by Judith Curry
Liberals and environmentalists would do well to take on board the categorical imperative of climate policy from a conservative point of view, namely, that whatever policies are developed, they must be compatible with individual liberty and democratic institutions, and cannot rely on coercive or unaccountable bureaucratic administration. – Steven Hayward
I met Steven Hayward last April while I was in Boulder – he has just finished serving a one year stint as the Inaugural Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy. He was visiting from his position at the American Enterprise Institute. Hayward also blogs regularly for powerline.
Conservatism and Climate Science
Hayward has written an article in Issues in Science and Technology entitled Conservatism and Climate Science. The article is over 5000 words, some excerpts to give you a flavor:
Conservative skepticism is less about science per se than its claims to usefulness in the policy realm. This skepticism combines with the older liberal view—that is, the view that values individual freedoms above all else—that the concentration of discretionary political power required for nearly all schemes of comprehensive social or economic management are a priori suspect. Today that older liberal view is the core of political conservatism. Put more simply or directly, the conservative distrust of authority based on claims of superior scientific knowledge reflects a distrust of the motives of those who make such claims, and thus a mistrust of the validity of the claims themselves.
Here the political naiveté of scientists does their cause a disservice with everyone; the energy policy of both political parties since the first energy shocks of the 1970s has been essentially a frivolous farce of special interest favoritism and wishful thinking, with little coherence and even less long-term care for the kind of genuine energy innovation necessary to address prospective climate change on the extreme range of the long-run projections.
The first point to grasp is that conservatives—or least the currently dominant libertarian strain of the right—ironically have a more open-ended outlook toward the future than contemporary liberals. The point here is not to sneak in climate skepticism, but policy skepticism, as the future is certain to unfold in unforeseen ways, with seemingly spontaneous and disruptive changes occurring outside the view or prior command of our political class.
More broadly, however, it is not necessary to be any kind of climate skeptic to be highly critical of the narrow, dreamlike quality the entire issue took on from its earliest moments. Future historians are likely to regard as a great myopic mistake the collective decision to treat climate change as more or less a large version of traditional air pollution, to be attacked with the typical emissions control policies—sort of a global version of the Clean Air Act. Likewise the diplomatic framework, a cross between arms control, trade liberalization, and the successful Montreal Protocol, was poorly suited to climate change and destined the Kyoto Protocol model to certain failure from the outset.
If ever there was an issue that required patient and fresh thinking, it was climate change 25 years ago. The modern world, especially those still billions of people striving to escape energy poverty, demands abundant amounts of cheap energy, and no amount of wishful thinking (or government subsidies or mandates) will change this. The right conceptual understanding of the problem is that we need large-scale low- and non-carbon energy sources that are cheaper than hydrocarbon energy. Unfortunately, no one knows how to do this. No one seems to know how to solve immigration, poor results from public education, or the problem of generating faster economic growth either, but we haven’t locked ourselves into a single policy framework that one must either be for or against in the same way that we have done for climate policy. Environmentalists and policy makers alike crave certainty about the policy results ahead of us, and an emphasis on innovation, even when stripped of the technological fetishes and wishful thinking that has plagued much of our energy R&D investments, cannot provide any degree of certainty about paths and rates of progress. But it was a fatally poor choice to emphasize, almost to the exclusion of any other frameworks, a policy framework based on making conventional hydrocarbon energy, upon which the world depends utterly for its well-being, more expensive and artificially scarce. This might make some emissions headway in rich industrial nations, although it hasn’t in most of them, but won’t get far in the poorer nations of the world. Subsidizing expensive renewable energy is a self-defeating mugs game, as many European nations are currently recognizing.
While we stumble along trying to find breakthrough energy technologies with a low likelihood of success in the near and intermediate term, a more primary conservative orientation comes into view. The best framework for addressing large-scale disruptions from any cause or combination of causes is building adaptive resiliency. As the British historian Thomas Macaulay wrote in 1830, “On what principle is it that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?”To suggest human beings can’t cope with slow moving climate change is astonishingly pessimistic, and the relentless soundings of the apocalypse have done more to undermine public interest in the issue than the efforts of the skeptical community.
