by Judith Curry
Regarding the Hockey Stick of IPCC 2001 evidence now indicates, in my view, that an IPCC Lead Author working with a small cohort of scientists, misrepresented the temperature record of the past 1000 years by (a) promoting his own result as the best estimate, (b) neglecting studies that contradicted his, and (c) amputating another’s result so as to eliminate conflicting data and limit any serious attempt to expose the real uncertainties of these data. – John Christy
Back in April 2011, I had a post on The U.S. House of Representatives Hearing on Climate Change: Examining the Processes Used to Create Science and Policy. John Christy’s testimony is worth revisiting, in two contexts:
- problems with the IPCC process, most recently highlighted in context of WG3 [link]
- the Steyn versus Mann and Mann versus Steyn lawsuits [link]
John Christy has a unique perspective on how the hockey stick became the icon of the TAR – he served as a Lead Author (along with Michael Mann) on Chapter 2 Observed Climate Variability and Change. Relevant excerpts from Christy’s testimony:
In simplified terms, IPCC Lead Authors are nominated by their countries, and downselected by the IPCC bureaucracy with help from others (the process is still not transparent to me – who really performs this down-select?) The basic assumption is that the scientists so chosen as Lead Authors (L.A.s) represent the highest level of expertise in particular fields of climate science (or some derivative aspect such as agricultural impacts) and so may be relied on to produce the most up-to-date and accurate assessment of the science. In one sense, the authors of these reports are volunteers since they are not paid. However, they do not go without salaries. Government scientists make up a large portion of the author teams and can be assigned to do such work, and in effect are paid to work on the IPCC by their governments. University scientists aren’t so lucky but can consider their IPCC effort as being so close to their normal research activities that salary charges to the university or grants occur. Travel expenses were paid by the IPCC for trips, in my case, to Australia, Paris, Tanzania, New Zealand, Hawaii, and Victoria, Canada. Perhaps it goes without saying that such treatment might give one the impression he or she is an important authority on climate.
As these small groups of L.A.s travel the world, they tend to form close communities which often re-enforce a view of the climate system that can be very difficult to penetrate with alternative ideas (sometimes called “confirmation bias” or “myside bias”.) They become an “establishment” as I call them. With such prominent positions as IPCC L.A.s on this high profile topic, especially if they support the view that climate change is an unfolding serious disaster, they would be honored with wide exposure in the media (and other sympathetic venues) as well as rewarded with repeated appointments to the IPCC process. In my case, evidently, one stint as an L.A. was enough.
The second basic problem (the first was the murkiness of our science) with these assessments is the significant authority granted the L.A.s. This is key to understanding the IPCC process. In essence, the L.A.s have virtually total control over the material and, as demonstrated below, behave in ways that can prevent full disclosure of the information that contradicts their own pet findings and which has serious implications for policy in the sections they author. While the L.A.s must solicit input for several contributors and respond to reviewer comments, they truly have the final say.
In preparing the IPCC text, L.A.s sit in judgment of material of which they themselves are likely to be a major player. Thus they are in the position to write the text that judges their own work as well as the work of their critics. In typical situations, this would be called a conflict of interest. Thus L.A.s, being human, are tempted to cite their own work heavily and neglect or belittle contradictory evidence (see examples below.) In the beginning, the scientists who wrote the IPCC assessment were generally aware of the new responsibility, the considerable uncertainties of climate science, and that consequences of their conclusions could generate burdensome policies. The first couple of reports were relatively cautious and rather equivocal.
In my opinion, as further assessments were created, a climate “establishment” came into being, dominating not only the IPCC but many other aspects of climate science, including peer-review of journals. Many L.A.s became essentially permanent fixtures in the IPCC process and rose to positions of prominence in their institutions as a side benefit. As a result, in my view, they had a vested interest in preserving past IPCC claims and affirming evermore confident new claims to demonstrate that the science was progressing under their watch and that financial support was well spent. Speaking out as I do about this process assured my absence of significant contribution on recent and future reports. Political influence cannot be ignored. As time went on, nations would tend to nominate only those authors whose climate change opinions were in line with a national political agenda which sought perceived advantages (i.e. political capital, economic gain, etc.) by promoting the notion of catastrophic human-induced climate change. Scientists with well-known alternative views would not be nominated or selected. Indeed, it became more and more difficult for dissention and skepticism to penetrate the process now run by this establishment. As noted in my IAC testimony, I saw a process in which L.A.s were transformed from serving as Brokers of science (and policy-relevant information) to Gatekeepers of a preferred point of view.
A focus evolved in the IPCC that tended to see enhanced greenhouse gas concentrations as the cause for whatever climate changes were being observed, particularly in the 2001(Third Assessment Report or TAR) which was further solidified in 2007, (the Fourth Assessment Report or AR4.) The IAC 2010 report on the IPCC noted this overconfidence when it stated that portions of the AR4 contained “many vague statements of ‘high confidence’ that are not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put into perspective, or are difficult to refute.’” (This last claim relates to the problem of generating “unfalsifiable hypotheses” discussed in my recent House testimony.)
My experience as Lead Author in the IPCC TAR, Chapter 2 “Observed Climate Variability and Change”, allowed me to observe how a key section of this chapter, which produced the famous Hockey Stick icon, was developed. My own topic was upper air temperature changes that eventually drew little attention, even though the data clearly indicated potentially serious inconsistencies for those who would advocate considerable confidence in climate model projections.
First, note these key points about the IPCC process: the L.A. is allowed (a) to have essentially complete control over the text, (b) sit in judgment of his/her own work as well as that of his/her critics and (c) to have the option of arbitrarily dismissing reviewer comments since he/she is granted the position of “authority” (unlike peer-review.) Add to this situation the rather unusual fact that the L.A. of this particular section had been awarded a PhD only a few months before his selection by the IPCC. Such a process can lead to a biased assessment of any science. But, problems are made more likely in climate science, because, as noted, ours is a murky field of research – we still can’t explain much of what happens in weather and climate.
The Hockey Stick curve depicts a slightly meandering Northern Hemisphere cooling trend from 1000 A.D. through 1900, which then suddenly swings upward in the last 80 years to temperatures warmer than any of the millennium when smoothed. To many, this appeared to be a “smoking gun” of temperature change proving that the 20th century warming was unprecedented and therefore likely to be the result of human emissions of greenhouse gases.
I will not debate the quality of the Hockey Stick – that has been effectively done elsewhere (and indeed there is voluminous discussion on this issue), so, whatever one might think of the Hockey Stick, one can readily understand that its promotion by the IPCC was problematic given the process outlined above. Indeed, with the evidence contained in the Climategate emails, we have a fairly clear picture of how this part of the IPCC TAR went awry. For a more detailed account of this incident with documentation, see http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/10/ipcc-and-the-trick/.
We were appointed L.A.s in 1998. The Hockey Stick was prominently featured during IPCC meetings from 1999 onward. I can assure the committee that those not familiar with issues regarding reconstructions of this type (and even many who should have been) were truly enamored by its depiction of temperature and sincerely wanted to believe it was truth. Skepticism was virtually non-existent. Indeed it was described as a “clear favourite” for the overall Policy Makers Summary (Folland, 0938031546.txt). In our Sept. 1999 meeting (Arusha, Tanzania) we were shown a plot containing more temperature curves than just the Hockey Stick including one from K. Briffa that diverged significantly from the others, showing a sharp cooling trend after 1960. It raised the obvious problem that if tree rings were not detecting the modern warming trend, they might also have missed comparable warming episodes in the past. In other words, absence of the Medieval warming in the Hockey Stick graph might simply mean tree ring proxies are unreliable, not that the climate really was relatively cooler.
The Briffa curve created disappointment for those who wanted “a nice tidy story” (Briffa 0938031546.txt). The L.A. remarked in emails that he did not want to cast “doubt on our ability to understand factors that influence these estimates” and thus, “undermine faith in paleoestimates” which would provide “fodder” to “skeptics” (Mann 0938018124.txt). One may interpret this to imply that being open and honest about uncertainties was not the purpose of this IPCC section. Between this email (22 Sep 1999) and the next draft sent out (Nov 1999, Fig. 2.25 Expert Review) two things happened: (a) the email referring to a “trick” to “hide the decline” for the preparation of report by the World Meteorological Organization was sent (Jones 0942777075.txt, “trick” is apparently referring to a splicing technique used by the L.A. in which non-paleo data were merged
to massage away a cooling dip at the last decades of the original Hockey Stick) and (b) the cooling portion of Briffa’s curve had been truncated for the IPCC report (it is unclear as to who performed the truncation.)
In retrospect, this disagreement in temperature curves was simply an indication that such reconstructions using tree ring records contain significant uncertainties and may be unreliable in ways we do not currently understand or acknowledge. This should have been explained to the readers of the IPCC TAR and specifically our chapter. Highlighting that uncertainty would have been the proper scientific response to the evidence before us, but the emails show that some L.A.’s worried it would have diminished a sense of urgency about climate change (i.e. “dilutes the message rather significantly”, Folland, 0938031546.txt.)
When we met in February 2000 in Auckland NZ, the one disagreeable curve, as noted, was not the same anymore because it had been modified and truncated around 1960. Not being aware of the goings-on behind the scenes, I had apparently assumed a new published time series had appeared and the offensive one had been superceded (I can’t be certain of my actual thoughts in Feb. 2000). Now we know, however, that the offensive part of Briffa’s curve had simply been amputated after a new realization was created three months before. (It appears also that this same curve was apparently a double amputee, having its first 145 years chopped off too, see http://climateaudit.org/2011/03/23/13321/.) So, at this point, data which contradicted the Hockey Stick, whose creator was the L.A., had been eliminated. No one seemed to be alarmed (or in my case aware) that this had been done.
Procedures to guard against such manipulation of evidence are supposed to be in place whenever biases and conflicts of interest interfere with duties to report the whole truth, especially in assessments that have such potentially drastic policy implications. That the IPCC allowed this episode to happen shows, in my view, that the procedures were structurally deficient.
Even though the new temperature chart appeared to agree with the Hockey Stick, I still expressed my skepticism in this reconstruction as being evidence of actual temperature variations. Basically, this result relied considerably on a type of western U.S. tree-ring not known for its fidelity in reproducing large-scale temperatures (NRC 2006, pg. 52).
At the L.A. meetings, I indicated that there was virtually no inter-century precision in these measurements, i.e. they were not good enough to tell us which century might be warmer than another in the pre-calibration period (1000 to 1850.)
In one Climategate email, a Convening L.A., who wanted to feature the Hockey Stick at the time (though later was less enthusiastic), mentions “The tree ring results may still suffer from lack of multicentury time scale variance” and was “probably the most important issue to resolve in Chapter 2” (Folland, 0938031546.txt). This, in all likelihood, was a reference to (a) my expressed concern (see my 2001 comments to NRC below) as well as to (b) the prominence to which the Hockey Stick was pre destined.
To compound this sad and deceptive situation, I had been quite impressed with some recent results by Dahl-Jensen et al., (Science 1998), in which Greenland ice-borehole temperatures had been deconvolved into a time series covering the past 20,000 years. This measurement indeed presented inter-century variations. Their result indicated a clear 500-year period of temperatures, warmer than the present, centered about 900 A.D. – commonly referred to as the Medieval Warm Period, a feature noticeably absent in the Hockey Stick. What is important about this is that whenever any mid to high-latitude location shows centuries of a particularly large temperature anomaly, the spatial scale that such a departure represents is also large. In other words, long time periods of warmth or coolness are equivalent to large spatial domains of warmth or coolness, such as Greenland can represent for the Northern Hemisphere (the domain of the Hockey Stick.)
I discussed this with the paleo-L.A. at each meeting, asking that he include this exceptional result in the document as evidence for temperature fluctuations different from his own. To me Dahl-Jensen et al.’s reconstruction was a more robust estimate of past temperatures than one produced from a certain set of western U.S. tree-ring proxies. But as the process stood, the L.A. was not required to acknowledge my suggestions, and I was not able to convince him otherwise. It is perhaps a failure of mine that I did not press the issue even harder or sought agreement from others who might have been likewise aware of the evidence against the Hockey Stick realization.
As it turned out, this exceptional paper by Dahl-Jensen et al. was not even mentioned in the appropriate section (TAR 2.3.2). There was a brief mention of similar evidence indicating warmer temperatures 1000 years ago from the Sargasso Sea sediments (TAR 2.3.3), but the text then quickly asserts, without citation, that this type of anomaly is not important to the hemisphere as a whole.
Thus, we see a situation where a contradictory data set from Greenland, which in terms of paleoclimate in my view was quite important, was not offered to the readers (the policymakers) for their consideration. In the end, the Hockey Stick appeared in Figure 1 of the IPCC Summary for Policymakers, without any other comparisons, a position of prominence that speaks for itself.
So, to summarize, an L.A. was given final say over a section which included as its (and the IPCC’s) featured product, his very own chart, and which allowed him to leave out not only entire studies that presented contrary evidence, but even to use another strategically edited data set that had originally displayed contrary evidence. This led to problems that have only recently been exposed. This process, in my opinion, illustrates that the IPCC did not provide policymakers with an unbiased evaluation of the science, whatever one thinks about the Hockey Stick as a temperature reconstruction.
JC comments: Christy’s assessment, when combined with the UEA emails, provides substantial insight into how this hockey stick travesty occurred. My main unanswered question is: How did Michael Mann become a Lead Author on the TAR? He received his Ph.D. in 1998, and presumably he was nominated or selected before the ink was dry on his Ph.D. It is my suspicion that the U.S. did not nominate Mann (why would they nominate someone for this chapter without a Ph.D.?) Here is the only thing I can find on the U.S. nomination process [link]. Instead, I suspect that the IPCC Bureau selected Mann; it seems that someone (John Houghton?) was enamored of the hockey stick and wanted to see it featured prominently in the TAR. The actual selection of Lead Authors by the IPCC Bureau is indeed a mysterious process.
The IPCC process is clearly broken, and I don’t see anything in their recent policies that addresses the problems that Christy raises. The policy makers clearly wrought havoc in context of the AR5 WG3 report; however there is a more insidious problem particularly with the WG1 scientists in terms of conflict of interest and the IPCC Bureau in terms of stacking the deck to produce the results that they want.
The IPCC process isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designed for a specific purpose that doesn’t include rigorous science.
Mailman
~Congressman John Linder (Hearing On Protecting Lower-Income Families… March 12, 2009)
Redistribution of wealth to a UN run world government?
“The IPCC process isn’t broken”
agreed, the reports especially WG1 are probably the best and most thorough science communications on any subject.
I see what ya did there, lolwot. You took his meaning and turned it 180 degrees (+/- 3 degrees). I guess those cli sci “tricks” die hard, don’t they? LOL
Houghton’s role is crucial because he has in my view reprised the role of religious zealot Joseph Priestley in our version of the Phlogiston hoax, the assumption, not accepted by any professional scientist or engineer taught standard physics, that a planetary surface emits net IR energy to its atmosphere at the same rate as it would to a body at absolute zero.
This very basic error originated with Arrhenius. Angstrom criticised it at the time and it died out. However, Sagan reintroduced it in his analysis of the Venusian atmosphere and it has since continued as a core belief of US Atmospheric Physics. Houghton copied it over to UK Atmospheric Physics.
Understanding why Sagan went wrong is important because the same mistake is made in the IPCC climate models. He failed to realise there are two optical processes acting in clouds. As well as Mie scattering which increases as optical depth increases, up to a limit of 0.5 hemispherical albedo for a non absorbing sol, a second process acts for large droplets. In our atmosphere it operates in the first few 100 m and gives the high albedo of convective clouds. The same takes place in the Venusian atmosphere.
By assuming all Solar SW entering the Venusian atmosphere went deeply into it, Sagan assumed c. 9 times as much thermalised SW as reality. In his two-stream approximation calculations, this is a negative energy flux and it offset the extra energy he wrongly assumed left the surface.
In his monograph, Houghton correctly assumed no IR energy flux from ToA to surface. However, the IPCC climate models, based on incorrectly assuming ‘back radiation’, a Thermal Radiation Field, is a real energy flux, triple the real energy entering the atmosphere from the surface. To offset this, the models apparently assume Kirchhoff’s Law of Radiation applies at ToA, giving a negative 238.5 W/m^2 from ToA to the surface. This assumption could only apply to a grey body atmosphere; in reality, it’s semi-transparent to IR so the Kirchhoff assumption is not valid.
The resultant ~40% increase over reality of energy flux from the Earth’s surface to the atmosphere plus Hansen’s mistaken view that the GHE is 33 K, it’s really ~11 K, gives the imaginary ‘positive feedback’. The 40% is offset by assuming near double low level cloud optical depth in ‘hind-casting’. The extra water evaporation is because the modellers assume the sunlit part of the ocean is hotter than reality then cheat to cover this up.
So, Houghton has presided over a massive hoax. However, it was Sagan who made the key mistakes which led to it. These have led to virtually all US Atmospheric Physicist being taught incorrect physics**. Hence many shout down professionals from other disciplines who state, correctly, that the basics of the IPCC’s Radiative and IR physics are wrong. The IPCC modelling needs to be corrected by professionals from outside Atmospheric Physics.
**Coming from Meteorology, another mistake is to assume a pyrgeometer outputs a real energy flux. Wrong: it’s a Thermal Radiation Field; only the vector sum of TRFs can do thermodynamic work. Hence the Earth’s surface emits to its atmosphere a mean 63 W/m^2, of which most goes directly to Space. There is no significant positive feedback and because Tyndall’s experiment has been misconstrued and the atmosphere self controls, CO2-AGW is near zero. There was AGW from Asian aerosols changing cloud albedo but it has saturated.
The IPCC process? The IPCC process from the very beginning is analogous to a Judge, having found the defendant guilty, instructs the jury, not to find guilt or innocence, but rather to come back with the best evidence they could muster to reinforce the decision already made by the Judge.
Science at its finest.
I agree Mailman. Known environmentalist were recruited to the IPCC. Just look at these recent lead authors from IIED’s stable, the organisation founded by Barbara ‘sustainability’ Ward.
Notice how the IIED has replaced the WWF as a supplier of lead authors to the IPCC following comments by Donna Laframbois that the WWF had infiltrated the IPCC.
http://www.iied.org/iied-statement-intergovernmental-panel-climate-change-report
Dr Saleemul Huq, Senior Fellow in IIED’s climate change group and IPCC Working Group II coordinating lead author for Chapter 12, on Adaptation Needs and Options (saleemul.huq@iied.org)
Dr David Satterthwaite, Senior Fellow in IIED’s human settlements group and IPCC Working Group II coordinating lead author for Chapter 8, on urban areas (david@iied.org)
Dr Achala Chandani Abeysinghe, Senior Researcher in IIED’s climate change group and IPCC Working Group II coordinating lead author for Chapter 20, on climate resilient pathways (achala.abeysinghe@iied.org)
Dr David Dodman, Senior Researcher in IIED’s human settlements group and IPCC Working Group II coordinating lead author for Chapter 9, on rural areas, and contributing author for Chapter 8, on urban areas (david.dodman@iied.org)
Dr Cecilia Tacoli, Principal researcher in IIED’s human settlements group and IPCC Working Group II contributing author for Chapter 12, on human security (cecilia.tacoli@iied.org)
mailmannz | April 29, 2014 at 6:32 pm |
Nonono. _THIS_ is a medium designed for a specific purpose that excludes rigorous science:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2014/04/30/my-experience-on-fox-friends-regarding-climate-change/
The IPCC process isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designed for a specific purpose that doesn’t include rigorous science.
Indeed it specifically EXcludes rigorous science, replacing it with manipulated science, in line with its overriding objective of advancing political expansionism.
The reason MM defends his hockey stick to vigorously is that his entire reputation rests on it – and it is wrong.
Back on the Mann-Wagon.
It’s addictive.
I see you’re back on the “the cause” “Wagon”.
Michael,
Are you going through a another Mannic phase? Chanting the Manntra with more feeling might ameliorate the symptoms. Check your temperature with a treemometer if you feel especially feverish or excitable.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Judith drags up a 3 yr old testimony from Christy – why now?
Could it be a co-incidence that a recent paper panning the ‘stadium wave’ for its dodgy methodology and imaginary conclusions, just happens to have a certain author?
Welcome to the children’s sand-pit.
Go Science!!
Michael, there was no Science. It was politics and a big con. Trillions have been wasted on a scam.
I agree 100% with Michael… it must be noon
Anybody with a strong field background in geology immediately knew that the Hockey Stick was “not even wrong”. It’s over and has been for years, even before the Christy testimony which sounds more like preaching to the choir than science.
‘Behavior of numerous and diverse geophysical indices – from fish populations to cosmic nuclides –
fluctuate at a quasi-periodic 50 – to – 80 year tempo (
e.g. Ogurtsov et al. 2002; Patterson et al. 2004; Klyashtorin and Lyubushin 2007). Motivated by this ubiquity of tempo, Wyatt et al. (2012; hereafter WKT)
analyzed 20th century indices in the context of a hemispherically spanning climate network through which a signal propagates’ http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/stadium-wave.pdf
And Mann suggests that the AMO contributed to cooling in the last decade? Duh.
“Judith drags up a 3 yr old testimony from Christy – why now?”
Yeah, it couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that the latest IPCC AR was just released. And that the available evidence regarding WG 1 especially suggests Christy’s testimony is still relevant today. Nope, no way.
It’s always better to think before posting an air headed comment.
“Yeah, it couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that the latest IPCC AR was just released”
You are right, I don’t think it can have anything to do with that. The relevance is a real stretch.
Michael, your interventions here continue to be vile and despicable, when not merely worthless. Therefore, no one worthy of notice respects you, and you are wasting your time. Judith indicated clear reasons for “revisiting” these matters. You entirely ignore her stated reasons in order to spin a bizarre psychological fantasy explanation. This is pathological and dishonest behavior on your part. Unless you have EVIDENCE to show that Judith deceived us about her explanation for bringing this up now, you owe her a sincere and groveling apology (not that I expect to see one, Michael, for you are consistently one of the more contemptible characters in climate-world). Here is what Judith said about her reasons for this thread (does anyone have any EVIDENCE to offer that Judith is inaccurate in describing her own reasons??)
Get off your high horse Skiphil,
This blog is full of people making speculations as michael as done and you are trying to silence him hmm?
lolwot, I am not trying to silence anyone. I am expressing clearly justified contempt for one commentator who rarely reasons, rarely attempts analysis, and merely spews bile. I want him to up his game.
say, lolwot, why do you find it necessary to ignore what I actually said, in order to create a straw man of your own convenience?? I did not suggest that Michael (or anyone) should be silent. I would like to see him (and everyone) strive to be honest, accurate, and competent. Why do some people find this kind of request to be so threatening, so intimidating??
Well Michael didn’t actually say Judith deceived us.
So unless you have EVIDENCE to show that he meant that, you owe him a sincere and groveling apology.
skippy,
apologies for offending your delicate sensibilities.
I’m sure Judith deeply appreciates your taking offence on her behalf.
Gary M: “Judith drags up a 3 yr old testimony from Christy – why now?”
For one thing, it demonstrates that criticisms of Mann and his “fraudulent” hockey stick were in the public domain, and that Mann himself was a public figure, long before Mark Steyn quoted the editorial for which he has been sued.
For another, the IPCC AR5 is now a hot topic, and a reminder of how the IPCC writing process works is quite timely.
In reading Christy’s testimony, I was struck by how meaningful it is to have the reminder now.
lolwot: This blog is full of people making speculations as michael as done and you are trying to silence him hmm?
Skiphil did not try to silence michael. Skiphil argued with michael.
Matthew, yes I reasoned and argued with Michael, even if with more heat and invective than I like to employ.
The fact that people like lolwot and Michael don’t understand the difference between argument and trying to “silence” someone says a lot about them.
The fact that they rarely engage with the substance of someone’s arguments, opting instead for personal abuse, distraction, and trolling, also says a lot about them.
“Judith drags up a 3 yr old testimony from Christy – why now?”
Dude, that was so…like, two years ago.
Have your irony removed? Wot!
curiously enough, both the BBC and the New York Times do not mention the HS until 2004…
“As time went on, nations would tend to nominate only those authors whose climate change opinions were in line with a national political agenda which sought perceived advantages (i.e. political capital, economic gain, etc.) by promoting the notion of catastrophic human-induced climate change. Scientists with well-known alternative views would not be nominated or selected” – Christy
This is fantasy-land stuff.
Where are the governments clamouring to commit to far-reaching mitigation policies??
Michael,
I’m curious why you think the Christy quote refers to “governments clamouring to commit to far-reaching mitigation policies”? He claims politicians are making “political capital, economic gain” out of catastrophe. It certainly does seem to be true that no government is actually doing anything that would result in a decrease in the human contribution to atmospheric CO2, but many politicians are using CAGW for political gain and to line the pockets of their crony capitalists.
Michael – Where are the governments clamouring to commit to far-reaching mitigation policies??
New York State is implementing multiple energy sector policies that are supposed to transform the electric power system and they all explicitly or implicitly claim that GHG emission mitigation is a prime benefit. All the supporting documentation refers to the new reality of extreme weather that requires mitigation now. Consider the following examples.
April 24, 2014: Regulatory Changes to Spur Development of World-Class Energy System in New York State and Mitigate Climate Change Impacts. Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today unveiled plans for an energy modernization initiative that will fundamentally transform the way electricity is distributed and used in New York State. This unprecedented effort will create the power grid of the future and forever change the way consumers buy and use energy. http://www.governor.ny.gov/press/04242014Utility-Regulation
April 24, 2014: Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced a nearly $1 billion commitment to NY-Sun, which will significantly expand deployment of solar capacity throughout the state and transform New York’s solar industry to a sustainable, subsidy-free sector. Governor Cuomo’s Administration is committed to developing innovative market solutions to help shape the future of energy for all New Yorkers. Governor Cuomo is determined to protect and ensure a clean environment for current and future generations. By fostering and facilitating innovative market solutions, New Yorkers will have a resilient, sustainable, clean, cost-effective and dynamic energy system. By advancing new energy systems and solutions, we can ensure New Yorkers will have improved energy affordability without sacrificing their right to live in a cleaner, resilient and more sustainable environment. http://www.governor.ny.gov/press/04242014-solar-power
April 25, 2014: Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and Con Edison are partnering on a significant initiative to decrease electricity demand by as much as 125 megawatts (MW) in New York City by increasing energy efficiency, reducing demand during peak electricity usage hours and applying combined heat and power (CHP) electrical generation systems at the sites of electric consumers in New York City and Westchester County. These efforts are in line with the Governor’s energy vision to create a world-class energy system that is cleaner as well as more affordable, reliable, and resilient, while also driving economic growth and opportunity. “In this new extreme weather reality, New Yorkers need a 21st century energy grid that won’t leave them in the dark, when big storms strike,” Governor Cuomo said. “This partnership between the State and Con-Edison will help make our electric grid more resilient and protect businesses and residents from unexpected power outages.” http://www.governor.ny.gov/press/04252014Grid-Reliability
July 11, 2013: Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today proposed revised regulations to further reduce harmful power plant emissions, which are a major contributor to global climate change, fulfilling a commitment made in his State of the State address earlier this year. The proposed regulations lower the emissions cap under the nine-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), and will serve as a national model for reducing harmful emissions from power plants. “In the last several years New Yorkers have faced more natural weather disasters than our State has faced in decades, making clear the consequences of ignoring global warming,” Governor Cuomo said. “The consequences of ignoring our changing climate are undeniable. From Hurricane Irene to Superstorm Sandy, these experiences have provided vivid reminders of the dangers of our changing climate and the need for immediate action. RGGI serves as a national model for combating climate change and proves that it is possible to significantly reduce greenhouse gas pollution while promoting job growth and a vibrant economy. With the goal of lowering the emissions cap, New York is taking a decisive step to reduce pollution and better protect the environment.” http://www.governor.ny.gov/press/07112013-harmful-power-plant-emissions
April 11, 2012: Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that his New York Energy Highway Task Force has issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking ideas for potential projects from private developers, investor-owned utilities, the financial community, and others with the goal of bolstering New York State’s aging energy infrastructure while promoting clean energy supplies, jobs, and economic growth. The New York Energy Highway Blueprint is an overarching method for collecting ideas to carry forward Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s bold proposal for a dynamic public-private partnership that will rebuild and rejuvenate New York State’s electric power system and enable the state to meet the needs of a 21st century economy and society. In his 2012 State of the State Address, Governor Cuomo outlined his vision for the Energy Highway, including projects that would enable delivery of economical surplus power from upstate sources and new renewable power generation to the downstate region, where the need is greatest. http://www.nyenergyhighway.com/
I could go on but this is depressing enough. By the way whenever I comment on these policies I always ask them to quantify the reduction in warming that might result from their mitigation. Not surprisingly that comment is always ignored.
What political capital, what economic gain?
How many politicians are we talking about? Do they conspire or are they working alone? Before they leave politics do they brief their successors on the conspiracy?
Seems to me it makes a lot more sense that the reason each generation of politicians focuses on climate change is not because they want to for personal gain but because they have to. Because the science prohibits the subject being ignored.
These conspiracy theories need to be thought through more. Why would the Bush administration want mitigation policies when they supposedly influenced the American contribution to 2007’s AR4? Answer: the governments don’t have influence over the science outcome, and AR4 is evidence of that.
You have to give Christy top marks for audacity – complaining about alleged un-corrected errors in the paleoclimate stuff, after his UAH temp series fiasco.
A fiasco. I see. Something like ARGO showing ocean cooling before it was “corrected” to show ocean warming?
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/
I triple dare you to go and ask Steve McIntyre to audit the 2006 ocean cooling paper by Willis and Lyman, the work by Takmeng Wong that is claimed to have indicated the cooling was spurious, and whether or not anything was untoward in its subsequent correction.
Michael
Check Mencken.
Max
mikey, lollie, jimmy dee et al
the usual troll yammering devoid of sunbatance
What’s subsntance. Who put that there? I think I menat substance.
Anyway:
Christy: “manipulation of evidence”
I wonder why mikey da mann didn’t sue Christy. Christy will make a very good witness for Steyn.
“mikey, lollie, jimmy dee et al
the usual troll yammering devoid of sunbatance” – Don
A fine counter-example Don.
Dear Michael Mann: We will get through the global cooling trend, even if it lasts 300 years; and, now you know it could: the Little Ice Age (LIA) was from about the mid thirteenth century to the 1860s. Charles Dickens wrote about life then at around the LIA’s midpoint and George Washington helped give birth to a new nation towards the end of the LIA.
Michael,
Possibly you overlooked the fact that he used the past tense.
If you are unable to find any records of Governments which advocated far reaching mitigation policies, I can suggest a few possible areas of enquiry for you.
You need but to ask.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Advocating is not the same as actually doing. If climate change was all about pushing through policies to make politicians rich you have to really wonder why the politicians always balk at the last minute at doing do.
lolwot,
I agree with you. Michael should have said what he meant. You should demand that he rephrase his question, if you disagree with his wording. It is pointless demanding that I do anything, because I won’t.
In regard to your second sentence, I appreciate you feeling that you have to tell me that I have to really wonder about a subject that you specify. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t comply with your instruction.
I can’t be bothered. If politicians pass laws to rack up huge debts, on behalf of taxpayers, pursuing nonsense policies, why should I care?
If you are really concerned that politicians appear to act in irrational and illogical ways, you can really wonder twice as hard, and save me the effort.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
lolwot,
The answer to your question is easy. It is not about politicians getting rich, though many pursue that goal as well. For progressives, which includes the politicians in control of most western governments pushing mitigation, it is about power.
Which is also the answer to the second part of your question. The whole reason Copenhagen failed, and that the progressive politicians are now working on decarbonization through regulation rather than legislation (in the US anyway), is that they were not willing to lose power, just to “save the planet.,” especially when they knew themselves the “science” they were peddling was paid for PR.
Alternative conservative media, including the internet, talk radio and the hated Fox News, were able to publicize the the costs of the policies the progressives were so desperate to implement in Copenhagen. Not to mention the work of McIntyre and other skeptics/lukewarmers. It is those damn, stupid, pesky voters who put the fear of Gaia into the pols.
It sure as hell isn’t any sense of altruism.
“it is about power.”
What power have politicians gained in the last 20 years from climate change then?
Money = Power.
Try a billion dollars a day.
