decade, the current Atlantic meridional overturning circulation will weaken to its long-term mean; moreover, North Atlantic SST and European and North American surface temperatures will cool slightly, whereas tropical Pacific SST will remain almost unchanged. Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming.’
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/full/nature06921.html
Should I care about consensus in science? Webby’s weird blogoscience? Being called a climate contrarian by a progressive science denialist ?
What I care about is the hydrological truth – a sacred trust.
But I care also about a world multiplying chaotic climate risks with neither side having much of a clue. There are a few who do have a clue – and Judith is one. Webby most certainly is not.
Yet you confidently say over and over that the climate will show no warming for a decade or three.
Initialised models like Keenleyside et al above have a limited window of plausibility – but it adds to 2 decades of non-warming. Broader considerations suggests a cool Pacific for 20 to 40 years.
Conclusion It’s time to lift the old dead libertarian hands of Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein from the climate-change debate.
`Cuz their juvenile economic shibboleths just plain don’t work, eh Climate Etc readers?
‘He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.’
Friedrich August von Hayek
Hayek is more clearly the liberal – not in the American sense – ideal. The purpose of economics is to nurture economies and not to indulge in wild eyed socialist adventures. These latter invariably end in tears and regrets.
Obsolete economic dogma by RIE, indefensible tragedies-on-the-ground by FOMD
‘Nor can certain harmful effects of deforestation, or of some methods of farming, or of the smoke and noise of factories, be confined to the owner of the property in question or to those who are willing to submit to the damage for an agreed compensation. In such instances we must find some substitute for the regulation by the price mechanism. But the fact that we have to resort to the substitution of direct regulation by authority where the conditions for the proper working of competition cannot be created, does not prove that we should suppress competition where it can be made to function.’
Friedrich August von Hayek
Rational environmental policy by Hayek – irrelevant insanity by FOMBS.
From Wiki (bold by AK)
Socialist boondogle failure by the TVA.
Republicans Fight Obama Plan to Privatize the TVA
The world ponders!
I am not sure who’s right.
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/voices/michael-shellenberger-and-ted-nordhaus/the-great-progressive-reversal
But to blame the TVA on unfettered capitalism and then to shift to Republicans oppose privatization seems to smell of unfettered hypocrisy.
I don’t wonder. A state-granted monopoly isn’t “free enterprise” even if it is privately owned. And besides, there hasn’t been a really “free market” Republican president since Reagan. Republicans are just as willing as Democrats to trumpet “free market” when it justifies their agenda, and just as willing to abandon “free market” principles when it conflicts with their agenda.
Hey Fan,
I was looking for something by Rand at the bookstore the other day and I couldn’t find anything. I asked the clerk, and he explained that it had all been moved to the non-fiction section.
Conclusion Just maybe, “quick-and-cheap” carbon energy is a long-term bad deal, no matter *WHO* is running the show?
Yep, that’s common sense *AND* solid science.
Slogan-shouting by AK, science-and-history by FOMD.
‘The New England Complex Systems Institute has become the latest organization to charge that by turning almost 50 percent of our corn crop into auto fuel, America is causing food shortages in the poorer nations of the world. The UN Food and Agriculture Association has been saying the same thing for ten years, calling biofuels “a crime against humanity.” But this time the authors are not simply making the accusation. They are providing correlations to back it up.’ http://www.realclearenergy.org/charticles/2013/03/18/is_ethanol_causing_food_riots_106927.html
Crimes against humanity by FOMBS – ‘pragmatic’‘ policy responses by the Breakthrough Institute.
Robert I Ellison, in regard to ethanol and/or biofuels, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is *already* way ahead of yah!
Biomass has been used for many thousands of years as the primary energy source for humanity. That doesn’t make it sustainable on an industrial scale or with human population approaching 9 billion.
Minor sources are indeed viable and such things as efficient wood burning stoves improve things. But ultimately widespread conversion of biomass to energy leads to less carbon in trees and less in soils – making the problems of hunger and land degradation worse rather than better.
It gets worse. Deforestation and global hunger by FOMBS – http://www.nrdc.org/energy/forestsnotfuel/
Just what can he be thinking?
Its not a joke FOMD its for real. The burning economic questions never change and the answers depend on what conditions apply to our scenarios and the most relevant theories that fit these scenarios.
I started a comment earlier, then stopped. But I guess I’ll mention it, although I’m sure anybody who follows my comments knows what I’m going to say.
Why not modify the tax laws so that any business can devote a portion of its tax bill to specified forms of research, instead of the government? Offer them limited IP, more than nothing but less than patent rights they’d get from research funded by their own money.
Now, there’d certainly be a modicum of cheating, putting the money to “research” simply intended to siphon some of it back. But there’s already cheating on taxes, and this would be just one more type.
Many businesses and wealthy individuals, however, would probably look to research that they thought had some chance of paying off. They’d do it in all sorts of different ways, depending on the idiosyncrasies of decision makers.
Research intended to contribute to solving the “fossil carbon problem” could well be included as eligible. So could research intended to address any perceived problem, both those facing our current civilization, and those of scientific theory. So could “blue-sky” research.
I’m not saying it would be any sort of “magic bullet”, but allowing such large amounts of money to be allocated at the whims of thousands (or even millions) of people would work as a sort of “scatter-shot”, evading the restrictions of “by-the-book” scientific mainstreamers.
Congratulations Judith on being appointed to the APS review commitee.
LOL … Not every outstandingly influential scientific maverick is young!
By the way, I tried to post a longer biography of this famous maverick, but the WordPress’ filters refuse to pass even the science-driven topics — which are mainly health-related — that he tackled so courageously, persistently, and effectively!
Springer’s tough, Fan. Give the man his due.
Gratuitously abusive language and historical ignorance by Dave Springer, verifiable scientific references (from 1975) by FOMD.
Full quote:
David Springer | March 23, 2014 at 2:09 pm |
Climate Etc readers are invited to verify for themselves that energy balance measures of climate-change substantially predate 1995.
Surface temperature records predate 1695 you horse’s ass.
What part of “many decades” did you not understand, Sidles?
1995? That isn’t even a plural number of decades ago.
ROFL
Or score, and several years ago.
=========
A score is 20 so it’s not even that long ago.
I guess we need to distinguish mavericks from critics. There are people like Curry, Lindzen, Paltridge, Christy, Pielke Sr., who mostly criticize the AGW magnitude without trying to come up with an alternative that explains the whole warming. They are just working around the edges of AGW. Those who have come up with an alternative are the true mavericks, and include Salby, Scafetta, Cotton and his crew, and a few others we hear from occasionally saying CO2 has no effect. That is maverick thinking.
Jim D
I’d see a slightly different distinction.
Your definition of a maverick in climate science today is too rigid IMO.
A maverick in climate science in today’s environment is one who is rationally skeptical of the “consensus view”, which is being fed to us as pablum by the IPCC, and therefore questions its validity.
It is not necessary that a maverick have an alternate hypothesis to propose, which explains the whole warming (for example Svensmark), but simply that she/he raise scientifically valid questions concerning the fallibility of the some specific part of the consensus position.