One caveat here is the specter of a sudden “tipping point” leading to a rapid shift in climate conditions, perhaps over a period of mere decades. To be sure, our capacity to respond to sudden tipping points is doubtful; consider the problematic reaction to the tipping point of September 11, 2001, or the geopolitical paroxysms induced by the tipping point reached in July 1945 in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The climate community would be correct to object that the open-ended and uncertain orientation I have sketched here would likely be adequate for preparing for such a sudden change—but then again neither was the Kyoto Protocol approach that they so avidly supported.
Weekly Standard
Hayward recently published an article in the Weekly Standard, excerpts:
While climate skeptics are denounced for mentioning “uncertainty,” the terms “uncertain” and “uncertainty” appear 173 times, while “error” and “errors” appear 192 times, in the 218-page chapter on climate models in the latest IPCC report released last September. As the IPCC admits, “there remain significant errors in the model simulation of clouds. It is very likely that these errors contribute significantly to the uncertainties in estimates of cloud feedbacks and consequently in the climate change projections.” The IPCC’s latest report rates the confidence of our understanding of clouds and aerosols as “low,” and allows that it is possible that clouds could cancel out most of the warming effect of greenhouse gases. If anything, our uncertainty about future climate change has increased with each new IPCC report.
The IPCC modeling chapter, which virtually no reporter reads, is also candid in admitting that most of the models have overpredicted recent warming. The 17-years-and-counting plateau in global average temperature, following two decades of a nearly 0.4 degree increase in temperature that boosted the warming narrative for a time, is the biggest embarrassment for a supposed scientific “consensus” since Piltdown Man. The basic theory says we’re supposed to continue warming at about 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade, but since the late 1990s we’ve stopped. They’ve been scrambling ever since, offering a variety of explanations, but none of them can minimize the fact that nearly all of the models failed to predict a “pause” of this length, and if the “pause” continues for another 5 to 10 years, all of the models will be falsified.
Where is the missing heat? The climateers are certain it is going into the deep ocean, and while this is a plausible theory, we have very little data to substantiate the hypothesis, and still less understanding of how this might play out in the future if it is happening. Other explanations for the pause include western Pacific wind patterns, aerosols, and solar variation. (This last explanation is ironic, since the climateers have been adamant up to now that solar variation plays very little role in climate change.) Some or all of these may be factors, but the difficulty the climate community is having provides reason to doubt their grasp of a matter we are consistently assured is “settled.”
Yet organized opposition to climate change fanaticism is tiny compared with the swollen staffs and huge marketing budgets of the major environmental organizations, not to mention the government agencies around the world that have thrown in with them on the issue. The main energy trade associations seldom speak up about climate science controversies. The major conservative think tanks have no climate change programs to speak of. The Cato Institute devotes just two people to the issue. The main opposition to climate fanaticism is confined to the Heartland Institute, the London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and a scattering of relentless bloggers who have acquired surprisingly large readerships. That’s it. These are boutique operations next to the environmental establishment: The total budgets for all of these efforts would probably not add up to a month’s spending by just the Sierra Club. And yet we are to believe that this comparatively small effort has kept the climate change agenda at bay.
The EPA touts enormous health benefits from its emissions targets, all of them from reducing conventional air pollution such as ozone smog and fine particles. But there is one benefit conspicuously missing: There is no claim that the regulations will affect climate change. If anyone bothers to run full compliance with the new regulations through one of the computer climate models, the temperature difference in the year 2100 would be perhaps .02 degrees Celsius.
Anyone who seriously thinks climate change is an imminent crisis threatening humanity will scoff at the EPA’s proposed policy, but there has been barely a peep from the climate establishment. Al Gore gave away the game when he used the term “symbolic” to describe the EPA proposal.
After all the sound and fury of the last few months, where does the issue of climate change stand? The cruel irony for the climateers is that the more they hype the apocalypse of future climate change, the more farcically inadequate are their proposed remedies. Global primary energy demand is going to double over the next generation, and there is no one who thinks hydrocarbons—especially coal—aren’t going to play a large role in providing this energy, especially in developing nations. If catastrophic climate change is somewhere in our future, the only serious remedy is to deploy new sources of affordable and abundant non- or low-carbon energy. The EPA plan does little in service of a serious energy transition; to the contrary, to the extent that it props up the inferior current renewable technologies such as wind, solar, and biomass, it will retard serious efforts to develop breakthrough energy sources.
Hayward hits hard, and makes some good points. Now, let me give you title, subtitle and opening paragraph of Haywards article:
Climate Cultists
Has the desperate global warming crusade reached its Waterloo?