Lolwot, naively asked:
Lolwot, naively asked:
Well, for one well known example, the Kevin Rudd Labor government (the most incompetent government Australia has had in more than 60 years) was elected in 2007 largely on the basis of the CAGW scam. His famous line was that “John Howard just doesn’t get it” {i.e. CAGW]. (John Howard was the Prime Minister of the LNP conservative government which had been in power for over a decade. John Howard is regarded as the best Prime Minister and led the best government in at least 40 years) http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/howard-rates-as-our-best-pm-of-the-past-four-decades/story-fn59niix-1226849689572. Largely because of the Rudd’s CAGW scaremonmgering, the population were scared witless about the fear of catastrophic climate change unless Rudd stopped it. As a result voters were hoodwinked into electing the most incompetent government we’ve had for more than 60 years. There’s one example to answer Lolwot’s question.
Out here in CA, our legislature is trying find ways to spend the CAP and Trade funds. http://www.mtdemocrat.com/opinion/the-pot-of-gold/
After reading these first ten responses, now I remember why I stopped posting to this website
Mathematically speaking, Western academia’s support of Michael Mann’s hockey stick has been like witchdoctors huddled around a green bubbling brew of magic potion.
Your post is absolute proof that you are a bald faced liar.
What made you start again? The bonhomie?
:)
Amazingly, Western academics don’t even need data — especially if they are paleoclimate dendrologists (and their tree rings are not telling them what they want to hear) – to be acclaimed global warming doomsday prognosticators with the ear of Leftist politicians and bureaucrats in the highest levels of government. Simply construct models that turn white noise into noisy red hockey sticks. “In general,” says Wegman, “we found [Mann’s methods] to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms [by Mann’s skeptical critics] to be valid and compelling… It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community… Moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that this community can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility.”
Make it eleven… It was never about the science.
If you need another reason to stop posting I can give you one
“After reading these first ten responses, now I remember why I stopped posting to this website.”
Try tying a string around your finger so you don’t forget again. Thanks in advance.
@Donald Rapp I don’t understand the reason some of the posters post here. My guess is that many treat this blog like a local bar or pub, where everyone can say whatever they want. I find the atmosphere they build here unpleasant and often feel unwelcome.
That feeling notwithstanding, the topic at hand is IPCC. I have read Michael Mann’s book and have sympathy for his experience. I am also a big fan of Steve McIntyres’s analytical blogs. It is a pity that Mann assumed McIntyre was one of the many ignorant people who were harrassing him during his career. Together they would have been able to clear up a lot of misunderstanding and changed the course of climate news.
That’s how I see it anyway.
Rose
howie, howie
Donald said that he stopped. He just started again. My guess is that your useless gratuitous insult is enough to get him stopped again. Check yourself, troll.
Donny, the purpose of Lolwitless et al.’s inane repetitive drivel is to drive you away from posting here (it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out).
As a religious leader Mann perhaps had a great deal of influence over his sycophantic followers. But as a scientist you are not supposed to teach how to produce a flood of hockey stick-shaped graphs by simply feeding white noise into a mathematical model that works like a maniacal global warming doomsday machine stuck in maximum overdrive.
(See, Edward J. Wegman, et al., Ad Hoc Committee Report On The ‘Hockey Stick’ Global Climate Reconstruction)
As I understand it, the hockey stick graph purports to overturn a long established consensus concerning the MWP and LIA. Under normal circumstances, one would expect such a paper to be met with at least initial skepticism. Precisely the opposite happened. Instead of skepticism, it was welcomed with something close to jubilation.
You are SCUM, barty.
Thanks for another interesting post. Also interesting that Christy’s doctoral supervisor was Kev Trenberth and also how far Trenberth has sunk since his famous Climate Gate quote: from realizing that it is a travesty to eye-hurting bright red power points of doom.
Global warming academics need not even tell the truth to be quoted in the mainstream media. “Overall,” says Wegman, “our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.”
Wagathon
The summary by the Wegman committee, which you quoted was followed (also under oath to a congressional committee) by a panel from NAS:
Max
Manacker,
Thank you for your frequent on-topic, highly-relevant, quotes and for your incisive, clearly explained comments.
Wagathon | April 29, 2014 at 7:25 pm |
manacker | April 30, 2014 at 3:19 am |
Huh. And yet, I’ve read the conclusions of the North Report, and confirmed its sources, and checked its logic. North upholds Mann’s conclusions and has nothing more than small quibbles about Mann’s methods, and North thoroughly contradicts Wegman, despite that sound-bite from Barton’s witch hunt sham.
Why keep harping on misleading parts of misleading processes, when we can look this stuff up for ourselves and see what you’re LYING about and how you’re LYING to our faces?
You do understand, LYING is bad, when you’re caught, right? And you’re caught.
This was supposed to go here:
You are SCUM, barty.
The global warming alarmists finally discovered there really was a LIA and a MWP, right? Or, are they still LYING about that?
Wagathon | May 1, 2014 at 10:25 am |
Some of Wegman’s concerns about Mann’s statistics are confirmed by North, however Wegman’s conclusions are refuted in the main by North’s main conclusions. North, and the scientific mainstream, don’t doubt there may have been an LIA and an MWP; they see the evidence and award the possibility an appropriate level of plausibility. Even Mann says the same: http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/shared/articles/littleiceage.pdf
Notice the incredible inversion of Barton in all this: according to Barton, North says Mann’s conclusions could not be guaranteed; Mann’s conclusion’s are only plausible; Wegman concludes Mann’s outcomes are impossible. What actually happened was: Wegman opined in a set of research he oversaw, that turned out to be largely plagiarised and key parts of which were inverted from the original author’s peer-reviewed results, that Mann’s conclusions weren’t possible; North contradicted Wegman to say that, while Mann’s conclusions could not be guaranteed beyond a competent confidence level, they were entirely plausible, contrary to Wegman’s conclusions. Barton caught LYING. Wegman caught LYING. Wagathon caught LYING.
See how that works?
The only example of LYING to be seen here is saying, “Wegman opined in a set of research he oversaw, that turned out to be largely plagiarised and key parts of which were inverted.”
Wagathon, your comment reminded me of a point that never really got attention. Deep Climate and John Mashey claimed the Wegman Report went so far as to invert the conclusions of a source. As an example, Mashey said the report was:
There was only one example ever given of the report supposedly inverting results, and even then, the Wegman Report’s description of the conclusion was perfectly accurate. All it did was leave off a qualifier (that something would be possible if people could figure out how to do it). Mashey and Deep Climate simply misread a couple simple sentences and came up with an obviously wrong claim.
The only reason this wasn’t immediately obvious to me was the claim was buried in a 250 page document ~80% of which was seemingly irrelevant. Once I got past that, I was quickly able to spot the problem. I even pointed it out several times.
Sadly, people tend to just accept anything they like the sound of as gospel truth without making any effort to verify it.
Brandon
The embedded link in your post does not lead anywhere.
tonyb
climatereason, thanks for pointing that out. WordPress is bad about links. Leave off the http:// and it’ll automatically append your link to the URL of whatever page you’re on. http://www.blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/2010/10/08/skepticgate/ becomes http://judithcurry.com/2014/04/29/ipcc-tar-and-the-hockey-stick/www.blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/2010/10/08/skepticgate/. You can find the right URL if you examine the URL of the link, but most people won’t bother to try.
Anyway, this should work.
climatereason | May 1, 2014 at 12:19 pm |
Brandon Shollenberger | May 1, 2014 at 2:50 pm |
It’s good to witness collaboration, collegiality, and a spirit of independent inquiry.
Toward that end, I offer:
Mashey claimed 35 pages of Wegman’s 91 page report were plagiarized.
Mashey’s presentation of these findings is quite detailed, and can be found in multiple media, for example online.at http://pics.uvic.ca/events/machinery-climate-anti-science is an hour+ video of his summary of his 250-page report.. perhaps it’s a different 250-page report than the one you read?
One of two GMU committees largely supported Mashey’s conclusions, and heavily censured Wegman on the sole complaint by the one author who could be persuaded to enter the nasty business of outing a plagiarist.
But if you really want more examples:
http://andrewgelman.com/2011/09/19/another-wegman-plagiarism-copying-without-attribution-and-further-discussion-of-why-scientists-cheat/
With 35 pages to choose from, I realize it’s unjust to choose a plagiarism of wikipedia. Did you need me to go through line-by-line?
For a colleague, I’d be glad to.
BartR
I merely pointed out to Brandon that his link did not work. That does not mean I endorse what he says. Similarly I point out to Fan when his links go to the wrong place. That does not mean I endorse those either.
tonyb
climatereason | May 2, 2014 at 5:30 am |
We can all be collegial here, regardless of our disagreements. It was means sincerely as praise, with no ulterior meanings. Honest.
When people overcome differences to work together, that’s not a thing I object to.
BartR
Thanks. Ok, I accept the spirit in which it was intended.
I am a half hour through your Mashey link but Dinner and the Simpsons will call very shortly
tonyb
climatereason | May 2, 2014 at 12:55 pm |
It might be faster, and more independent, to just use one of the many free online plagiarism checkers and pop the Wegman Report into it.
Of course, there’d be the false positives of all those citations since its release, but well worth it to not have to rely solely on the views of Mashey, North, the original author, the experts cited by USA Today, the various other blogs commenting on Wegman’s plagiarisms, or the GMU committee investigating the charges.
Though, ironically, one must be careful with plagiarism checkers. Some of their vendors aren’t entirely honorable.
At this point, I don’t think there’s any room to doubt the Wegman Report contained plagiarized material. However, anyone truly interested in examining John Mashey’s ridiculously long document will find issues. As an example, the link I provided goes to a discussion which showed (what’s in my opinion) the single most serious charge in the report is false.
Before I get to that though, I want to point out a lot of people say Mashey’s document showed 35 pages were plagiarized, including media reports. It does not. It only looks at 30 pages. Other pages were examined elsewhere. I pointed this out to both John Mashey and USA Today when he promoted a USA Today article which made that mistake. Neither seemed to care, and nobody else seemed to either. I find that interesting. Anyway, the document said:
It is a very serious thing to accuse people of completely inverting the results of the work they describe. That made it an obvious claim to check. I’ve been able to confirm only one case of it was charged. This text from the Wegman Report:
Is said to contradict the Ray Bradley book referred to (by both Deep Climate and John Mashey). The text supposedly contradicted is:
The book says if we have an equation which accurately describes something, we can make paleoclimatic reconstructions with only tree-ring data. We don’t have such an equation. Paleoclimatologists have discussed why creating such an equation would be very difficult. I believe even Michael Mann has done the same.
Given we don’t have such an equation, we cannot make the reconstructions with only tree-ring data. John Mashey and Deep Climate claim the Wegman Report is not only wrong, but inverts what Ray Bradley says because it accurately reflects that point. They say this despite having never made any effort to show we have the equation Ray Bradley says we’d need for the Wegman Report’s claim to be wrong.
Suppose I found, “We won’t have any more energy problems if we can figure out cold fusion.” Someone later says, “We have energy problems.” Deep Climate and John Mashey’s approach would argue that inverted my results. It’s silly.
John Mashey and Deep Climate made a bold accusation which was wrong, and nobody promoting their conclusions ever made any effort to check it.
Brandon Shollenberger | May 2, 2014 at 3:05 pm |
I’d be the first to say there’s a mote in Mashey’s eye, if Mashey hadn’t beaten us all to it, acknowledging that he was merely pushing forward the research done by others before him and handing it over to others after him to carry on.
There’s a mote in Mashey’s eye.
That’s been stipulated.
Can we get back to the real beam in Wegman: its conclusions have been refuted, except for a very few which themselves were not fatal to MBH; MBH’s conclusions have been repeatedly independently verified, notwithstanding that MBH had some issues, and MBH merely pushed forward the research previously done by others before and handed it over to others after to carry it on.
We’re well into the generation after the generation after MBH. Beating the dead horse’s dead grandfather will get us nowhere.
Bart R, the conclusions of the Wegman Report have not been refuted, nor have MBH’s conclusions “been repeatedly independently verified.” If you want to “get back to” things which aren’t real, that’s your call. I prefer not to.
I also prefer not to rely upon other people to make my arguments. As such, I don’t refer people to the Wegman Report to make arguments against MBH. I instead write detailed explanations of various problems with it. A listing of such writings can be found at the end of this post. If you’d like to focus on a newer generation of reconstructions, #8 and on in that list discuss Michael Mann’s 2008 reconstruction.
If you think you can offer any sort of substantial defense for MBH or Mann 2008, you’re welcome to respond to any of the posts therein. You’re also welcome to merely wave your hands and make empty remarks, if you prefer.
Brandon Shollenberger | May 2, 2014 at 6:26 pm |
I also prefer not to rely upon other people to make my arguments. As such, I don’t refer people to the Wegman Report to make arguments against MBH. I instead write detailed explanations of various problems with it.
Good man. Well done.
Point remains, we have the means to do better than what we currently do, because satellites can help interpolate on land-based stations, and with Space-X coming along we ought expect the cost of launch to fall at least 90%, and with schoolchildren launching computers to the edge of space on balloons we ought expect better tracking of data and far higher resolution on measurement than the little trickle that currently we settle for.
GCM’s are better than krieging, if you use all the data available and run high resolution GCMs to interpolate constrained by the measurements you do have to produce ensembles. Sure, you don’t always get a single absolutely accurate value by such process, but the range of values are bound to be better than what is, after all, just a fancy form of weighted average.
And if we can use GCMs to find the critical points on the globe where having a weather station will most improve our knowledge of the world climate, wouldn’t that be a great way to plan deployment of such stations?
Sure, we’re a long way from the computing power to run such GCM’s at high enough resolution to perfect our picture of the globe in real time. We’re years away from that. But only a few years.
Likewise, we could use GCMs to fill in the blanks in our knowledge of Holocene climate by constraining the models with the data we do have from paleoclimatology. We could get an ensemble of a few thousand projected Earth climates telling us what the MWP or LIA or Holocene Optimum were like with resolution every bit as detailed as GCMs are today. That’d give us some statistical basis to have this discussion, which remains a waste of time given the low quality of current data and poor methods used so far.
Which is why I handwave so dismissively.
Bart R: Can we get back to the real beam in Wegman: its conclusions have been refuted, except for a very few which themselves were not fatal to MBH; MBH’s conclusions have been repeatedly independently verified, notwithstanding that MBH had some issues, and MBH merely pushed forward the research previously done by others before and handed it over to others after to carry it on.
Could you please direct us to where Wegman’s conclusions were refuted? All that was ever established, in what I have found, was that a lot of (mostly boilerplate) text was plagiarized. Once rewritten to avoid plagiarism, the content was sound.
Also, could you direct us to where the MBH98 conclusions have been repeatedly independently verified? Analyses by others (e.g. McIntyre and McKitrick in the commentary on the paper by McShane and Wyner that appeared in The Annals of Applied Statistics have shown that their results depend highly on a few of the series that are included in their analyses.
Bart R: Likewise, we could use GCMs to fill in the blanks in our knowledge of Holocene climate by constraining the models with the data we do have from paleoclimatology.
that would make a lot more sense if the GCMs had a demonstrated record of accuracy over some set of out of sample data. To date they have predicted more rapid warming than has occurred. Here are some model simulations that proved not very accurate regionally in past ages:
Global Signatures and Dynamical Origins of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Anomaly
Michael E. Mann, Zhihua Zhang, Scott Rutherford, Raymond S. Bradley, Malcolm K. Hughes, Drew Shindell, Caspar Ammann, Greg Faluvegi, and Fenbiao Ni
Science 27 November 2009: 1256-1260. [DOI:10.1126/science.1177303]
Matthew R Marler | May 3, 2014 at 9:34 pm |
Sure. North refuted Wegman.
http://web.archive.org/web/20060503103311/http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/ammann/millennium/refs/WahlAmmann_ClimChange2006.html
Wahl and Amman discredited Wegman’s claims entirely.
Everything else you write contrary to this is quite absurd considering it has been debunked for years.
The Jesus paper. Except it does not refute Wegman. It attempts (notice the verb) to bolster Mann’s paper.
philjourdan | May 5, 2014 at 2:52 pm |
Derisive assertions and referential agitprop do not an argument make.
Let’s look a bit at some of Wegman’s false premises and incorrect claims.
Network analysis of authorship?
The network of authors has grown rather large since 2006; re-applying Said’s methods to the latest author network shows that reasonable predictions, were Wegman’s conclusions on Said’s premises valid, do not hold. The authors of the papers critiqued do not remain a narrow exclusionary clique with little outside connection. Well, except McIntyre and McKitrick.. and Wegman and Said. This is only seen more clearly in the ever-widening circle of citations of the authors involved. Except McIntyre, McKitrick, Wegman and Said.
Complaining that specialized scientists are doing their own statistics rather than “interacting with the statistics community” might be a valid complaint; except, Muller’s team at BEST represents the cream of the statistics community, and showed that MBH erred on the side of least drama, so far as their analyses have gone yet. With only one very small deviation, the bulk of Wegman’s complaints about MBH’s statistics amount to little more than stylistic whinging, with no real merit, like quibbling whether the “C” in “NIC” stands for Card or Controller.
Recommendations 1 & 2:
The IPCC costs less than even the football team funding for Wegman’s school. Further, the IPCC report isn’t the be all and end all of Science, it’s a panel of communicators. Is it possible Wegman doesn’t know what the IPCC is for? Where is this idea developed in the report, on what facts? Where is its evidence? What are its numbers?
Hey, that’s great and all, but what the freak does it have to do with anything in the scope of the report or of the committee? Where is it developed? Where is its evidence? What are its numbers? Why, they’re that Barton’s McCarthyist witch hunt was slapped down by the lawyers for the institutions hosting the research. Taking Wegman’s recommendations seriously would mean putting an expert on privacy laws on Wegman’s team.. and Wegman didn’t put such an expert on his team, or he’d know better than to continue to make unconstitutional claims in a report to Congress.
Recommendation 3 reads like an argument to pad the budgets of government statisticians. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for statistics, but Wegman could have been a bit less transparent about arguing to be the gatekeeper controlling all budgets everywhere, especially while showing so little grasp of the subject matter at hand.
Recommendation 4, “Funding should focus on interdisciplinary teams and avoid narrowly focused discipline research,” is all very well and good, except Michael Mann is an interdisciplinarian, and his list of co-authors is extremely broad and deep while bringing excellent levels of expertise appropriate to the field, while not showing the same weakness as Wegman does in this report of failing to grasp the subject matter.
The incredible fauning over McIntyre & McKitrick, unseen in almost any other paper from anyone of any academic standing, goes very far to undermine Wegman’s credibility.
On the whole, Gerald North’s comments on Wegman’s report tell us all we need to know. Not that those of us who don’t rely on the authority of others stop when someone tells us all we need to know.
The report winds down toward its end with pages and pages of garbled retellings of the findings of others, most showing little grasp of the fundamentals of the Earth Sciences.
And at the end of the Wegman Report, on Osborn and Briffa:
This claim is simply unfounded in statistical analyses where “unquantifiable error” is involved. If the uncertainties are well understood by the expert reader, then valid comparisons may be made with the expert reader incorporating uncertainty so far as their uncertainty tolerance permits.
It’s only the accounting for confidence level that determines the validity of a comparison, which is an entirely different matter, somewhat related but not in this case the same.
If it’s “unquantifiable”, then we don’t take it into account in the comparison, we increase the uncertainty of the conclusion of the comparison as appropriate. In the case of this comparison, the effect of so many dissimilar lines of evidence converging to the same agreement reduces that uncertainty.
The large body of works citing Osborn and Briffa, and the technical discussions since 2006, more than debunk Wegman’s specious claims on the final page of his report.
So, yes. Wegman is discredited, a sham procured by a partisan from a partisan for partisan purposes, contributing no value to science or truth.
@bart – a lot of useless writing on your part to prove nothing. The jesus paper proved nothing. Since Wegman was a report on the methodology used for MBH, it was not up for “disapproval” unless they attacked the methods, not the plagiarism. But you seem to fail to understand that.
The fact you dragged out the Jesus paper shows you have no clue what you are talking about. A thousand hockey sticks could have been created after Mann – and it would have done nothing to the Wegman REPORT (If I use that word perhaps you will get a clue what it is all about). For one simple reason. Wegman was not out to debunk ALL hockey sticks. Just the infamous one.
So game, set and match. Wegman stands, no one has “debunked” it, and really, Wayne Gretzky’s Hockey stick is the only one that has any substance. (My old GF will argue Mario Lemieux, but that is between us).
Such a waste of space on your part and all due to not understanding the conversation.
philjourdan | May 6, 2014 at 10:51 am |
A sure sign of a partisan, rejecting anything that rationally constitutes proof or evidence, denying any argument that does not support his ulterior motives, employing propaganda to support a false argument.
Game set and match? You haven’t even laced up.
You show little sign of having actually read the Wegman report: it was not exclusively about the MBH paper, touched very little on methodology, had five recommendations that did not discuss methodology except as part of the last one, and read as mere polemic about imaginary and unspecified amounts of money and measures to review the results of people who aren’t statisticians by statisticians who don’t actually grasp the science.
The best thing that can be said about Wegman or MM 1-5a-d (counting all re-releases with various corrections and respinning) is that concerns raised in the arguments might have turned out to be valid based on the statistical knowledge of the time, but were not borne out by further study.
So, yes, finding other hockey sticks that corroborate MBH matters. It proves MBH did not err, rather that at the far edge of statistical theory, there are overstatements of confidence in the statistical methods by Wegman and co.
Statistics is, after all, a field full of abstractions and hypotheticals, based on mathematics but not itself as reliable as mathematical certainty. Trusting a statistician for proofs is like trusting Andersen Accounting for financial assessment, or more current, trusting bankers who hired people trained by guys who left AA when it folded its tent after Enron. That’s why no field of science leaves its results entirely in the hands of pure statisticians. Even Wegman’s example of FDA is wrong on that point.
The very small part of the Wegman report that touches on methodology relies entirely on MM, and is simply wrong. Even if it hadn’t been a shameful plagiarism full of inaccuracy, overreaching, wandering off the point, assertion from fields Wegman has no credentials in, and lies about the level of review the report received prior to submission, it’s just plain wrong on fact about methodology.
@bart – partisan? no. I merely spoke the truth. I am sure you are still lacing up your shoes and that is why the match was so easily won. I have yet to see you play a point. You talk a big game, but always fail to come through.
You are afraid of facts, you try to create strawmen out of comments made, or you just lie about what is said (even going so far as to contend SS is BB).
Sorry bart. You lost. You tried to lie about what the Wegman report was, tried to proclaim it had been debunked, tried to claim it was something it was not. A few pecks at a keyboard revealed your flaws, laid bare your lies, and exposed you for the naked emperor you pretend to be,.
As I said, game, set and match. next time, try lacing up your shoes faster. And bring your A game.
And read smarter.
philjourdan | May 6, 2014 at 3:59 pm |
Again, you have not shown any sign of having actually read Wegman’s polemic.
You disagree with Lucia and BB on the SkS hack, in a soft-on-crime bit of polemic.
That’s all perfectly fine; I can fully empathize with anyone who wouldn’t want to waste their time reading Wegman, and I frequently disagree with Lucia, too.
But mixing tennis metaphors with hockey? That’s just fail.
Tell me, do you have a Wayne Gretzky hockey card?
Oops. I meant “a Wayne Gretzky hockey”.
@bart – read smarter. I actually did not comment on BB since the opening line of her blog clearly indicated it was her OPINION. And we (you and I) were talking about FACTS. Evidence is needed for facts. An opinion on a blog is not a fact. I said “no evidence”. You have yet to even address that aspect of it. If you read smarter, you would know that.
I guess you may have a Wayne Gretzky card. Do you have a Wayne Gretzky Hockey? Seems you have no clue what you are talking about in any field. Seems you have a problem with reading, regardless of smarter or harder.
Maybe you just are not trying hard enough.
philjourdan | May 7, 2014 at 9:13 am |
Soft. On. Reading.
Soft. On. Crime.
@bart – whatever – http://judithcurry.com/2014/04/24/slowing-sea-level-rise/#comment-544201
Exodus 20:16
~Klaus Eckert Puls
Well that’s all fine and good, but it means little without giving us a few examples we could chew on.
John Carpenter | April 29, 2014 at 9:13 pm |
If you feel yourself lacking in examples, perhaps you should put your teeth back in, and read through the page from start to end to see if anything jumps out that qualifies.
Oh Bart, that reply just turns the burden back on me. I’m not asking myself what qualifies as false testimony, I’m interested in what you believe to be false testimony. I don’t know what you are thinking, so that is why I ask you. The problem is you only half commit to your comments. If you know of lies being told, then please be forthright about it. Gives some examples we can discuss. Why do you have such a hard time answering such simple requests. You started the topic of giving false testimony, then lead off with an example, seems perfectly normal for one to do so. If you don’t want to share your knowledge, that’s ok, I’m sure everyone will make the appropriate conclusion.
John Carpenter | April 30, 2014 at 11:35 pm |
How are your interests my problems? What am I, a catering service? My posts are all about people drawing their own conclusions. If you’re just now catching onto that, congratulations; you’re up to speed. If you want to act the naif, you ought expect to be kicked to the curb.
*kick*
Bart R: If you feel yourself lacking in examples, perhaps you should put your teeth back in, and read through the page from start to end to see if anything jumps out that qualifies.
Don’t be absurd. If you want to make a point, then make it. Otherwise, read “Anna Karenina”, and you’ll see what I mean.
“My posts are all about people drawing their own conclusions.”
Huh, you cited a commandment verse… which is a statement… “thou shalt not bear false testimony against your neighbor”. In essence you made the statement. In the context of this thread, you are stating that false testimony has been given. Had you written…. Exodus 20:16?, I would buy in to your comment. But you didn’t pose a question, instead you made a statement where the reader is left with the impression you have drawn a conclusion. When challenged for an example you shifted the burden to the challenger. When challenged again you resorted to veiled ad hominem. So in the end you can’t offer anything for people to draw a conclusion about. You wasted your time, my time and anyone reading this thread time. Thanks for wasting everyone’s time.
“*kick*”
No, what you did was punt.
Shanked it.
John Carpenter | May 1, 2014 at 3:21 pm |
I may have wasted the time of people who just skim. What are people who can’t READ HARDER to me?
Independent thought isn’t handed to you on a silver platter.
And if you think my ad hom veiled, you need new glasses. I’ll freely admit to ad hom of the people who self-select to behave like entitled infants.. oh, wait. That’s not technically ad hom; it’s based on the quality of their conduct, not the cosmetic features of their person.
If everyone on CE lived up to that mark, the comment sections would be ghost towns.
“And if you think my ad hom veiled, you need new glasses. I’ll freely admit to ad hom of the people who self-select to behave like entitled infants.. ”
Congratulations Bart, your comments have risen to the level of a fifth grader. Keep up the good work and you will soon be at middle school level.
And Bart, I’m glad to see you live up to making comments all about people drawing their own conclusions with that last one, superb food for thought. And the way you don’t have any use for ad hominem, stunningly brilliant. Well played Bart. And elsewhere in this thread your fawning over Mann’s credentials… absolutely exquisite for someone who holds ideas far and away above all else. Yes, you really walk the walk and talk the talk, a shining example of successful discourse with your fellow Climate Etc denizens.
I think a just channeled my inner Joshua on that one… Thanks for that too!
Frank, D., Esper, J., Zorita, E. and Wilson, R. (2010), A noodle, hockey stick, and spaghetti plate: a perspective on high-resolution paleoclimatology. WIREs Clim Change, 1: 507–516. doi: 10.1002/wcc.53
LI, B., NYCHKA, D. W. and AMMANN, C. M. (2007), The ‘hockey stick’ and the 1990s: a statistical perspective on reconstructing hemispheric temperatures. Tellus A, 59: 591–598. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0870.2007.00270.x
Or, heck, cut to the chase: http://hol.sagepub.com/content/19/1/3.abstract
And, if you’re not up to the heavy lifting:
Science studies, climate change and the prospects for constructivist critique. David Demeritt, Economy and Society: Vol. 35, Iss. 3, 2006
Bart R,
I quote from your link –
” We discuss the need to develop a framework through which current and new approaches to interpreting these proxy data may be rigorously assessed using pseudo-proxies derived from climate model runs, where the `answer’ is known.”
My understanding, from this, is that you use the climate model runs to give you the answer you want (after all, you wrote the program, and control the inputs, the process, and the outputs), and then develop a framework so that the proxy data fits the model output. Is this referred to as science by Climatologists?
Making stuff up to fit in with other stuff you made up previously, sounds more appropriate, but I’m no Climatologist. If you think this is science in action, good luck. As long as the grant money keeps flowing, it’s all good, I suppose.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
‘Icons of past temperature variability, as featured in the intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports over nearly two decades, have changed from a schematic sketch in 1990, to a seemingly well-solved story in 2001, to more explicit recognition of significant uncertainties in 2007.’
Heavy lifting?
The ink barely dry on his PhD and he gets appointed as a LA . . . No dishonesty or criminal behaviour there.
Has Mikey ever commented on his Mach 1 burst of fame, ever say he was surprised he was selected over thousands of far more qualified candidates?
Or do he know it was coming.
Fred. | April 29, 2014 at 7:45 pm |
Burst of fame?
Here’s some of what Michael Mann had done before being named LA:
1998 Ph.D. Yale University, Department of Geology & Geophysics (defended 1996)
1993 M.Phil. Yale University, Department of Geology & Geophysics
1991 M.Phil. Yale University, Department of Physics
1991 M.S. Yale University, Department of Physics
1989 A.B. (double), University of California-Berkeley, Applied Math, Physics (Honors)
1998 Council of Graduate Schools’ Distinguished Dissertation Award, nominated
1997 Phillip M. Orville Prize for outstanding dissertation in the earth sciences, Yale University
1996 Alexander Hollaender Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship (DOE)
1989 Josiah Willard Gibbs Prize for outstanding research and scholarship in Physics, Yale University
1996-1999 Patterns of Organized Climatic Variability: Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Globally
Distributed Climate Proxy Records and Long-term Model Integrations, NSF-Earth Systems History [Principal Investigator: R.S. Bradley (U. Mass); Co-Investigators: M.E. Mann, M.K. Hughes] $270,000
1996-1998 Investigation of Patterns of Organized Large-Scale Climatic Variability During the Last
Millennium, DOE, Alexander Hollaender Postdoctoral Fellowship [M.E. Mann] $78,000
1998-00 Contributing author, Chapters 7,8,12, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Third Assessment Report
1997 Co-convener/organizer (w/ E. Cook, H. Pollack, D. Chapman) , theme session “Multiproxy Climate Reconstruction…”, Annual Fall meeting, American Geophysical Union
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/about/cv.php
Looking at the crapload of stuff he’s done since tends to justify the enormous accomplishments recognizing Mann’s ability up to 1998.
Anyone disparaging that academic record has mattress stuffing for brains.
That said, it’s not as if all that accomplishment produced the most tactful, diplomatic, courteous personality.
Maybe you want charm school graduates to do science?
Hey Bart you forgot Michael’s winning of the Nobel Prize. [snicker]
Bart. The real issue is why mann rather than briffa.
And the results of this decision for ar4.
Briffa was given marching orders. Create something more compelling than the HS.
That order created climategate.
Bart R,
It might just illustrate that education doesn’t necessarily instil understanding of the subject matter.
Delusional psychosis can not be cured by talk, and delusion psychotics can appear to be otherwise normal. They may accumulate impressive qualifications, but this merely serves to reinforce their delusions, which may appear extremely convincing to the gullible and easily led.
I don’t believe that my brain is made of mattress stuffing, but if you tell me it is, I won’t argue. I haven’t looked.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Steven Mosher | April 29, 2014 at 10:00 pm |
Then people ought stick to the real issue, instead of feeble, weak, lame, nonsensical objections easily dismissed while making their whole argument seem irrational.
Damage like that can’t be overcome by just bringing up the real issue. It takes substantial effort to erase the bad taste of sour grapes. Which effort is not yet apparent.
Oh.. and about that ‘real issue’: http://deepclimate.org/2010/05/14/how-to-be-a-climate-science-auditor-part-2-the-forgotten-climategate-emails/
There appear to be two different stories here: ClimateAudit’s and DeepClimate’s.
Which one is the skeptical, thorough, thoughtful reader supposed to consider accurate or more nearly true?
I must say, after reading DeepClimate’s reconstruction of what was actually said, I have to admit I have new regard of McIntyre. Not a lot of people have the brass to pull something so enormously deceitful online and carry on after being caught with such apparent teflon disdain for honesty and integrity.
Bart r.
Deep is wrong as usual. As are you.
None of those discussions has anything to do
With overpecks instructions.
None.
Yes, it’s amazing how these people take years to figure out exactly what was said, when and by whom.
If only the parties involved had made these things clear from the outset, and particularly during the numerous inquiries, they could have saved us from all this endless speculation.
Bart R
Reads like a rap sheet.
Max
Bart R said: Burst of fame? Here’s some of what Michael Mann had done before being named LA:
Snip.