A scientist who is knowledgeable about tropical storms might question the hypothesis that a warmer world will necessarily bring more frequent or intense hurricanes, based on the past actual record, without offering an alternate hypothesis of why the record shows there was no increase in these storms or their intensity despite global warming.
Observation-based hypotheses (such as the “wave”) can be proposed, without defining the specific physical mechanism that has caused the observed phenomena.
Keep the definition of a maverick loose, rather than trying to constrain it.
Just my thoughts.
Max
manacker, a maverick is not someone who just has a view where there is uncertainty, or has uncertainty where there is a view. In these cases, the “maverick” falls within the spectrum. In the hurricane case, yes, if everyone says hurricanes will get worse, a maverick would be quite certain they won’t, but actually the science is not certain on that, so it is hard to have a maverick position of any kind. Regarding warming, a maverick is certain that the whole IPCC sensitivity range is wrong, and there are some of those.
Scafetta is indeed a maverick, coming up with an alternative theory of thermal forcing. His proposed effect likely exists, but unfortunately it is swamped by the much larger GHG forcing.
That makes him an insignificant maverick.
WebHubTelescope (@WHUT) | March 23, 2014 at 10:05 pm |
Scafetta maverick? Huh. Astrologer, maverick; po-tay-to, po-tah-to.
Max,
Thanks for keeping up the fight with the consesus CAGW activists.
Hard work to restore the science objectivity and nudge the bias back to observe data, propose hypothesis, develop models, test models against data and revise models before revising hypothosis.
Scott
Scott | March 24, 2014 at 11:43 am |
Or, as Newton said:
Rule I: We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. To this purpose the philosophers say that Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.
Rule II: Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes. As to respiration in a man and in a beast; the descent of stones in Europe and in America; the light of our culinary fire and of the sun; the reflection of light in the earth, and in the planets.
Rule III: The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intensification nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever. For since the qualities of bodies are only known to us by experiments, we are to hold for universal all such as universally agree with experiments; and such as are not liable to diminution can never be quite taken away. We are certainly not to relinquish the evidence of experiments for the sake of dreams and vain fictions of our own devising; nor are we to recede from the analogy of Nature, which is wont to be simple, and always consonant to itself. We no other way know the extension of bodies than by our senses, nor do these reach it in all bodies; but because we perceive extension in all that are sensible, therefore we ascribe it universally to all others also. That abundance of bodies are hard, we learn by experience; and because the hardness of the whole arises from the hardness of the parts, we therefore justly infer the hardness of the undivided particles not only of the bodies we feel but of all others. That all bodies are impenetrable, we gather not from reason, but from sensation. The bodies which we handle we find impenetrable, and thence conclude impenetrability to be an universal property of all bodies whatsoever. That all bodies are movable, and endowed with certain powers (which we call the inertia) of persevering in their motion, or in their rest, we only infer from the like properties observed in the bodies which we have seen. The extension, hardness, impenetrability, mobility, and inertia of the whole, result from the extension, hardness, impenetrability, mobility, and inertia of the parts; and hence we conclude the least particles of all bodies to be also all extended, and hard and impenetrable, and movable, and endowed with their proper inertia. And this is the foundation of all philosophy. Moreover, that the divided but contiguous particles of bodies may be separated from one another, is matter of observation; and, in the particles that remain undivided, our minds are able to distinguish yet lesser parts, as is mathematically demonstrated. But whether the parts so distinguished, and not yet divided, may, by the powers of Nature, be actually divided and separated from ane another, we cannot certainly determine. Yet, had we the proof of but one experiment that any undivided particle, in breaking a hard and solid body, suffered a division, we might by virtue of this rule conclude that the undivided as well as the divided particles may be divided and actually separated to infinity.
Lastly, if it universally appears, by experiments and astronomical observations, that all bodies about the earth gravitate towards the earth, and that in proportion to the quantity of matter which they severally contain; that the moon likewise, according to the quantity of its matter, gravitates towards the earth; that, on the other hand, our sea gravitates towards the moon; and all the planets one towards another; and the comets in like manner towards the sun; we must, in consequence of this rule, universally allow that all bodies whatsoever are endowed with a principle of mutual gravitation. For the argument from the appearances concludes with more force for the universal gravitation of all bodies than for their impenetrability; of which, among those in the celestial regions, we have no experiments, nor any manner of observation. Not that I affirm gravity to be essential to bodies: by their vis insita I mean nothing but their inertia. This is immutable. Their gravity is diminished as they recede from the earth.
Rule IV: In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions. This rule we must follow, that the argument of induction may not be evaded by hypotheses.
— RULES OF REASONING IN PHILOSOPHY – Cambridge, Trinity College, May 8, 1686
Oh. Wait. Newton seems to be saying Max is wrong.
Bart R
Wow!
But wait!
It ain’t Newton, it’s only Bart R.
Whew!
Max
manacker | March 24, 2014 at 5:13 pm |
Still with the ad hom?
Newton, or Bart, it’s not who says it; that would be mere ad hom, and nothing to do with the facts and logic of what is said.
It’s the facts and logic that say manacker | March 23, 2014 at 7:40 pm | is wrong.
A maverick isn’t one who is distinguished by being more or less or specially skeptical of a consensus or of any particular view. A maverick is distinguished by not being bound by a consensus or any particular view in their inquiry and methods. One can be a dyskeptical maverick as easily as a skeptical one, one skeptical of specious politics-inspired or religion-based conclusions such as Gray and Christie epitomize, or one skeptical of all the 10,386 out of 10,388 peer-reviewed climate papers in 2013 for all their fact, observation and inference, and thus of every reviewer and reader in the entire science community who have accepted what the maverick doesn’t even take the time to reject.
Thus, when you claim there is no onus to produce an explanation when attacking an explanation, you are simply wrong. Failure to procure a new explanation means by default the new explanation can only be, “we have too little information to draw a better conclusion,” but that new default inherent in failing to submit a better explanation is implicit in all of Science, which doesn’t claim the ultimate answer, merely that the simplest, most parsimonius, most general explanation drawn from inference of all the observations we have is considered accurate or very nearly true.
Producing new questions with no answer? That has no part of Science; any child can do that. One could replace every so-called ‘skeptic’ who does merely that with a smartphone app, “Maveridiot 3.5”. Maverring around with feigned hypothetical questions contributes nothing to understanding, and merely obscures; it contributes nothing to policy response, and merely paralyses. Arguing for such a position as yours is irrational, and anti-rational. See, this is still a discussion of the _argument_, not the persons involved; not an accusation against your mind or character, but a definitive explanation of why what you have written is simply wrong, regardless of who says it.
A scientist, or anyone, might question any direct outcome, but a knowledgeable scientist who can do mathematics must acknowledge that the Risk of more frequent intense storms globally is increased by an external forcing of the dimensions of AGW, because that calculus is inescapable inference from the facts, and elementary Chaos Theory. Sure, many weather technicians (aka meteorologists) and climate technologists (like Spencer) can’t actually do the math involved in Chaos Theory; our own host frequently mistakes mathematical hoaxes for legitimate ideas in mathematics. There’s little shame in having no mathematical ability or credentials whatsoever; the shame is the pretense.