Instead of confronting the fact that their cause has foundered mostly of its own dead weight—and the sheer fantasy of proposals for near-term replacement of hydrocarbon energy—the climate campaigners have steadily ratcheted up their bad-faith arguments and grasping authoritarianism. The result is a catalogue of exaggerated claims and appalling clichés, the most egregious being the refrain that “97 percent of scientists ‘believe in’ climate change.” This dubious talking point elides seamlessly into the implication that scientists should strive for unanimity and link arms in full support of the environmentalists’ carbon-suppression agenda.
Does this change your impression of the article? I suspect that this is a litmus test for something (not sure what).
Yesterday, I tweeted the title and link to this article. Here are some of the responses:
There’s Physics @theresphysics Oh yes, let’s call people we disagree with “Cultists”. That’s a good idea!
Victor Venema @VariabilityBlog: Then it get’s even better: crusaders, clinically mad, worship of authority, Salem witch trial-style intimidation. :(
rick woollams @RickWoollams They can’t find any actual working scientists to write crap like this.
Catalin Caranfil @CatalinCaranfil Text not stronger but reinforces bad ‘gut feelings’, enhances #circlejerk denial
Catalin Caranfil @CatalinCaranfil Errors intentional, all about how to pledge allegiance to the right-wing bubble!
Gavin Schmidt @ClimateOfGavin One despairs at the state of conservative scholarship… Can they not do better?
The following two tweets deserve a response:
Raoul De Guchteneere @rdegucht 4h
I tried, but stopped at “… water vapor “feedbacks” (clouds in ordinary language)” WTF @CColose @theresphysics @VariabilityBlog
Victor Venema @VariabilityBlog 4h
Like me @curryja was a cloud researcher. For me that error almost produced physical pain.
The text in question is:
In other words, despite billions spent on climate research and the development of enormously complex computer models, we are no closer to predictive precision than we were 110 years ago. The computer models are still too crude and limited, especially about the crucial question of water vapor “feedbacks” (clouds in ordinary language), to spit out the answers we’re looking for. We can fiddle with the models all we want, and perhaps end up with one that might produce a correct prediction, but we can never be sure so long as our understanding of water vapor behavior remains sketchy.
Well of course ‘clouds’ are not ‘water vapor.’ I suspect what happened is that the editor said “what the heck is water vapor feedback”, and Hayward figured the simplest way to get past this was to say “clouds in ordinary language.” As a cloud physicist with with a new book on the topic in press Thermodynamics, Kinetics, and Microphysics of Clouds, am I offended by what Hayward said? Well apart from my inference on the editorial response, I have long stated that it makes little physical sense to separate the fast atmospheric thermodynamic feedback processes – water vapor, cloud, lapse rate.
So, does Hayward’s statement count as an ‘error’? Well, that is in the eye of the beholder. If I had been writing this piece, I wouldn’t have even tried to include ‘water vapor feedback.’ But if one does count it as an error, it is far less egregious than the numerous errors in Obama’s and Kerry’s public statements about climate change. Is one arguable error of terminology sufficient to dismiss all of Hayward’s arguments? Well, if you are looking for an excuse . . .
JC reflections
Steven Hayward is an interesting and increasingly prominent voice on climate change from the conservative perspective. He is clearly not a ‘denier’ – more of a lukewarmer, with a preference for adaptation policies.
I find the comparison of Hayward’s two essays to be interesting. The Weekly Standard piece uses inflammatory words that have clearly piqued the ire of those on the other side of the policy debate. The phrase ‘climate cultist’ may be the best one I’ve seen to counter the epithet of ‘denier’. So, by one standard, Hayward’s Weekly Standard article is a bit over the top; but by the standard of say the daily op-eds in the Guardian on climate change, it is pretty much comparable.
There is a lesson in Hayward’s Weekly Standard essay for those on the other side of the climate debate – inflammatory words make you stop reading (which was your reaction to the title and first paragraph of Hayward’s article). So when you rail on about the Koch brothers funded denial machine, the people that you would most like to reach tune out and turn off. Use of inflammatory words is useful in preaching to the converted, if that is your goal, but it does nothing to influence people on the other side of the debate and turns off the undecided and more reasonable people.