And yet his seminal work has been shown to be wrong. Not just a little wrong, but fundamentally bad. Statistical errors, data filtering errors, etc.
You apparently think his reputation should be based on something other than the quality of his work.
Steven Mosher | April 30, 2014 at 2:07 am |
I’ve read a lot of wrong on the Internet. I’m really good at distinguishing for myself wrong from right. Following both DeepClimate and ClimateAudit back up their respective rabbit holes, guess which one turns wrong over and over and over, and which one only turns out to have been assiduous in confirming facts before publishing?
Oh, wait. You’re one of the people here I’d expect to know how to fact check and back check.
If you’ve got some fact check or back check that would turn the information trails upside down, by all means, carry on.
Until then, argument by assertion doesn’t cut it in the face of facts.
phatboy | April 30, 2014 at 2:40 am |
And yet, people said and did what they did. All that due process and ‘personal rights’ crap. We have to deal with it. Because we all get due process and personal rights. Be so much easier if we could just dictate what people do.. but then, would you trade due process and your rights for ‘easy’?
manacker | April 30, 2014 at 2:59 am |
Ah. The true colors of someone who really hates education and equates knowledge with crime.
fizzymagic | April 30, 2014 at 3:39 am |
You mean, asserted to be wrong..
And yet proven to have conclusions that agree with all the work done on the subject ever since, independently, verified, over and over..
And the people who asserted the work was wrong?
Oh, wow.. their assertions amount to a pile of quibbles, plagiarism, factually inaccurate, fabricated, cherry-picked, edited to appear as other than what they originally said, and orchestrated into nothing more than a campaign of disinformation.
This is not new. Science has gone through centuries of people campaigning zealously for their philosophical stances, to the point of such pious frauds as faking blood from statues and rallying mobs to denounce scientists for who they are rather than the content of their research. We know this, and we know it’s up to us to be skeptical of all sides and check for ourselves.
You may buy what Wegman was selling; you may believe in what McIntyre and McKitrick preach, but one by one checking each of their claims against facts, the claims prove to be false, or the arguments fallacy, while what Mann wrote, with all its warts, with all the limitations of what can be said, withstands scrutiny as scientific fact. Even Muller’s contention about what Mann did to ‘Hide the Decline’ omits that in every version of the Hockey Stick graph published with Mann’s involvement, the narrative clearly explains what was added and what was ‘hidden’ and why.
So, McIntyre & McKitrick’s statistical “correction” of two percent of a single curve out of dozens, by less than 2% of its amplitude, not really enough to change the conclusions. Wegman’s plagiarism, inverting the original work of another uncredited author to mislead readers, is nothing but the tombstone marking the end of Wegman’s credibility. And WUWT? Give your head a shake.
Oh. And for comparison:
Ph.D. 1968 – Dissertation, On Estimating a Unimodal Density under the direction of Professor Tim Robertson
M.S. 1967 – Mathematical Statistics
B.S. 1965 – Entered the University of Iowa (USA), Department of Statistics with NDEA Fellowship
Guess what distinguished academic lists NOTHING beyond this in his cv, under academic accomplishments?
There’s nothing wrong with it, by the way. It’s a perfectly nice list of academic accomplishments. It’s pretty usual fare. Few Ph.D.s can say much more about themselves.
I mean, it compares nicely with (guess who?):
1982 Ph.D. The University of Chicago, Geophysical Sciences
1974 B.S. cum laude Northern Illinois University, Geography
The point is, these are pedestrian accomplishments of the academic elite who rise to the level of defending a thesis and being granted letters. They represent the norm. Mann’s credentials _before_ he became an IPCC Lead Author are so head and shoulders above the norm as to leave one slightly agog, if one knows how these things normally look. If you wanted scientific expertise, diligence, and a burning passion for fact and logic, you’d want someone with those credentials, in a field littered with lesser lights.
So it turns out that socially, he’s a bit of a yutz. Science isn’t about personality.
That might look like an impressive resume to a partisan hack, but you have to look at the resumes of those mikey was selected over to get a proper perspective. Do some research and get back to us, Barty.
You are really frantic and struggling today, barty. Attempting to defend the indefensible is rough work. And dirty, too.
Spare me, Bart. Robert Way’s thoughts on the Hockey Stick:
“I don’t think these are minor points. I think they get major points correct. MBH98 was not an example of someone using a technique with flaws and then as he learned better techniques he moved on… He fought like a dog to discredit and argue with those on the other side that his method was not flawed. And in the end he never admitted that the entire method was a mistake. Saying “I was wrong but when done right it gives close to the same answer” is no excuse. He never even said that but I’m just making a point. What happened was they used a brand new statistical technique that they made up and that there was no rationalization in the literature for using it.”
“I’ve been shown before by even climatology profs in my university time that it might be best to stick clear of Mann’s reconstructions until the dust settles (although this debate has been going on for 10 years)”
I looked at your link, but whatever. I do note the DeepClimate censors pretty heavily, so people who take his word for stuff are never going to find out any different. Unlike climateaudit, who never censors except for off-topic. Given that that is so, if he has good points to make, let deepclimate make them at climateaudit, and see if McIntyre can answer there. That’s what Robert Way did for his paper, and defended himself pretty effectively. There is no point in reading someone who has his own imaginary battle in his own private country.
Lovely poll at the end, with three choices:
‘How will Steve McIntyre react to new evidence contradicting his current “trick” narrative concerning IPCC TAR Fig. 2-21?
1) Admit he was in error and apologize to all concerned.
2) Ignore the evidence in the hope it will go away.
3) Change the narrative once again, possibly shifting “blame” back to CRU scientists.’
How about 4) Find an effective counter-argument?
I just can’t be bothered to deal with people who have no consciousness that they can be wrong, or that there is anyone out there but them.
MikeR | April 30, 2014 at 2:34 pm |
Could you supply a citation for “Robert Way’s thoughts”?
Because I’m pretty sure you’ve left out a few salient points.
Of course, it only took about two minutes to realize the passage you cite was hacked from SKS’s moderator’s board back in 2012, and spread around by the typical clientele of hackers in the blogosphere.
And that far from the defense of McIntyre & McKitrick it sounds like, it’s actually a pretty damning indictment, when seen in its whole, and with the surrounding commentary for context.
Sure, McIntyre and McKitrick know, if you want to lie effectively, you should make it sound as much like the truth as possible. They include major points that would be quite effective as a minor censure of Mann’s bad manners and lack of couth. The criticism and error checking of minor points by so many is not inconsequential, on minor points. Heck, many of the minor points criticized were first pointed out by MBH themselves. Science is only improved by such minor corrections, improvements of precision, catching of errors, expansion of oversimplifications, and a degree of censure proportionate to the deficiencies.
But that’s all you can get from the total pile of every bit of complaint about Mann; you cannot call MBH discredited based on all of those censures, in the way Wegman and the various McIntyre & McKitrick retreads are.
And while I doubt the censure is much going to improve Mann’s comportment and demeanor, I’m sure some may see lessons in these exchanges and.. who’m I kidding? Anyone reading all the bafflegab of Wegman, McIntyre and McKitrick not coming out of that vortex of smallminded insufficiency with a confused worldview would have had their crap together before plunging into the mire, anyway.
As for objections about DeepClimate censorship, what of it? I don’t search for starting points based on what the comments policies are, and if I did, I have to point out that it is a complete myth according to multiple sources that ClimateAudit doesn’t censor. Someone who starts and ends all their inquiry with a single web page is no skeptic. Going back to first sources, to original documents, is more than enough to reveal the truth of these matters is far closer to DeepClimate’s version than to ClimateAudit’s.
Oh, and since you seem to forget the point: It would take a McIntyre, a McKitrick, a Pielke Sr., a Curry, and a Wegman put together to equal the academic achievements Michael Mann had before being named Lead Author, ignoring the Ivy League factor. That means it’d also have taken a Jones, a Briffa, a North, a Cowtan and a Way to equal the accomplishment count. While I’m not overly impressed by a long list of credentials, I’m more than satisfied that people whinging about Mann’s qualifications should not be trusted as part of any academic hiring process.
Bart.
The issue that I raised as the real issue was the instruction to Briffa from Overpeck to come up with something more compelling than the HS for Ar4.
You proceed to link to a discussion that NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO with the issue.
1. you are wrong.
2. Deep climate is wrong.
I dont argue with skydragons and I dont argue with morons who never read the mails.
Read the mails.
GC1
GC2
GC3
oh wait, you dont have CG3. pity that. wait. it’s awesome.
Nice work Bart
+ 3.7 E10
one of my favorite numbers
Bart, I guess I’ll leave it alone then. Since you didn’t bother to explain, besides just saying that if someone would read everything they’d know better, I have no idea how you can turn Way’s comments that – well, that Mann’s work was wrong and his results were wrong – into what you keep calling “minor points”. His methods were wrong and indefensible – as Way said. His results cannot be justified – as Way said. I guess you think those are minor points, but some will disagree. Then you list out all the honors he got, pretty much because lots of people wanted to believe his wrong work. So that makes him incredibly qualified in your eyes. But some will disagree.
As for my other point, I can only repeat it. I’ve been following some of these forums for a while, and what you call censoring is almost invisible. If anyone has good points to make, they can make it on climateaudit, or at Lucia’s blog, or here. And some of them have, including Robert Way. It should be obvious that anyone who wants to really convince skeptics ought to do it here. If instead they write long articles to people who will never see the other side, they are not going to convince anyone who isn’t convinced already – and they shouldn’t.
Steven Mosher | May 1, 2014 at 3:00 pm |
G3?
Ever the marketer, trying to interest anyone in the picked over leavings from the picked over leavings of the picked over leavings of something that never lived up to even a shadow of its billing.
Boring. Move on. You’re actually capable of yeoman work on fiddly details of weather stations. Do that. It’s by far the best thing you’ve done.
miker613 | May 1, 2014 at 6:31 pm |
So.. no citation then? No link to original source? No full text of the original?
Nothing that a decent skeptic could call trustworthy, objective or reliable representation of what after all is a remarkable claim?
Nothing that would let a person of average means discern between your claims and invalidly spun deceptions?
And you don’t get why the reception of your claims is tepid?
I know you’re capable of better. Maybe not as capable as Mosher, but we can’t all be.
miker613,
just tell Bart to go find the citation himself, that your not his personal catering service and his interest is not your problem, he will understand completely and go away.
Bart R
WHAT?
You are misquoting me, Barty.
That’s not a nice thing to do.
Makes people think you’re a liar (even if you aren’t).
Truth of the matter is that Mann’s hockey stick was thoroughly discredited even before the “hide the decline” debacle (read Montford’s book for details).
McIntyre and McKitrick showed it was statistically flawed.
Under oath before a congressional committee, the Wegman panel agreed with the assessment of Mc + Mc and added that the claim of unusual 20thC warmth was not supported by Mann’s study.
Again under oath before the same committee, a panel from NAS confirmed that the Wegman assessment was correct.
This is all in the record.
Check it out yourself.
Max
Bart, did you actually want citations? Your statements gave me the impression that you were familiar with them. I first saw them here: http://climateaudit.org/2013/11/20/behind-the-sks-curtain/
But since they are lengthy quotes they are easy to find.
miker613 | May 1, 2014 at 10:26 pm |
When I referred to citations, I was obliquely pointing out that your source would be, could only be, a secondary, purposely manipulated, extract of the text of something maliciously stolen and reproduced solely for the purpose of deceiving readers. There’s no way you can cite the original, so the only point of supplying the text could be to carry on the deception of others.
You really need that explained to you in small words?
Fine.
You’ve been caught in a lie. Give it up.
manacker | May 1, 2014 at 9:25 pm |
You’ll have to be more specific.
I misquote you quite a lot. Takes up all my time. I go around to all my friends, tweeting quotes from you where I change a word or two, put up posts on peoples’ walls where I purposely spell words wrong and say that’s what you wrote, spray graffiti under bridges and tag it to make out you did it.
Why, I imagine, of all people in the world quoting you, I’m the one who does it most of all. More than everyone else who quotes you combined. And I just can’t help but mix your words around every time. But the one thing I always do when I misquote you is, I put quotation marks around your words, the ones I purposely mistake.
That way there’s no doubt I’m not plagiarizing your words, as was clearly and unambiguously shown in the case of Wegman.
So go ahead, link to what the freak you are talking about, if you want people to know just which misquote of you it was, this time.
Or don’t.
I’m sure they can draw their own conclusions.
“When I referred to citations, I was obliquely pointing out that your source would be, could only be, a secondary, purposely manipulated, extract of the text of something maliciously stolen and reproduced solely for the purpose of deceiving readers. There’s no way you can cite the original, so the only point of supplying the text could be to carry on the deception of others…
You’ve been caught in a lie. Give it up.”
As there seems to be no communication possible here, is there anyone else who can explain to me what Bart is talking about? I think the quotes are clear enough, quoted in full at the link I provided. Some of them are several paragraphs long, if you like context. I further note that one can find Robert Way posted numerous comments at that link, complaining that these were damaging quotes to him. He never once suggested that they were misleading in any way, or that he changed his mind later, or that he in any way disagrees with their implications – which were spelled out explicitly by McIntyre at the link.
Bart, you seem to think you’re making some good point, but all you’re doing is convincing me that you are oblivious to facts.
miker613 | May 2, 2014 at 6:14 am |
I was talking about integrity. I see I was hopelessly optimistic to expect you to get it, no matter how small the words.
You’re repeating some of the fragments of stolen correspondences selected in the hopes of damaging the truth, with no regard for the consequences to what people may think of you, or how trust is eroded by such actions and the attitudes behind them. Now, I understand that in a post-Climategate world, a lot of folks don’t really grasp the moral wrong of such spinning and twisting of words, of the win-at-all-costs mentality of black hat propagandists, but I don’t see how that lets you off the hook.
Your actions are creepy in exactly the same way as the crimes of Kody Maxson and Aydin Coban are creepy. They erode trust in exactly the same way as those creeps erode trust. They’re wrong in the same ways. Whatever your motives, what you’ve done is immoral.
And in the end, what is the ultimate upshot of posting stolen, spun words to leave the wrong impression with readers? To support a point even Steven Mosher has acknowledged is the wrong one for your cause. We can easily see how mistaken Fred.’s guileless “ink barely dry” and “Mach 1 burst of fame” and “thousands of more qualified candidates” insinuations were. Mosher wants more guile. You have your marching orders. Stop distracting Mosher’s Big Lie with a mixed and dilute message not on point, or the wheels on Mosher’s propaganda bus will fall off.
And for someone willing to do anything because the ends justify the means, that’s sort of an ultimate immorality.
@bart – You’re repeating some of the fragments of stolen correspondences
There is no evidence they were stolen. You speak of truth, then lie.
Bart, I guess I’ll go and talk to someone else. You just keep right on assuming that everyone really agrees with you. I don’t. I think you’re saying nonsense. I think the quotes are extremely convincing. I think that what you’re saying makes no sense. Since you apparently aren’t going to justify anything you’re saying, aside from describing how wrong it is to disagree with you since you’re right and everyone else is a black hat – I just don’t see the point in the discussion.
miker613 | May 2, 2014 at 1:25 pm |
Straw man, much?
I’ve explained why I’m not going to reward your bad behavior by engaging in discussion of your fruit of the poisoned tree.
Your stuff is unreliable, immorally gotten, and the use of it refuted at great length by the original author, the victim of your immoral actions.
What about the contents, on a topic we all know very well without resorting to invalid arguments about what someone completely unconnected with the original events, could possibly tempt anyone to enter what from the start is an invalid discussion?
I’m factually right? There is no factually right, because your contribution is not even in the world of facts to be wrong about. Your contribution is simply creepy.
Ah yes, the moral high ground fallacy…
btw for those paying attention, that was me drawing my own conclusion on that last point by St Bart.
John Carpenter | May 2, 2014 at 2:19 pm |
It’s only a fallacy when it’s invalid. And you misidentify; in this case, it’s the Low Moral Ground argument: Mike R’s ongoing dilution of Steve Mosher’s “Marching Orders” Big Lie fails on “Ends Justify the Means” morality.
It’s not that it’s not high moral ground, it’s that it isn’t even the lowest dregs of moral swampland.
Moreover, fruit of the poison tree validates my case. We can’t rely on Mike R’s citation because the citation is so invalidated by its origins that any argument relying on that premise is false.
When I appeal to people to draw their own conclusions, I’m heartened if they do. I’m happier if they do it with something more resembling reason than your attempts have yet to muster.
Keep trying. One day, you’ll get there.
There are online courses in the fundamentals of reasoning that might help you out.
Thanks for being a bright spot on the comments section.
“Your actions are creepy….”
“Whatever your motives, what you’ve done is immoral.”
“Your contribution is simply creepy.”
Bart, you invalidly claimed the moral high ground with these comments to miker613. You are in no position to make these judgments. You misunderstood what I said. It’s ok. Oh, and thanks for your concern over my reasoning ability… or disability as it were. That means a lot to me, you are so kind to point me in the right direction. You must sleep well at night knowing you do such good in the world. Thank you Bart.
John Carpenter | May 2, 2014 at 5:53 pm |
Also not a fallacy when it’s the conclusion of a rational argument developed from entirely valid premises.
Those courses in logic, did you want.. citations?
Here, start with http://www.coursera.org and try out:
/course/intrologic or similar, for example.
Then move up to something like:
/specialization/reasoning/8?utm_medium=catalogSpec or
/course/criticalthinking or
/course/reasonandpersuasion or
/course/thinkagain
I’m sure you’ll love the chance to move forward.
philjourdan | May 5, 2014 at 10:20 am |
No evidence?
Wrong again, but at least consistent.
SkS has a lengthy series analyzing the logs of the theft by someone who set up an account under then name ‘dieter’ (hence, they call him ‘the German’), then increased his permissions by exploiting multiple obscure weaknesses in the system, persistently and with signs of obvious practice cracking until he had root control, erasing his steps as he went to cover his tracks.
Any competent security analyst would be able to confirm this was a theft, if he only looked. Heck, even http://rankexploits.com/musings/2014/timeline-sks-forum/ says so, shooting down the frankly lame “but was it a leak” meme the soft-on-crime set embrace so frequently.
@bart – I already told you that I do not put stock into what neo n@zis say. So I do not CARE for the OPINION of SS. And that is all their spiel is about since THEY DO NOT KNOW either. Really bart, are you contemptuous of learning?
If you have evidence they were stolen, present it. I said no evidence. Even the Authorities have no evidence. They were released, that we know. Were they leaked? Were they stolen? We just don’t know.
Next time you call someone a liar, I suggest you bring some facts. As it is, all you have done is hand wave and issue another sad petty childish ad hominem to add to your list of failures.
philjourdan | May 6, 2014 at 7:46 am |
What a thing to call Lucia and her Blackboard.
If it’d happened to your clients’ files on your watch as an infosec guy, and you called it a “release” and all that other bafflegab defense of crooks, they’d be right to fire you for cause.
Heck, for some clients, just what you’ve said about this theft in support of the crooks would be enough cause for dismissal.
Your soft on crime attitude gives you away.
@bart – last I checked BlackBoard did not start with the initials SS. But then you may be having trouble reading smarter like I advised.
Read smarter. Reading harder is not helping you.
What an atrocity. How many have suffered due to this policy setting phenomenon. How many trillions of dollars have been tossed into the abyss as a direct result of this transgression. Snake Oil salesman in the modern world, right before your eyes and deserving of a global class action law suit IMHO.
+ 1000
Pingback: The “Mannifestation” of climate science | The View From Here
As with the tree ring data of the 1960’s, I say the IPCC too, should
be truncated.
beththeserf,
A jolly good dose of defenestration is what they need.
Do them the world of good!
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
“As with the tree ring data of the 1960′s, I say the IPCC too, should
be truncated”
I’ll go out on a limb dear Beth, and agree there’s much more than a twig of truth in what you say.
Though there be some, dear pokerguy, who can’t seem ter see
the woods fer the trees.
I like Steyn’s reference to Mikey as the “very ringmaster of the tree ring circus”
That conjures up some images pg. )
pokerguy,
I believe that the Treering Circus will shortly be featuring The Climate Clowns for a short season. I believe that two Bearded Balding Babblers will appear, and amaze the audience with feats of Juggling Figures, Splicing Sticks and Trees, and Upside Down Reading.
They will be ably supported by the Brilliant Bearded Bengali Bollywood Buffoons – you’ll laugh till you cry, and then cry some more.
But be quick – the Treering Circus is coming to an end. The audience figures are dropping, and the critics no longer sing the same paeans of praise as in the past.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
What is needed is an inquiry like the one currently underway in Australia that is exposing corruption throughout the main political parties. The inquiry is being conducted by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). The Premier of NSW has resigned in the past week or so and widespread corruption is being exposed. Have a look a the site here: http://www.icac.nsw.gov.au/ Google ICAC to see the many media reports. Parliamentarians are being forced to resign left, right and centre.
Australia is also conducting a Royal Commission into union corruption and it is likely to investigate alleged serious fraud by Julia Gillard, Prime Minister from 2010 to 2013.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/who-knows-pm-julia-gillard-is-under-investigation/story-e6frg6z6-1226630319702
http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2014/02/julia-gillard-is-under-police-investigation-for-fraud-the-chief-magistrate-ruled-her-legal-work-was-.html
I’d suggest a UN ICAC. The first investigation should be into the whole IPCC process and the climate scientists who alledgely have been involved in wrongdoing.
Peter Lang,
The problem is who would appoint such a commission internationally. There is very little interest in looking at the sausage factory that is “climate science,” your government being a rare exception. Any investigative body appointed by the progressive governments (or the IPCC) would be like Penn State investigating Michael Mann. Any such commission formed by one or more conservative governments (of the few that exist) would be ignored by the IPCC and the rest of the tribe.
Good idea in theory, but I’m afraid it doesn’t have much chance practically. The progressives don’t see any need to investigate anything. And conservatives have no power to do so on the international stage.
This would only work if there were enough western governments headed by conservatives. But at that point, it would no longer be necessary. They would just implement the Curry Plan – put the IPCC out of our misery.
GaryM,
I agree. But there must be some way to investigate and expose in well constituted forum. It’s got to happen one day. Sometime in the future that will almost certainly be investigations into how we wasted so much money on such a poorly justified cause.
In search of an Honest Mann.
Regardin’ this post’s opening para …
“Ya gotta am -put -tate the negative,
latch on ta the affirm -at -tive …
don’t mess with tree rings in between.” –
Oh and do u remember that – oh – so – selective – bristle – cone
– data, such a teeny-tiny sample when thirty-four -living – core –
samples jest around the cor -ner in Yamal gave a VERY
different result … enuff ter make yer bristle? Tsk!
beth – the – serf.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/02/ross-mckitrick-sums-up-the-yamal-tree-ring-affair-in-the-financial-post/
The assessment of Mann is over a decade late and again is obviously incomplete. Mann was and always was a political activist first and dodgy is an understatement regarding many practices as if tree rings were the secret formula of Coke-Cola.
So it was and is partisan junk science which is standard for the self-appointed “consensus” hockey team. Acknowledge the partisan framing of the consensus AGW activist science for what it is directly, name the political associations of the core members of the movement and admit that it was, obviously, the primary driver of the movement and science conclusions fabricated before the first paper was submitted. Anything less is in part obfuscation and why mix and soften words?; IT’S A FORM OF DISHONESTY as well. It’s far more important to assign the proper motives to rogue behavior because the ideological agenda are really far more horrible then “misrepresentation” of a propaganda graph in a propaganda publication; IPCC 2001. “Why” they misrepresent in the name of “science” is really more relevant at this stage.
Making stuff up really is the secondary attribute to alarmist activity, the primary evil is a totalitarian inclination being rationalized and supported by a process that is “anti-science” from the start. No empirical, audited “proof” of the hypothesis exists after billions in pork barrel crony efforts. Mann is a symptom while the disease isn’t discussed directly by key participants and yes, Dr. Curry, that means you. You remain loyal to a political peer group is my primary explanation for this detachment to the central question of green authority through marginal if not dishonest academic consensus power politics. Mann is a left-wing activist and ideologue to a point he can only be dismissed as a member of the science community, just say it directly and relate to the broader standard of the “consensus” and who and why this culture dominates climate academia. That would be called honesty.
More marginalized skepticism as if this was provocative.
Careful, you could be sued for definition of character.
It just strikes me when the so called “dissent” simultaneously protects all trappings of academic authority, mutual respect for other “scientists” regardless of how politicized, agenda driven and rouge they obviously are. If AGW were a conservative movement she wouldn’t apply these standards at all so it is hypocrisy.
They were for the consensus before they voted against it.
As if wars were won by conscientious objectors. Dr. Curry is upset she gets trashed by these people on Twitter but doesn’t seriously object to perpetual limbo of framing AGW debates on their protocol and protecting their political I.D. If the warming filter is what many people say whose politics are personally objectionable how is it “science” to deny the reality because it forces you to leave your political peers? Dr. Curry will only go so far no matter what a tool like Mann might say. It illustrates the cult nature of the climate tribe.
I don’t think she will ever fess up even if the greenshirts are about to throw her into a volcano as “denier” punishment. Now that is political loyalty.
GaryM,You are correct!
CWAN14, You are not the Mann!
This is an amazing post! It should be required reading for the APS panel that Christy, Curry and Lindzen participated in.
Agreed! It certainly should get a lot more attention than it will get, unfortunately.
Hmmmm. Is John Christy looking to be the next victim of Michael Mann’s litigiousness?
Note that Mann is not mentioned by name in Christy’s write-up except as part of the identifier of a ClimateGate email. He who must not be named.
Judith asked: “How did Michael Mann become a Lead Author on the TAR?”
Here’s my guess (and only a guess).
Mann submitted Mann et al 1998 in May 1997 (curiously within a couple of days of the submission of Briffa’s reconstruction with the decline). On October 14, 1997, while MBH98 was still unpublished, he gave a presentation at the UK Met Office in Exeter. Chris Folland, the Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC chapter, was then at the UK Met Office. And, Houghton, of course, had been a former Director General, with a relationship that continues to this day. My surmise is that Folland and/or Houghton were impressed by Mannian statistics and took the initiative in appointing him as a Lead Author over many other much more experienced candidates.
Sounds like a very feasible explanation.
Hence the need for an ICAC style body to investegate wrongdoings. If not at the UN level than in countries like USA and UK for a start.
IACC: http://www.icac.nsw.gov.au/
See my comment above: http://judithcurry.com/2014/04/29/ipcc-tar-and-the-hockey-stick/#comment-536504
If it happened like Steve suggests, I’ll guess that some of the ‘more experienced candidates’ were mightily pissed off by the appointment of newly minted Dr. Mann to a position they were expecting to take themselves.
Is it possible to reconstruct who they were and what their reactions were?
I’d also guess that some of them found themselves needing to work with the newcomer on AR4. How did that go? From what we know of Dr Mann’s way of working with other colleagues, it is unlikely to have been all milk and honey.
Steve,
In 1997, the Met Office was in Bracknell, Berkshire, about 150 miles from Exeter. The organisation relocated to Exeter in 2003.
What do we need? – A hockey stick!
When do we need it? – Now!
Why do we need a hockey stick? – To make the troops
kow -tow!
Richard Betts
This was my article ‘The long slow thaw’ from December 2011 depicting CET as graphed against the Hockey Stick and the work of Hubert Lamb.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/12/01/the-long-slow-thaw/
Figure 4 shows the hockey stick. Figure 2 the IPCC depiction based on Lambs earlier work.
Here is the hockey stick shown against the background of annual, decadal and 50 year CET and also glacier movements.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/clip_image010.jpg
it is taken from my article here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/16/historic-variations-in-temperature-number-four-the-hockey-stick/
Glaciers appear to advance and retreat and instrumental/observed real world temperatures from CET showing considerable extremes can come and go, but the Hockey Stick depiction sails serenely on barely deviating for hundreds of years until the sudden surge in modern times caused by placing a highly variable instrumental record on top of a more static paleo record.
After 18 months of further research (much of it at the excellent Met Office library) I am compiling the data for the period 1180 to 1450. It is entitled ‘tranquility, transition and turbulence,’ and as the name suggests I found considerable evidence of a break down in the relatively settled weather of the MWP with notable extremes of climate during the transition period towards the (poorly named) LIA .
Dr Mann- contrary to frequent assertions-did believe in the MWP and LIA, but saw them as less extreme and more geographically limited than had hitherto been supposed. This has coloured the views of past climate of a whole generation of scientists (including the Met Office) and environmentalists. A depiction based on the evidence available at the time and that has come to light since, seems to indicate that our traditional view of a considerably fluctuating climate during these epochs, that was very widespread (but probably didn’t always extend simultaneously to every part of the globe) was basically correct.
Lower resolution 50 year or 125 year paleo depictions based on novel proxies will show a very different picture to the daily, annual and decadal weather that exists in the real word. This can be seen here
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/clip_image0041.jpg
Dr Mann’s hockey stick showed very considerable error bars. It is clear the stick would have been more representative if it had made better use of the extremes they show.
tonyb
tony b,
CE’s resident oracle, kim, got it right on the 22nd of October, 2013,
with the following insight … ‘Beware the millennial at your perennial.’
Nobody was misled who didn’t want to be misled.
A very damning narrative. I cannot fathom how anyone would use Briffa as a supporting study of the Mann Hockey stick. Yet I see people all the time doing it. I doubt Briffa would even concur given the contortions his stick has endured.
Hee-hee.
Every subsequent report that doesn’t include the hockey stick – or
the Himalayan pay-for enviro report is part of the self repudiating IPCC.
What will they retract next?
“Self-repudiating…”
More like self licking.
Oh, yeah – I forgot the .2C per decade guarantee.
There are a lot of LA’s, not all are the Mann-type character and are ‘quietly’ getting on with the job. Mann seems like a convenient bogey mann, does the description work with all the other hard working scientists?
HR, that’s a good question. Unfortunately, it’s one we could only truly answer by carefully reading through the entire IPCC report and referring to the literature. That’s a tall order.
That said, we could catch some of the more obvious examples (Michael Mann in TAR, Richard Tol in AR5) by looking for sections which depend heavily upon work by a lead author and examining only those. That wouldn’t take anywhere near as long, and it might give at least some idea how far the problem extends. I’m betting it wouldn’t turn up much. I suspect most cases of bias from lead authors are less obvious and severe.
The biggest problem is that the vast majority of published studies are wrong (see e.g. Ionnides, Amgen/Bayer work, climategate, et al). Since there isn’t any grant money for replication, no one ever checks anyone else’s work. Most scientific assessments are ridiculous structures built on false ‘facts’.
Stan, I agree 100%. Mark Twain said:
“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
Stan: The biggest problem is that the vast majority of published studies are wrong (see e.g. Ionnides,
Ioannidis gets a figure of about 40% for medical journals. Reviews of the psych literature get a figure closer to 50%.
JC mentions that the AR5 WG3 problem is somehow related. Actually it seems opposite, because in their SPM it was a case of the policymakers getting in the way of the experts saying what they wanted to. The policymakers tend to work in favor of the skeptics when it comes to SPMs, by suppressing the expert conclusions that might lead to unfavorable policies to some countries or adding uncertainty to delay any policy. The experts have every reason to complain about the IPCC SPM process as Stavins did because it waters down their opinions in a motivated non-expert way.
And why is that issue confined only to AR5, exactly ?
The problem with alarmists is that they are not able or willing even to glance at the very thing which is at the centre of all their concerns: changes in the world’s climate.
The hockey stick for them is like the leg-length tablecloth for the most puritanical of Victorian households. It helps to avert the eyes from the unmentionable.
In a political process, what makes anyone think that the “dirty tricks” of the Nixon administration aren’t playing a role in the subsequent Democratic, Republican, and now Obama administration?
“The policy makers clearly wrought havoc in context of the AR5 WG3 report; however there is a more insidious problem particularly with the WG1 scientists in terms of conflict of interest and the IPCC Bureau in terms of stacking the deck to produce the results that they want.”
This behavior may be egregious, unfair, unethical and down right malicious, what makes one think that Obama is any different than Richard Nixon? Cut from the same cloth. Deliberately insulated from a reality that shows him in a negative light. Obama is Richard Nixon’s dirty trick successor. We have 2.5 more year of him.
Reading this, I had a kind of malaise come over me. You have an issue that is off in the haze, and it become politicized as a certainty by some. I found nothing surprising at all reading John Christy’s comments, but somehow I feel confident he is a supporter of truth seeking. It seems to me, in various ways, and perhaps for various reasons, Science is being subjugated to other purposes. It’s not only Climate Science, String Theory has that same feel to it. Of course, politics has and probably always will.