What you call “Observation-based hypotheses”, most especially like the Stadium Wave created by adapting Shopping Cart analysis to too little data, which require massive assumptions unsupported themselves by much more than speculation, treat the vast majority of observations as special case exceptions, and do not apply anywhere except the exact one location they are tailored to?
That is what Newton meant when he stated, “Hypotheses non fingo” — I do not fake hypotheses.
Making out people who are merely wrong as mavericks is abusing the word past its breaking point. You know what happens when you break a maverick? It loses its spirit.
Would government-funded, conservative Republican-backed Gray, Spencer, Christy be considered maverick, or more Establishment?
Isn’t the GWPF infamously made up of Lords and Ladies, heads of organizations and political leaders?
Wouldn’t.. Cowtan and Way be considered mavericks?
Marcott?
Hansen?
They’re hardly the Establishment.
See, I keep hearing how all these Scientists are colluding with all their massive power, and then I look at who they are and what ‘power’ they hold. Dr. Curry is a high-ranking member of the faculty of a school whose cheerleading squad budget outstrips the budget of the entire IPCC.
And as for peer review somehow suppressing mavericks, 1905 had tons of peer review of an Austrian patent clerk, and it didn’t hurt his ideas at all.
Power is holding the purse strings and sitting on interview/promotion panels.
DocM, I could say power is sitting in Congress and deciding which scientists you want to listen to when making policy: the majority or minority, the mainstream or the mavericks.
Bart,
Must decode.
‘Maverick’ in this context is – someone who says what we want to hear.
Maverick by definition would be anyone not automatically included in the 97% club. Ironically – this is probably a majority.
Judy:
You are without doubt the most polite host of a blog in this general area. Sometimes, however, I think you should be a little firmer with some of your guests who seem to lack basic civility. If I gave a dinner party and a guest was rude to me the host or other guests, I would decline to invite them back. It costs little to be polite and it does increase the likelihood of a productive discussion. Just a thought.
I could be called a “gentleman scientist”. But I prefer my usual presentation: “I am only a physicist: no PhD, no academic, no educator”.
By the end of March, I will have finished my new “Refuting …”. It contains some ideas against the research of Lewis, Wyatt, Curry … and, of course, against IPCC’s claims.
I realy hope that my “Refuting …” will be cited in this blog and discussed, at least by Curry (and, if they come in, by: Lewis, Wyatt, McIntyre, Edwards, Lidzen, …).
Clearly Climate science took a wrong turn early in its history. The early big mistake was ‘the science is settled’ dogma which dogs us to this day reinforced by powerful political figures like Al Gore. The resulting cavalry has strove manfully to save the world from a fate worse than death.
Yet the UN’s IPCC continues to spend tax dollars on its misleading work and politicians continue to trumpet the dangers of carbon pollution. In my view the second big mistake was to ignore the 1940 climate singularity. 1940 had so much to teach us and was an essential step in learning the ways of this planet.
OK, it is easy to spot the early mistakes, but not so easy to put them right, because they have achieved considerable momentum. Now more than ever we need the mavericks in our powerful research institutions to do what they do best, scientific research.
We took the wrongs steps years ago
“Clearly Climate science took a wrong turn early in its history. The early big mistake was ‘the science is settled’ – AB
‘Early’ would have been about a 100 yrs ago.
Sounds like you don’t like what the science says, and what something different – that’s ideology, not science.
DocMartyn: Thanks for your support.
Michael: I don’t think there were any climate scientists 199 years ago. It is quite a new science and only possible since the computer was invented. Science speaks with many voices. It bis up to you to decide which you accept. Thanks for your reply
Herman Alexander Pope: Perhaps you are right. Thanks for your reply..
Now more than ever we need the mavericks in our powerful research institutions to do what they do best, scientific research.
The Mavericks are not in the powerful research institutions because consensus keeps them out. Science is sick and Consensus, Peer-Review is the reason.
Jim D | March 23, 2014 at 11:57 am |
pottereaton, the corporations think science is providing inconvenient results. It starts from there.
———————————-
Jim, the problem is not that the results are inconvenient, the problem is that the are irreproducible
Have you ever noticed that the ‘deniers’ generally post under their real names and the promoters of CAGW prefer to remain anonymous? What does that tell you?
Hmmm … deniers freely embrace death threats and intimidation and hate?
Threats from the too-numerous nutjobs who justify their own hatred by embracing global-science conspiracy theories?
THESE are death threats and plenty of them. No global warming scientist has had anything even approaching this. I’d say not even in the same ballpark of threat level but it’s more like not on the same planet.
https://www.google.com/search?q=jackie+robinson+death+threats&rlz=1T4GGNI_enUS573&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=g_wvU4fZFIWG2wXAz4GgCQ&ved=0CCYQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=605
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/02/12/online-trolls-are-just-everyday-sadists-according-to-new-paper/
Can we set up an ANSI committee–lots of meetings in good places–to develop a set of standards for performance of maverick science? Maybe a ‘Black Belt’ program? Can we breed more mavericks if we need them? ;OP
For whatever reason, thermodynamical science has always attracted rather more than its equal share of mavericks by whom progress in thermodynamics has not been notably advanced!
So, yet another pseudonym comment cites Mother Jones about a single “veiled threat” (not even a genuine threat) and applies it to all ‘deniers.’
Thank you for proving my point!
Question How many threat-posting nutjobs does it take to harm your spouse or kids?
The world ponders.
“How many threat-posting nutjobs does it take to harm your spouse or kids?”
Do you have an example of a global warming scientist or family member being physically harmed? If not then then, evidently, it takes more nutjobs than are available at this time.
I realize of course that evidence seldom persuades people like you to give up the ideologically inspired pre-conceived conclusions and I don’t expect you to change now. Have you tried worry beads? That might help.
The 10-10 video represented the most violent rhetoric to date in the AGW debate and your “side” thought it was hilarious. Spare us the fake outrage.
Normal folks apologize for mistakes and learn from them.
Nutjobs don’t apologize … and don’t learn.
It’s a pleasure to help you to appreciate this common-sense distinction, Jeffn!
Did any of the global warming scientists apologize for not predicting the pause?
By your own assertion what may we conclude about their normal vs. nutjob status from that?
hahahahahahahahahahahaaha!!!!!!!!!!!111
“Normal folks apologize for mistakes and learn from them.”
Hey there Fan, just for fun would you care to list some of the mistakes you’ve made and which you’ve apologized for, here on Cilmate Etc?
Also, as I’m certain there must be a bunch of them given that you’re human after all….and normal certainly….what you’ve learned from them?
“normal folks” don’t think it’s funny to blow up children who doubt.
And seriously, you think a billboard pointing out that the unibomber was a warmist is even in the same league of “violent rhetoric” as a polished, graphic video featuring a Hollywood star killing children for the thought crime of doubt?
Get a grip.
“It’s been my pleasure to oblige your curiosity *and* provide a lesson in rationality and civility, pokerguy!”
Always fun, FAN. :-) In boxing it’s called “rope-a-dope.”
When it comes to climate change there is only one maverick we cannot live without–nominally, it’s the Sun, stupid.
Mr. Discourse: It is illegal to make threats. Did Dr. Emmanuel turn them over to police? If not, why not?