So if you think that there is justification for calling people ‘deniers’, there is arguably as much justification for calling people ‘cultists’ – if the shoes doesn’t fit then don’t wear it. So there are two approaches – filter out the name calling garbage and try to figure out what people are actually saying, or stop the name calling. I doubt the name calling will stop – and the conservatives have just come up with a stinging new name. An interesting development in the ‘climate wars.’
Dan Kahan has a good article, about how unhelpful labels like anti-science, anti vax, get used on the public and political sides – he shows that most people across the political spectrum are not. (and asks why the focus on the tiny fringes)
Cultural Cognition Blog:
Got facts? The boring, ignorant, anti-liberal, science-communication-environment polluting “who is more anti-science” game
http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2014/6/9/got-facts-the-boring-ignorant-anti-liberal-science-communica.html
I agree with you Barry.
Kahan’s piece should be ATL; he has apparently had enough.
Climate or Freedom?
Another eloquent conservative like Hayward is President Václav Klaus who experienced the coercion of communism. He now warns of coercion by climate alarmists. See “Blue Planet in Green Shackles: What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? and Klaus’ introduction.
Kahan completely misses the point by using general polling data, which includes tons of people with virtually zero cognitive involvement with these issues. The relevant questions have to do with those who are meme-promoters, activists, and litigants. If you think the anti-GM food movement is filled with pro-market types, good luck to you, even though they often will phrase their agenda in terms of “consumer choice.”
It is true that the usual left-right distinctions are not the appropriate ones in understanding the big ideological splits over these issues among those who actually care, but the suggestion that general polling data are adequate to capture the ideological predilections of activist movements is ludicrous.
“The right conceptual understanding of the problem is that we need large-scale low- and non-carbon energy sources that are cheaper than hydrocarbon energy.”
No, that would be the wrong understanding of the problem — comparable to asserting that the solution to the problem of slavery is to find a cheap source of labor than slaves for plantation owners to use.
Fossil fuel energy is extremely costly, but the costs are spread out through society, while the benefits are concentrated with the burner.
Gavin is right. It’s an embarrassment for what passes for conservatives if they can do no better than this.
Robert, your slavery analogy is a good one. Conservatives like to pretend there is no cost to fossil fuel pollution, financial, moral or otherwise.
Slavery, Holocaust trains, deniers…. You guys just can’t help it.
“but the costs are spread out through society, while the benefits are concentrated with the burner.”
Yeah the guy who burned hydrocarbons to make an MRI machine got all of the benefits of its burning….
You guys are so deeply steeped in your own politically based view of economics that you can’t even comprehend that there might be valid objections to your belief.
Slavery is a silly analogy. And pointing out that the benefits of fossil fuels are concentrated with the burner is silly and trivial. Everybody benefits from the burning of fossil fuels. Nobody is pretending there is no cost to fossil fuel pollution. Some are just pretending to do something about it. It ain’t us:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2478300/Pictured-Nasa-satellite-images-reveal-terrifying-extent-Chinas-air-pollution.html
Steven Hayward has accurately described the current state of climate policy politics. It makes you sad. Let’s see some more whining.
As if every joule goes to building an MRI. I’ll give you a thousand gigajoules — how much goes towards watching Pat Robertson on the boob tube?
The MRI needed energy to be built; it didn’t need to be fossil fuel energy. And the fossil fuels burned still affects the entire world, far into the future.
How many windmills does it take to build one MRI? How many windmills does it take to build one windmill?
“how much goes towards watching Pat Robertson on the boob tube?”
See, this is one of the points Hayward was making. You guys want to decide what is valuable and what isn’t and use control of energy for control of society in general.
If we are all poorer due to energy poverty, MRIs are not going to get built. That is a simple fact that you economics deniers seem incapable of grasping.
Besides, this was your original statement:
“Fossil fuel energy is extremely costly, but the costs are spread out through society, while the benefits are concentrated with the burner.”
There are thousands and thousands if not millions of examples like the MRI. We have an interdependent economy, we do stuff for each other, then pay each other to get money to buy stuff from one another. Nobody makes things nobody wants to buy at a fair price except the Govt.
I’m pretty sure that was satirical snark, Dave.
Roman slavery collapsed with the development of the horse collar; before the ability to place a load on a horse’s/oxen’s shoulders a horse was able to deliver as much power, for cost, as slaves. With the horse collar it was cheaper to use horse’s/oxen.
I believe fossil fuel pollutants are undesirable. I believe that CO2 is plant food not a pollutant.