The Hockey Stick has been confirmed by multiple other studies while John Christys satellite data was needing correction. The follow up to the UEA emails showed that episode to be nothing more than a propoganda campaign by deniers of science. Sad that some people prefer propoganda.
Eric,
I like propaganda. Particularly when it is spelled correctly. What’s wrong with that?
Warmists also like propaganda. They have to. They don’t have any facts to support their Warmist fantasies, do they? If you have no facts, how else can you keep up the flow of money? Propaganda! Distortion, evasion, half truth, obfuscation, pal review, false claims, data manipulation . . .
It seems to have worked on you. You’re probably convinced the world is warming.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Care to share those multiple studies with us? I am always open to being persuaded by good science.
Can’t stop laughing that with all of Mann’s underhanded practices he has the audacity to label anyone other than himself a “denialist”.
The board alarmists aren’t really trying here – they’re content-free protestations seem half-hearted. The tide really does seem to have turned. When the “consensus” is that the alarmists will fudge just about any data to further their religion errrrr cause, truth be damned, it’s very hard to overcome.
The realists at least had truth on their side to counter the fantasists during the dark, non-science days of the hockey stick’s short-lived respectability.
On the IPCC process, I recommend reading ”
Climate Assessment Oligarchy – The IPCC”
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/climate-oligarchy/
An extract reads
“An oligarchy is a
“form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few.”
This definition certainly fits with the IPCC.
I concluded that post with the text
“Without new scientists leading the IPCC process as LAs and CLAs, the next IPCC report is doomed to continue to be completed by an oligarchy that is using its privileged position to advocate for a particular perspective on the role of humans within the climate system [the third hypothesis above]. The next IPCC report will not be a balanced assessment, but continue to be policy advocacy in the guise of a scientific framework.”
The recent WG1 IPCC report certainly did not change their role as an oligarchy.
Read and further recommended.
Roger A. Pielke Sr.
Thanks for the link to your very pertinent article on the IPCC oligarchy.
It’s just as true today as it was 5 years ago.
Max
Strong brave words Dr. Curry. You may find yourself farther on the outside than you think. Such results are hardly without precedent and I worry a bit when you comment so directly about scientific facts which point against the not-so-hidden political agenda of the IPCC. You are completely correct though so in time you will be vindicated for writing this.
30:1
O/T Breaking News:
Greens Party of Canada changes policy to support nuclear power.
https://www.greenparty.ca/new-members/topic/288970
Is this the beginning?
When will the other anti-nuke stop their denial of nuclear power?
Likewise, when will Greenpeace, WWF, Greens parties in other countries stop resisting to progress?
When will all those who would like to be called ‘Progressives’ stop blocking progress?
Peter Lang
Good news!
But I’m still waiting for the bumper stickers saying: “Atomkraft, Ja bitte!”
Max
Then there is the USA where the Dimowits and environmentalists continue to keep us in the stone age.
From the article:
Nuclear technology supplier Babcock & Wilcox (B&W) has slashed funding for its Generation mPower program, an effort to develop a small modular reactor (SMR) for power generation and other applications. The pullback represents a major blow to the development of SMRs, which have been hailed as the next step forward for the nuclear power industry.
B&W, which had a cost-sharing agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and a reactor construction contract with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), has cut funding for the program from $60 million to $80 million per year to less than $15 million, let go the head of the mPower unit, and will lay off up to 200 employees who worked in Tennessee and Virginia on the project. The TVA mPower reactors were to be built at the Clinch River site in northern Tennessee, once slated to be the home of the similarly ill-fated Clinch River Breeder Reactor, which itself was terminated in the 1980s after around $8 billion in investment. Clinch River has become the place where nuclear power innovation goes to die.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/pikeresearch/2014/04/28/mpower-pullback-stalls-small-nuclear/
Jim 2
Thanks for that link. Indeed, that is bad news. I’d blame the Obama administration, especially John Holdren, as well as the many anti-nuke activists for this.
Of course and many of us realise, the same people who say they want the world to cut GHG emissions are also the anti nuke activists.
Little progress is going to be made in cutting global GHG emissions until nuclear power is significantly cheaper than fossil fuels, can be built and brought on line as quickly and is widely available. Small and medium size economies like Australia would have difficulty incorporating the >1GW scale plants like the AP1000 into our grid. We really need the SMR’s. But we won’t risk investing in them until they have a clear economic advantage over new fossil fuel plants. I suspect that is unlikely to happen until the USA removes its impediments to the development of low cost nuclear technologies.
The Obama administration is the thrombosis holding back world progress, in more was than just nuclear power.
SMRs are one of the pillars of future base load. In the US, the lunatics are in charge of the asylum, and I’m afraid the Dimowits have been and in the long run will continue to be successful buying votes by giving away other peoples money as “benefits.” The Dimowits are the ones getting the benefits. Their constiuents are getting screwed in a subtle manner in that they are becoming dependent on the government and losing self respect and standard of living. One must always keep in mind that about half the population has an IQ below 100.
Jim2, I believe that you are incorrect when you say that only half of the US population has less than 100 IQ points. As evidence that this statement is incorrect, I recommend reading “The Bell Curve”. Furthermore, the reason for “free” contraception is to eliminate this problem. And finally, any use of IQ points in any discussion is racist!
If we are going off-topic, how about the BBC article at http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27202192 . Extracts:
Subsiding land is a bigger immediate problem for the world’s coastal cities than sea level rise, say scientists. In some parts of the globe, the ground is going down 10 times faster than the water is rising, with the causes very often being driven by human activity. Decades of ground water extraction saw Tokyo descend two metres before the practice was stopped. …
Gilles Erkens from the Deltares Research Institute, in Utrecht, in the Netherlands, said parts of Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok and numerous other coastal urban settlements would sink below sea level unless action was taken. His group’s assessment of those cities found them to be in various stages of dealing with their problems, but also identified best practice that could be shared.
“Land subsidence and sea level rise are both happening, and they are both contributing to the same problem – larger and longer floods, and bigger inundation depth of floods,” Dr Erkens told BBC News. “The most rigorous solution and the best one is to stop pumping groundwater for drinking water, but then of course you need a new source of drinking water for these cities. But Tokyo did that and subsidence more or less stopped, and in Venice, too, they have done that.”
The famous City of Water in north-east Italy experienced major subsidence in the last century due to the constant extraction of water from below ground. When that was halted, subsequent studies in the 2000s suggested the major decline had been arrested.
The article reports subsidence of 6-100mm/year. The latter puts “Shock Horror” tales of 2-3mm/year sea-level rise in perspective.
Interesting that Conservation is getting a run on the BBC. I thought they only did Environmentalism. Worm turning?
Outstanding comment. Doing just a little research, it was obvious to me that subsidence had a significant role in some coastal regions. And yet very little is ever said about its role. It is heartening that this factor is getting some attention.
Folks, you can moan and groan about this being “rehashed” just as AR5 is being released, but that does not change the fact that the testimony by John Christy on the broken IPCC process, which led to the inclusion of the broken (and later fully discredited) Mann hockey stick, is just as pertinent today as it was a few years ago.
The IPCC forced consensus process is not only broken, it is corrupt.
And it has not changed over the years.
Max
PS Many thanks to our hostess for posting this, just to remind us of the underlying IPCC problem as we ponder the recently released AR5 stuff.
Dr Christy doesn’t explain the actual composition of the Lead Author panel for Chapter 2 of TAR WG1.
As Steve McIntyre mentions above, C.K. Folland was one of the 2 ‘Co-ordinating Lead Authors’ for that chapter, the other being T.R.Karl. I presume that both took overall responsibility for the contents of the chapter.
There were 8 ‘Lead Authors’ working under the leadership of Folland and Karl: J.R.Christy, R.A.Clarke, G.V.Gruza, J.Jouzel, M.E.Mann, J Oerlemans, M.J.Salinger and S.-W. Wang. It would be interesting to know how the writing and editing tasks were allocated among the members of the Lead Author team.
Among the approximately 140 individuals listed as ‘Contributing Authors’ for Chapter 2 are: P.Jones, D.Parker, R. Bradley, K.R.Briffa, M.K.Hughes, M.Hulme, D.Karoly, J.Overpeck, L.Thompson, K.Trenberth and H.von Storch. Jones and Parker are included in a shortlist of 10 Contributing Authors at the head of the main alphabetical list, which suggests their contribution may have been considered more important.
I understand that Dr Curry has on occasion been a Contributing Author for an IPCC WG1 report chapter. She might be able to throw some light on how much influence these lower grades could have on the final product.
Dear John (and Judy).
Thankyou for this post. For further insight in to the influence of the stick, check out the climate wars:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_1wAQJi_YU
Begin at 33.35 and go to 39.45
I believe that even if it is warmer now than at any time during the past 1000 years, it does not mean anything in particular with regards to emissions because of the basic scientific truth that correlation does not equal correlation unless it is supported by basic statistics (the BBC program above grudgingly admits there is likely to be a lot more variance than the original hockey stick implied, but only after it attempts to brain wash you).
And people wonder why science is going down the drain? The public purse dishes out lots of money for this? Shame.
The BBC made a big thing of the Republicans trying to emphasize uncertainty, but totally failed to point out that maybe the IPCC is downplaying uncertainty.
The consensus see the battle as Science vs Vested Interests, but the reality is surely more subtle than that.
Pingback: IPCC TAR and the hockey stick | vuurklip
Our hostess writes “The IPCC process is clearly broken, and I don’t see anything in their recent policies that addresses the problems that Christy raises. The policy makers clearly wrought havoc in context of the AR5 WG3 report; however there is a more insidious problem particularly with the WG1 scientists in terms of conflict of interest and the IPCC Bureau in terms of stacking the deck to produce the results that they want.”
Could it be, or am I dreaming in Technicolor, but might it be that out hostess is finally realising that CAGW is a hoax?
Jim
Hoax is a very strong word. I think there has been group think and many blind alleys but I don’t do conspiracy theories and to claim AGW is a hoax is to buy into that meme.
I think noble cause corruption comes into it, as do people defending their position, as do politics and an over reliance on a belief in powerful scientists and their work, which has caused many people to hesitate about speaking out and challenging the theories.
That over respect is summed up in this Moroccan Proverb;
‘if at noon he says it is night, will you say; behold, the stars?’
tonyb
@Tonyb – just curious. But when do you see “noble cause corruption” becoming a hoax? That is not to say I think this is a hoax, but I am curious as to when it crosses the line.
The CAGW thing is a bit like the Crusade thing. Long after the last chaotic expeditions, it was still standard to preach and promote Crusade. You didn’t just say: “Nuh. Not goin’ east no more.”
The sexiness factor and need to transcend everyday life stays; conventional piety and face-saving can go on for centuries after action has ceased; bureaucracies and other institutions can’t just disappear; rich activist organisations like the Templars and Greenpeace need time to change their focus.
Eco-hypocrisy is as old as Rousseau but most people who believe in CAGW, give or take the C, are as about as sincere as I am. I can list a few hypocrisies of my own – just not that one!
I’d say for a skepo like me climate alarmism is just a strong need to understand, control and trust in an area where those things are not realistic aspirations.
Tony, you write “Hoax is a very strong word”
I agree, and I use it advisedly. It is obvious to me that it is impossible to use The Scientific Method in order to try and establish that CAGW is any more than a hypothesis; as I have discussed interminably. This must have been obvious to the people who originally started CAGW; they are far better qualified that I am. They must have known that it was essential to show that, whatever scientific approach they used to investigate CAGW, this approach was suitable to show that CAGW is something other than a hypothesis. They did not. Instead they pretended that the approach used was the equivalent of The Scientific Method. It is not.
These people never addressed these issues at all. That is why I claim CAGW is a hoax.
It becomes a hoax when anyone knowingly overstates their case.
There is a lot of that coming from pols as well as climate scientists and blog commenters.
Andrew
It’s also hoaxish when people respond to climate science issues with poetry, bad philosophy, name calling, appeals to doctors, evolution, gravity…etc.
Andrew
Phil
The reason people act in the way they do is caused by a variety of factors. I was merely saying that noble cause corruption is one of a number of powerful motivators to see and do things in a certain way and perhaps slant information one way rather than another.
I would not equate that to a hoax which is a deliberate and persistent attempt to mislead often by creating fase information
Tonyb
@TonyB – I understand your point, and do not want to infer that you think should XY&Z happen, that this will become a Hoax.
So perhaps a rephrasing may be more useful. Can a “corruption” of a noble cause become a Hoax? I am merely curious.
Phil
Hmmm, we are getting into Joshua scale semantics here.
I had meant it as a noun
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/hoax
It’s obviously not malicious as its ‘noble.’
As a verb, are climate scientists deliberately perpetrating a trick or deception? They don’t see it as deception as they believe the science, so
few are deliberately intending to deceive.
However, as a verb Jim Might have a point if he believes that there has been a deliberate intention to deceive. ‘mikes nature trick’ comes to mind.
However I do not believe climate science in general is perpetrating some sort of a giant and elaborate hoax.
I think you need to get Joshua in to adjudicate whether as a verb an admittance of a trick might be a hoax.
Tonyb
@TonyB – Sorry, I guess we are getting too far into semantics. I was merely curious as to when a noble cause could become a hoax. IN other words, the “cause” is corrupted not by the believers, but by those who see it as a way to enrich themselves. Believers will always think of their cause as noble. But that does not mean everyone will.
Rather ‘if at noon he says it is bright, we will keep it out somehow; even if we have to re-define what the peer-review literatue is’.
Some people defend the hockey stick at the same time as using the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age to estimate climate sensitivity:
http://climatechangenationalforum.org/cause-and-effect-by-scott-denning/
There was more ice extent on earth in the warm times and there was less ice extent on earth in the cold times. The warm times put more vapor pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere and the cold times suck it back into the oceans.
These principles are so simple it is silly they get all this backwards. They make it cold to add ice. Mother Nature adds ice to make it cold. It snows more in warm times when more ocean is thawed. It snow less in cold times when more ocean is frozen. The more ice extent follows a warm period with more snowfall. The less ice extent FOLLOWS a cold period with less snowfall.
It really is this simple and the Consensus Climate People don’t know.
They really don’t even suspect.
I call them people and not scientists because one must be skeptical to be a real scientist.
There was more ice extent on earth in the warm times and there was less ice extent on earth in the cold times.
I said this backwards to see if anyone really reads.
Below is the correct wording.
There was less ice extent on earth in the warm times and there was more ice extent on earth in the cold times.
To control earth temperature with a trace gas is something that is not believable for this engineer.
To control earth temperature, you use something that is abundant. You use water, in all of its states.
Water, Water Vapor, Ice, Clouds of Water and Ice are used to control the temperature of earth.
Not a man-made fraction of a trace gas.
The temperature that Polar Sea Ice Melts and Freezes does provide the SET POINT for Earth’s Temperature.
Cold times always follow warm times because it Snows much more when Polar Waters are not Frozen.
Warm times always follow cold times because it Snows much less when Polar Waters are Frozen.
It really is this simple.
Water vapour is under attack from the consensus, they say its feeble because it condenses, unlike CO2. Yes it condenses, but it also evaporates, and I don’t really get the argument.
BREAKING NEWS
Climate-Change Denialism is Dumb!
• CO2/greenhouse physics is affirmed; and
• The earth is in sustained energy imbalance; and
• The oceans keep heating, the sea-levels keep rising, polar ice keeps melting, CO2-levels keep rising … all without pause or obvious limit; and
• Hockey-stick “blades” keep lengthening … without pause or obvious limit; and
• Moral and economic concerns keep increasing … also without pause or obvious limit; and
• Big Carbon astro-turfing and politician-buying *ALSO* keeps increasing … *ALSO* without pause or obvious limit.
Denialism’s Desperate Response Let’s obsess over decade-old emails from *one* climate-researcher!
Conclusion The ending of “the thermosphere pause” in 2014 portends the rational demise of climate-change skepticism, and the political demise of climate-change denialism.
That’s common-sense, eh Climate Etc readers?
Fan
Please name a single person who denies that the climate changes.
You seem to believe you know how it is changing now and will change in the future, but when asked to verify your beliefs, you are unable. Yes, the climate changes-adapt to it.
Rob Starkey, from reading WUWT it seems Anthony Watts believes climate does not change. His blog is a stream of articles saying nothing is different between present and past climate.
Eric
While I frequently disagree with Anthony Watts, I assume you realize that you are mis-stating his position. His position is that there is not reliable evidence that the climate is changing negatively due to humans emitting CO2.
Wrong question by Rob Starkey, right answer by FOMD:
That’s why Michael Mann’s (strongly validated) “Hockey Stick Blade” and Judith Curry’s (unvalidated) “Stadium Wave” both are peripheral to the fundamental scientific understanding of climate-change as well as the fundamental moral and economic implications of climate-change science.
Best wishes for your continued study of climate-change science, Rob Starkey!
Poor Fan- Typical of your comments.
Another wordy response that fails to provide the answer to the question. You can’t show a single person who does not believe in climate-change.
You simply BELIEVE that the climate is changing differently than it would have if humans were not emitting CO2 and that those changes are negative for humanity overall.
I am skeptical that the evidence supports your beliefs.
What is the evidence that the climate is worse for humanity overall (or for the USA) now than it was 50 or 100 years ago?
Rob Starkey, I don’t believe I am mis-stating Mr. Watts opinion. I have read many articles on his blog claiming no change in climate, specifically when looking at the last 100 or so years.
Fan, Eric, please explain these “other” temperature excursions throughout the Holocene, what caused them, etc and why you think the last 60 years of high frequency, high resolution data is relevant?
http://imgur.com/QkhlO93 or for a better pic
http://imgur.com/BKaEalG
Breaking news! Ad hominems are dumb
I hope folks click through to FAN’s links, they show a brilliant new strategy since March. It used to be that every mention of Koch had the dollar figure they were spending on elections- $30 million.
Google Koch $30 million for countless examples of the genre.
But now they stopped mentioning the dollar figure. If you’re wondering why, it’s because Tom Steyer is offering $100 million to back AGW fanatics (not that any Dems are dumb enough to run on the issue this fall.).
So keep that in mind when you read about the all-powerful influence of money: the AGW fanatics believe their message is “overwhelmed” by spending that is less than a third of theirs.
Meanwhile, FAN, it looks like “the young” keep getting less and less enthralled with the progressive world view. I had hopes that the information age would overcome the indoctrination, looks like that’s panning out: http://www.businessinsider.com/poll-millenials-have-historically-low-levels-of-trust-in-government-2014-4
Christy, McIntyre, Mosher and Curry are doing their part to put the message out that Mann’s methods were not robust. This can only help Steyn as evidence like this dating before the article will add credence to his article.
Hopefully more scientists will chip in on this blog and other places to back them up
‘not robust’ = “fraud”???
Steyn is in deep do-do
fraud (frɔːd) —n: 1. deliberate deception, trickery, or cheating intended to gain an advantage: 2. an act or instance of such deception: 3. something false or …
If Mann intentionally used non-robust methods to get others to accept his beliefs it may well be considered fraud. The key is whether he was doing it intentionally or if he was a just bad scientist in this case.
.
Hmmm, quibbling over words, or doing science.
What would a sceptic do?
“What would a sceptic do?”
A true skeptic would seek the truth of the situation by following reliable evidence. Was Mann a bad scientist or did he intend to mislead others intentionally?
Shouldn’t everyone be skeptical until the data justifes otherwise???
You are a fraud, mikey. Sue me.
Michael
We’ll see whether or not the court decides that Steyn (or maybe Mann) is “in deep do-do”, Michael.
Max
Michael,
You wrote –
“Hmmm, quibbling over words, or doing science.
What would a sceptic do?”
I don’t know about sceptics, but lawyers quibble over words. I’m sure that the Michael Mann of climate science hopes that his lawyers quibble faster, furiouser, and more eloquently than the lawyers representing the person he has sued.
I don’t know about the US, but usually the onus is on the person bringing an action for defamation to make a case proving they have suffered damage to reputation and so on. Usually, claiming hurt feelings does not count. Poor, poor, darling Mikey! Diddums, diddums, Mommy will kiss it and make it better! There, all fixed. No charge. You’re welcome.
On a more positive note, in civilised countries, even if an action technically succeeds, a judge may award a dollar in damages, but order the claimant to pay the defendant’s costs, as well as his own. The costs can be ruinous, and there is usually no appeal, as the claimant received a favourable verdict. Maybe the US is not a civilised country. I would be inclined to investigate before commencing litigation, but Warmists seem to just assume the world is their oyster.
Maybe scientists should stick to science.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
“Nobel Laureate” = fraud.
pardon me, but Ive always said that using the fraud word was
1. unwise
2. not supported by the evidence.
There are a whole host of questionable things that mann did. folks have a right to question that and an obligation to do better.
when it comes to his personal behavior he is a climate warrior who whines too frickin much. he needs to shut up or suck it up.
That said Styne should prevail.
The lack of explanation of the 1940 singularity shows that the IPCC failed to explain a vital phase of global climate. So they have selected real data that supports their greenhouse gas hypothesis and ignored data that did not.
They have some correlation, some of the time. They have no actual data that proves anything. Correlation is not proof. The only thing they have is Model Output and that is not data and that is not proof. Temperature, for the past eleven thousand years, has always been properly correlated with Ice Extent, but not with CO2.
Herman: Thank you. I agree.
I should have added that they ignored the low pass filter provided by the oceans. This is a filter between atmospheric temperature and water temperature and works both ways: To both cool the air or heat it at different times in the cycle. The net affect is on/off global warming which the IPCC can’t account for, and therefor can’t predict future temperature.
While it is trivially true that we will run out of economically recoverable oil some day, until then a record has been set.
From the article:
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Oil drillers targeting the rich Bakken shale formation in western North Dakota and eastern Montana have produced 1 billion barrels of crude, data from the two states show.
Drillers first targeted the Bakken in Montana in 2000 and moved into North Dakota about five years later using advanced horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques to recover oil trapped in a thin layer of dense rock nearly two miles beneath the surface.
North Dakota has generated 852 million barrels of Bakken crude, and Montana has produced about 151 million barrels through the first quarter of 2014, data show.
Oklahoma City-based Continental Resources Inc., one the oldest and biggest operators in the Bakken, said two-thirds of the production has come in the past three years.
http://news.yahoo.com/bakken-oil-fields-mark-billionth-164007099.html;_ylt=AwrBJR7j.F9TXSMAabvQtDMD
The Ghost of Lysenko. –is alive and well. Never let a tried and true opportunity go to waste.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/the_ghost_of_lysenko.html
‘Lysenko’s experiments were heralded, although the experiments were never replicated. The Soviet Union was full of botanists, biologists, geneticists, and other life scientists, and it was obvious to anyone with a free mind that Lysenko was propounding nonsense. But it was not until 1962 that the Soviet government allowed a real critique of his cartoon science. Why?’
Climate Etc readers are shocked … SHOCKED … that fallible human beings and flawed administrative processes could generate solid scientific understanding having crucial moral and economic implications.
In which regards, advances in climate-change science are no different from all other advances in scientific history, isn’t that plainly evident, Judith Curry?
Conclusion Denialist cognition withers slowly … yet it DOES wither.
The withering of climate-change denialism is accelerating, eh Climate Etc readers?
CE poll:How many people scrolling through the comments stop to read fannie’s verbose foolishness? Please raise your hand.
Don Monfort,
Hand duly raised, although sometimes I give up partway through.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Don, read most of them, look at the others &$@&$
After the hockey stick, none of us need worry about the lack of education in America’s dropout factories. Rather, worry about what is being taught.
My two questions to lukewarmers and skeptics who still believe human produced C02 has ANY effect at all on global temperatures. How long will it take for temperatures to be flat or fall before you give up. How long will it take for you to stop using fraudulent adjusted GISS Hadcrut NDCD data and use only RSS and AMSU in postings or CET and Armagh as surface temps LOL?
Eliza. From Johnny Mathis “Until the twelfth of never and that’s a long, long time.”
I gotta give anyone who can use a Johnny Mathis song in a comment a +100!
“How long will it take for temperatures to be flat or fall before you give up.”
The basic physics don’t change. More CO2 will lead to warming if other conditions remain unchanged.
The question(s) are:
1. How much and when in the actual system? (since it is dynamic) Answer- still unknown, but seemingly much slower than was thought a few years ago as the warming theortically caused by CO2 could be overwhelmed by other conditions in the system and not relavant to humans.
2. What other conditions will change and when as a result of any warming that occurs? Answer- Nobody has reliable information on this.
3. Can the conditions in #2 be avoided cost effectively by humans reducing CO2 emissions? There is no reliable information
“More CO2 will lead to warming if other conditions remain unchanged.”
Unless it gets colder. C02 cannot prevent things from getting colder.
Andrew
And if you resort to “warmer than it would have been”, you have crossed the line into “not science.”
“Would have been” in the context of climate doesn’t exist and cannot be measured.
Andrew
“The basic physics don’t change. More CO2 will lead to warming if other conditions remain unchanged.”
That’s not basic physics. Non sequitur. Radiative properties of CO2 may be basic physics, however the Earth’s surface warming resulting from increased atmospheric CO2 doesn’t follow from it. There is a disconnection between the premise and the conclusion.
The solar energy absorbed by the Earth’s surface is transferred to the atmosphere mostly by non-radiative processes (evaporation and convection), while all of the energy gained by the atmosphere (to repeat, mostly non-radiatively) can only be radiated to space. The bulk of the atmosphere cannot radiate significantly – only the so-called GHGs and clouds can.
One thing to understand is this is also an inertia problem. Warming will not necessarily be observed as a uniform and even increase over decade time scales. It will take time for the train to gather speed. To say ‘CO2 does not have any effect at all on global temperatures’ says you don’t think the earth is warmed at all by CO2. This is at stark odds with well understood physics. I would not be surprised if the GST record remained largely flat for another 15 to 20 years, but that does not mean AGW has ceased, it just may not have nearly the impact that has been predicted so far. That should be considered a good thing.
“One thing to understand is this is also an inertia problem.”
That is a belief and not a fact. (imo)
“while all of the energy gained by the atmosphere (to repeat, mostly non-radiatively) can only be radiated to space.”
You really believe that ALL of the energy can ONLY be radiated to space??? Really?
“C02 cannot prevent things from getting colder.”
and
“if you resort to “warmer than it would have been”, you have crossed the line into “not science.””
Andrew- If you think about it you will realize what you have written is a bit silly.
If natural variability (or the system without humans) would have resulted in cooling, then the additional CO2 would have led to somewhat less cooling. Not being able to quantify the impact only means the interactions of the system are not understood sufficiently and that more than the single variable (CO2) is having an impact.
None of that means that the CO2 has led to net negative conditions for humans, or that it makes sense to implement costly CO2 mitigation actions that will have an unknown impact.
“Not being able to quantify the impact”
You are agreeing with me.
Andrew
John Carpenter, you write ” To say ‘CO2 does not have any effect at all on global temperatures’ says you don’t think the earth is warmed at all by CO2. This is at stark odds with well understood physics.”
Nonsense and garbage. We can state that CO2 has a positive but negligible effect on global temperatures, OHC, Old Uncle Tom Cobbley and ALL..
“CO2 has a positive but negligible effect on global temperatures”
Jim- can you quantify “negligible”?
LOL- no, you can’t in this case.
“My two questions to lukewarmers and skeptics who still believe human produced C02 has ANY effect at all on global temperatures. How long will it take for temperatures to be flat or fall before you give up. How long will it take for you to stop using fraudulent adjusted GISS Hadcrut NDCD data and use only RSS and AMSU in postings or CET and Armagh as surface temps LOL?”
How long ?
Its pretty simple.
Lukewarmers hold that the sensitivity to doubling c02 is between 1.5C
and 4.5C and so climate sensitivity lies between
roughly .4 and .8
1 year from now, if the sun does not fall below 1361W and if there are no volcanos erupting ( big ones) and the temperature falls by 1C, then I would have to say that sensitivity to doubling could be less than 1.5C.
How long will it take for you to stop using fraudulent adjusted GISS Hadcrut NDCD data
1. Stopped using it over 2 years ago.
2. the adjustments have all been empirically verified.
3. When you use more data and better data than GISS or Hadcrut
you see a world that is actually warming faster
“and use only RSS and AMSU in postings ”
4. RSS is not observations. It is output of data + a physics model.
5. AMSU is a sensor. it outputs voltages. read the ATBD
“or CET and Armagh as surface temps LOL?”
1. Both of these are heavily adjusted.
2. Neither of these captures SST or the southern hemisphere.
“How long will it take for you to stop using fraudulent adjusted GISS Hadcrut NDCD data”
His fraudulent adjusted data beats your fraudulent adjusted data. :P
Andrew
“Lukewarmers hold that the sensitivity to doubling c02 is between 1.5C
and 4.5C”
In your opinion that is the range. You don’t define the range.
Interesting – because I have been told over and over and over that “skeptics” don’t doubt that ACO2 increases temps, they only question the magnitude of the effect.
In other words, Eliza, Bad, Jim, and Edim (not to mention many others who populate these threads), simply do not exist. They aren’t actually writing these comments. They are the product of a group hallucination.
Fascinating.
Jim –
>> We can state that CO2 has a positive but negligible effect on global temperatures,
Just curious – how do you know that it has an effect, and that the effect is negligible? Is your conclusion the product of observations? Measurements? If so, how did you measure the effect? How did you conduct your observations?
“they only question the magnitude”
Yes. I question that the magnitude is > 0. Count me in.
Andrew
Joshua,
Jim C has some seriously settled science. he is certain that this thing
he cant measure has a near zero value.
Joshua, you have been told MOST skeptics don’t doubt that ACO2 increases temps.
Joshua, you write “Just curious – how do you know that it has an effect, and that the effect is negligible? Is your conclusion the product of observations? Measurements? If so, how did you measure the effect? How did you conduct your observations?”
My apologies. Bad writing on my part. We don’t know any of these things. What I was trying to explain to John Carpenter is that it is possible to think that adding CO2 to the atmosphere has a positive effect on temperatures, but that this effect could be negligible.
The Ordovician “snowball Earth” period occurred when atmospheric CO2 levels were 10x today’s values.
So much for the “CO2 climate control knob”.
Max
Steven Mosher
You have apparently misunderstood Jim Cripwell.
He has not said that the 2xCO2 climate sensitivity = 0.
He has simply said that there is no empirical evidence that it is significantly greater than zero in our climate system.
It is not Cripwell who says “the science is settled”, it is those who claim that 2xCO2 results in 1.5 to 4.5C warming of the atmosphere at equilibrium.
Are you among this group?
Just curious.
Max
Thanks Jim –
>> “My apologies. Bad writing on my part. We don’t know any of these things. ”
I continue to appreciate that unlike some of other (much beloved) “skeptics,” you do take steps to be logically consistent.
There was no “snowball Earth” event in the Ordovician. Per Wiki:
Bah! Why can’t people do a little research before commenting?
Edim –
>> “Joshua, you have been told MOST skeptics don’t doubt that ACO2 increases temps.”
Actually, I think that you need to look more carefully. Sometimes your qualifier is used, and sometimes it isn’t. It seems to often be a matter of what’s convenient at the time. Of course, keep in mind, that “no one in the room” doubts that ACO2 has some effect, and even if they did, Judith “doesn’t listen to them.” So they get thrown under the bus regardless.
But back to your statement. Can you tell me how the beliefs of “skeptics” has been measured so that “skeptics” know what most “skeptics” believe (even though, as “skeptics” often tell me, “skeptics” are not monolithic)?
When they say “most,” does that merely mean more than 50%?
I mean they must know. Because a true skeptic would require evidence before formulating a belief. Otherwise they might just be projecting, generalizing from their own opinions and making a statement of fact about something that is actually an unverified opinion that is highly subject to observer bias.
“We can state that CO2 has a positive but negligible effect on global temperatures”
Well, unless you consider how much colder the earth would be without any CO2 in the atmosphere. There is a green house effect, CO2 is part of it and without it the earth would be about 30 C colder…. that’s settled science for me Jim.
But for you to say CO2 has a positive but negligible effect is a meaningless. You are both confident it is positive, yet are also confident it is negligible, i.e can’t be noticeably measured. Your conclusion cannot hold both of these ideas simultaneously without blowing up. We all know you hold the belief that if you can’t measure something, you cannot follow the scientific method to verify your hypothesis. You state that nearly daily here. Your hypothesis would have to be stated something like ‘If CO2 has a positive effect on global temperatures it can also be negligible’. You would then have to test that hypothesis through measurement. Based on the results of the measurement you could possibly make the concluding statement ‘We can state CO2 has a positive but negligible effect on global temperatures’. Well Jim, your conclusion is not based on the scientific method. If you can’t measure the effect of CO2 on global temperatures (according to what you have said before), then you can’t be confident it is positive. Since you can’t establish the sign of the effect of CO2 through measurement, you can’t determine if it is negligible or not. So we can’t conclude ‘CO2 has a positive but negligible effect on global temperatures’ by your very own logic. Maybe you meant something else.