If you believe threats and other distasteful comments are done only by skeptics, you need to read the vile comments directed at Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. earlier this week: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/disasters-cost-more-than-ever-but-not-because-of-climate-change/
I suggest you take a break from Mother Jones and Grist and read that the skeptical scientists say for themselves. You’ll find it to be very enlightening.
What’s baffling is that Mike’s link contains no comments of any kind.
Whereas the vilest varieties of personal, high-volume denialist threats have been thoroughly documented.
The world ponders.
So we have a few emails about dishonesty and one graphic account of arraigning people at The Hague for crimes against humanity. Funny where have I heard that before.
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=5619
I would certainly support criminal cases for those making threats to kill. It is certainly looked on dimly in Australia.
https://sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/files/snapshot_143_sentencing_trends_for_making_a_threat_to_kill_in_the_higher_courts_of_victoria_may_2013.pdf
Gee – I wonder how many have been convicted for making death threats to Australian climate scientists in an effort to silence them?
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/05/pathological-exaggerators-caught-on-death-threats-how-11-rude-emails-became-a-media-blitz/
Reality by me – BS by – well – FOMBS.
Being a maverick depends on where you are. In the US a maverick buys a diesel whereas in Europe, a maverick takes a shower.
Not quite coffee spitting funny like Don calling himself a people person but very good nonetheless!
Being a maverick, (or acting heroic, in any capacity or arena) will always be a rare, risky thing. There are all sorts of pressures applied, overt and covert, to conform with the majority. I think this is innate in our culture, and hard to resist even in our modern so called liberated times. I doubt our host sees herself as any sort of maverick or heroine, but she has suffered slings and arrows of fortunes outrageous for stepping out of line, Many of us here are scientists and would like to think we are immune from this,that it doesn’t apply to smart and learned people, But of course it does. The highest use of tenure in our universities may be to protect those mavericks that don’t follow or accept the dictates of the tribe.
Bein’ a maverick,
darin’ ter act out
on the littoral,
carin’ enough
ter take a risk –
fergit’n yerself
in this endeavour,
… that’s objectivity.
A bit of courage
can be a dangerous
thing, but admirable,
and may, no guarantee,
jest may, lead on ter
things portentious yet
fer the rest of us.
Very nice Beth – there is someone even in the shape of the poem that is evocative of humanity and fecundity.
whoops… something that is…portentious yet…
Thx Robert but I should
add this …
Proviso that
yer up ter testin’.
We’re not talkin’
dogmatic delusion here,
un -tethered theories
divorced from
real world observations,
there in may lie
Dis – topia.
b-t-s
Did you mean “portentous”?
If challenged on spelling – always claim the right to idiosyncrasi.
simon a, I did. :(
What’s all this about spieling?
===============
beth
It’s mahty purty with a message fer ma-ver-icks an Ah don care bout the spellin.
Yore feller serf Max
Our friend David Appell appears to have reached a crisis point.
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2014/03/is-no-one-humble-anymore.html
I challenged him to start from scratch, rethink assumptions, actually listen to the contrarian viewpoint. Even if he only adopts it in order to find contradictions.
Australians pretty much draw the line at sinking a boot in when the man is down. Very ungallant.
Rather it seems that if the ‘contrarian’ view is that there is no risk – it is likely an argument from ignorance.
I did see Billy Joel at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre. What stands out in memory is picking up tickets a few days beforehand in the city – after which we wandered down to the Roma St gardens – sat on the grass listening to some radio jocks ham it up in a Christmas special. At sunset we climbed the hill to look for a restaurant – first raindrops pattering on an umbrella while we drew close and laughed. Within minutes this patter of raindrops turned into a dangerous, vicious storm. Wind tearing limbs from trees and iron sheets from roofs – torrential rain flooding the streets. During the worst of it we took scant shelter at a bus stop – my arms and coat around her – my back to the storm to shield her from rain and flying debris. I was a hero that night – albeit with soggy tickets.
I wish him luck. He is an acute observer, and may do well.
===============
Apparently the IPCC bureaucrats are preparing to present the darkest summary yet. There is a storm in a teacup coming.
On a brighter note – Daisy has had Missy Higgins’ original 2004 album Sound of White in her car CD player for months. Beautiful musician – the drums are fantastic – there is nice piano – some violin and cello – even a muted trumpet in one song. Altogether very classy for a first album. I love the piano riff in this one.
Couldn’t resist the metaphor for climate – it is all falling apart and being held together with chewing gum.
‘Doesn’t it sound familiar?
Doesn’t it sound too close to home?’
Assessing global warming based on diaphanous surface air temperature is like measuring the flow rate of a river halfway down a waterfall, when there are perfectly good weirs upstream (TOA radiation budget) and downstream (ocean heat content).
That rather depends on how accurate and long (time wise) the ‘weir’ measurement series are.
For all our best efforts these are not nice solid V ‘weirs’, they are of some unknown cross section with the instruments at one side and probably very leaky to boot, with such a short measurement time series length that almost anything COULD be possible.
If, however, the thermometers, in the middle of the waterfall, say we are in a cooling phase/flow is decreasing, then it is likely that we are.
http://climatedatablog.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/hadcrut-giss-rss-and-uah-global-annual-anomalies-aligned-1979-2013-with-gaussian-low-pass-and-savitzky-golay-15-year-filters1.png
We don’t live hundreds of meters below the ocean surface or at the top of the atmosphere. Weather happens in the lower troposphere. That’s where we have a vested interest. Get a clue, dummy.
We don’t live hundreds of meters below the ocean surface or at the top of the atmosphere. Weather happens in the lower troposphere. That’s where we have a vested interest. Get a clue, dummy.
_____
Where “weather happens” versus where the local energy that drives weather systems originates is the issue here. The sun of course is the prime source of energy, but the largest “local storage” for that solar energy that drives weather is the ocean, and the single largest ocean storage is the IPWP.
Also Springer, you should really stop calling people names, or Judith should refrain from posting your comments for a while until you can get better manners.
The IPWP is a slightly deeper in La Nina – and less in El Nino but over a bigger area. The significance is due to the surface area of the warm pool as La Nina waxes and wanes.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ElNino/Images/sst_depth_1-97.jpg
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ElNino/Images/sst_depth_4-97.jpg
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ElNino/Images/sst_depth_7-97.jpg
The energy content in the warm mixed layer in a small part of the global ocean is of no great significance in itself – what is significant is the change in surface area exposed to the atmosphere as the warm pool flows east.
And Randy whining about being called names is perfect hypocrisy.
“And Randy whining about being called names is perfect hypocrisy.”
In all fairness he wasn’t complaining about me calling him a name. It was me calling RokShox “dummy”. This was simply calling it as I see it not name calling. Surface air temperature is by far the metric of most concern to the majority of the terrestrial plants and animals on this planet. Surface air temperature is almost identical to ocean surface temperature so it’s also a perfect way to measure that too.
It’s obvious that the attempt to reframe global warming so it’s no longer about the temperature where we live, work, breathe, and cultivate our crops but rather about the average temperature of the ocean which, as it happens, hasn’t been warming on the surface for over a decade so now we’re supposed to be alarmed that a number of Joules so dilute it can’t warm the ocean’s average temperature more than 0.2C in a hundred years is alarming.