In his book’ The Rational Optimist’ Matt Ridley has a chapter
aptly entitled ‘The release of slaves’ as a consequence of
the Industrial Revolution, There’s this:
‘ By 1870, the burning of coal in Britain was generating as
many calories as would have been expended by 850 million
labourers. It was as if each worker had twenty servants at
his beck and call. The capacity of the country’s steam engines
alone was equivalent to six million horses or forty million men,
who would otherwise have eaten three times the entire wheat
harvest.That is how much energy had been harnessed to the
application of the division of labour. That is how impossible
the task of Britain’s nineteenth-century miracle would have
been without fossil fuels.’
beth-the-serf. Serfs up!
“Conservatives like to pretend there is no cost to fossil fuel pollution, financial, moral or otherwise.”
Groan. We have no such pretension. We assert that the costs of fossil fuel pollution are less than the costs of no fossil fuel pollution.
@ Robert
“Fossil fuel energy is extremely costly, but the costs are spread out through society, while the benefits are concentrated with the burner.”
Really? The benefits of cheap, plentiful energy are confined to those burning the fuel? Like the truck drivers who deliver deliver the food to the grocery stores, allowing me to eat rather than starve? Or the power plant owner who produces the energy that ‘society’ enthusiastically consumes and pays for? Ad infinitum?
As for the extreme costs of fossil fuel that are now ‘spread out through society’, how do those compare to the ‘costs spread out through society’ of implementing the 90+% reduction in fossil fuel use advocated by the ‘climate experts’? Remove 90% of the gas and diesel supply, 90% of the fossil fueled power plants, and 90% of the fossil fuel for home heating, for example. See any costs there?
Roberts arguments amount to something like me saying he apparently has never benefitted from fossil fuel energy…. so obviously wrong.
It’s an embarrassment that someone thinks they are smarter and more moral than another based on which political party they have chosen to identify with.
Everybody wins with cheap clean energy. That is beyond debate. Believing in a fantasy that Africa, China, and India are going to be willing to not burn fossil fuels if they are cheaper is simply wishful thinking. When you don’t yet have an indoor bathroom with an operating toilet, you won’t care much about theoretical externalities. My family is freezing, but I refuse to burn coal because of the cost to society? Good luck with that.
In the end, we will find out who is right. People such as yourself who think this problem can simply by solved by taxing it into submission, or those that believe large scale clean energy adoption will not occur until it is economically feasible without the market manipulation of subsidies. So far, RPJ’s Iron Law remains unchallenged.
The most significant recent reduction in emissions occurred due to natural gas and fracking, much to the moral dismay of the greens. The consumer didn’t have to pay for it, and the government didn’t have to subsidize into existence. It was embraced and deployed for economic reasons.
=>> “It’s an embarrassment that someone thinks they are smarter and more moral than another based on which political party they have chosen to identify with.”
Let’s hope GaryM reads that and takes it to heart.
Could your thoughts run in any narrower channels there Robert?
1) The correct answer to your slavery analogy is the solution to slavery being to find a cheap, labor saving device.
2) If Hayward’s recommended solution is wrong – what is your alternative?
“Could your thoughts run in any narrower channels there Robert?”
unfortuneatly…. yes.
“…comparable to asserting that the solution to the problem of slavery is to find a cheap source of labor than slaves for plantation owners to use.”
Finding a cheaper source of labor may not be the best solution, but it may be the most viable one given the circumstances.
What is it that Schmidt said? One despairs at the state of (conservative) liberal (scholarship) tweets… Can they not do better?
“Fossil fuel energy is extremely costly, but the costs are spread out through society, while the benefits are concentrated with the burner.”
Where does this belief come from? Amazing.
Spot on Robert, and this is why you can see how “conservatives” are wrapped up in socialism. “Conservatives” are all about socializing costs while privatizing profit. This has been the goal of the conservative movement since Reagan.
What ever costs there are for the current state of air pollution in the US, they are spread out and we all pay those costs. The rich tend to live in larger cities, so they pay a more substantial cost compared to someone poor living in the Appalachians.
On the other hand, the much more substantial benefits accrue to everyone.
Of course, breathing in an extra 200 ppm CO2 isn’t hurting anyone at all.
Any fantasied costs rest on speculation by climate scientists – which is far from settled.
The general response to Robert is that many people benefit from cheap energy so it is ok for the costs to be socialized. Socialism is good if the benefit is widespread enough?