Huh, Joshua and Mosher pointing out similar flaws in Jim C’s statement before I could post my comment. Jim acknowledged Joshua. No need for me to beat a dead horse a this point.
AK
For references to the Ordovician “snowball Earth” period see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Ordovician_glaciation
And here’s a picture (worth 1,000 words, they say):
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html
It’s always best to check things out before making silly remarks, AK
Just a tip.
Max
@manacker…
The Late Ordovician glaciation was not a “snowball Earth” event. No more than the current one. As anybody even remotely familiar with the concept is aware. The word “snowball” doesn’t even occur in the Wiki page you linked to.
Which you clearly didn’t, or even bother reading the Wiki page I linked to. A glacial period isn’t the same thing as a “snowball Earth” event, as anybody but an ignorant f00l would have known by doing a little research before making such a silly comment.
“its possible to think that adding CO2 to the atmosphere has a positive effect on temperatures, but that this effect could be negligible.”
Its possible that monkeys could fly out of your butt.
“its possible to think that adding CO2 to the atmosphere has a positive effect on temperatures, but that this effect could be negligible.”
and
“Its possible that monkeys could fly out of your butt.”
The initial quote is far more reasonable than the 2nd. It is most definately true that adding CO2 to the atmosphere could have a positive effect on temperatures and that this effect could be negligible to observers because its impact was overwhelmed by other conditions of the system in the timescales under consideration by the observer.
Don’t be a dumbbell, AK
See (bold type by me):
http://www.the-online-museum.com/ordovician.htm
And this occurred with CO2 at ~4,000 ppmv.
Ouch!
Max
there’s evidence the CO2 levels weren’t that high and dropped during the cold period
Following up on manacker | April 30, 2014 at 3:09 pm:
And not to put words in Jim Cripwell’s mouth – I remember Jim’s statement as something like zero to one significant digit (or something like that).
This led me to infer his range was 0.0 – 0.9.
Jim – is that correct?
lowlot:
In that case, how did it get warm again?
manacker – Regarding the Ordovician, your sources lack authority. Why not see what those actually studying the issue have to say?
@manacker…
From the page you linked:
According to Wiki, the Sturtian glaciation occurred ~720-660MYA, while the Marinoan glaciation is timed at ~650-635MYA. Another possible “snowball Earth” event, the Kaigas, is timed at ~730-755MYA (per my estimate from the chart in the latter Wiki page). There is no “snowball Earth” event timed at “around a billion years ago, […]”. And as for the late Ordovician glaciation, the Wiki page linked above says this:
All these pages are well supplied with peer-reviewed reverences. Contrary to the f00lish link you supplied that is well supplied only with BS.
Arguing on the basis of ignorant websites that spout BS without references just discredits the very thesis you’re trying to “prove”. I wonder if you’re really an alarmist sailing under false colors.
References. No scientific publication deserves reverence.
AK
Relax. Don’t get your bowels in an uproar.
The late Ordovician glaciation and extinction has been referred to as a “snowball Earth” event.
It occurred during a period of high CO2 concentration.
Of course, the entire “snowball Earth” nomenclature (including earlier “snowball Earth” events) has been questioned, including just when a major global glaciation is referred to as a “snowball”.
But the point is that it was extremely cold when CO2 was 10x that of today.
And that was my point.
But, AK, you should really watch your temper. It’s not good to get all excited like that.
And being nasty to other bloggers just makes you look silly.
Max
Rick A, you write “This led me to infer his range was 0.0 – 0.9.
Jim – is that correct?”
No. My statement was that there is evidence that the climate sensitivity for a doubling of CO2 added to the atmosphere from recent levels, is 0.0 C to one place of decimals. or two significant figures.
Jim, 0.0 is not a value expressed to two significant figures. When expressing nothing, 0, there is no difference between 0 and 0.000000000. As such, significant figures do not apply as there is no significance or difference between 0 and 0.000000000. It is all nothing…. and nothing is indistinguishable from nothing.
Pat Cassen
Thanks for tip.
I’ve read the Finnegan et al. paper (the entire Abstract) earlier.
Here’s another 2013 study by Elrick et al.
http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/41/7/775.abstract
And here’s yet another, Saltzman 2004:
http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/33/2/109.abstract
Or Holland and Patzkowsky 2012:
http://jsedres.sepmonline.org/content/82/8/599.abstract
There are still a lot of hypotheses out there as to the extent or the cause of the “icehouse”.
The biggest riddle (as far as I can tell) is how this could have occurred when atmospheric CO2 was 10x the current concentration.
Max
Joshua: because I have been told over and over and over that “skeptics” don’t doubt that ACO2 increases temps,
You missed the “other things being equal” that is invoked. Rob Starkey put it thus: if other conditions remain unchanged.
Pat Cassen
And here’s an interesting paper: Buggisch et al. 2009 “Did intense volcanism trigger the first Late Ordovician icehouse?”
http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/38/4/327.short
Max
Matthew R Marler
The “all other things being equal” caveat is very important, as the physical observations have shown us.
The recent “pause” of more than one decade has occurred during a period over which human GHG emissions have continued unabated (with almost one-fourth of all CO2 ever emitted by humans since pre-industrial days being emitted) and concentrations reaching all-time record levels.
So, compared to the late 20thC period of rapid warming, with about the same amount of CO2 emitted, some “other thing was NOT equal”.
We are hearing all sorts of different rationalizations as to what “was NOT equal”, but there is no agreement on that.
Then there was the period from around 1944 to 1975, during which roughly 20% of all the human CO2 was emitted yet global average temperature cooled slightly. Again, some “other thing was NOT equal”, apparently.
But we do not really know what that “other thing” was.
That appears to be the dilemma.
Max
Matt –
>> “You missed the “other things being equal” that is invoked. Rob Starkey put it thus: if other conditions remain unchanged.”
Well, “other things being equal” is, indeed, the crux of the biscuit. That’s the whole valid argument, IMO, because it captures the questions regarding natural variability.
But while sometimes skeptics (no quotation marks) indeed make that qualification, “skeptics” (with quotation marks) generally do not – so when you say that I “missed” it, you need to be more specific. I’d wager that in this threads and at places like WUWT, most often the caveat is left out by “skeptics.”
Of course, “realists” also are only making a valid argument when they include the caveat as well.
Hmmm.
Looking at manacker’s 8:19 and my 8:24, I fear that the end o’ times may well be nigh.
Jim Cripwell:
Well I misunderstood then. Thanks for explaining.
to Steve Mosher at 2:33 PM:
A question: does the new study just reported on WUWT, about the S Hemisphere warming much more slowly that the N Hemisphere? Link:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/30/new-paper-finds-climate-sensitivity-to-co2-is-lower-than-previously-believed-strong-natural-variability-in-southern-hemisphere/
One sentence: “If the new reconstruction of Southern Hemisphere temperature is accurate, then estimates of climate sensitivity — the response of global temperature change to a given amount of external radiative forcing — may be lower than those calculated based solely on Northern Hemisphere reconstructions1.”
Your records may or may not already have the into in this paper. Please let us know?
understood physics says CO2 should have some small influence, not likely enough to measure and separate from natural variability. But then, they put in feedbacks that they don’t understand and that they can’t explain, but it is in the Model output. They will never give up but Mother Nature will put whoever is wrong out of business.
Max you crack me up
“I’ve read the Finnegan et al. paper (the entire Abstract) earlier.”
you know you don’t need to capitalize abstract!
Joshua: so when you say that I “missed” it, you need to be more specific.
I quoted exactly what you missed that was in a comment that preceded yours. Your vague reference in quotes to “others” rendered your comment vacuous.
I agree with those who think that the IPCC process isn’t broken, but is operating as designed. Why else would the current head of the IPCC still be in place? About 5 years ago Pauchuari (current IPCC chair) accused an Indian scientist who (correctly) challenged the notion that Himalayan glaciers would all disappear by 2035, of using “voodoo science”?
To be clear: the head of a supposedly scientific organization didn’t check the science, didn’t check with experts in the field, but used inflammatory, accusatory words. If the IPCC bore much relation to a scientific organization AT THE TOP (lots of good scientists toil below), Pauchauri would have been replaced by a stolid, thoughtful scientist who wouldn’t make accusations like this.
Christy is obviously right. Look for further demonization of Christy based upon the fact that he is religious, that religious people tend to be in the tea party, tend to be Republicans, and thus smear Christy on the basis of questionable reliability (in today’s world).
FWIW, I am not religious personally. And I agree that there are religious flat earthers out there. Yet Francis Collins is a prime example of a great scientist who is also religious. Don’t tar people because of their religion, debate their views and science, please.
Delusions by Rob Starkey, facts by FOMD!
Quibbling, smearing, and delusions of persecution and conspiracy all are hallmarks of denialist cognition, eh Climate Etc readers?
It is a pleasure to assist you in maturing your thinking, Rob Starkey!
Whoops! The proper attribution is to “John”, not to “Starkey”.
On the other hand, this syndrome of delusion is ubiquitous among denialists, eh Climate Etc readers?
morediscourse@tradermail.info
A fan of *MORE* discourse
You know you’re a clear-thinking ‘icon’ when you don’t even know who you’re responding to. Brilliant.
Dr. Christy’s recollections are fascinating reading. At a minimum, it should give any thoughtful person reason for pause.
Key word above being “thoughtful.” Climate alarmism is faith based, hence by definition beyond the reach of contrary evidence or argument. Some of them go so far as to admit this. Naomi Oreskes urges people to literally close their minds to skeptical arguments.
“Naomi Oreskes has an op-ed in the LA TIMES today entitled “The verdict is in on climate change“, with subheading “When it comes to climate change, openmindedness is the wrong approach.”
http://judithcurry.com/2012/01/23/open-mindedness-is-the-wrong-approach/
It’s a breathtaking renunciation of rationalism, especially for an academic.
Conventional wisdom in mentoring newly minted engineers prior to them achieving professional status involves “breaking the baby engineer’s ego” with difficult problems that they will make errors on and will have to correct.
The reason for this process is most engineers graduate with an elevated sense of self-importance which could lead to arrogance that can cause them to miss an error (or worse, defend an error) in the course of their work with sometimes dire consequences to society. Hence the mandatory 4 year mentoring period under an experienced professional engineer.
The pursuit of truth requires a fair bit of maturity and humility since there are a great number of times in one’s career that you have to admit you were mistaken and to accept that.
It seems to me that there are incredibly weak mentors in this field, with the handling of this ‘Rock Star newly minted Ph.D.’ being a textbook example of precisely what not to do.
Generalities by Basinger, specifics by FOMD.
Conclusion Rational climate-change skepticism is passing; irrational climate-change denialism is a shambling zombie.
Nothing you wrote relates whatsoever to what I stated, FOMD. Perhaps you should take a remedial reading course?
“It seems to me that there are incredibly weak mentors in this field, with the handling of this ‘Rock Star newly minted Ph.D.’ being a textbook example of precisely what not to do.”
Worst yet, they are interested in the controversial aspect of the climate issue and not the truth of what is going on with the climate.
“Nothing you wrote relates whatsoever to what I stated, FOMD.”
Fan’s famous for that, Scott. Hard to fathom. MY best guess is he puts up what on the surface looks like some sort of effective defense…or more typically an outright counter-attack…hoping that people won’t look too closely. It’s especially entertaining to check out the supposedly supportive links he provides. They often have virtually nothing to do with the discussion at hand.
All that said, he’s far and away more pleasant than the other alarmists who hang out here. I think he’s well intended and good natured, if a tad eccentric.
What is climate?
…solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?
(from a poem by Mary Oliver)
As I have the emails of some of IPCC’s main Lead Authors and of its main co-chair, I thought that I could challenge IPCC’s scientific basis directly with them. My idea was showing them my “Refuting …” document, in:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4r_7eooq1u2TWRnRVhwSnNLc0k/
and trying to have a constructive discussion. But so far, I got no reply.
My next step is trying to challenge them in front of more and more people. (People related with the responsibles of applying policies, with journalists and with scientists. People that have been acted actively either in favor or aggainst IPCC’s view).
I hope that IPCC’s co-chair and Leading Authors will not hide forever, and that, finally, they will defend their scientific views in a scientific way (or that they will embarrasedly resign).
Antonio wrote:
I hope that IPCC’s co-chair and Leading Authors will not hide forever, and that, finally, they will defend their scientific views in a scientific way
Their views are not scientific in any way. There is no scientific defense for that stuff.
“It seems to me that there are incredibly weak mentors in this field, with the handling of this ‘Rock Star newly minted Ph.D.’ being a textbook example of precisely what not to do.”
Worst yet, they are interested in the controversial aspect of the climate issue and not the truth of what is going on with the climate.
Mr. Swedan:”Worst yet, they are interested in the controversial aspect of the climate issue and not the truth of what is going on with the climate.”
Well, that’s how this climate scare thing got started. Way back in the day, one of the 9 unknown scientists laboring away in one of the obscure backwaters of academia, climate science, was going through another sleepless night worrying about the next meager grant and his dim prospects for tenure, when he happened to turn on his little TV to the midnight movies. It was Godzilla. Huge lizard starts stomping on cities and towns and the authorities turn to some hitherto unknown, poverty stricken geek herpetologists to save the world from lizard Armageddon. Geeks become heroes, get grants, get tenure, get girls etc. Lightbulb goes off in head of obscure climate science geek and the rest is history.
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings.
This is off topic, but relevant to this thread. I made a reply to Peter Lang, the first two words of which were “I agree”. Now I don’t think I have the software to produce hypertext, and if I do I don’t know how to use it. I have never used hypertext. But the word “agree” is now in hypertext, linked to an advertisement. So someone has modified what I wrote somehow. This a frightening. Will, in the future, someone be able to change what I wrote, and alter the meaning?
I have just been through the thread, and these things are all over the place. What I have just written has one. I was in error; I was replying to Tony B, not Peter Lang, but now the “agree” is not in hypertext, something else is. What is happening?
You have an adware infection Jim.
Thanks, Skippy
I found the Christy testimony fascinating, and well worth rereading.
I appreciate follow-up comments by tonyb and Steve McIntyre.
Judith, Off topic, but a link someone posted in WUWT comments cought my eye.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00300-014-1482-1/fulltext.html
At the rainbow’s end: high productivity fueled by winter upwelling along an Arctic shelf
Herein we document findings from a unique scientific expedition north of Svalbard in the middle of the polar night in January 2012, where we observed an ice edge north of 82°N coupled with pronounced upwelling. The area north of Svalbard has probably been ice-covered during winter in the period from approximately 1790 until the 1980s, a period during which heavy ice conditions have prevailed in the Barents Sea and Svalbard waters. However, recent winters have been characterized by midwinter open water conditions on the shelf, concomitant with northeasterly along-shelf winds in January 2012. The resulting northward Ekman transport resulted in a strong upwelling of Atlantic Water along the shelf. We suggest that a reduction in sea ice and the upwelling of nutrient-rich waters seen in the winter of 2012 created conditions similar to those that occurred during the peak of the European whaling period (1690–1790) and that this combination of physical features was in fact the driving force behind the high primary and secondary production of diatoms and Calanus spp., which sustained the large historical stocks of bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) in Arctic waters near Spitsbergen.
Jim
I can not see that any of your messages-especially the one to me-has any hypertext. If you can see one why don’t you copy the post here and lets look at it? Perhaps its your browser?
tonyb
Thanks Tony. You may well be right. I am using Internet Explorer, and we know this has problems.
Climate Etc Skeptic’s Quiz
Q The strongest climate-change skepticism is concerned with:
▢ the strongest climate-change theory, verified against global data, on millennial time-scales, fully referenced, critically reviewed, and produced by strongly interdisciplinary teams of top-grade scientists and mathematicians.
▢ weaker climate-change theory (e.g., purely statistical models), verified against local data, on decadal time-scales, produced by essayists hired by special-interest think-tanks.
▢ dubious decade-old emails, filtered through conspiracy theories, eccentric physical models, cherry-picked data analysis, and b*tt-hurt personal feelings, commonly produced by lone-wolf authors.
Pick the best answer.
Conclusion The best answer is plainly evident, eh Climate Etc readers?
A fan of *MORE* discourse: Many of the particular claims in that review have been addressed here from time to time. It is rather a mishmash. They are a little “indirect”, shall we say, in telling us just how long the 3 – 4 degree increase they expect will take; and how much water such a large increase would (improbably) evaporate if maintained. Clearly the rate of the non-discussed non-radiative transport of heat from the surface to the upper troposphere and thence to space would be dramatically increased — is even a 3.7W/m^2 increase in surface radiation (from a doubling, not merely a continuation of the current 400 ppm) enough power to do that?
Here is a selection: Health impacts of climate change are in addition to direct effects of air and water pollution. A clear illustration of direct effects of fossil fuels on human health was provided by an inadvertent experiment in China during the 1950–1980 period of central planning, when free coal for winter heating was provided to North China but not to the rest of the country. Analysis of the impact was made [140] using the most comprehensive data file ever compiled on mortality and air pollution in any developing country. A principal conclusion was that the 500 million residents of North China experienced during the 1990s a loss of more than 2.5 billion life years owing to the added air pollution, and an average reduction in life expectancy of 5.5 years. The degree of air pollution in China exceeded that in most of the world, yet assessments of total health effects must also include other fossil fuel caused air and water pollutants, as discussed in the following section on ecology and the environment.
That does not have anything to do with CO2. It is part of a case, perhaps, for “clean coal”.
Here is my question that has been bugging me for years about Mann’s hockey stick: His Hockey Stick graph ended at 1950. The instrument record was spliced on to that to make the hockey stick bigger. Yet we are told that CO2 had a minor effect on global temperature before 1950. If this is true Mann’s proxy hockey stick was caused by natural warming not CO2! Am I wrong here?
Reblogged this on Power To The People and commented:
It looks like “an IPCC Lead Author with a small cohort of scientists, misrepresented the temperature record of the past 1000 years” …. Judith Curry
Wrong attribution by CJ Orach, correct attribution by FOMD.
Remark Multiple independent scientific studies affirm (1) the reality of the climate-change “Hockey Stick”, and (2) the lengthening of the “Hockey Stick Blade” without pause or obvious limit.
A fan of *MORE* discourse: Remark Multiple independent scientific studies affirm (1) the reality of the climate-change “Hockey Stick”, and (2) the lengthening of the “Hockey Stick Blade” without pause or obvious limit.
Even the IPCC no longer supports Mann’s hockey stick, and most writers (e.g. Lovejoy, Trenberth) now accept the “pause” (in mean surface temperature increase), hence the many explanations for it.
Broken climate science broken IPCC and Sound climate science sound IPCC. They have nothing to do with it. Blame it on climate scientists, from both sides of the climate debate, who have had more than their fair share of time and money. If the climate science is not fixed, this debate, which is departing from constructive, will hurt many scientists. We have already seen law suites and more are on the way.
Now hear this all ye commentators on Judith Curry’s site: For the past few years, the “regulars” have been repeating the same old commentaries over and over and over again. As just one example (not really to pick on the fan of less discourse, but who better?) you can go through maybe 50 postings by Judith and the fan has the same thing to say, over and over and over again. Same for most “regulars”. Has anyone (I repeat anyone) ever said “I heard you. I listened to your arguments. You convinced me to change my mind.”? If so, maybe there IS some value in all this stuff. But I have yet to find it. So here is what I propose: Each “regular” should get a link on Judith’s website to a canned diatribe. Then, when Judith creates a posting, the reader can click on any of these links to learn what any “regular” would have said if he had made a response posting. That would save a lot of time and trouble and accomplish about as much as the present system.
Proposed Canned Diatribe No. 1:
We must learn what everyone once took for granted that everyone knew – climate change happens without our help.
Proposed Canned Diatribe No. 2:
Let us pray that Al Gore and Michael Mann have the strength and courage to continue their war against evil business to save the world from modernity.
Donald Rapp: “I heard you. I listened to your arguments. You convinced me to change my mind.”?
I said that at least once, fwiw. It was when a some people wrote sharp critiques of my defense of Mann as having been merely sloppy. Most of my actual opinions have come from reading peer-reviewed literature, and I had read some of the papers cited critiquing me, but the full load of all the critiques persuaded me that I had been too slow coming to realize how awful Mann has been.
Rapp
This is from Dr Christy’s piece and one of my favorite quotes…But, problems are made more likely in climate science, because, as noted, ours is a murky field of research – we still can’t explain much of what happens in weather and climate.
You need to focus on the last part of that sentence ..”..we still can’t explain much of what happens in weather and climate.” Every person engaged in climate science should tape that quote over their headboard and look at it when they wake up. The level of certainty individuals have about climate is inversely proportional to how much knowledge they have. The discussions here are amorphous because the subject matter is amorphous. The more humility that a climate scientist shows, the more confidence I have in their knowledge, judgement and expertise. Do a little introspection and enjoy the ride. This is not going to settled any time soon.
The comments are settled.
I like that response very much! Cute!
Fly a helicopter to the top of Mt Everest in summer (July) and lower a large drum of very salty water (heated to near boiling point and opened at the top) onto the surface at the start of a nice sunny day – as it would be above the clouds up there. We will assume there is enough salt to lower the freezing point to -10°C. In July, the warmest month, the average summit temperature is -19°C. Will the water freeze? Yes. So how good is the Sun at raising ocean temperatures below the clouds with all its direct radiation? How absurd is it to imagine that the 1cm thin transparent surface layer of the oceans is warmed to 15°C by direct solar radiation? How absurd then are all the models which use ocean emissivity in Stefan-Boltzmann calculations and expect to get the temperature due to absorption?
DJC,
I see what you are getting at, but it might not be a good example. At around 22.500 feet in Nepal, ambient air temperature below freezing, pretty much still air conditions, full sun, September from memory, rock surfaces vary from warm to quite warm. Light snow in direct sun melted, snow still in shadow didn’t melt during the day.
I noticed that damp clothes didn’t seem to dry that well, unless laid out on said warm rocks. Clothes hung up would freeze and go rigid. If you stayed sheltered, a light shirt was all that was necessary to keep comfortable. Unfortunately, forgetting to apply sunscreen or cover up could result in severe sunburn. Once burnt, lesson learnt!
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
I can’t see what point you are trying to make. The atmosphere is colder in high altitude because of the convective lapse rate. So, the temperature at the surface of a high altitude lake will be lower than the temperature at the surface of a low altitude lake (both of them equally heated by the Sun) because the sensible heat flux from the lake surface to the air above it is higher, and the downwelling radiative flux from the atmosphere is lower, in the case of the high altitude lake.
Rob Starkey said:
I’d go further. Policy relevant information is what we need. Therefore, these are what I think we need to know before spending large amounts of money on policies that have near zero probability of delivering the claimed benefits (where ‘benefits’ means climate damages avoided):
1. What is the value of ECS and TCR?
2. Is ECS and TCR relevant given that climate changes suddenly, not as portrayed by IPCC’s smooth projections?
3. What effect will increasing atmospheric CO2-e concentration have on the climate – will it make the next sudden change happen sooner or later? Will it make the next sudden cooling happen sooner or later? Or will it cause a sudden warming event?
4. Will it make the next sudden climate change less or more severe? (e.g. delay the onset of the next cooling and/or reduce its severity OR make the next sudden warming happen sooner and make it more severe)?
5. What would be the consequences of warming? What would be the consequences of cooling?
6. What is the probability that the advocated mitigation policies would succeed in delivering the claimed benefits (climate damages avoided), given real world issues with implementing and maintaining such policies (e.g. carbon pricing)?
• To answer question 6 we need to understand the short- and medium-term economic impacts of the proposed policies for each nation state, and consider how each will respond so as to maximise its advantage (game theory) through the situations that could occur over the next century or so.
7. What is the probability that alternative polices are more likely to succeed (such as removing the political and regulatory impediments that are preventing the world from having low cost nuclear energy and allowing lightly regulated markets to deliver the benefits at least cost)?
Fly a dozen climatists to the top of Mt. Everest and leave them there until they realize the official temperature of the grid that contains the top of Mt. Everest and the average global temperature that is comprised of such grids is as meaningful to their survival as an average of all the telephone numbers in NYC.
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“The disturbance we’re seeing in the Neoproterozoic carbon cycle is larger by several orders of magnitude than anything we could cause today, even if we were to burn all the fossil fuels on the planet at once,” said Maloof, an assistant professor of geosciences at Princeton.
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S27/26/54A51/index.xml?section=topstories
http://epsc.wustl.edu/~crose/1.Swanson-Hysell_etal_2010.pdf
It is difficult to imagine that this is an analogue for the last 40 years – presuming that we had good data on the last few decades.
As for Doug – the scenarios are getting scary.
I have to add a comment here regarding this link, the photo of the Trezona Formation in South Australia and the easily accessible evidence of snowball Earth. http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S27/26/54A51/index.xml?section=topstories
I’d also recommend a tour which is conducted each year and this year starts on 1 September to 8 September. It’s an excellent tour of the geological history of planet earth from ‘snowball earth to the explosion of multi-cell animal life in the Cambrian, and also rocks dating back to 2.6 billion years old. Much to see and very interesting (e.g. in situ leaching uranium mining with near no disturbance to the surface). The tour is run on a shoe string budget (at cost) by Terry Krieg and his wife. Terry is an ex school teacher who has been taking his strudents ato and walking the Flinders for some 50 years. He has that rare knack that the really good teachers have of keeping everyone interested/enthralled and of getting the important messages across in a way you wont forget them. It’s a really enjoyable experience. I’ll ask him to post a comment.
As for Lang and Starkey – unanswerable questions about climate can be posed in the negative. We don’t know that extreme and rapid changes won’t occur and therefore we should be reticent in changing the atmosphere.
The answer is of course to take those actions that have multiple benefits and provide net gains neglecting the unquantifiable costs or benefits of climate change.
Skippy
Yes, indeed!
Max
A good example would be to increase the height and strength of the seawalls and dikes protecting New Orleans from tropical storm surges. This would create employment over the short term and avoid the kind of disaster that occurred with Katrina over the long term.
“We don’t know that extreme and rapid changes won’t occur and therefore we should be reticent in changing the atmosphere.”
We don’t know that extreme and rapid changes won’t occur; therefore, we should not be reticent in changing the atmosphere.
Global glaciation snowballed into giant change in carbon cycle
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S27/26/54A51/index.xml?section=topstories
It is excellent to see this field work based research in progress. There has been far too much emphasis on modelling and insufficient on doing real science and gathering observational evidence, IMO.
It seems to me there is evidence to suggest the climate is more volatile when colder and more stable when warmer. Also life thrives when warmer and struggles when colder. If this is true then perhaps we should consider that we are actually reducing the risk of sudden, severely damaging climate events in the future by increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. We may be, inadvertently, saving future generations from catastrophe.
I’d like to see more research on the conditions for life and the stability v volatility of climate changes during the warmer times in the past. There hasn’t been as much focus on trying to see what the warm times were like as there has for investigating the cold times – perhaps because the warm times were more placid, boring and productive. Bad news gets people excited, and makes for good scaremongering, not good news.
As I’ve said many times before there is no reason to believe we happen to be on the planet just when it is at the optimum temperature. Doomsayers believe that, but that doesn’t make it true.
Peter Lang
I believe Tony B has done some historical research on that question and come to a similar conclusion, although I cannot find the link to his study.
Max
The ice core data on the second page.
http://www.slc.ca.gov/division_pages/DEPM/Reports/BHP_Port/ERRATA_CSLC/Vol%20II/EDC%20Attachments%20Vol%20II-02.pdf
All human civilization arose in the Holocene of course – and humans are thought to have been an endangered species over the Quaternary.
‘Modern humans are known to have less genetic variation than other living primates, even though our current population is many orders of magnitude greater. Researchers studying specific genetic lineages have proposed a number of explanations for this, such as recent “bottlenecks”, which are events in which a significant proportion of the population is killed or prevented from reproducing. One such event was the Toba super-volcano in Indonesia that erupted around 70,000 years ago, triggering a nuclear winter. Only an estimated 15,000 humans are thought to have survived. Another explanation is that the numbers of humans and our ancestors were chronically low throughout the last two million years, sometimes with only 10,000 breeding individuals surviving.
The new research is concerned with the entire genome rather than specific genetic lineages studied in the earlier research work. Using a new method of studying genetic markers of DNA in the genome has allowed geneticists to study the genetics not only modern humans, but also our early ancestors such as Homo erectus (thought the most likely to be our direct ancestors), H. ergaster and archaic H. sapiens. Remarkably, they found there was enough information in only two human DNA sequences to estimate the ancient population size. – Read more at: http://phys.org/news183278038.html#jCp
Less variability in interglacials doesn’t preclude major shifts into and out of glacials of course.
My comment was intended to be about the times when the planet was warmer than the interglacials – e.g. when the poles were ice free. There has been no ice at the poles for about 75% of the past 500 million years or so. So, it would be reasonable to say this is the normal situation. It is also the times when life thrived most.
My recollection, from long, long ago, is that the oil was deposited in warm, calm seas in which life flourished. If my recollection is correct, it suggests the climate was less volatile and also less windy when the planet was warmer.
The dust in the ice cores decreased markedly as the planet warmed and increased as it gets cooler. Also suggesting less wind when the planet is warmer.
Hansen and Sato, Figure 1, http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110118_MilankovicPaper.pdf suggests that the climate was less volatile when warmer. Of course, this could be simply because we do not have such good records of what the climate was like when there was no ice because we have no ice core data. But we are getting data from other sources. What I was advocating was more work to determine what the climate and the climate changes were like in the warmer times.
I recognise the long time scales to get to warmer times. But I also recognise that the engineering solutions to deal with, for example, rising sea levels, over long time scales are trivial.
I am just throwing out the question/suggestion that we should consider, objectively, whether there may be less risk in having a higher CO2 concentration than allowing it to stay at the level at which the glacial cycles continue. We’ve started the process that could end the planet’s period in the current phase of ice ages (only the third such period of ice ages in the past 500 million years), and perhaps this might be a good thing. After all, if we hadn’t, we’d be due for a sudden cooling soon as we head, in steps, towards the next glacial maximum around 80,000 years from now.
“My recollection, from long, long ago, is that the oil was deposited in warm, calm seas in which life flourished.” Good heavens, Peter, how many billion years old must you be to recollect that? :-)
Just old enough to know I don’t want to be around during the next ice age. :)
And, I’d really like to have Brisbane’s average temperature in Canberra!
Although we started with snowball Earth – I generally don’t go past the Quaternary. There are generally a couple of explanations for the new glacial/interglacial regime – the uplift of Tibet and the shoaling of the isthmus of Panama. A distinct morphology at any rate creating the Quaternary climate.
The dust – btw – is more associated with evaporation and rainfall than winds. Drier in a cold climate.
“As I’ve said many times before there is no reason to believe we happen to be on the planet just when it is at the optimum temperature.”
Yes there is.
We happen to be on the planet when it is at the optimum temperature for us. Because over thousands of years we’ve adapted to that temperature.
We handle -50C to +50C.
“Winter temperatures in Oymyakon, Russia, average minus 50 C”
http://www.weather.com/travel/breathtaking-photos-coldest-city-world-20140128
http://past.theweathernetwork.com/news/storm_watch_stories3&stormfile=What_are_the_hottest_cities_on_earth__23_08_2012
Yes, we have adapted to temperatures from -80 to +132 (F). The most calamitous predictions made do not change those extremes.
com or localized version would not assist directly when it comes to achieving
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To Bart R
You don’t seem to understand how academic credentials work.
I’m a near-contemporary of Dr. Mann, in the years before Berkeley became a “most competitive admissions” university. It attracted many Stanford rejects, and was “hard” to get A’s, even for a National Merit Finalist, like me. B’s, on the other hand, were pretty easy.
I started from a farm-town school, and my early grades reflected my lack of preparation, as in organization (note-taking, rewiting notes, consistent nightly study well before midterms and finals.)
I graduated High Honors, in two fields. In five years I could have graduated Highest Honors in two fields, mainly because in years 3rd-4th I had a 3.89 GPA, and an extra year of that would have made Highest Honors, since I had only missed it by 0.4 GPA.
I didn’t have the advantages of Dr. Mann, who grew up in Andover, MA, home to Amherst (#1 ranked liberal arts college), and UMass (not so much), where young Mr. Mann could have taken AP Calc and Physics in 10th-11th grade, and completed linear algebra, and differential equations, as well as calc-based physics I-II in 11th-12th grades–his dad was a U Penn math PhD prof at UMass.