Then when confronted with that people like Gates start the handwaving about the heat is somehow concentrated and will reemerge to the surface in some manner so as to resume the alarming rate of surface warming observed in the 1980-2000 time frame.
The thing is, even if it does resume, the long term trend is now substantially reduced. Twenty years of rapid warming (0.2C/decade) followed by 14 years of no warming (<0.1C/decade) averages out to (as of now) 0.13C/decade. As Curry and other notable honest brokers agrees the next ten years is pretty pivotal. Alarmism lives or dies by what happens in the next decade and you can take that to the bank. If the hiatus continues that's all she wrote the alarmist narrative is dead. It's in the critical care unit as we speak.
I wouldn’t describe the 80s-90s warming as alarming. It is quite beneficial.
Rob, I think what a lot of people miss is that it is not just exposure of warm water to the atmosphere, it is also exposure to light. Temperatue effects how much water vapor there can be, but radiation is a big driver of how much evaporation happens. If the albedo is high and the cloud response to el nino is muted, I don’t think there will be nearly as much heat flux from the ocean. A few mechanisms could be wind pattern moving more aerosol to the region, cooler atmospheric temps allowing more low cloud formation, weak solar cycle generaring more CCN. (The amount of UV likely plays a role as well as high energy CRF. I also think the sun may modulate high energy CRF rather than the earth magnetic field and polarity of cycle may play a role.).
Maverick weather–e.g., a spring blizzard to crush New England and Canada tomorrow as global warming alarmism continues in the ivory towers of Western academia…
Yup. Cold records be a breakin’ agin east of the old Mississip.
To be frank I’m not getting much consolation knowing that the ocean below 700 meters is getting warmer, on average, by two hundredths of a degree every ten years.
“…somehow, the heat that should be appearing at the planet’s surface has instead found its way to the deep ocean. But this hypothesis suffers from three main problems. First, there is very little data – the ocean is vast, and unlike the land and sea surface which can be viewed from space, its depths are especially difficult to monitor. Second, the effect, even if it is real, is so small it may not be practicably measurable at all. Third, there is no clearly understood mechanism by which energy may have been transported through the atmosphere and upper layers of the ocean, undetected, to heat the water beneath.” ~Ben Pile
We don’t need more scientific mavericks.
We need fewer statist ideologues.
Andrew
“much more difficult it has been”
Yoda?
Andrew
The academic scientific climate community steadfastly refuses to discuss and consider the blindingly obvious natural 60 and 1000 year quasi-periodicities in the temperature data. This is because using these and the neutron count (and 10 Be data) as a proxy for solar “activity” it is possible to produce very simple and transparent forecasts of future climate and temperature trends at little cost. All that is required is a wide knowledge of the likely quality of the various proxy temperature and driver records and no preconceived outcome motivated bias as to process.
For forecasts of the timing and amount of a possible coming cooling see several posts at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
I have from time to time on threads such as this and by personal Email requested several of the establishment academics to make some sort of comment on or criticism of these forecasts. They so far seem to unable or unwilling to respond.
Monocausal explanations for dynamic systems are good examples of creationist thinking.
It is useful to remember these words from Eisenhower’s farewell address:
“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.
“Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
“It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.”
Hi all, speaking of mavericks, I was just over at http://www.skepticalscience.com/97-percent-consensus-robust.htm
and submitted a reply to their bizarre ad hominems and non sequiturs. As soon as click to submit, Chrome diverted from the page and said that a SQL injection attack had been detected.
Is this something the owners or admins of the site could have setup? They had been deleting my substantive refutations of their claims — the whole thread is littered with “snips” of parts of my posts. They have no substantive refutation and were the most ill-tempered and fallacious scientists I’ve encountered in years, seemingly unaware of basic rules of logic and validity. They’re so incredibly biased and hostile that I feel like they’re at war, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they lashed out against even non-skeptic dissenters like me by setting up a computer attack. But I have no idea — perhaps it was a third-party hacker. Is there any experience with this?
These are apparently some of the authors of the Cook et al study, and perhaps of the fraudulent AAAS claims of a robust 97% consensus (since the wording on their website is almost identical to the AAAS report.) I had pointed out that if almost all studies of the consensus yield an estimate well below 97%, then 97% isn’t the robust finding, and there’s no way derive by any known scientific method of aggregating studies. They even reached back to a one-page essay that briefly mentions a study, but doesn’t give the methods, from 2004 as evidence of today’s consensus (Oreskes). The deception and scientific malpractice is amazing.
Anyway, if you have any leads or thoughts about the SQL injection attack, please let me know.
ALERT “Phronesis detected; initiate SQL attack.
An SQL injection attack is an attack on a server not a client. What you describe makes no sense.
probably there was something in your comment that looked like sql and their server mistook it for an attack
Yes, it doesn’t make sense. An SQL injection implies a database to inject. A client machine could have a database running, but I don’t.
I’ve never seen this Chrome warning before, had no idea Chrome even had an SQL injection warning feature. If it’s about an injection from a PC to a website database, it should be the website admins that get the warning, but maybe Chrome stops SQL injections from the client. That would require that my machine was launching an attack, maybe through a bot, but I can’t find anything. I was in the software industry for years, so I’m not an easy mark for a bot, but anything is possible.
There’s so much weirdness going on with that site. It’s Orwellian. They delete substantive posts and even parts of posts, so that the reader has no idea what the dissenter has actually said, what their arguments are. They create this synthetic, crafted discussion and can be very deceptive. They even say up top that there are no valid arguments against Cook et al, which is really weird. Scientists don’t normally talk that way, as though they’ve scanned the earth and no one anywhere can possibly have a valid critique of their paper. Then they debunk a couple of critiques and make no mention of all the other critiques of their paper. It’s a very strange website in how it tries to synthesize reality.
I noted how one of the three sources for their 97% figure is a one page essay that briefly mentions a study, but doesn’t describe the method used, and that since it’s from 2004 it’s not going to tell us anything about the present consensus even if it were a credible, usable source. (Oreskes). They responded by saying people could either trust the AAAS or some anonymous voice on the internet.
That is such a shocking epistemology. My points were either true or not. No one needs to trust anyone, or cede all judgments to authorities or third parties. Reality is often observable directly. You can just look at the paper to confirm what I said. The AAAS doesn’t really enter into it, other than that they cited this paper, and chose to ignore almost every study of the consensus to get their desired 97% figure. This would tell a rational knower that they can’t be trusted as a sober scientific source, that they can’t bear to report an 83% or 89% or 91% consensus, or whatever the actual figure is, that would be derived from the body of extant and current research.
I’m really, really annoyed that the AAAS tried to convince the public of the consensus by LYING to them, inflating the figure by ignoring almost all the research and drawing in part from an ancient one-page essay-study that we know is false. Lying to the public, dropping all normal scientific standards and methods for aggregating studies, is not a good strategy for winning their trust. Now they have no reason to trust the AAAS. Wonderful. If AGW becomes a severe problem, one of the worst case estimates, we’ve just undermined our ability to convince of that when that time comes.
I had to look up Phronesis. My Philosophy 101 teacher at SUNY should be embarrassed!