Eric, socialism has a specific political connotation. Stop conflating cooperative public projects with an ideology that’s all-inclusive, and that is a proven failure at the both the scale of large nation states and all the way down to collective farms. Socialism contains the meme that socialism is the ONLY way, that everything belongs to everyone, that’s hostile to private ownership, that believes human nature towards self-interest is always wrong and can be overcome, that incentives to productivity and profit don’t matter, that elitist bureaucrats are capable of replacing all individual market mechanisms.
Your public utility that sends you electricity can actually do the job that most people want done, for a price most people can afford. Wind mills can’t. This is why windmills (an old technology) didn’t win the market battle with large co-operative electrical generation corporations. This is why you leftist utopians ought to be more circumspect in your headlong rush to “de-carbonize” the electricity grid.
Fossil fuel energy is NOT expensive compared to the alternatives. That’s why market forces have selected it. Your communalist do-gooders are trying to mandate that something which does not exist, and therefore cannot compete in the marketplace (IE. magic), to replace fossil fuels. This is insanity. The benefits of fossil fuel use accrue to everyone. Do you live in an area that gets cold, yet your house is warm in the winter? Do you enjoy the mobility of an automobile? Do you have a refrigerator in your house to keep your food? Do you turn on lights and electronics to enjoy the evenings and nights? Do you have a job? Do you wear clothes? Do you fly on an airplane occasionally? Do you shop in a grocery store? Do you eat Chilean cherries or grapes in the winter time? Then I have bad news for do-gooders. You’re benefiting from the use of fossil fuels. The problem your side has in the political debate is that everyone benefits from relatively cheaper energy, even it they’re too stupid to realize it. When you raise their costs, they’ll all suffer. Then they suddenly disagree with your do-gooderism, especially when they finally understand your arbitrary cuts in their standard of living don’t make things better, anyway. Your lift is way heavier than you understand. Wake up.
Robert wrote:
Fossil fuel energy is extremely costly, but the costs are spread out through society, while the benefits are concentrated with the burner.
That is totally untrue. The benefits of fossil fuel energy is spread out through society.
Imagine this many people using horses for transportation and everything else.
Most of all that everyone has is much better and much more due to benefits from the use of fossil fuel.
To say it is not is really unreasonable.
The greens focused on actual social costs of carbon such as lead and so2 early on and helped create the EPA. The point is there was always a reasonable balance in the public’s mind about regulatory expense and government control that limited the authority. That created the need (among the core green radicals) for the apocalyptic climate fantasy that AGW evolved to;
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/06/19/CO2-is-good-for-us-climate-change-is-bunk-greens-are-raging-extremists-says-Greenpeace-co-founder
It’s true, if the green movement had stayed more reality based it would have had more political successes, it would be more broadly based in supports. Then again, I don’t think this was ever a priority for the Marxist fringe that dominates green leadership then or now. Think of all the SO2 that might have been mitigated had that priority been given? While a minor failing in the de-industrializing West consider what the misbegotten priority has meant to the developing world. No small irony, greens made the environment worse then it would other wise be.
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“…filter out the name calling garbage and try to figure out what people are actually saying”
Critical analysis, progressives just can’t do it. To “try and figure out what people are actually saying” in the climate debate is to entertain arguments against the “consensus.” That means thinking about what they themselves believe critically, not just criticizing skeptics. And that progressives are loathe to do.
Name calling is one of the most popular means of avoiding genuine critical analysis all together.
.. in the climate debate is to entertain arguments against the “consensus.”…
Things change. ‘Constancy’ is ill equipped to describe climatological features. ‘Consensus’ is a poor tool for the situation
“loathe” doesn’t mean unwilling; loath (or better still loth) does.
“I doubt the name calling will stop – and the conservatives have just come up with a stinging new name.”
Oh, dream on. Climate deniers have threatened to rape children, hang scientists, shoot them, or burn them alive. Whining that the majority that accepts the scientific consensus are “cultists” doesn’t “sting” anyone — we laugh at you for it.
I know, seriously. Why just look at the 10:10 video and… oh, wow, it just occurred to me that you might not be writing sarcasm. Hard to tell with that team.
OK, let’s have a link to the threats to rape children. We all know where to find video of fantasy murders with full blood special effects of “denier” children.