According to the tables, Michael Mann should have been able to go to MIT, Harvard or Princeton. Had he been a brilliant student.
He went to Berkekey and graduated with Honors. That required a 3.4 GPA in his time (much higher today), slightly above the technical “3.3” points designated for B+’s in classes, well below 3.7 designated for A-‘s. Honors graduates were one cut above Ordinary/Undistinguished.
So, Honors means a lot of Mr. Mann’s grades were B / B+’s.
What does this mean? A near- A- (GPA 3.65) would have gotten Mr. Mann High Honors. He didn’t get that. A 3.4-3.6 GPA means, you answer all the “easy questions” correct, you get most of the “hard questions” correct, which comprise, together, 80-90% of the tests, but you flub the “hardest questions”. They’re just to hard for you.
Mr. Mann’s inability to answer the “hardest questions” was why as an applied mathematics and physics double-flield student, he didn’t get into Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Princeton or Berkeley for PhD work. (Or Cambridge.) Yale was second-tier in physics.
These things are inscrutable to most people. Such as majoring in English at Berkeley and going to Yale for a PhD in English or History is “on track”, but going to Yale in Physics is “downtracked”. You don’t go from Berkeley physics undergrad to Yale grad, unless you have a second-tier mind (in Berkely profs’ opinion.) If you can answer the hardest questions posed to Berkeley undergrads, you get placed at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Berkeley or Cambridge.
Then Mr. Mann went to second tier physics Yale (zero Nobel Laureates in Physics). After that he was downtracked to a postdoc at UMass, then a junior faculty position at UVA, then advanced to tenure at Penn State.
Here’s the thing Bart, at every level of formal education and faculty placement, Michael Mann was downtracked. Just to put the puzzle pieces in place, Michael Mann had the opportunity to nail AP classes, and beyond, in Amherst, and go to Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Caltech. Didn’t happen. He went to the much-easier-entrance Berkeley, where he should have graduated in 3 years highest honors, given his home-parent advantages, and advanced placement. Didn’t happen. Berkeley profs placed their best students in the top PhD programs in the world. Mr. Mann was not one of them. He aced the easy problems, got most of the moderately hard problems right, but the really difficult ones baffled him. So he didn’t get to go to Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Caltech or Berkeley. Because his PROFS DID’T RECOMMEND HIM, as ONE OF THE BEST MINDS IN HIS CLASS. He was categorized as semi-bright.
Even Yale profs, didn’t see him as brilliant. That’s why he didn’t get placed for his postdoc in geology/geophyisics at Stanford, Caltech or MIT. UMass, are you kidding me? It reminds me of Phil Jones. Second rate minds end up at second-rate institutions. Hardest problems that baffle people should not result in their determining humankind’s future.
The Left excoriates the Koch brothers. They went to MIT. Michael Mann had what should have been a wide open door to MIT. But he didn’t have the brains credentials.
.
Wow.
There’s a lot of supposition in your position, starting with the random whackiness of guessing about my understanding of academic credentials. I’m guessing you’re not favored for your diagnostic skills.
That’s some scholastic detective work, for an MD. The second you come up with real numbers that stand up to the measure set by the awards in Mann’s CV, it’ll even sound less like the Scooby Gang.
The guy chose Earth Sciences, so no one’s expecting him to be a first rank intellect.
Big deal.
Among the Earth Sciences, Michael Mann’s still way ahead of the herd.
A lot of people got invited to MIT who never went, for some reason. I was one of them, when I was fifteen. Maybe Mann followed a girl. Maybe he liked the idea of going to the school Albert Einstein chose. Maybe he preferred the cafeteria menu.
Bart R,
You wrote –
“The guy chose Earth Sciences, so no one’s expecting him to be a first rank intellect.” It looks likes no one should be disappointed about his lack of achievement, then.
Which Climatolgists do you consider have a first rank intellect? Or is Michael Mann the best and brightest? One would surely hope that this is not the case.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Mike Flynn | April 30, 2014 at 10:42 pm |
Really not the point.
Who’s On First is not the name of the game.
Complaining about Mann’s lack of competency, though? That’s just not going to fly.
Slamming the IPCC for naming Mann a lead author is simply an ignorant position, dismissive of ample bona fides for what is, after all, a not very rewarding job.
Looking at the plentiful lineup of third-stringers — emphasis on stringers — who claim to be IPCC authors or contributors to some panel or committee, really just confirms that.
Mark Schooley, MD
Hey, the guy’s got to be a genius – after all he got the Nobel Prize, didn’t he?
Max
Barty gets schooled by Mark.
Bart R,
You wrote –
“Really not the point.
Who’s On First is not the name of the game.
Complaining about Mann’s lack of competency, though? That’s just not going to fly.
Slamming the IPCC for naming Mann a lead author is simply an ignorant position, dismissive of ample bona fides for what is, after all, a not very rewarding job.”
All well and good, although your statement “Really not the point” is, of course, assertion passed off as fact. You might consider responding to my original question asking which Climatologists you consider to have a first rank intellect.
As to the rest of your post, your reference to Who’s on First is too oblique for me.
I haven’t complained about Michael Mann’s competence. I don’t know in which areas he is supposed to be competent, unless you are talking about Mike’s Nature trick. I have heard of that one.
As to flying, I have no idea what you are talking about. Is that some secret Warmist code? I am unaware of slamming the IPCC etc., so your assertion that it is an ignorant position is possibly not directed at me. On the other hand, I doubt that you can point to any demonstrated benefit to humanity up to the present time, which has come about as the result of the IPCC naming Michael Mann as a lead author.
How much more work needs to be done, and how many more billions of dollars need to be spent, before self styled Climatologists finally stop trying to bend the global population to their will, in order to prevent non existent global warming from getting worse?
The IPCC seems to be an organisation without any useful purpose. Governments seem to be taking less and less notice of IPCC reports. I may be wrong, and if I am, it won’t make the world commence warming, so I really don’t care.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Mike Flynn | May 1, 2014 at 1:34 am |
I did consider answering your question. Then I told you why I wouldn’t. I explained it at length in writing. That you didn’t obtain that information from my reply indicates a failure to READ HARDER.
If you don’t recognize that the responses I’m giving are solely in context of http://judithcurry.com/2014/04/29/ipcc-tar-and-the-hockey-stick/#comment-536486 and Fred.’s complaint of Dr. Mann’s “Mach 1 burst of fame” (some thirteen years in the making), insinuating something suspect in the election by the IPCC of Mann for lead author position. Outside of that context, how can any of this apply, and forgetting that context is cherry picking. So, yes, I’m asserting the fact that there is a context, a main point, and if you missed where this started, perhaps you ought READ HARDER.
If you want a demonstrated benefit to humanity of choosing Mann as a lead author, you fail to appreciate the entertainment value we’ve all obtained as a result, plus, his name is easy to write and remember, so that’s a point in his favor. And we cannot know what level of cosmic screw up the next best guy would have been: imagine if someone who knew nothing of mathematics whatsoever were in the role, what sort of Stadium Wave would have been on the cover instead of the Hockey Stick.
As to billions spent and bending populations to their will, I suggest you look up the credentials and writings (where you can get past the secret code) of Dr. Frank Luntz. The IPCC’s entire budget is smaller than the football budget of Dr. Curry’s school. Screwball alarmist accounting is the hallmark of a manipulator, and you appear to have fallen for Jo Nova math hook, line and sinker.
Sad, really; by the tone of your writing, you sound like you and Michael Mann would normally be well-suited to pal around, were circumstances otherwise.
@bart – you seem to like to tell people to read harder. Yet the harder words are read, they still do not change their meaning. Perhaps that is part of your problem.
Ever heard of “Work smarter, not Harder”? Perhaps reading smarter is better than reading harder.
Bzzt.
I know I ought have given more time for the Persian Flaw of the Day, but here’s the thing: it’s such a well-known fact, and so glaringly wrong, that no one ought have missed it. And yet, a string of commentators already have.
Einstein was Princeton, not Yale.
Still doesn’t make Yale a second-rank school in anyone’s books; it’s number eleven. (www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2012-13/world-ranking/institution/yale-university)
You should have gone to MIT, barty. You probably would be doing something useful now.
Don Monfort | May 1, 2014 at 9:30 am |
We’ve yet to see any sign you’ve done anything useful at all, anywhere, ever. From that we’d logically conclude you’ve never even seen MIT.
Another example of your faulty logic, barty. I have seen MIT. You apparently haven’t. You said you never went there, even though you claim that you were invited. I observed that it is a pity that you are an underachiever. That made you mad and you countered with some copycat BS. The old ‘I’m rubber your glue’ comeback. Nicely played.
Carry on with your incessant trolling, barty. I have businesses to run and I have to polish my medals.
“If you want a demonstrated benefit to humanity of choosing Mann as a lead author, you fail to appreciate the entertainment value we’ve all obtained as a result”
Ha ha. I do like it when anyone shows a sense of humor in these discussions.
MIT’s acceptance rate now is 70% (as in number of offers that are accepted), possibly the highest of all (?). The Stanford’s and Harvard’s also have similar numbers. One expects anyone declining MIT is likely going to one of these few others. It’d be pretty hard to walk away from MIT to attend State U. But people have reasons.
You stand about a 5% chance of getting into Stanford, a 10% chance of getting into MIT (better if you are girl). Not sure how the numbers were 30 years ago. But it is brutal now. And you pretty much have to have near perfect scores and have cured cancer in high school to even bother to apply.
My daughter graduates next year, has the scores to get in, but I still consider it a long shot.
Tom Scharf | May 1, 2014 at 12:00 pm |
Good luck and best wishes for your daughter’s success. It sounds like you have ample cause to be proud.
philjourdan | May 2, 2014 at 3:53 pm |
I long ago gave up telling people who’d proven they weren’t smart enough to improve their own reading skills for themselves to try to be smarter, acknowledging their limitations.
But anyone who is a sloppy reader who gets the opposite out of what is written can, at least, read a bit harder.
It’s also why I so rarely advise you to THINK HARDER.
@bart – and what do you call people that just will not learn? You continually try to insult me with your childish taunts, when I have already both told you and demonstrated to you that I do not care about childish taunts, nor even pay them any mind.
Perhaps you should read smarter. And trust less to the first source you google on things you have no clue on. Then perhaps you can set aside your childish insults and get down to discussing the issue seriously. Instead of acting like a petulant child who has to denigrate everyone else to feel some self worth.
Read smarter. Then maybe you can think harder.
BREAKING NEWS
Global Technorati REJECT Denialism!
The world’s most popular engineering website is Slashdot, and it’s remarkable how strong the Slashdot consensus has become that (1) climate change is real, serious, and accelerating, and (2) Big Carbon’s astro-turfing efforts to deny this scientific reality are becoming pathetically desperate .
Climate Etc readers are welcome to verify these assertions by reading (for example) the Slashdot forums:
• The Koch Brothers Attack On Solar Energy
• Arizona Commissioner Probes Utility’s Secret Funding of Anti-Solar Campaign
• A Look at the Koch Brothers Dark-Money Network
Conclusion Climate Etc readers can rely upon FOMD for links to the *STRONGEST* climate-change science and the *SLEAZIEST* climate-change denialism.
Confident Prediction Around the world, political parties and/or political candidates that embrace climate-change denialism will receive little or support from the world’s community of scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians (the STEM community).
Can Big Carbon’s massive “Dark-Money Network” compensate for denialism’s collapsing credibility within the STEM community?
The world wonders!
AFOMD,
Unfortunately, in spite of any amount of consensus, confidence, conclusions or predictions – the sum total of which plus a few Euro will buy a cup of coffee – the world has cooled over the last four and a half billion years.
You may wonder, but the world keeps cooling. Maybe you can figure out a way to halt the decline, stop the cooling, and start some warming. Good luck!
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Another confident prediction:
Fan
Personally I am not against renewables but they are being deployed before they are ready to take up the slack of fossil fuels, renewables are often expensive intrusive and often inefficient.
I do believe in energy horses for courses and with regards to solar we have the nonsensical situation here where solar farms taking up 50 acres or so of good farmland are sprouting up in southern England. We are a small country and 50 acres of green field sites is a lot.
to make matters worse the output from these panels is small and when they are most needed-in winter-is exactly when they are producing next to nothing.
I have had solar lights for 30 years and almost yearly buy the latest variety, but the sad truth is that from around October until March they produce nothing and in other months the output fades after a few hours. In the UK we have long periods without sun or sufficient light for solar and similarly in winter have long spells without wind rendering wind turbines useless.
We do however have a long coastline that could produce enormous amounts of energy but research on this is negligible.
I don’t know the situation in New York but suspect the power output-bearing in mind weather conditions and shade from buildings is not going to be that great for solar, in the deserts of Arizona it will be a different story.
Fossil fuels and nuclear provide measurable power outputs that can be calculated in advance at a rate and price needed for advanced economies and to date renewables can not take their place.
tonyb
Fan & Tonyb
I support renewables in the appropriate economic situation. In California, using roof tops and parking structures shading by solar panels could reduce electrical requirements by some 25% according to one paper. I mentioned it some time ago with a link and will go back to find it. Wind is doing fairly well but needs the subsidies to compete but those are in place at this time. The State mandates the use and that will give an opportunity to evaluate big gobs of renewagle generation. These will compete with the nuclear in Georgia as that is built. This is good for the economy except CA electrical prices are higher than they should be to accomodate the policy directions. So places that look for lower first costs will figure out what is best. China and India and now Poland and Germany will go for coal in a big way. We shall have to evaluate the external costs of coal generation in China as they continue to choke the lives out of their people with pollution, not Carbon. All of the above is a policy choice but not in a single geographic location, but now we can evaluate.
Scott
Fan & Tonyb
Here is the summary and article.
“Despite such breakthroughs, the U.S. economy is harnessing only a fraction of solar’s potential benefits. Based on U.S. Census Bureau data, about 100 million U.S. residential units could physically hold rooftop systems one day, generating by one estimate 3.75 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity a year. In 2011, total U.S. electrical generation from all sources was about 4 trillion kilowatt hours—42 percent of that from coal, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The trouble is, many of the big,investor-owned utilities that provide about 85 percent of America’s electricity see solar as both a technical challenge and a long-term threat to their 100-year-old profit models. And the lack of a national energy policy means regulation of solar is up to states, public service commissions, and a wealth of local governments and bureaucracies—many of whom have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.”
Source: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-25/solar-energy-is-ready-dot-the-u-dot-s-dot-isnt
Scott
Scott
I live on the south coast of England which is reckoned to be the sunniest place in the entire UK. We get some 1800 hours per year.
Here are the figures for the US
http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/US/average-annual-sunshine-by-city.php
This is why we in the uk should be concentrating on wave/tidal power, not solar.
Energy houses for courses
Tonyb
Tonyb,
US National Academy of Sciences published na Evauation of the US Dept of Energy’s
Marine and Hydrokinetic Resource Assessments in 2013. You can read for free if you sign up at the NAS website and print a copy. It is a good resource. If you have problems let me know and I can get one to you.
Regards, Scott
Tony b
You are actually lucky in your sunny part of England.
Most of Switzerland is not an ideal spot for solar panels, either.
Most of the central valley of Switzerland from Geneva to Zurich (where almost everyone lives) is covered by dense fog 30% to 40% of the time for 5 months of the year (winter).
Yet these days are counted as “sunshine days”.
http://www.geschichteinchronologie.ch/eu/ch/wetter_nebeltage-fehlen-in-wetterstatistik.html
The reported (and adjusted) annual sunshine hours for some major cities are:
Geneva: 2239 (1850)
Bern: 2100 (1690)
Zurich: 2042 (1580)
Lucerne: 1865 (1350)
Lucerne gets a lot of rain and also has the distinction of being called the “Eidgenössische Schüttstein” (federal kitchen sink) in German, and less flattering, “le pot de chambre fédéral” in French.
Cities outside the fog zone are:
Chur: 1964
Basel: 2031
Davos: 2083
Lugano: 2407
Sion: 2420
And, highest of all, the upper Valais, near Zermatt at over 2500 sunshine hours per year.
There’s also not much wind in Switzerland and, unlike your part of the world, there is also no potential “wave or tide power” to harness.
But there is a lot of hydroelectric power (over half the total supply). This is not easily expandable to any great extent.
And the politicians are wondering how the proposed shutdown of all nuclear power plants (which came as a result of a hasty decision by the Federal Council following green pressure after Fukushima) is going to be possible.
As you say: “horses for courses”.
Max
Max
A couple of years ago we took the train from geneva to Zurich so guess we went through the valley you describe. It was December. We were struck by the very large number of pretty chalets disfigured by ugly solar panels but what amused us the most was that although it was sunny on the mountains, down in the valley it was sunk in a Stygian gloom and we guessed that no one would see any sunshine until a virgin was sacrificed in late march.
We also noticed the very tiny changes of levels on lake geneva and the minuscule waves. Quite unlike the ocean outside my house.
Yes, horses for courses but they must be the right horse for the particular course it needs to run on.
Tonyb
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Great joy for this old codger to see photos of the Trezona Range [Formation]and the included stromatolites as well as the contact between the Elatina and Nuccaleena Formations. The only Golden Spike in the southern hemisphere is found at this contact. It marks the base of the world type section for rocks of Ediacaran age. The Elatina at about 600my represents the last part of the Cryogenian Period. As noted by Peter Lang [thanks Peter] I teach about this time every year during the Spring Tour which I and my wife conduct. We spend five days in the central Flinders Ranges at Gum Creek Station [sheep]. From there we spend a couple of days considering the top third of the layers comprising the Adelaide Geosyncline, beautifully laid out in sequence and starting with the layer under the Trezona formation,the Enorama shale and ending with the Wirrealpa Limestone. We get a chance to see evidence of bacterial life[stromatolites] , the first metazoans [neoProterozoic- Ediacarans] and some early Palaeozoic [Archaeocyaths,trilobites, brachiopods] characters.It’s all seen on a journey [5 hours or so]through Brachina Gorge. It’s scenically beautiful and more importantly is, in my view, one of the most significant sequences of sediments on earth. There are 14 layers with a combined thickness of 5 km.And it’s so accessible. You can drive or walk from layer to layer and read[ it’s a marked geological trail] the whole 130 million year story.I’ve also produced a CD, a poem by me with music by my son called “A journey through time in words and music.” We get a chance to consider those “piercement” structures [diapirs] and also some rare structural forms [Wilpena Pound] and the “Enorama Dome” We also spend two days at Arkaroola where some early Cryogenian tillites [early part of Snowball Earth] make a bold showing. They come in at about 750 my and were laid down during what we call the Sturtian glaciation [I remember Peter Lang getting very excited at seeing them.] Arkaroola is where the oldest sediments of the Adelaide Geosyncline rest unconformably on the mid Proterozoic Mt. Painter Block of metamorphics and igneous rocks. [1.6billion ybp]. This is all appreciated on the famous Ridge Top Tour [5 hours on an open 4WD and on a track that is without doubt as steep as one could find on the planet. It’s a great week of exploring and learning and if you’re interested in trying it, then please contact me.
Fantastic. If you have a web site just enter the address in the box and it will link by clicking on your name.
Terry, I read your Gawler autobiography. Fascinating. My wife Helen’s mother, now 91, was one of Australia’s first female geologists, which helped inform Helen’s interests. I’m sure she’d be interested in your tour (as would I, depending on how much walking is involved), please see if you can provide contact details. Perhaps Peter Lang has them – he could e-mail Skippy and I.
Terry Krieg, sounds like a wonderful experience. I saw living
stromatolites when I visited Shark Bay, Western Australia a
few years ago, one of only a couple of places in the world,
I believe, where you find them.
a serf.
To help out, I’ve found this reference that has links to and background on to some of Terry’s work:
http://www.independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/nuclear-industry-infiltrates-abc-to-push-for-an-atomic-australia,3630
Great stuff, Terry. Keep it up.
BartR shows his usual bias. He could have posted a fair and balanced review of Terry Krieg’s background, but chose not to. BartR demonstrates he is seriously lacking in personal, intellectual and professional integrity.
Fair, balanced, and current:
http://ec.europa.eu/energy/nuclear/forum/doc/final_report_dhaeseleer/synthesis_economics_nuclear_20131127-0.pdf
Which cites http://www.atse.org.au/Documents/Publications/Reports/Energy/ATSE%20Low%20Carbon%20Energy.pdf
Which considers nuclear moderately attainable, starting in about 2040 (a quarter century from now) speculating on advances in Gen III nuclear technology. I’ve heard a lifetime of speculation on advances in nuclear domestic energy technology. Want to know how far nuclear domestic energy technology has advanced in my lifetime? Not a bit.
The 2010 report postulates almost a standstill in the development of solar and wind, which are already only four years later where the report guessed they would be in 2040, and trending to improve over and over again before 2020.
And the fair and balanced 2013 report also cites http://www.nirs.org/neconomics/Nuclear-Safety-and-Nuclear-Economics-Post-Fukushima.pdf — which if the Austrialians had known would happen, they’d have never been so wildly optimistic about nuclear just a year earlier.
Fairly, and with balance, nowhere in the world has better domestic nuclear energy prospects than Australia. Do I care one way or the other if Australia goes nuclear? I do not. Those risks and benefits don’t affect me directly in the least. However, fairly, and with balance, it would be an incomplete conversation to ignore that the economics do not favor nuclear particularly well, even in Australia, and the prospects of that changing in the foreseeable future are low.
Off topic but interesting article. You think GCMs are bad….
http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2014/04/30/test-driving_the_epas_carbon_models_927.html
The conclusion (the whole article is well worth reading, it’s not very long):
“That’s right. Washington now regulates how much electricity microwave ovens use when they are not being used. Those four-watt energy-hog digital displays need to be swapped for two-watt models, which in the Department of Energy’s own lab tests caused a 50 percent failure rate for the ovens.
The SCC will “nudge” dishwashers into longer and longer wash cycles, minivans into something more like a Priuses, and coal miners to the welfare office. Proponents will say even that’s not enough.
Why use flawed models to justify economically harmful regulations? Unless, of course, more accurate estimates undercut your case. Perhaps it’s time someone asked the EPA what it’s got against appliances that work.
Reminds me of the low-low-flush toilets in expensive new Sydney homes. After about five wasted flushes you finally have to dip your hand in there to fish out the green pea that won’t go down. Then some more water to wash the hand.
The planet has survived much. But can it survive the good intentions of our Green Betters?
The SCC is simply a political tool that will be used to further bankrupt our country. As I have said many times, if Obama and the EPA have their way with the energy sector, their actions will make Obamacare look like a minor blip in the economy in comparison.
Sorry guys. Don’t have a website BUT email me on: patez1@yahoo.com OR phone [08]86821571, Mob 0428834141 or write to: PO Box 640 Port Lincoln 5606. There’s very little walking on the Brachina Gorge story and you don’t have to do any more than you are comfortable with. There’s a bit more on the second day but only if you feel up to it. Contact me for details of the eight day tour. I hope to hear from you soon.
Cheers
Terry Krieg
mosomoso,
A bit off thread, but low flush toilets in Berlin apparently don’t save a lot of water.
From Spiegel Online –
“Our consumption has declined so much that there is not enough water going through the pipes to wash away fecal matter, urine and food waste, causing blockages. The inert brown sludge sloshes back and forth in the pipes, which are now much too big, releasing its full aroma.
The water authorities are trying to offset the stench with odor filters and perfumed gels that come in lavender, citrus and spruce scents. But toxic heavy metals like copper, nickel and lead are also accumulating in the sewage system. Sulfuric acid is corroding the pipes, causing steel to rust and concrete to crumble. It’s a problem that no amount of deodorant can solve.
The waterworks must now periodically flush their pipes and conduits. The water we save with our low-flow toilets is simply being pumped directly through hoses into the sewage system below. On some days, an additional half a million cubic meters of tap water is run through the Berlin drainage system to ensure what officials call the “necessary flow rate.”
I believe there are yet more ill effects now. It is beginning to dawn on people that trying to repair and upgrade buried century old services like sewers is not cheap.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn
Mike, it’s dawning slowly for Spiegel, once as daffy as the Guardian and full of as much snobby mock-science as the NYT. But at least it’s dawning. I guess the experience of funding the rest of Europe and the Jammer-Ossis is bound to dispel some of that green German mist.
One of the design criteria for sewerage is transport time between the source and the plant. After some 12 hours – depending on temperature – the sewage becomes anoxic and starts generating hydrogen sulphide – following reduction of oxides of nutrients and metals – which smell, corrode and release highly toxic metals and nutrients in highly bioavailable forms.
The typical solution is to inject oxygen – as hydrogen peroxide or in some other form – into the stream. Another key design parameter is maintaining velocities in pipes with sufficient flow to ‘self clean’. I think you will find as that most 100 year old pipes are due for upgrading. Especially those combine sewer/stormwater pipelines that end up discharging raw sewage into the Spree River.
The overall solution is not to flush huge amounts of water down the toilet and into rivers or out to sea – something best avoided by a good greenie like me – but to integrate high and low technology in stormwater, water supply and sewage treatment and recycling. It is called integrated urban water cycle management in the jargon of the day. Recycle locally for irrigation – for instance – using advanced filtration technology and heat treatment of sludge. Irrigation of parks and playing fields and fertilizer – flush from stormwater ponds if needed. Hell – I’ve won awards for this sort of stuff in civilian life.
What I really don’t like is the waterless urinals popping up in shopping centres. They just smell bad. But with a bit of management even Moso’s problem with floaters can be solved. Metamucil, chewing his peas and using the full flush button.
It wasn’t my pea. And that was the full flush. The skid marks might be acceptable in a Brisvegas servo.
Me, I live in the scrub and flush from the bathtub. Hell – I’ve won awards for my civilian bucketing.
Enough with the pea talk already.
“How did Michael Mann become a Lead Author on the TAR?”
If US, the information should be freely available. The decision would likely have been made by the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC). A request for information from U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) may be the easiest way to determine his selection.
Here’s a thought, why not simply ask Dr. Mann?
Just a thought. It might be more productive to request information from the Subcommittee on Global Change Research (SGCR) of the National Science and Technology Council’s Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Sustainability (CENRS). This is the group which steers USGCRP. USGCRP is also overseen by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) but they’re unlikely to know much about Dr. Mann’s selection.
Transparency related to the selection process for authors isn’t a big deal. The information is simply difficult to find on the globechange.gov website.
Climate Change Assessments. Review of the Processes and Procedures of the IPCC (Index)
http://www.ipccreport.diamax.com/TheReport.aspx
Current Challenges Facing The IPCC
http://www.ipccreport.diamax.com/TheReport/Introduction.aspx
As far as I can tell from the UN org. chart, the UN doesn’t have a group solely focused on Science and I don’t think they should. The WMO is a Specialized Agency of the UN’s Economic and Social Council. The UNEP is one of the Funds and Programs group reporting to the UN’s General Assembly. Given the UN structure and UNFCCC policies, its not surprising to find the focus on mitigation which is IPCC’s cart before the horse dilemma.
Climate Change Assessments. Review of the Processes and Procedures of the IPCC (Index)
http://www.ipccreport.diamax.com/TheReport.aspx
Conflict of Interest Recommendations are found in Chapter 4 of the Report
Recommendation: The IPCC should develop and adopt a rigorous conflict of interest policy that applies to all individuals directly involved in the preparation of IPCC reports, including senior IPCC leadership (IPCC Chair and Vice Chairs), authors with responsibilities for report content (i.e., Working Group Co-chairs, Coordinating Lead Authors, and Lead Authors), Review Editors, and technical staff directly involved in report preparation (e.g., staff of Technical Support Units and the IPCC Secretariat).
In developing such a policy, the IPCC may want to consider features of the NRC policy. These include:
1. Distinguishing between strong points of view (i.e., biases) that can be balanced and conflicts of interest that should be avoided unless determined to be unavoidable
2. Differentiating between current conflicts, where the candidate’s current interests could be directly and predictably affected by the outcome of the report, and potential conflicts of interests
3. Considering a range of relevant financial interests, such as employment and consulting relationships; ownership of stocks, bonds, and other investments; fiduciary responsibilities; patents and copyrights; commercial business ownership and investment interests; honoraria; and research funding
4. Judging the extent to which an author or Review Editor would be reviewing his or her own work, or that of his or her immediate employer
5. Examining indications of a fixed position on a particular issue revealed through public statements (e.g., testimony, speeches, interviews), publications (e.g., articles, books), or personal or professional activities
6. Maintaining up-to-date confidential disclosure forms and participating in regular, confidential discussions of conflict of interest and balance for the major components of each report.
The policy should strike the appropriate balance between the need to minimize the burden on IPCC volunteers and the need to ensure the credibility of the process. To implement the policy, the IPCC will have to designate a senior individual, such as the proposed Executive Director, to review the disclosure forms, lead discussions of conflict of interest and balance, and make decisions about potential conflicts of interests.
Its worth noting, I’m quoting from The IPCC Recommendations Report dated August 30, 2010!
Were these recommendations adopted and implemented for AR5?
Dr. Curry,
If the IPCC Processes and Procedures recommendations from 2010 were implemented for AR5, a post-analysis related to effectiveness of the changes should expose the UNFCCC policies, as well as others, which have corrupted the AR5 reporting process?
If “they” didn’t implement the recommendations, we have the true cause of the problems in our sights.
manacker | May 1, 2014 at 5:25 pm |
Newport Mac
It seems pretty obvious that the IPCC did not implement the “Processes and Procedures recommendations from 2010″ for AR5.
======
As yet, I haven’t found (have no evidence) they didn’t adopt many of the recommendations. Several favorites include all IPCC positions show be limited to a single AR assessment.
I’ll dig some more in the morning.
all IPCC positions show be limited to a single AR assessment.
s/b
all IPCC positions should be limited to a single AR assessment.
Newport_Mac
You cover Chapter 4, which covers conflict of interests. I was referring to Chapter 2, Article 4, which covers inclusion of alternate (i.e. dissenting) views:
Under Chapter 2 “Evaluation of IPCC’s Assessment Processes”
Article 4
Handling the Full Range of Views
An assessment is intended to arrive at a judgment of a topic, such as the best estimate of changes in average global surface temperature over a specified timeframe and its impacts on the water cycle. Although all reasonable points of view should be considered, they need not be given equal weight or even described fully in an assessment report. Which alternative viewpoints warrant mention is a matter of professional judgment.
Therefore, Coordinating Lead Authors and Lead Authors have considerable influence over which viewpoints will be discussed in the process. Having author teams with diverse viewpoints is the first step toward ensuring that a full range of thoughtful views are considered.
Equally important is combating confirmation bias—the tendency of authors to place too much weight on their own views relative to other views (Jonas et al., 2001). As pointed out to the Committee by a presenter10 and some questionnaire respondents, alternative views are not always cited in a chapter if the Lead Authors do not agree with them. Getting the balance right is an ongoing struggle. However, concrete steps could also be taken.
For example, chapters could include references to all papers that were considered by the authoring team and describe the authors’ rationale for arriving at their conclusions.
Recommendation: Lead Authors should explicitly document that a range of scientific viewpoints has been considered, and Coordinating Lead Authors and Review Editors should satisfy themselves that due consideration was given to properly documented alternative views.
IMO IPCC did not follow this recommendation when it came to the many studies on ECS which represented “alternate views” to that expressed by IPCC.
Max
“An assessment is intended to arrive at a judgment of a topic”
The term “assessment” is the key in this example which speaks to proper standards and practices. This is not a catch 22 as the structure imposed on assessment is the concern and key to subsequent thought in the work groups.
Newport_Mac
Good point on “assessments”
Not being a lawyer, I may not be all that good in legally parsing the words.
But it appears to me that the IPCC insistence to remain with essentially the same model-predicted estimate for 2xCO2 ECS (and TCR) from AR4 in its AR5 report, despite several, more recent and (at least partially) observation-based studies showing much lower estimates, does not comply with:
Max
PS BTW, this is not the first time that IPCC has ignored or rejected properly documented scientific studies that concluded alternate views to its own view. Paul M has compiled a whole list of such omissions, etc. for AR4, which is available on-line.
manacker | May 1, 2014 at 7:21 pm
…..
====
I find the best in your comments in the first 1 or 2 sentences.
Everything the UN does is in the context of International Law. Laws that define and restrict the UN based on UN Charter. The muse of the Assembly may drift but can be discarded with a single fact.
My comments relate to the IPCC’s ability to deliver facts and the tragic environment they are forced to contend with which alter the facts.
My opinion, correct the standards and practices from all UN agencies associated with this AR delivery and its brave new discovery for a Global Science effort. Sadly, the UN “elite” are tragic and self-serving cargo culture fools.