I wonder if there was something in the comment that would’ve triggered it, as lolwot says. It seems unlikely — it was all natural English, and it would require syntax to dynamically change an SQL request, and it’s strange that the warning would face me, not the web admin. Who knows? It’s probably not worth posting there anymore anyway — if they’re not offering insights into my motives, they’ll just delete key passages. e.g. “The fact that the consensus is real does not give anyone license to overstate it.” They deleted it, and much more important stuff than that. I guess it was profane or trolling or something.
They also tried to convince me of the consensus even though I said I needed no convincing (well, they deleted my reiteration of that point as well). There seems to be a premise that if we know the consensus is real, let’s not worry about the numbers, let’s not call anyone out for overstating it, we need to focus on passing laws or whatever. That’s a no go for me. We have to care about accuracy and lying. Climate scientists absolutely have to be credible — there’s no room for games at this point. I’m not even a lukewarmer — I don’t know enough to be a lukewarmer, to choose a particular, lower estimate of climate sensitivity or what have you out of a set of options. I’m just someone who wants clean data and an efficient way of navigating it.
Dunno. I figured it wasn’t Chrome that generated the error message it just obeyed orders and displayed it. On the other hand it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Chrome has a sequel kernel in it and something malicious at skeptical not science tried to attack through it.
And yes, I love the ancients yo. In many respects I think the last 2,000 years can be described as an effort to catch up with Ancient Greece.
And I totally feared the cat ninja SQL injection when I first saw the Google divert page and warning message. I had logged in, then written a comment, and then clicked Submit or whatever, and boom, SQL injection attack warning. Those guys are so hostile, ideological and personal, and had pockmarked my posts with snip-deletes, that the idea they’d enlist some hacker friend to attack the computer of this person they seem to hate and find out Who He Really Is seemed plausible. Maybe I’m a good candidate for a Lewandowsky study? If only I could only see that the Apollo program was a hoax, he could increase the number of global warming skeptics who think Apollo was a hoax to…two participants. Well, you’d also have to convince me to be an AGW skeptic I guess. Right now, I’m scoring high on four of his endorsement of AGW consensus items and low on the two vague ones.
Phronesis – I take it from your comments that this is the first time you have attempted to have rational discourse at SKS, and you are quite generous in describing the moderators as “scientists”. Even John Cook does not give himself that much credit. SKS is well known for heavily editing comments that disagree with their consensus view or simply deleting them altogether, and going back after sometime to “change the data” in an effort to bolster their arguments, so in that sense, they perfectly reflect the “climate scientist” – that is, manipulate data, deceive, and in general, outright lie.
Yeah, I’m not too familiar with them. I think I posted once about the Lewandowsky study, but didn’t follow up, and maybe an error correction on another page. I think it was a page about a person — they seem to have pages dedicated to attacking specific scientists — where they were debunking a prediction out to some future year, which they can’t do without time travel. Don’t know if they fixed that one.
It’s a bummer. I’m not sure where people have quality discussions. I’ll look to this site more in the future. Where are the best skeptic arguments? I’m aware of McIntyre, and see that he argues against various studies, but I don’t know what his overarching, integrated claim is, or the evidence for it. My impression is that whatever issue Watts had with weather station data didn’t pan out, and I’m not confident in some of the material I’ve seen at WUWT.
One of the founders of Greenpeace was on TV recently, and his arguments against AGW were awful. “The earth used to be warmer.” “They use computer models.” These arguments have no epistemic standing or value. They don’t make any logical contact with the scientific case for AGW. A lot of people seem to think they can just casually think about climate change and know stuff. I’ve critiqued Objectivists who do this. They use a form of kung fu called bao tai — Being An Objectivist and Thinking About It. Reality isn’t structured that way, where questions about complicated natural processes can be adjudicated by being smart and pondering it. But I am interested in the state of the art in skeptic arguments.
Well, I don’t know that there is a place where there are consistent quality discussions. But this site is the closest I have found in that it is lightly moderated and there are a number of very smart people on both sides of the argument who comment frequently, although you do need to wade through substantial trolling and sniping from both sides to get to some occasional meaningful discussion. I do a lot more lurking here than commenting given that I am neither a scientist or philosopher, but a layman with some technical background. My reasons for being skeptical are simple. I find it difficult to believe that any single element or variable in a system as complex as our climate system can rise to the level of being THE control knob, completely overwhelming all other elements or variables to the extent that we need to take drastic and immediate actions to remove Co2 from the atmosphere given that those actions will likely cause serious economic damage to our society – especially when that single element is a trace gas making up about .04% of the atmosphere. And depending on who you believe, human emissions of Co2 make up anywhere from about 3% of that .04% to about 30% of that .04%. Either way, it’s a very small amount. There are papers from credible scientists that show things like the absorption spectrum of Co2 essentially overlaps with the absorption spectrum of water vapor, and that each molecule of Co2 added to the atmosphere has a decreasing impact on warming to the point where adding more Co2 has effectively no impact. Add to that the behavior of the AGW group vis a vis Climategate emails, Peter Glieck, Mann’s hockey stick, etc., in other words, the basic behavior you experienced with SKS. My summary is that our climate is a massively complex, chaotic, non-linear coupled system made up of five separate subsystems which no scientist can claim to fully understand, much less all the complex interactions of those 5 subsystems plus the interactions of all the externalities like the sun, gravity, polarity, cosmic rays , and who knows how many unknown unknowns. Heck, the PDO was not “discovered’ until 1997 and was not discovered by climate scientists but by a scientist studying salmon production patterns. We now have some scientists who believe that the recent shift in PDO is what is causing the current “pause” that will likely last another 20 to 30 years. If that is true, and who really knows, what does that do to “global warming is caused only by human contribution to atmospheric Co2”. So, to claim that man’s contribution of anywhere from 11 ppm of Co2 to maybe 120 ppm of Co2 in our atmosphere is causing catastrophic global warming/climate change/climate disruption or whatever the term du jour is, well to put it kindly, difficult to believe, especially when so many of the alarmists predictions have fallen flat. Just my perspective.
Interesting about the water vapor issue. I think maybe Lindzen had something to say about that, but I don’t know enough about that debate.
That human caused global warming doesn’t seem right, intuitively, isn’t going to be a valid argument. Are you familiar with the Large Number Fallacy? It’s an argument that consists of citing a large number, like:
– We spend $10 billion on education for children of illegal immigrants!
– We’re emitting a billion tons of carbon every day!
I chose those values arbitrarily, although the immigration one is close to arguments I’ve heard. The arguments are supposed to persuade people just by the shock value of the large numbers. Of course, if you look at the federal budget, you realize $10 billion is nothing (about 0.3%), not to mention local and state spending. And the figure is just one side of the ledger — we’re left with no figure for how much immigrants pay in taxes, reduce food prices, etc. Same drill with the carbon emissions — in isolation it tells us nothing, and we usually don’t have any context to frame the value, like the amount volcanoes emit, the amount already there, etc. In any case, the amount tells us nothing absent an actual scientific argument.
Your point on the small values regarding CO2 is the inverse of the Large Number Fallacy, the Small Number Fallacy. That CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere tells us nothing. It really tells us nothing. Given that number, and knowing nothing else, the role of CO2 in climate could be anything. The 0.04% isn’t even a clue. It wouldn’t matter if it was 0.01% or 0.001%. It wouldn’t tell us if AGW is true or false. A man can be killed by 0.0000022% of his bodyweight in ricin, and nature/reality abounds with effects of things at less than 0.04% concentration.