~Richard Tol (Bogus prophecies of doom will not fix the climate, 31 March 2014)
I’ve often wondererd about Mann’s selection as a lead author while his PhD was still drying. In my mind I kind of see it like teen pop music. I see Folland and Houghton being like record producers looking for a new sound and finding Dr. Mann. As is always the case with teen pop the artist really isn’t talented and the music isn’t very good. But for some reason because its new and different people eat it up for a time. Eventually people wake up and realize that the music is bad and cant believe that they ever liked it. Sure there are die hard fans who will defend to the death but for the rest of us we look at it with nostalgia and laugh at ourselves.
All beliefs in whatever realm are theories at some level. (Stephen Schneider)
Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. (Dandemis)
Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. (Francis Bacon)
Never fall in love with your hypothesis. (Peter Medawar)
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts. (Arthur Conan Doyle)
A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong. (Francis Crick)
The thing that doesn’t fit is the thing that is most interesting. (Richard Feynman)
To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact. (Charles Darwin)
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. (Mark Twain)
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong. (Thomas Jefferson)
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second, it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
Inspiring quotes — how do they apply to my pragmatic comments above?
The bigger they are, the harder they hit. (various)
Ahhhhh at last consensus cAGW defined !
Steven Mosher
Good set of quotes.
Here are a couple more that fit it with our topic here:
Two attributed to Albert Einstein:
“The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance” and
“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong”
Two attributed to Richard Feynman:
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” and
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”
“Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm.”
(Donella Meadows)
Two attributed to Thomas Kuhn:
“Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles, and the puzzles upon which he concentrates are just those which he believes can be both stated and solved within the existing scientific tradition.” and
“Scientific advancement is not evolutionary, but rather is a series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions, in which one conceptual world view is replaced by another”.
Max
To be honest my favorites so far are:
– We’re All Going to Die!
– It’s Worse Than We Thought!
Favorite Post so far:
Plankton Cause Hurricanes! Urgent Action Required!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/15/plankton-cause-hurricanes-urgent-action-required/
Favorite discovery: Plankton make clouds to prevent sunburn. Now there’s a feedback that makes sense ; )
Newport Mac
It seems pretty obvious that the IPCC did not implement the “Processes and Procedures recommendations from 2010” for AR5.
It starts out with the 2xCO2 estimated climate sensitivity at equilibrium (ECS).
In AR4 IPCC reported a model-predicted ECS range of 2.0 to 4.5C (mean value 3.2C).
Several independent, at least partially observation-based studies (including the current pause in warming) were published after AR4, which all showed that this range was too high: The new range was 1.2C to 2.4C, with a mean value of around 1.8C (or around half the previously reported range).
Our hostess commented on an earlier thread that this would be difficult to simply “sweep under the rug”.
Yet IPCC did just that; in AR5 WG1 it stuck with its old estimate (with a very slightly reduced lower range): 1.5C to 4.5C (mean value of 3C not specifically expressed).
IOW IPCC simply ignored or rejected several independent studies which dissented from its previous estimate of a mean 2xCO2 ECS of 3C.
It did this for one simple reason IMO.
Had it used the new lower value for ECS, all the “RCP scenarios” for future warming from AGW would have been much lower (and less alarming).
The (already bloated) “worst case” scenario RCP8.5, which the media are touting as the “business as usual” case, would only show warming of less than 2C by year 2100 had the new information been used.
So I conclude that IPCC AR5 WG1 is simply a sales pitch to support the UNFCCC policies and agenda.
Max
Hi manacker,
Let’s leave Mosher’s post to quotes and some fun. I’ll answer you at the end the my comments related to the IPCC recommendations.
Newport_mac
You think sunburn hurts a human being?
Just think what it could do to a plankton without suitable sunscreen protection!
The mind boggles (as Fanny would write).
Max
Newport_mac
How about:
“More work is needed” (i.e. pay here, please)
Max
“Several independent, at least partially observation-based studies (including the current pause in warming) were published after AR4, which all showed that this range was too high: The new range was 1.2C to 2.4C, with a mean value of around 1.8C (or around half the previously reported range).”
That same range shows it is extremely likely that the warming since 1950 is mostly caused by man. Can’t have it both ways.
lolwot
Yes, indeed.
You “can have it both ways”.
Using a 2xCO2 ECS of 1.8C (instead of the 3C favored by IPCC), and a corresponding 2xCO2 TCR value of 1.35C (instead of the 1.9C favored by IPCC), one gets for 1950 to 2010 warming:
1950: 313.0 ppmv CO2
2010: 389.1 ppmv CO2
ln (389.1 / 313.0) = 0.2176
ln (2) = 0.6931
Using 2xCO2 TCR of 1.35C:
Theo warming 1950-2010 = 1.35 * 0.2176 / 0.6931 = 0.42C
Add in warming from other human GHGs = 0.03C
Total theo warming from GHGs = 0.45C
Actually observed warming (HadCRUT4 linear warming from Wood for Trees) = 0.64C
So warming from GHGs represented 0.45 / 0.64 = 71% of the observed warming, which matches the IPCC claim of “most of the observed warming”.
Of course, if we use the 2xCO2 ECS estimate of 1.8C, we end up with a theoretical 1950-2010 warming from GHGs of 0.61C (95%).
So, you see, lolwot, you CAN have it both ways.
Max
so what does JC mean by “WG1 dropped the ball with its ‘extremely likely”?
lolwot
To clarify the “you CAN have it both ways”:
A 2xCO2 TCR of 1.35C or a 2xCO2 ECS of 1.8C, as latest studies are suggesting, are consistent with the IPCC claim that “most of the observed warming” since the mid-century have “very likely” been caused by increased atmospheric concentrations of human GHGs.
Max
if you guys want to leave my thread to comment on another thread you need to ask permission.
lolwot
You ask me what appears to be a rhetorical question:
I cannot answer that – possibly JC can.
I’d say it has more to do with moving the likelihood from 90% (“very likely”) to 95% (“extremely likely”) without really having any new corroborating evidence to strengthen its claim (in fact, a “pause” that goes a bit in the other direction), but you’d have to ask her if that was what she meant.
Max
Steven Mosher
Dear Mosh,
May I have the permission to respond to comments from lolwot or Newport_Mac, which happen to be located on your thread?
Thanks in advance for your kind consideration.
Yours faithfully,
Max
Steven Mosher | May 1, 2014 at 7:00 pm |
if you guys want to leave my thread to comment on another thread you need to ask permission.
LOL, yet isn’t this the point in your “thread” — who owns the insights.
Christy’s testimony was–there is no other phrase for it– a damning indictment. Of course, because it was exactly that, I didn’t hear about it at the time.
It should have been above the fold in every newspaper and tabloid in what we once referred to as “the free world.”
Great blog here! Also your website a lot up fast!
What web host are you using? Can I am getting your associate hyperlink on your host?
I desire my website loaded up as quickly as
yours lol
The global warming debate is way past the use of hockey stick by the US-hating UN-IPCC and Eurocommies. It’s about the facilitators of the lie — by the government education interest group and by Democrat politicians — who have done far more to subvert the ideals of Americanism.
The ‘nature trick’ (an attempt by CRUgate conspirators ‘to hide the decline’) was a fraud on science and the people. Steve McIntyre of M&M repute noted (30-Nov-2010), as follows:
Bart, you still don’t understand how things worked in academia in Michael Mann’s time.
Judith Curry started at Northern Illinois University, originally a normal school training grammar school teachers. She was recommended to U Chicago. U Chicago profs recommended her to Georgia Tech. She passed tenure-tack testing and made Asso. Prof. then Prof., at Tech, and so on. This is an A STRONGLY UPWARD trajectory. Judith didn’t go to UIUC for undergrad work. Maybe she was a small-town girl, maybe a farm girl, where her high school teachers advised her to go to NIU because they recognized Judith had a teaching spirit, but as advanced study/research/teaching was beyond their ken, they thought they were doing best for Judith to send her on to NIU, so she could teach high school too. But she proved to be to talented for that role.
John Christy attended Cal State undergrad, but was recommended for harder studies. He earned his PhD at UIUC. That’s an UPWARD trajectory.
Bart, you can rationalize Michael Mann’s trajectory to your heart’s content, but facts show it is downward.
Berkeley’s “honors” are: University Medalist, University Medalist Finalist, University Medalist Nominee (all Highest Honors GPAs), Highest Honors without UMed nomination, High Honors, and Honors.
I missed Highest Honors by 0.04 GPA (corrected, not “0.4”). My thereafter wife made UMed Finalist, based on her profs’ recs, including Glenn Seaborg, and Dan Koshland (subsequently Science mag’s editor). Dr. K said, introducing her as the valedictorian, the first woman to win the biochemistry department citation, “If A+’s counted as 4.3, [she] would have gotten a 4.12 GPA.” I only made third in my class (of ~250 grads).
We both had our pick of PhD programs. We both chose to go to med school, a different track.
Dr. Mann didn’t have his pick of programs. Even if he didn’t get into Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Princeton or Berkeley, strong options for High Honors grads were Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, UIUC and Carnegie-Mellon, or maybe UCSD, or even not-yet-on-most people’s radar, up-and-coming UCSB.
Yale wasn’t a physics school. Yes it could claim Josiah Willard Gibbs, one of the fathers of physical chemistry, a genius; yes I mastered Gibbs free energy equations, but he died in 1903. Did he deserve a Nobel? I think so.
Did Mr. Mann choose Berkeley because Albert Einstein taught there? What a stupid comment. He died in 1953. I got to see one of quantum-mechanics Werner Heisenberg’s last lectures. It was over my head. A lot of Berkeley claases’ stuff was over my head, until I geared down and studied every week from the first day of the quarter. Then I arrived at exams, with nervous energy, wearing my “lucky” Woolrich “chamois” shirt. I was ready for any question asked.
Michael Mann wasn’t ready for any question asked.
Bart, it’s your choice to answer, “Mann was brilliant, but unwilling to study (like I was early), he was lazy,” or “He studied hard, but wasn’t smart,” or “He was smart, and studied, yet not smart enough, or studying hard enough, OR
“He got high grades based on Amherst college prep in his first two years, taking courses he already took, then flagged in advanced courses because he couldn’t meet the Berkeley competition,” or “He just didn’t make the highest-honors cut at any time.”
Late Berkeley bloomers made the MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Caltech, Princeton, Berkeley PhD programs. Or. if not preeminant, at least still first tier (faded from their WWI-era glory) Columbia, Chicago, Cornell. Or Carnegie-Mellon, Johns Hopkins, UIUC, USCD or UCSB.
Bart, you never went to one of these schools, not in a physical science, math or bioscience. Show us your academic credentials. If you have an undergrad degree in humanities, or social sciences, or education, you’re not credible on a climate science discussion site. So what do you have in terms of science-ed crdentials? I did electron microscopy at age 19, nucleic acid analysis at age 21, biomolecular engineering, completely my own project, at age 22, almost 40 years ago, at UCSD. I was lucky. In the good old days, catching insects, lizards, frogs and salamanders, when I was 5-7, using Christmas money to buy a microscope at 8, telescope at 9, chemistry set at 11. Fooling around with Tesla coils at 12-18. Blowing out a TV tube’s tesla coil at 13. (You can ask me how I did this.)
I know you didn’t get to do these things. Michael Mann apparently didn’t either. For some reason, he didn’t do hands-on experimental science. He decided he could do data analysis, including chopping data, when the results didn’t suit his goal. I’m sorry, but tree-ring data being accurate temp proxies, then chopping them when real-time temp measurements were available, and discredited the tree-rings’ temp estimates, that’s not science.
Real science would have been publishing the discordance between tree-ring temp estimates before real temps were measured, and real temp measurements, in the modern era, when both modalities were available.
Anyway, people were saying Judith Curry and John Christy warrant promotion. Mike Mann’s teachers said, “He’s only an okay student, he’s not a failure, but he’s nowhere near the best. He warrants demotion out of the premier tier.” Even second-tier Yale sent him below for PG, and then paid academic.
Dr. Schooley schools little barty, again. Barty is impervious to facts, Mark. We find that subjecting the little fella to ridicule is a better use of our time.
Mann’s first rate publication record speaks for itself. Your metric of what constitutes “upward” and “downward” is clearly faulty.
Mike Mann’s teachers said, “He’s only an okay student, he’s not a failure, but he’s nowhere near the best. He warrants demotion out of the premier tier.” …
Is this a real quote from one of Mann’s professors?
Mann’s publication record illustrates the sad state of peer-review in the so-called climate science.
A putatively imminent climate scientist prophesied in a CRU email that was subsequently liberated:
Whosomever disappears the MWP is going to be rich and famous. Tenure, department chairs, tables and other furnitures, cars, babes, all expense paid junkets to exotic places. But the price he will pay is to be forever bald, chubby, short and nasty.
Mark Schooley | May 1, 2014 at 4:52 pm |
Smarmy, specious, superior speculation wrong on virtually all counts, Scooby. You should ask Daphne for help. Your academic eugenics theories at first reminded me of the words of a nurse: “The higher a doctor specializes in the anatomy, the bigger their god complex.”
The later diatribe made me more think of what I’d been told about a particular type of academic referred to as “early emeritus”; not safe to be let near students, not old enough for retirement, no good at research, not worth trying to get published.
Is that your story? Frustrated by being kept from impressionable minds, still reliving the glory days when your GPA last mattered?
By the way, you ought learn this lesson sooner or later: if your GPA still matters more than eight seconds into your first real job interview, you’re doing it wrong.
Trajectory determined by their teachers? What utter banality.
Try Velma.
See what I mean, Mark? Impervious, but has some entertainment value. They used to write that on his little report cards.
Don Monfort | May 1, 2014 at 10:39 pm |
Didn’t you say you had buttons to polish?
Can’t imagine the button polishing business is going too well, that you have all this free time to froth all over the blogosphere.
You are lying again, barty. But we expect that. It would be nice if you could be more creative. Juvenile, lame lies are not very entertaining.
Don Monfort | May 2, 2014 at 12:44 pm |
I just go by the evidence. You’re the one who is still amply _here_, after claiming better things to do.
Which would make you the one who is seeking to deceive us with the notion he has anything worthwhile to do anywhere at all.
Whereas I’m merely the one who is mean-spirited about point out the truth.
It is easy to see who is obsessed and stressed by the failure of their cause. I am just having fun at your expense, barty. Doesn’t take much time, or effort. You are the easiest target in a target rich environment. Well, jimmy dee and joshie are easier, but hitting them is kind of cruel. You are a little better able to defend yourself.
Don Monfort | May 2, 2014 at 1:19 pm |
See, that’s the thing. You’ve just proclaimed that your only purpose for commenting on Climate Etc. is to make ad hominem attacks, to bully, defame, distort and impugn for fun.
You contribute nothing else, and you’re not particularly good at the fine art of the insult, which has a long and honorable history when not practiced by the merely miserable without imagination or wit.
I imagine others simply ignore you, as ignoring a troll is entirely effective at discouraging their needy attention-starved pathology.
But to me, examples like you are pure gold: you bring derision to a band of bullies by being so obvious and inimical; the more people read writings like yours, the more they see clearly what you are all about. That’s why I waste my time responding to your likes: your comments are so readily disliked by readers, they make my case for me, and in far fewer words, more plainly.
Carry on.
You are lying again, barty. I never proclaimed what you just lied about. I said I am having fun with you and I named a couple of other trolls that I have fun with. Now hit us with some lies and pompous irrelevant verbosity. Try to keep it under 400 words.
Don Monfort | May 2, 2014 at 2:20 pm |
QED
I am having a positive effect on your blog behavior,barty. At least, you kept it under 400 words.
BULLETIN OF CANADIAN PETROLEUM GEOLOGY
VOL. 50, NO. 2 (JUNE, 2002), P. 297-327
Are Observed Changes In The Concentration Of Carbon Dioxide In The Atmosphere Really Dangerous?
A great deal of recent research has demonstrated that the Little Ice Age was evident even in Australia and reaffirms that it really did happen on a global scale. For example, work by Hendy et al. (2002) and Linsley et al. (2000) shows largely synchronous temperature trends of the South Pacific Ocean over the past 400 years support the view that the Little Ice Age was a truly global phenomenon and not a minor regional anomaly of lands in the vicinity of the North Atlantic Ocean. In addition, the data of Hendy et al. (2002) and Linsley et al. (2000) show temperatures in the South Pacific during the mid-18th century as being as warm as, or even warmer than, the present day. This is in contrast to the `hockey stick’ temperature history of Mann et al. (1999), which portrays the last two decades of the 20th century as the warmest of the past millennium. Other supporting evidence from around the world is provided by Le Roy Ladurie (1971), MacCracken et al. (1990), Grove and Switsur (1994), Leavitt (1994), Luckman (1994), Villalba (1994), Zhang (1994), Huffman (1996), Keigwin (1996a, 1996b), Huang et al. (1997), Dahl-Jensen et al. (1998), Cioccale (1999), de Menocal et al. (2000), Hong et al. (2000), Naurzbaev and Vaganov (2000), Winter et al. (2000), Verschuren at al. (2000), Broecker (2001), Haug et al. (2001), Holmgren et al. (2001), Johnson et al. (2001), Nicholson and Yin (2001) and Schilman et al. (2001).
In a particularly interesting study, Majorowicz et al. (1999) present proxy temperature records for the past 300 years. Data were extracted from borehole temperature-depth logs obtained at ten sites scattered throughout southern Saskatchewan, Canada. Data from the latter portion of the record were compared to observed surface temperature measurements over the last 100 years. The researchers found that the temperature proxies indicate the existence of a relatively cool period throughout most of the 18th and 19th centuries. Then, from about 1820 to present, temperatures rose between 2.5 and 3.0°C, suggesting “the last major warming event [which is still going on] began in the 18th-19th century” (Majorowicz et al., 1999, p. 240). According to the authors, “the significance of this record is that it suggests almost half of the warming occurred prior to 1900, before the dramatic buildup of atmospheric greenhouse gases.” Thus, according to a review of the article Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (1999, p. 1) “if something other than greenhouse gases caused the first half of the most recent global warming event (in which we are still imbedded), something other than greenhouse gases may be responsible for the second half of the warming as well.”
. . . Their data indicate a temperature rise similar in form to most recent trends, but without any matching rise in greenhouse gases. In reviewing this and similar work, Briffa and Osborn (2002, p. 2227) note that the record of Esper et al. (2002) clearly shows that the warming of the 20th century was actually “a continuation of a trend that began at the start of the 19th century.”
In conclusion, it is clear that the Mann et al. (1999) `hockey stick’ is nothing more than a mathematical construct vigorously promoted in the IPCC’s 2001 report to affirm the notion that temperature changes of the twentieth century were unprecedented. The validity of this has been soundly challenged and sufficient evidence exists to disprove it.
“At Least 75 Major Temperature Swings in the Last 4,500 Years!’
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a660d62d970c-pi
The graph claims 1991 was as warm as 1998….
And claims 1991 was warmer than 2009…
And predicts that 2019 will be as cold as 1815…
You buying any of that?
Only Al Gore knows the future… he invented it!
Dr. Curry:
In case you haven’t yet seen this:
http://www.climatedepot.com/?utm_source=CFACT+Updates&utm_campaign=69f8da2dd0-E_Fact_Report5_1_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a28eaedb56-69f8da2dd0-269792014
On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 4:19 PM, Climate Etc.
And here’s some more important news
sorry that should have said “even more important”
“Whenever Solar Radiation has Decreased and Volcanic Activity has Increased, global temperatures Suddenly Plummet, often within weeks or months.” [See, ‘4000+ Years–Earth’s Major Warming & Cooling Periods,’ (link above)]
““Whenever Solar Radiation has Decreased and Volcanic Activity has Increased, global temperatures Suddenly Plummet, often within weeks or months.””
So in other words the current warming during a time of sharply falling solar activity is unprecedented.
Measuring temperatures in the Leftist liberal asphalt jungle to calculate a mean global average temperature is corrupted by the blue city urban heat island effect and in any event, arrives at government-approved numbers of official numerologists whose findings have zero meaning scientifically.
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So.. intriguing speculation on the next Big Lie campaign, let out of the bag prematurely by Steve Mosher.. or is he just testing the waters to see how the message flies?
G3 is being combed through and mined for soundbites that can be stitched into a narrative damaging to the arguments of actual scientists by the marketing gurus of the FOIAlist coalition.
And their trial balloon?
Someone named “Overpeck” gave “marching orders” to someone named “Briffa” to do better with a later generation of a report than with previous report. Oh my! It’s a CONSPIRACY!
People really do have too much spare time on their hands.
Bart R
Not really. The orders were to “get rid of the Medieval Warm Period” (which is an embarrassment for those trying to claim unusual current warmth resulting from AGW).
There now. That should straighten you out, Bart.
Max
PS BTW, Bart, it was Deming who testified under oath before a US senate committee in 2006 that these marching orders had been sent out:
Deming did not implicate Overpeck directly in his testimony and the committee did not follow up on this part of his testimony AFAIK.
Max
PPS And (according to WUWT) the actual text of Overpeck’s email was (bold face by me):
manacker | May 1, 2014 at 9:51 pm |
Ohnoes! It’s PROOF of a CONSPIRACY!
Keep repeating your narrative. The one thing about Big Lie narratives that always happens, is one day everyone wakes up, looks at the Big Lie, realizes, “Hey, that’s a Big Lie,” and it loses its power.
The more you repeat your Big Lie, the sooner that day happens.
The propaganda value of a scientist giving such testimony is immense. Small wonder Barton arranged for it from a man who had to sue his own university to be let back out from the boiler room.
But Deming’s views were testified to seven and a half years ago. We have so much more data now than we had before. And what does the data as of today tell us? That indeed, confidence in any MWP outside of a narrow European context was greatly overstated based on the data of the time, and all the data since only refutes Deming’s opinions applied outside Europe.
What Dr. Curry warns us against, too much certainty, is the disgruntled Deming’s great vice in his testimony. Deming was absolutely confident in the term MWP, even though the foundation for belief in it was always paper thin. Which anyone in 2006, being honest with himself, ought have known if he were any sort of scientist in the field of paleoclimatology. It’s not that what Dr. Deming said was untrue; merely that it was.. overstated, hiding the decline of warming as one moved further from the neighborhood of Belgium.
If you were partisan, and a supporter of Deming’s side, you’d see nothing wrong with this. If you were a partisan in opposition, it would be a great perjury. Objectively, the words were so carefully chosen as to leave no one in any doubt Deming knew he was purposely misleading careless listeners, and fueling the fires of his cause. Which would not be Science.
7 1/2 is so much more compared to 1000 years.
Bart that is not a big lie.
That is the opposite of the big lie. The big lie works because everyone think it cant be that big because it would have to be a ‘CONSPIRACY’. Of course it is that big but its not a conspiracy. The key to the big lie is that it isn’t a ‘CONSPIRACY’ those who the mark thinks would ahve to be in on it are being played just as much as the mark. That is how the big lie works.
Its very hard to predict how 10 people will react to a given circumstance. Its very easy to predict how 10,000,000 will. That is how the big lie works.
Bart R
You have the uincanny ability to get it wrong every time.
For example:
Are you unaware of the 30+ independent studies from all over the world, using various paleo methodologies, all confirming that there was a MWP in that location, which was slightly warmer than today?
A pity, Bart.
You should try to keep up with the literature out there if you are going to make proclamations – otherwise you just keep looking silly.
Max
Are you accusing Dr. Demming of perjury, barty? I know what your disingenuous answer will/would be, but that is what you are doing. Defamation from a little anonymous internet character sniping from the cover of high weeds. What do you have to say for yourself, Mr. R?
Tom T | May 2, 2014 at 11:35 am |
An interesting view.
Please, carry your analysis forward in this vein on this particular example. What are the FOIAists working away at their spincraft to get 10,000,000 people to believe? To do?
Don Monfort | May 2, 2014 at 12:33 pm |
Dr. Deming doesn’t appear competent of perjury in this context, lacking the relevant training and knowledge to understand how off-base his opinions were.
After the better part of a decade, we know better. Those 30+ studies you gloat about show exactly what you and I agree: Deming’s MWP was almost exclusively a Belgium-centered phenomenon (or, more likely, string of phenomena, or most likely, absence of the typical string of phenomena for a prolonged run), affecting little of the globe not in a climate basin proximal to Belgium within two zones.
Likewise, we now know the LIA, originally a phrase describing the whole of the time since the Holocene Optimum, to be a span that was global for less than nine decades, while a series of coincidences in that literate, Western, region of the globe where we obtain our historical documents from strung together some cooling unlike the earlier loosely-correlated Belgian warming. The whole incident could be described as the Belgian Flip Flop (BFF), and written off as no more significant than that.
If Belgium were the center of a map drawn on the seat of his pants, I don’t know that Deming could find it with both hands. But anyone can tell you, Belgium does not equal the whole world, and less than nine decades does not equal a geological age, not even a little one.
Little barty pokes his little head up above the weeds and pretends that he did not accuse Dr. Deming of perjury. Carry on with your slithering, barty.
Don Monfort | May 2, 2014 at 1:11 pm |
Surprising you don’t also quibble that it was manacker, not you, gloating about 30+ studies (which he never seems to be able to entirely cite correctly, and half of which seem patently at odds with his claims, while the other half appear to be mainly silent in their conclusions on the results he asserts to obtain from them).
Did the weeds get in your eyes?
What matter if Deming was a perjuror or merely incompetent?
I’m fairly certain any statute of limitations would be expired long before Deming could be charged, and the passage of time and collection of more data has proven that, whatever else, Deming was simply factually wrong.
You are talking a lot of irrelevant nonsense, barty. I never said anything about 30+ studies. What does the statute of limitations have to do with this? I am talking about you accusing Dr. Deming of perjury, very recently:
“Objectively, the words were so carefully chosen as to leave no one in any doubt Deming knew he was purposely misleading careless listeners, and fueling the fires of his cause. Which would not be Science.”
That’s the same crap you warmista clowns pull whenever a climate scientist who strays from the party line testifies to Congress. Oooo! They are anti-science and serial disinformers. It stinks, barty. You stink. Are we clear now?
philjourdan | May 5, 2014 at 9:56 am |
Eight years ago, when Deming was writing his opinions to present to Barton’s sham of a witch hunt, we had about ten percent of the paleoclimate data assembled about the MWP as exists now.
Either the data was yet to be collected, yet to be analyzed for corroboration of claims, inaccessible or of poorer quality.
And yet, even then it was widely known that on that slender pile of figures, Lamb’s cartoon was grossly inflated and unsupportable bafflegab.
Which is why Scientists wanted to get rid of terminology flowing from Lamb’s suspect and shoddy work. Not because they were conspiring to make more money from government work (as if) than they could make as geologists working in fossil and mineral prospecting (far more lucrative), but because if you can’t get people to stop using made-up phrases for things that aren’t real, you end up with Enron Accounting and Tea Party American History.
Enron accounting. Created by Paul Krugman. Tea party history, I guess nothing ever did happen in Boston Harbor 200 odd years ago. Just made up history.
See how the new regime rewrites the facts.
Bart,
The big lie is simple because it is a con. You give people a little of what they want. You feed their ego and appeal to their personal biases. At the turn of the con, that moment when the mark begins to realize that his might be a con the ego will fight back. For admitting that it might be a con would be to admit that you were dumb enough to fall this deep into the con in the first place. The ego cannot take this. The ego will rationalize ‘It cant be that big!!! It would have to be a conspiracy!!!’. Rather than walk away from the con and admit to ones self that they fell that far into the con the mark will see the con through to the end because they would rather be taken for everything they have then admit to themselves that they fell into a con.
Tom T | May 2, 2014 at 1:00 pm |
Thank you for these insightful contributions. By all means, carry on, applying the general properties of a Big Lie to the particular of CG3.
Thanks for your encouragement BartR.And thanks for the link to the Wauchope article. I wish he’d do some reading and research on the growing nuclear industry. If you’re interested BartR, I’ve given three additional Ockham’s Razor talks since the 2011 one. You can check them out by logging on to: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor, click on Past Programs and then get the transcripts for Jan 2012 [15th I think].entitled Nuclear Power- the myths exposed, then March 2013 [4th I think] entitled:Nuclear Waste – a profitable new industry for Australia.” and then Feb10th, 2014 [I think],” Australia’s future energy supply must include nuclear.” You get only 13 minutes for each talk and so it’s difficult to say too much. However, the ABC[Robyn Williams] gave me a very good go at getting the nuclear story out there. I’ve been promoting nuclear for Australia since 1998 and have written a lot, given heaps of talks and am still going as hard as I can. At last there’s some talk about it happening. If you let me have your email address BartR, I can copy you some of my other writings.
Cheers
TerryKrieg
Terry Krieg | May 2, 2014 at 7:42 pm |
I appreciate the offer, however I grew up a whole lot more nuclear than the average, did pretty well in Physics at a school with a nuclear reactor on campus, had friends who worked at the Chernobyl clean-up immediately after, worked with people who’d done Three Mile Island containment, and work now supporting people dealing with Fukushima outflow monitoring, so might not be your target demographic.
Australia has a highly educated population, plenty of resources, a stable geopolitical outlook, and extremely low tectonic risks, so there’s a good talent pool to draw from for workers in the event of emergency, and downsides from the inevitable breakdowns are relatively small. Whereas the Ukraine has dedicated some 5% of its GNP to the aftermath of its incident annually since it happened, and prevailing winds carry substantial deposits over historic Moscow and key trade routes, there’s nothing like Moscow in Australia to worry about defiling, and no key international trade within its boundaries.
Parts of Australia are some of the few places on Earth where nuclear might be feasible: the Australian government has proven it doesn’t mind bending over backward to prop up an energy industry that can’t stand on its own, most of Australia is already uninhabitable anyway, and wind and water currents washing away any residues from leaks in Australia won’t settle much over any part of the world I’m likely to need to visit, so it won’t directly harm me should the worst happen.
I’m sure Dr. Curry would welcome posts from you on any nuclear topics, and look forward with keen interest to developments that way.
Though to be honest, I’m more interested in outdoors adventures than shop talk.
Terry,
No point responding to BartR. He’s not interested in anything other than his own beliefs and the doomsayers’ logic.
He also is xenophobic and regularly displays his hatred of the many Aussies who contribute to Climate Etc..
Peter Lang | May 2, 2014 at 9:31 pm |
Who could hate an Australian?
They’re so far away.
Well, New Zealanders aside, I suppose.
BartR,
You people at the back end of the Earth just don’t realise who it is that is ‘far away’. You’re lagging way behind (look at the time stamp on the comments if you don’t believe; you’re still on 2 May). Catch up!
“He also is xenophobic and regularly displays his hatred of the many Aussies who contribute to Climate Etc..” – Peter Lang
Funny thing, I have similar feelings toards the same people. Can’t be xenophobia. Maybe it’s just a general animosity towards irrationality?
Littles barty and mikey hate the Aussies for tossing out their lying, feckless carbon tax guvermint. The denier Aussie electorate has doomed the planet. They should all be locked up, again:)
The IPCC is functioning exactly as Maurice Strong intended.
Malthusians have been proven wrong over and over again yet there is always educated idiots in charge telling us that growth is “Unsustainable”.
One day in the far future those dismal prophets of doom will be right but by then the “Cornucopians” will have colonized the Galaxy.
ALL leading protagonist know that their individual theories are wrong; that’s why they don’t call: ”Intergovernmental Panel on Global Warming”’ instead on ”Climate Change” Because the constant climatic changes have nothing to do with the phony GLOBAL warmings!!!
Geez Bart R,
You’ve certainly got the propensity to give the lemon a good old suck before you hit the keyboard. You are clearly way behind the times when you talk about your contact with those who were involved in the clean up etc of Chernobyl, TMI and Fukushima. You really should check my four Ockhams Razor talks, which among other things demonstrate, according to the latest report from UNSCEAR [2012] that radiation doses to people in the fall-out zone at Chernobyl varied between 0.7 and 3.2 mSv per year, both well below background radiation in many parts of the world. The report said that in retrospect,there was no need to relocate the 116,000 who suffered that fate. Time to catch up Bart. Have you ever visited a nuclear power station, stood in front of an open reactor ready for recharge, peered into spent fuel cooling ponds, visited the nuclear research station at Chalk River [Ontario], gone down a uranium mine and been given a sample bag of yellowcake, taken a group of 40 year 12 students underground at Olympic Dam, visited Lucas Heights in Sydney, spent 16 continuous years studying the world nuclear power generating industry, made any attempt to educate the public about the truth about nuclear power? NO? Well I have Bart and that’s why I’m a fan of nuclear power and why I’m now in my 17th year of promoting it to Australians,both general public and politicians. I’ve found that those with an open mind can be persuaded to accept nuclear as an important part of our energy future. At 76 Bart, I’m still at it and won’t be stopping any time soon.