The dynamism of climate science is a challenge. It seems like we need to account for that somehow, but I don’t know how. We know the models will be revised in the future, but we don’t know in what direction or by how much (on things like climate sensitivity or cloud or aerosol forcings or feedbacks). It’s the hardest scientific issue I’ve ever dealt with.
I understand your point about large and small number fallacy and agree that saying co2 is only .04% of the atmosphere alone tells us nothing. At the same time, I don’t see it as comparable to a small amount of a poison killing a living organism. Our climate system is not a living organism, but, if it were, then Co2 could not be characterized as a poison – it is more accurately characterized as plant food. For example, people who own greenhouses typically increase co2 levels to between 1000 to 1200 ppm because plants exposed to increased levels of co2 grow faster and larger while using less water. By that measure, I’d say we want to increase co2 levels, not decrease them.
As to additional context, one thing I referred to was the decreasing impact on warming that Co2 has per ppm added. While you may find a lot not to like at WattsUp, there are some things worth reading. See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/08/support-for-the-saturated-greenhouse-effect-leaves-the-likelihood-of-agw-tipping-points-in-the-cold/. SKS, RealClimate and other AGW sites have counter arguments to this assertion, but my point would be that examples like this show that climate change is far from settled science.
Does any of what I just said prove anything one way or the other? Of course not and I do not claim that it does, but it does give me reason to be skeptical. As you point out, we need a better understanding of the dynamics of the climate system and as our hostess likes to put it, there is a very large uncertainty monster lurking wrt, in my words, attribution. We don’t know enough about feedbacks, clouds, and we certainly don’t know that we’ve even come close to identifying all the possible variables that affect climate. In short, we don’t know enough about how our climate system works to be making statements like “Co2 is THE control knob” implying that if we control Co2, we can effectively stabilize the climate. And we especially don’t know enough to be making statements like those made in the recent Senate filibuster on climate change, nor do we know enough to start taking immediate and drastic action to curb Co2 emissions that will undoubtedly lead to serious economic harm. We do know that raising energy costs, as our President wants to do (“Under my watch, energy costs will necessarily skyrocket”) harms everyone, and harms the poor disproportionately.
Oh, David Springer, I consulted with some friends in infosec and the SQL injection coming at my machine does make sense after all. They said that when I click on the Submit button for a post, I’m sending code to their database, AND their database is sending code back to my Mac. So Chrome was warning me about a SQL injection coming at me.
The most likely explanation is that Skeptical Science database was infected, by whomever — a hacker, or just blind propagation of the malware. If so they might have announced something by now, but I’m not going back there. There’s a small chance it was specifically directed at me. It’s easy to flag a specific user for an injection and this was a login-based system. But I don’t know what good a SQL injection would do when there’s no SQL database to inject, unless a SQL injection can carry other payloads, like JavaScript. We’re checking some things. There is so much malice over there that it makes me very uncomfortable to even be there, and the deceptive Orwellian editing added to the strangeness, so I can imagine a directed attack — I just don’t think it’s very likely. When I see malice like that on the internet though, I do think there is potential real life danger, sabotage, acts of malice against a person’s career, etc. The recent spate of “swatting” incidents where people targeted bloggers with fake 911 calls is the latest form — they had police storming into people’s homes. Politics makes people crazy.
Professor Curry,
I admire your courage in questioning lock-step consensus science.
That is of course the only way science advances.
Judith, thank you for the undeserved compliment. I have deliberately waited for the troll vituperation on this thread to subside before commenting.
To those who think I just write books, check out 13 issued and several pending US patents. To those who think I do not understand Judith’s maverick science comments, check out letters from the governor, senator, and congresswoman of Illinois that failed to secure ARPA funding for my maverick energynstorage carbon ideas despite an ONR grant of almost $2million plus an ONR recommendation to DOE and ARPA (Tutorial, 22ISDLC world conference). (Issued patent NanoCarbons have a 1.4x performance advantage over the status quo, plus a 30% cost advantage).
Now it is true that with respect to climate science, I am not a ‘gentleman scientist’. The gentleman part fails with respect to intemperate trolls, as above. Those who called me a joke might wish to respond more specifically with some facts showing how my past books, or past postings here courtesy of our gracious and learned hostess (after surviving her severe scrutiny) joked. Bet you won’t/don’t/ can’t, potty mouths. You know who you are, indelibly and shamefully posted above.
To Nic, Steve, Tony, Bob, and others Judith did not mention like Frank L, Steve G, Tony W, and Jo N, highest regards.
LOL … pokerguy starts and FOMD finishes!
I think the numbers are important and we need overwhelming evidence to prove 400PPM of CO2 is a powerful driver of anything. Otherwise, put 2500 white marbles in a jar. What color do you see? Now add one red marble. Now what color do you see?
Sure, 400PPM (or 2PPM) of a deadly poison can be a problem. But, CO2 is not a deadly poison.
I don’t know about mavericks, what about buffoons? Do we need more or is one enough?
Ken Coffman,
Too many buffoons is still not enough! More! More!
You are going to need a bigger jar to fit all the marbles that the buffoons lost along the way. One more or less is irrelevant.
A definition of gross ignorance is 144 Warmist buffoons. An oldie but a goodie!
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Lovelock is in praise of lone wolfs
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/james-lovelock-we-need-lone-scientists-9215280.html
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And it gets worse. Roy Spencer was being very kind to Willis and the ungrateful little tool has the stones to call Roy foolish.
Eschenbach’s thermostat paper was published in Energy & Environment.
Check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_%26_Environment
E&E is almost perfectly positioned at the very bottom of the barrel. How apt is that?
But wait, it gets worse.
Ibid:
Psuedo-science and pseudo-scientists. Too funny.
I think, yes we need mavericks. Aren’t lone wolves the same?
And I don’t think we need to limit the possibility that an “untrained” mind may come with an answer. I think that happens all the time, and an overly “trained” mind can be a burden because it limits thinking. People who have worked with and believed radioactive decay to be constant for years and years, won’t be as likely to look for the possibility it varies as a fresh mind, untrained, still full of question. Epictitus (i think) said (and I paraphrase) “it is impossible for people to learn that to which they believe they already know the answer”.
Said another way, anyone who has the right answer, has the right answer.
I don’t think either that we can hold training, and group agreement up as a shielded against question, not when the IPCC with all it’s resources, and all it’s focus, and all it’s determination, hasn’t managed to dig very deeply, hasn’t made any progress at predicting the temperature, and has made very obviously false overstatements and raised unfounded alarm.
And anyone with a Christian background/teaching /upbringing, HAS to recognize they have been indoctrinated to believe (or believe in the possibility that), mankind can be responsible by living vicariously, for the flooding of the earth, and the downfall of both humanity and the animal kingdoms, but that they have been promised through the symbol of the rainbow, that will never occur again.
So talking about group consensus of trained minds, take the graduates of a theology course at a university, heading of to be religious leaders, what they think on climate change, and man’s capability to change the climate, and you are getting a “trained”, professional, group response. Is it legitimate, objective, unbiased, scientific.
training from birth, to have a belief, and to be able to see certain patterns, is training your mind to accept their possibility, to test that possibility. Our mind is a giant pattern recognition, and memory bank. And many have inappropriate, or invalid patterns stored that prohibit openness and growth in some areas.
I read one “process control” or decision making methodology, where by important decisions were tabled to ten people, if no one disagreed with the proposed course of action by the tenth person, that person was forced to take an opposing viewpoint and enthusiastically chase it and serve up why he might believe the opposite to be true. The tenth man process. Could be used to apply to climate change policy.
And consider the vilification of Devil’s advocates. Is it fair or just? A skeptics mind, at the same time it questions everything, is also wondering about everything. When on path is proposed it wonders whether there are ten other answers. When shown how something works it wonders whether it could work better, faster, cheaper, more reliably, longer. When it hear’s an hypothesis, it questions and wonders whether it is correct, it wonders whether other solutions could provide the same answer. It wonders how things work, why things aren’t better. But also why things aren’t worse, where is the good, what is good. And absorbs. Always obsorbing patterns. And often liking the variety of alternate answers, alternate thoughts. It may question everything, but it looks for good as well as bad, because it wonders. devil’s advocate may be what comes out, but wonder is coming out too.
When we dare to the edge of a known field, we are often going to have thoughts that are right and thoughts that are wrong. It takes a certain belief in oneself to propose an answer to a field of interested parties, especially when you are working looking for new answers. Everyone poses, and some puff and blow. but recognize that any new thought is anopportunity for reward, is also a potential for rejection, it a putting on a table of a dagger that cen be used against them. And that even if 9 things they say are right, and one thing they say is wrong, they can be ridiculed, blow a reputation, get on the ignored, or harrassed list. Or if they accidentally have the same thought as another, and don’t know it. Misquote a figure, or falsely relate things that don’t matter, overstate significance.
We are all questioning, or we wouldn’t be on a discussion board. We are all interested and probably looking for things/clues/evidence that will seal the deal and end the debate. Or hoping to see it in someone else’s thoughts. Building our own mental constructs, knowing there is a big error in thinking, but not sure where. Or thinking we do know where, but how to explain it thus that people will listen, see what you see.
Brainstorming is the most powerful tool for finding elusive solutions. “Accidentally” noticing patterns and relating/extrapolating or interpolating them to apply to different scenarios, has been the center of most invention, most scientific breakthrough. Perhaps untrained minds, with strong pattern recognition, but a lack of preconceived notions of significance, relevance, and potential working independently, but sharing results, feeding off each other, bouncing, regurgitating, practicing the communication of their ideas, is exactly what is needed, to have the best chance of coming up with the right solution.
Then consider a board like this one, that has a beautiful mix of all of the above, wonderers, skeptics, over-confident people, hyper sensitive people, shy but quiet, loud and persistent. A breeding ground for solutions and answer. Not by filtering based on what we believe we know, (cause how is that working out for you so far??). But by spurring discussion, moving forward, making progress, staying positive.
How will we fail? By driving away people. By being poor sports. By playing the competitive, teasing, slamming, burning game too harshly. By forgetting we all have the same agenda, we can choose who we read, we want others to read us, to listen in case something we say hits the mark. We hope our hypothesis or something we notice or say, may be an answer, or a catalyst that helps another find an answer. We hope to unravel the mysteries of the climate and put the debate to rest, so the world can stop shutting down coal plants, funding massive expensive sleepover parties in various cities of the world to discuss the weather. Stop unnecessarily increasing the cost of energy, stop making people feel guilty flying somewhere for a vacation, or driving an SUV if they need it for the snow, and to feel safe transporting their kids around, or to get to work reliably. Stop making people feel financially burdened and environmentally unfriednly if they hapen to like having their thermostat at 71, or 73, or god forbid 75!! It is their house.
At least that is what I am hoping for.
YES to mavericks!!! At the other end of the spectrum is the IPCC, and I have ZERO confidence in their cumulative efforts.
By validating temperature buildup in the oceans, as a moderating effect on he lower atmosphere, the have already put the dagger on the table that will slay them.
The rightness of considering the impact of CO2 on all of the earth, not just the lower atmosphere has been made official. It just hasn’t been “run with” yet.
Earth being 1,200,000 times the mass of the atmosphere, it’s tempearture rules the lower atmophere much more than CO2.
We just haven’t been able to put our finger on why it fluctuates as much as it does. (radioactive decay and magnetic field strength variations). ?;-)
Nullius in consensus
Embedded in this debate is who is to be held beyond questioning. If I don’t have a PhD, does that mean that my argument if it is right is still wrong? Who determines that. If a group of PhDs go down a path and it is wrong, does it mean that they are all right? This debate has opened a can of worms, similar to question the authority of those who are faith based. It is a reoccurring theme that pits those that advocate universal education and those that want to believe that they are something special because they hide behind the curtain that they have a special ability that no one else has.
The bottom line is that I have looked at the evidence that the IPCC has presented, asked questions that have gone unanswered, and judged them to be lacking to make the kind of statements they’ve issued. Further, much to my horror, is the lack of questioning by major organizations that should be asking the same questions that I’ve asked. I think that those questions are totally reasonable considering the ramifications that they intend to unleash on a free and open society. With the unleashing of the negative rhetoric from the beginning, the absurd certainty of their claims in a very complex and chaotic system (butterfly effect anyone) and the statements out of the UN for a wealth distribution and control of people who even question the goals… leads to a conclusion, rightly or wrongly that the goals are corrupt and do not have the interest of anybody except a select group of people. And that the science has been manipulated to give the results that they want.
Heaven’s royal messenger they are not. I can calculate the timing of the next eclipse too.
The crux of the matter;
http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmichaels/2014/03/27/global-warming-scientists-scrap-real-science-bow-before-president-obama-instead/?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed
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Looking for a maverick? Hmmm. That means you are interested in science, regardless of source. Here is some of it. Be prepared for a paradigm shift. First, there has been no (enhanced) greenhouse warming either in the twentieth or the in the twenty-first century. Second, Hansen did not observe greenhouse warming in 1988. Third, the pause, now 17 years old, proves that the Arrhenius theory of greenhouse warming is dead wrong. Fourth, the only correct greenhouse theory is the Miskolczi greenhouse theory (MGT). Fifth, global temperature curves used by the IPCC are falsified to show more warming. They are worthless for doing real climate science. Use satellite data if you want to know where the temperature is going. Sixth, the climate models used by IPCC are worthless. It started with Hansen in 1988 whose predictions were all wrong. In twenty-six years that have passed since then they are no better, only more numerous and expensive. Close them down and stop pretending that they tell the future. I got into climate science because I saw Al Gore’s movie that predicted a twenty foot sea rise. Being familiar with scientific literature it did not take me long to discover that there had been a sea rise indeed. At the rate of 2.46 millimeters per year that is, for the previous eighty years. Extrapolating that gives you 24.6 centimeters per century, just under ten inches and certainly not twenty feet. And when he got a Nobel prize for that I realized that climate science needed to be fixed. The above six points are what is needed to make climate science a real science.