I reckon my nuclear credentials will stand up against yours any day.
Cheers Bart
Terry
Terry thank you for that. Very clearly stated.
Regarding your comment:
You, Terry, and Bart R might find this recently published, short pamphlet of interest:
http://home.comcast.net/~robert.hargraves/public_html/RadiationSafety26SixPage.pdf
Terry Krieg | May 4, 2014 at 12:28 am |
You make a number of assumptions about me, a complete stranger to you. How is that sort of reasoning process intended to improve my impression of your commonsense? Technically, you’re appealing to the fallacy of Argument from Ignorance, seeking to diminish my case by pretending you know something and I don’t. Does not bode well for the level of integrity we can expect, if you immediately turn to ad hominem and untruth.
And here, I’d had such high hopes of colleagiality and mutually respectful discourse.
You’re slamming professionals who worked under extreme conditions of hardship in the nuclear profession because you went on a tour of Chalk River and formed a lobby group, so that makes you an expert more up-to-date than people who got actual degrees in the subject and put decades working in the field hands on?
I’m tickled pink that there are Australians who want to live the nuclear dream. It’s certainly far better than Australia continuing to mine coal.. except it isn’t an either-or proposition, is it? It’s government subsidy for nuclear on top of government subsidy for coal, and more intensity of both.. and none of my concern, really. It’s your country, you can push it to go any way you please. Why seek to involve foreigners in your internal business?
If you’re looking for international allies in your marketing campaign, I understand James Hansen is quite fond of nuclear. I’m sure he’d be glad to read your book and watch your advertisements and he might even give you an endorsement.
By the way, UNSCEAR [2012] is by no means its only, or even last report, and you’ve cherry-picked a single passage from it completely contrary to the overall conclusions. Of 150 workers with the highest acute exposure, 30 died and all suffered measurable severe health effects lasting years at least. Within ten years of Chernobyl, most of what UNSCEAR [2001] found (and repeated in 2008 and the later report you cite) was expected due the close monitoring of population health, so one would need be very behind the times indeed to be impressed with your ‘new’ knowledge.
You seem to be exaggerating the already heated reasoning of Zbigniew Jaworowski, a commentator on the Chernobyl evacuation, in your post. Jaworowski’s attempts (a bit zealously) to counter the rabid alarmism of mass media and political opportunists are often taken over by those just as alarmist and opportunist on the other side: you can’t know during an emergency evacuation before all the data is gathered on the full extent of risks who should and shouldn’t be evacuated. Chernobyl exposure beyond a narrow zone around the reactor was remarkably low — lower than Three Mile Island or Fukushima — for the vast majority of the population (a far greater population than Fukushima). But no one could have known that would have been the case at the time, and the containment efforts — which were intensive — might have averted significantly worse outcomes. We can’t know, because there’s no way to wind back the real world and play “What If?” And the long-term containment dome is still very far from completion, and the technology to fully shut down and normalize the reactor buildings does not yet exist.
The evacuation of New Orleans during Katrina was unnecessary by this type of misreading of Jaworowski, as except for a few, most of the evacuees would have suffered no ill effect at all, other than wet feet. There are problems with both extremes, but the needle is not hard to thread: nuclear is a subsidy-dependent industry that cannot stand on its own even if it has zero leaks. I have a lot of sympathy for Dr. Jaworowski’s attitude: the Ukraine’s national wealth is drained far more by the cost of the trauma and fear of Chernobyl than by the actual radiological damage, and many profiteers and parties with ulterior motives to this day exploit that at great damage to the economy of the region. Dispelling myths, even minimizing the actual level of harm, if it reduces the panic, is to Jaworowski a good thing.
But then, he’s from a part of the world used to having politburo’s tell the masses what to think and do, instead of handing them full facts and trusting them to think for themselves. And he still hands people full facts only a little spun and trusts people to think for themselves with only a little berating about their poor judgment. That’s different from cherry picking out just the facts one likes, and forgetting to balance with the lemons one doesn’t.
http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/2013/13-85418_Report_2013_Annex_A.pdf is a nice report on Fukushima, by the way. Well worth the read. You’ll be happy to know that there should be no detectable health effects from radiation from Fukushima based on events to date.
Nuclear as it stands today isn’t ready, and hasn’t moved appreciably forward toward the point it can self-fund, self-justify, or self-sustain except in a very tiny fraction of cases where people want it. If you can eke out those conditions in your country, that’s great. It’s more likely you’re one of those who hopes for a thing that cannot deliver on its promises, but that’s not my concern.
BartR,
You are accusing Terry Krieg of doing what you do routinely. Why don’t you show some manners, if you have any?
Terry,
I’d suggest you don’t waste your time arguing with BartR. He’s a professional troll. He fills all the threads with this sort of bating. He apparently has no personal integrity. Have a look at just about any thread and you’ll see his incessant trolling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)
BartR,
“You’re slamming professionals who worked under extreme conditions of hardship”
How did you manufacture that out of anything Terry said. Just more of your conniving, strawman tactics and intellectual dishonesty? http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/20/10-signs-of-intellectual-honesty/
Peter Lang | May 4, 2014 at 7:54 am |
Terry Krieg | May 4, 2014 at 12:28 am |
Talk about conniving intellectual dishonesty.
Here’s what UNSCEAR says to this day on its website:
There were 28 attributed deaths of Chernobyl workers (some say 30), and about 120 serious radiation injuries. Farms were shut down and livestock and crops destroyed. A hugely costly medical campaign to reduce harms was launched, and at least some risks of actual harm were mitigated by some of the evacuation, which even at the time was known to be erring on the side of caution because Uncertainty was so high.
Criticism of the evacuation (other than the generally inept governance of politicians who were caught flat-footed at the time) is otherwise generally to do with the long term psychological effects of resettlement compared to return to living out victims’ lives in their contaminated homes. Psychologically, people tend to fare better if they stay put and bear the risk of exposure (which is difficult to attribute other than for children with heightened thyroid cancer risk). There’s less alcoholism and depression among those who aren’t relocated, and the dangers of those plus economic harms of decimation of a region by evacuation are easy to measure and attribute.
Amazing to see Psychology and Economics accorded so much regard, and Medicine and Physics so little, but there’s so much Uncertainty in what can be said about radiation exposure, the soft sciences have the upper hand. So, in retrospect, given what we know now, the evacuation would have been more narrowly targeted, accompanied by better preventative measures, and more careful monitoring and decision-making would have been better. Of course, with that sort of retrospect, the Chernobyl nuclear facility would never have been built, either.
http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/2008/11-80076_Report_2008_Annex_D.pdf is an okay source, but www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/te_1240_prn.pdf is better.
Saying there was ‘no need to relocate’ is a vastly oversimplified coat of varnish, misses the point, and misleads the reader.
Bart R says:
“Talk about conniving intellectual dishonesty.”
Yes, BartR, you shoould consider your “conniving intellectual dishonesty.”
You know full well that nuclear power is the safest way to generate electricity. Yet you spin, cherry pick and propagate disinformation. Why is that BartR? Is that a clear sign of intellectual dishonesty?
Below is a summary of many authoritative studies of the fatalities per 1000 TWh. For perspective, in 2013 the USA’s electricity supply was about 4,200 TWh, Europe’s about 3700 TWh and Australia’s about 200 TWh.
Coal electricity – world avg 60,000 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
Coal – U.S. 15,000 (44% U.S. electricity)
Natural Gas 4,000 (20% global electricity)
Biofuel/Biomass 24,000 (21% global energy)
Solar (rooftop) 440 (0.2% global electricity)
Wind 150 (1.6% global electricity)
Hydro – global average 1,400 (15% global electricity)
Nuclear – global average 90 (17% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush)
Bart R.
Again I ask that you check ALL four of my Ockham’s Razor talks. In your posts denigrating me, you’ve told me NOTHING that I haven’t already written and talked about over the past 16 years to thousands of people.
Terry Krieg | May 4, 2014 at 7:21 pm |
I don’t know you. Not a thing about you. How could I possibly denigrate you?
You seem to be under the impression that either I’m writing solely for your benefit — which I can see no point of, as I don’t know you — or that somehow your word in your talks is the final and correct word. Which, so far as I can see, is unlikely, even if something about Australia were remotely pertinent to me. Which, so far as anyone can see, is unlikely.
At 16 years, you’ve put in just under half the time to this issue as a hobbyist that I have as an actual professional in the field. You’ve been a tourist in Chalk River. I’ve written exams on it, and looked on in disgust at the spectacle of the Canadian Parliament ordering the restart of the unsafe reactor in 2007, only for it to leak in 2008 and be forced to shutdown again in 2009, causing global shortages of medical isotopes. Chalk River’s reputation for reliability is in the dump.
You must understand, Chalk River is defunct as a nuclear reactor, has proven unmaintainable, and should be slated for decommissioning right now, before its license expires in 2016, right? Because no matter what a bunch of lobbyists tell a bunch of politicians, a nuclear reactor doesn’t run on wishful thinking, but by the principles of Physics.
So tell me again why I should read your marketing pamphlets?
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Coal electricity – world avg 60,000 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
Coal – U.S. 15,000 (44% U.S. electricity)
Natural Gas 4,000 (20% global electricity)
Biofuel/Biomass 24,000 (21% global energy)
Solar (rooftop) 440 (0.2% global electricity)
Wind 150 (1.6% global electricity)
Hydro – global average 1,400 (15% global electricity)
Nuclear – global average 90 (17% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush)
Nuclear is the safest way to generate electricity, yet Bart R argues against nuclear power on the basis of it isn’t safe enough. How irrational is that.
However, since BartR knows all this and is simply trolling, it demonstrates he is intellectually dishonest.
Peter Lang | May 4, 2014 at 11:31 pm |
I keep hearing people use the word ‘safest’ with invalid premises and loose definitions.
The safest way to generate electricity is to rub two clouds together. Lightning arcs high in the cloud layer generate far more electricity than all human sources combined, and cause virtually no direct harm or loss of life. That’s “safest”.
Everything else on your list is framed to reach the conclusion you want to see.
You want to tell us about safe electricity? Go fly a kite.
BartR,
Stupid comment. Not other way to describe it.
Clearly the discussion is about electric power supply to the grid to meet consumer requirements.
And even that is misleading. Fukishima was due to a massive Tsunami. That is what caused all the backups to fail. I guess you can declare that a down pillow is fatal if you are lying on it when a meteor strikes you.
philjourdan | May 5, 2014 at 3:41 pm |
Ah, “where to draw the line” on fatalities, the question that vexes.
95% of hydroelectric deaths are fatalities associated with the failing of one system of badly built dams (most of them not hydroelectric producing) during one storm in China. The dams had been disowned by the chief engineer who designed the project, as he knew the cutbacks to be unsafe.
So, are they really ‘hydroelectric’ deaths, or political decision-making deaths? Or 50% political, 40% water-management deaths, and 10% hydroelectric?
If you counted all the deaths in the tsunami at Fukushima, then the death toll for Fukushima goes from undetectable to the worst nuclear incident of all time. It would be ludicrous to do so: the nuclear reactor didn’t _cause_ the tsunami, it was merely built in an area so tectonically exposed as to inevitably fail eventually due to tsunami or earthquake. Just as the deaths attributed to hydroelectricity in the Chinese cyclone incident did not come about because someone was generating electricity from hydro.
Adjusting the numbers for hydroelectricity, we find hydro — which is only exploited to about one eighth its economic potential worldwide — far safer than nuclear, and that’s non-cumulative nuclear.
Geothermal’s also safer, by far, non-cumulatively.
Samples for CSPV and wind are far too small to meaningfully compare statistics.
Yes, nuclear is safer for durations a half century or less than fossil fuels. Past 50 years or so, nuclear overtakes the harms of each form of fossil all the way up the scale, until only coal is worse.
But I hear now we can expect peak coal by 2070, so nuclear is likely to be least safe overall, eventually. Unless people can be persuaded to stop making choices that line their own pockets while stealing from everyone else.
A pile of ignorance, motivated reasoning and unsubstantiated assertions, as usual, from BartR the Denier (of relevant facts).
BartR thinks he knows better than all the authorities who have been conducting these analyses and building the data bases of “Major Accidents” for over 30 years.
Denier is the appropriate pigeon hole for BartR.
@bart – and your narrative has what to do with earthquakes and Tsunamis?
Perhaps you mistook my point and went off on a tangent. If so, fine. Now give us some facts.
Peter Lang | May 5, 2014 at 6:00 pm |
I was born in that briar patch.
While I don’t think I know better than all the authorities, I’ve known several of them, worked with them, supported them going back thirty years, and while I have the humility to recognize where their understanding far exceeds my own can generally tell when what someone is cherry picking from the indices does not reflect the authoritative mainstream views of OSH.
Bart R
No you can’t or you’d stop doing it. If you can discredit the many such analyses that all draw roughly the same conclusions and ranking why haven’t you done so? You’re doing the cherry picking, not me.
You can get to many of the authoritative sources from here:http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/06/deaths-by-energy-source-in-forbes.html
Tell ExternE they’ve got it all wrong an you know better.
Your a troll and an eejyt, Bart R.
Peter Lang | May 5, 2014 at 8:49 pm |
Did you drill down and evaluate the numbers?
Amazingly, for everything in the carbon burning realm, their numbers are somewhat accurate and mostly noncontroversial. It’s tough to knock them, other than to suggest they err on the side of least drama.
On everything else, we run into problems of outdated figures, comparing small pools with very large ones, and of choice; what’s in the dead pool, and what’s out? Where do we draw the line?
Do we include figures from hydro for coal, as coal often uses arbitrage to pay hydro not to produce off peak, to allow the coal generators to keep running when there isn’t enough demand to justify it? Oil used to do the same, before oil became to absurdly expensive to use to generate stationary power.
What about fracked gas?
Do we include the imaginary deaths from fracking that the tinfoil hat wearing set allege?
No?
Then why include the imaginary wind deaths, and fictional solar deaths?
Maybe by 2020 there’ll be enough solar and wind to justify a comparison study with some reliability. If enough people die from wind and solar. But it’s doubtful, or more precisely, uncertain.
Do we include radon daughters that might have been emitted by uranium in the far future if it hadn’t gone into reactors? No, the math on that is so straightforward we can drop that factor entirely.
Do we exclude nuclear weapons from nuclear energy, given how intertwined the two activities are?
Virtually no nuclear energy would be produced in the world were it not for nuclear weapons, due economics and politics. When the Arms Race folded in the North, so too did the pace of the nuclear energy industry there. No fatalities list excluding Hiroshima and Nagasaki for nuclear is truly representative of nuclear power mortality.
Just so, the risk of having nuclear weapons is a risk of death and damage, the MAD argument notwithstanding as we don’t know whether or not it actually works. Looking at the vast number of genocidal actions, non-nuclear warfare, quagmires and the like since WWII, it’s hard to say it has. So calling nuclear safe, and assigning such an absurdly low mortality figure, is extreme wishful thinking and the worst sort of manipulation of numbers to arrive at a forgone conclusion.
And if you think the authors don’t know this, haven’t heard it, haven’t been roundly criticized, then you haven’t followed the literature, or even the comments section of your own link.. Well, okay. The comments section of the site you link are so absurd as to leave one wondering what the contributors have been doing in their parents’ basements since Star Trek went off the air. How does that bode well for the reliability of your source?
BartR,
Have you? Which studies have you analysed in detail? Which ones are you trying to discredit?
I referred you to that link because it is a summary of many authoritative studies. Clearly you didn’t take any notice of that. You haven’t been to the sources. Instead you read the comments on the web page and cherry pick the ones that say what you want to hear.
It’s clear you haven’t a clue about the subject. And your previous comment that “I have a friend and he told me …” demonstrates the sort of information you trust to support your preformed beliefs.
You are making a complete fool of yourself BartR. Instead of continuing, why don’t you go and dig in an understand the sources. I suggested you start with ExternE. But you could also look At many others. Once you’ve finished I’ll refer you to similar studies done by OECD and by the US EPA in the 1980’s to show that little has changed in the order in that time.
Peter Lang | May 5, 2014 at 10:01 pm |
You’re saying I said what, now? Straw man. Yet again.
A bit pointless to lie about what you’re claiming someone’s written, on the same page.
Perhaps you really do believe you read it. Which just means you need to READ HARDER.
Address the issues with your claims that I raised in my comments. Go ahead, make even a little effort. A small one.
BartR The troll,
I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about with that comment and don’t care because it is your usual diversionary tactics.
And as usual you’ve been talking through your hat about the comparative safety of the electricity generation options. You know zilch about the subject, and it shows.
Little barty the troll is doing what is expected of him. However, I agree with barty on this one item, regarding the Chernobyl evacuation:
“Saying there was ‘no need to relocate’ is a vastly oversimplified coat of varnish, misses the point, and misleads the reader.”
The rest of what barty says is just the usual incessant, intentionally inflammatory bull dookey. Actually, he seems to be getting more desperate. I would suggest some therapy, but I don’t care that much about Mr. R.
Don Montford,
I had to look to see who had said ‘no need to relocate’. Searching for that word string I see BartR implied I’d said it. I did not. That shows how cunning and sneaky he is and displays his lack of integrity he is.
Yes Peter, barty is one of the more accomplished sneaky trolls, but he was replying to Terry. Look again. He addressed both you (first) then Terry in that comment.
Actually, I consider barty to be the top troll on this blog. Little joshie is a close second, because he is even more disgustingly annoying. Barty beats joshie hands down in being able to actually distort the science to his advantage. Joshie is completely clueless about the science. Barty seems to have more drive and stamina, or maybe just more time on his hands. Joshie takes long breaks to recover from beatings. Barty is unaffected by nearly universal disdain and rejection. So, it’s barty that wins the prize.
PS:nobody can touch joshie when it comes to smarminess
Don Montford,
Thank you for that. If I’ve accused BArtR incorrectly, I apologise.
However, BartR’s comment @ May 4, 2014 at 7:54 am would likely be interpreted by anyone who hadn’t carefully followed the discussion as BartR quoting me, not Terry.
http://judithcurry.com/2014/04/29/ipcc-tar-and-the-hockey-stick/#comment-540168
Peter, that time you definitely accused barty incorrectly. But you were right all the other times. Don’t apologize to that troll.
Bart R
After hydroelectric, nuclear is the safest form of reliable electrical power generation today.
Technology already exists to resolve the spent fuel problem economically, so even this “hobgoblin” can be laid to rest.
The French have got it right (for their situation).
The Swiss and Norwegians have it right for their situation (large % comes from hydro)
Natural gas is much cleaner than coal (no real air pollutants like sulfur, heavy metals, soot, etc.) and less expensive than nuclear if a low-cost source of gas is available. Think Texas. Think fracking.
Even with all the projected future efficiency improvements, neither solar nor wind are economically competitive, except for some limited local solutions.
All the blah-blah in the world isn’t going to change these basic facts, Bart.
It will take some time (because of the anti-nuke scare campaign by green politicians and lobby groups in the past), but even the Germans will eventually be saying, “Atomkraft, ja bitte!”
And, until they do, they can always purchase nuclear power from the French right across the Rhine.
Max
Manacker,
+1
I’d add to this sentence:
I’d add
… and where the gas pipeline infrastructure is largely established.
I’d make this point because most of the future emissions will be produced buy the emerging economies. They do not yet have gas pipeline infrastructure or the infrastructure to transport coal (port with coal loaders/unloaders railway lines etc).
The infrastructure required for moving 20,000 to 2 million mass units of coal compared with 1 mass unit of nuclear fuel is, at first glance, 20,000 to 2 million times more expensive. So nuclear may well be far cheaper than gas in countries that do not yet have the infrastructure for gas. And these are the countries that will produce most of the emissions this century.
This CSIRO calculator shows that, even in Australia, nuclear is by far the cheapest way to reduce emissions: http://www.csiro.au/Outcomes/Energy/MyPower.aspx
Compare three options (more the sliders):
1. Default: 80% coal, 10%gas, 10% renewables. By 2050 the electricity bills will increase in real terms by 15% and emissions will increase by 21%
2. 0% coal, 50%gas, 50% renewables. By 2050 the electricity bills will increase in real terms by 19% and emissions will increase by 62%
3. 0% coal, 20%gas, 10% renewables, 70% nuclear. By 2050 the electricity bills will increase in real terms by 17% and emissions will increase by 84%
4. 0% coal, 10%gas, 10% renewables, 80% nuclear. By 2050 the electricity bills will increase in real terms by 20% and emissions will increase by 91%
Conclusion: nuclear is the least cost way to make significant reductions in the emissions intensity of electricity.
The CSIRO calculator is based on the latest BREE projected costs of electricity and emissions intensities from the technology options: http://www.bree.gov.au/publications/australian-energy-technology-assessments
[Ignore previous reply to Manacker. “increase” should be “decrease” in 2, 3 and 4. I’ll repost the complete comment with the corrections]
Manacker,
+1
I’d add to this sentence:
I’d add
… and where the gas pipeline infrastructure is largely established.
I’d make this point because most of the future emissions will be produced buy the emerging economies. They do not yet have gas pipeline infrastructure or the infrastructure to transport coal (port with coal loaders/unloaders railway lines etc).
The infrastructure required for moving 20,000 to 2 million mass units of coal compared with 1 mass unit of nuclear fuel is, at first glance, 20,000 to 2 million times more expensive. So nuclear may well be far cheaper than gas in countries that do not yet have the infrastructure for gas. And these are the countries that will produce most of the emissions this century.
This CSIRO calculator shows that, even in Australia, nuclear is by far the cheapest way to reduce emissions: http://www.csiro.au/Outcomes/Energy/MyPower.aspx
Compare three options (more the sliders):
1. Default: 80% coal, 10%gas, 10% renewables. By 2050 the electricity bills will increase in real terms by 15% and emissions will increase by 21%
2. 0% coal, 50%gas, 50% renewables. By 2050 the electricity bills will increase in real terms by 19% and emissions will decrease by 62%
3. 0% coal, 20%gas, 10% renewables, 70% nuclear. By 2050 the electricity bills will increase in real terms by 17% and emissions will decrease by 84%
4. 0% coal, 10%gas, 10% renewables, 80% nuclear. By 2050 the electricity bills will increase in real terms by 20% and emissions will decrease by 91%
Conclusion: nuclear is the least cost way to make significant reductions in the emissions intensity of electricity.
The CSIRO calculator is based on the latest BREE projected costs of electricity and emissions intensities from the technology options: http://www.bree.gov.au/publications/australian-energy-technology-assessments
It should be noted that the learning curves for renewables are probably optimistic but no learning rate is included in the cost estimates for nuclear. So, the projected nuclear costs are probably pessimistic.
manacker | May 6, 2014 at 6:49 pm |
Yes, and no.
If you restrict yourself to only one day, and that day is today, nuclear is safest per unit of energy delivered of the reliable (ie ‘on demand’) power generation types, on a typical set of assumptions and exceptions.
However, the typical assumptions and exceptions include a whole panoply of footnotes and codiciles, and all of those fall away over a sufficiently long time. How will France continue to pay the huge sums to locals for storing nuclear waste, when solar and wind drop to one percent of their current cost?
When they drop to one tenth of one percent of their current cost? When enough waste has accumulated, or enough waste is being produced that storage can’t cope?
Sure, if Gen III worked — it hasn’t proven itself yet, and likely cannot — there might be some hope. Perhaps the future will hold some technical solution for disposal that might be cost effective, competitive with solar and wind, hydro and geothermal, and that won’t be cumulatively risk-increasing.
However, that is yet to be demonstrated.
I’d be very glad to see technically feasible economically viable nuclear. We’re not there yet, and so far every one of the obvious courses of action has failed, except ‘throw money at it’.
BartR,
You are talking through your hat, as usual.
Here’s some homework for you:
ExternE home page: http://www.externe.info/externe_d7/
ExternE New Ext project report: http://www.ier.uni-stuttgart.de/forschung/projektwebsites/newext/ (go to Part VI, e.g. Table 8, pVI-28; shows nuclear safer than hydro even in the OECD. The data bases of severe accidents go back to as early as 1800.
Meeting the Energy Challenge: A White Paper on Nuclear Power
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/228944/7296.pdf
Get back to us when you’ve digested these. If you think you found a significant error that would significantly change the accumulated result of the hundreds of authoritative studies conducted over the past 40 years or so, I look forward to seeing your critique, and seeing your figures to replace those you dispute and the justification for your revised figures.
This is just pathetic. Little bartsky pulls something bizarre out of his buttocks:
“However, the typical assumptions and exceptions include a whole panoply of footnotes and codiciles, and all of those fall away over a sufficiently long time. How will France continue to pay the huge sums to locals for storing nuclear waste, when solar and wind drop to one percent of their current cost?
When they drop to one tenth of one percent of their current cost? When enough waste has accumulated, or enough waste is being produced that storage can’t cope?
Sure, if Gen III worked — it hasn’t proven itself yet, and likely cannot — there might be some hope. Perhaps the future will hold some technical solution for disposal that might be cost effective, competitive with solar and wind, hydro and geothermal, and that won’t be cumulatively risk-increasing.
However, that is yet to be demonstrated.”
Gen III hasn’t proven itself and likely cannot, but we are going to somehow get the wind and solar technology to one tenth of one percent of their current cost. Based on what physics, you clown? You have revealed a really muddled mind here, bartsky.
Bart R
Avoiding “nuclear waste” is something that can be accomplished for all practical purposes with existing fast breeder/thorium technology should it become a problem. I don’t know what Peter Lang thinks about this, but I could imagine that this technology will become more prevalent in the future, as political pressures on spent fuel disposal problems increase.
On the other hand, fantasizing about wind and solar dropping to one percent (or one tenth of one percent) of their current cost is a pipe dream – what are you smoking?
Don’t toss rhetorical hypotheticals out there like they are reasonable predictions of reality, Bart.
Max
Manacker,
Regarding near term viability of thorium power plants (say next 40 years or so), I find this report persuasive:
UK National Nuclear Laboratory, 2012, ‘Comparison of
thorium and uranium fuel cycles‘
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/65504/6300-comparison-fuel-cycles.pdf
Uh Bart an average lightening bolt is about 5e9 joules. On average 50 lightening bolts happen worldwide every second. That is a power flow of 0.25 TW. Human electrical demand runs about 16 TW. So your assertion is false.
Jonathan Sawyer | May 5, 2014 at 1:55 am |
Dude. Poetic license. I was working toward the punchline. Of all the many things wrong with the absurd notion of collecting lightning energy with kite strings, you picked on the easiest one to defeat by simply pointing out lightning has been around a whole lot more than a hundred times longer than human industry? But thanks for the trivia, which is also funny in its ability to overlook the point.
Off by a factor of 64, (more, really, since I was only talking about air-to-air lightning), my assertion, framed specifically to build up to the conclusion I had pre-determined I’d end my ‘argument’ with, was still orders of magnitude less wrong than Peter Lang’s safety assertion on faulty premises.
Nuclear risks are cumulative in the long run, only building as time passes. Even though in any one month, or year, or decade, nuclear is ‘safest’, it all adds up. By the end of a century, the risk accumulates to make nuclear the second or third ‘safest’, and by the end of a second century, it’s the second most harmful after coal. These calculations have been known for most of the lifespan of nuclear energy, pending the technology to safely and finally dispose of waste.. which has not happened yet, and doesn’t look likely ever to work.
This knowledge used to be taught to us when we studied Physics if there was any chance we’d go into the nuclear power field, with the strong urging to figure out a better way before the end of the century. Well, guess what? That doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.
Barty, please explain how the nuclear risks accumulate/build as time passes. Or is that more poetic license? Maybe you should alert us, when you are just making crap up. It would save us all a lot of back and forth circular discussions. Oh, I forgot. That’s what you are here for.
I was in a nuclear submarine for a few days. Those guys stay underwater on those things for months and never come back glowing in the dark. What you so scared of, barty?
Don Monfort | May 6, 2014 at 12:57 am |
You need addition explained to you, now?
Really?
Figure it out for yourself.
Start with this, as it’s required reading for submariners:
http://nnsa.energy.gov/sites/default/files/nnsa/02-12-multiplefiles/NT-11-2%20FINAL.pdf
Boats are heavily shielded, and exposure for submariners is less than for average civilians from background sources by a wide margin. That’s not because anyone is ‘scared’, but sound safety policy.
Thing is, the shielding only lasts so long before it’s useless. It, and the whole boat, are decommissioned after it is no longer possible to prevent exposure, and the hot radioactive materials pile up with all the other waste materials from all the other nuclear reactors, generation by generation, at a much faster rate than nuclear decay. Right now, the USA has no functioning disposal or storage sites. None. And that doesn’t look to be changing any time soon.
So the risk just accumulates where the power is generated, and over time it will exceed the risk of any other source of energy except coal (and possibly burning biomass).
If this is too advanced for you, we can start with 1 + 0 = 1; 1 + 1 = 2; 1 + 2 = 3 ..
I get your point, barty. We don’t have any place to store the nuclear waste, so we are all going to die. Somebody should have thought of that before building all those nuclear power plants, nuke submarines, nuke aircraft carriers etc. We don’t even need to worry about climate change. We will all be dead from radiation exposure long before the CO2 doo doo hits the fan.
You are hysterical, barty. Windmills and solar panels on rooftops aren’t going to get it. Nuclear reactors will necessarily make up an increasing share of power production in this century. There are plenty of places that can and will be used to store nuclear waste. What makes you think that decommissioning nuclear reactors
and dealing with nuclear waste is an insurmountable problem?
http://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/reactor/songs/decommissioning-plans.html
https://www.google.com/search?q=france+nuclear+waste+disposal&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb
Even the French know how to do it, barty. Aren’t you ashamed to be scared of nuclear power, when even the Frenchies can deal with it?
Don Monfort | May 6, 2014 at 2:52 pm |
Really? France is your solution?
France has the capacity for vitrified storage only for another 20 years before it runs out of cash to bribe the locals (that is, before its financially infeasible to continue to pay), though the space it has set aside could last several hundred years before they run out of that.
People keep saying what solar and wind can’t cover, but that’s based on archaic and incorrect understandings of what the technology can certainly do. As efficiency of solar and wind increase, as their costs drop, as geothermal and pumped hydro capacity are more fully exploited, and as we become more efficient at using energy, it’s becoming plentifully clear that yes, we can do without fossil and nuclear.
Yes barty, France is a tiny country and they will soon run out of underground storage space. It’s well known that the French can’t dig very deep. And we are learning more and more about the secret physics of wind and solar power every day. Pretty soon we will have windmills that spin up energy in a dead calm and solar panels that produce right through the night.
Hey barty, as soon as you get your lightning-kite-string power capturing gizmo working properly, you will be rich and we won’t need those nasty black sooty fossil fuels any more. I wish I had some of whatever it is that you are smoking, barty.
Windmills won’t do it. Inherent design fault.
+_ Getting that vast weight aloft, having to limit the nacelle
to the size of a bus thereby reducing power output,
+_ designing those long blades that need to operate in
a narrow wind speed band.
What do yer get in power delivery?
Not much. _ _
https://papundits.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/the-limitations-of-renewable-power-part-3/
Beth
Yeah. The Dutch figured that one out a century ago. Pumps now driven by electric motors with power coming from the gas fields.
But they keep them painted and clean for the tourists and post cards.
Max
Max,
Guess the low countries wouldn’t have adopted wind mills
in the 1600’s if water mills had been an option for them.
Beth the serf.
Bart, we were not invited to go to MIT at the age of 15 and therefor are not as brilliant as you. I hope you will illuminate us when you use poetic license in your pontifications. Was there any in this last post?
Jonathan Sawyer | May 5, 2014 at 1:55 pm |
Tell you what.
When I’m saying something that sounds absurd to you, take it as likely that I’m trying to say something else reasonable and you’ve missed the point by failing to READ HARDER for yourself.
Perhaps focus on the concept of reading with goodwill, for yourself.
A goodwill reading will generally make more sense to yourself.
And if in doubt, asking rather than accusing, show the math (as you’ve done), re-read the original (as you’ve failed) for yourself to find alternative meanings for yourself given what the math shows, and if there is no obvious correct meaning for yourself, just say you don’t know and ask for more from someone in a position to help.
That’s what people so brilliant they turn down MIT when they’re 15 do, for themselves.
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And why dredge up the three-year-old Christy submission now?, someone asked.
Because the same corruption and political bias inherent the IPCC that once boosted the Hockey Stick fraud, is still in operation now, still wielding the same huge and malign influence over the world.
So the question is : can it be reformed into taking on the objectives of science? Or is it constitutionally dishonest and political, and must therefore just be scrapped?
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Dr. Curry, your work does show up in some, um, *interesting* places these days: http://alethonews.wordpress.com/tag/judith-curry/
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