Here you go
Australian Climate Scientists get death threats
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/06/06/australian-climate-scientists/
Several years on and 11 emails are released – 10 of them insulting but no threats and one about kangaroo culling – in which it seems the only threat was to kangaroos. No arrests – no jail – no nothing but the song and dance, discredited links and the inclination to defame by association.
Here you go. Debunked over two years ago.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/14/quote-of-the-week-death-by-coochey-coup/
But a good progressive meme never dies.
It hasn’t been debunked just because you haven’t seen the death threats. Remember we never saw evidence of the harassment Bengtsson claimed to face, but you were all happy to accept that…
Robert, warmists are the climate deniers.
Someone should provide an editing service that reduces media articles to their bare logical structure. I suspect in many cases there wouldn’t be a lot left.
yup
What you cannot perceive does not exist. Got it Mosh. Some might call that “denial.”
TJA
huh.
Very simple.
1. Someone should provide an editing service to reduce text to its bare
logical structure. this is a statement of a market need. yup I agree.
This need exists.
2. The OP suspects in many cases there would not be a lot left.
yup. this is my experience when I try to reduce a piece to its logical
structure. Its almost a tautology.
note: explicating “yup” in this case took more space. hence the word “many” as opposed to “all”
In context, I assumed that you were making a comment that the Hayward article contained no logic. If that is not what you are saying, then fine.
Yeah Mosher, so typical of your thought processes.
Reading capability challenged alert.
A real live propaganda artist working to discredit skeptical scientists and promote quasi-science like the BEST project at UC-Berkeley?
Disagree with him if you like, but saying there’s no content just makes you look silly.
Hi Paul,
Were you responding to me? It’s hard to tell with the nesting.
I neither agreed nor disagreed with him. Nor did I say that there is no content.
What I said was “Someone should provide an editing service that reduces media articles to their bare logical structure. I suspect in many cases there wouldn’t be a lot left.”
Cheers
Steven Hayward has identified the key problem. Incompatibility of dictatorial (grant-guided consensus) science with civil rights and democratic values.
So now would be the time for you (or Hayward) to start proposing solutions compatible with your particular values. See Scott Denning’s short talk at a past Heartland Institute Conference:
But when somebody does, your sort simply ignores it, or dismisses it with specious rationalizations.
Well somehow the US has done better at reducing emissions since Kyoto than just about everybody. So one suggestion is natural gas through fracking, another suggestion is nuclear.
Now, Now, TJA. How would we spend another 20 years dreaming about new bureaucracies, taxes and windmills if people start wandering off the reservation and thinking about stuff that works?
And, for goodness sakes, you do understand that Republicans – even the conservative ones – support gas and nukes. You can’t just kill a political narrative like that! Jeeze, what are you, someone who thinks CO2 is a problem? Get with the program!
I got the “denier” label for trying to get WebHubbleTelescope to explain why his CSALT model wasn’t curve fitting.
Too bad tja doesn’t understand that any attempt to connect theoretical and experimental physics involves curve fitting in some capacity. Name something that doesn’t.
On the other hand, “curve fitting” in quotes is applied as a euphemism by pseudo-skeptics to marginalize work done by scientists. They usually criticize the “curve fitting” scientists in stories written in crayon on three-lined paper.
See how that works?
Curve fitting is fine and necessary. It helps to support inferences. Sometimes it even can support predictions, after it has been validated against out of sample data. In your case, I would have to say future data that you could not have known at the time your model was created.
Now I see that when you said that your model showed there wasn’t a pause because it acted like “noise canceling headphones” and demonstrated an “underlying trend,” that you couldn’t really have meant it, because you understand that it is very possible to fit curves with what seem like relevant factors and once run against actual new data, for the correlation to fall apart.
Of course you also know that if you train against a period of data, then examine the results against the full set of data, then choose the model that correlates best with out of sample data, that what you have really done is extend the training data to the whole data set. So you would also understand that your model proves nothing until it has been tested against future data.
You also understand, since you are a “scientist,” that this is the kind of thing that led to the “decline” in temperature as seen by the tree ring proxies. Not realizing that the whole data set was really the “training” data. And that the real test didn’t come until new data came in.
I can live with the fact that we don’t have an experimental control to compare numbers against.
What is intriguing about CSALT is how it can reveal artificial artifacts in the data. For example, the artificial warm spike during the WWII years.
CSALT models natural variation and that data interval stuck out like a sore thumb.
So where exactly is your better way of doing this?
CSALT actually does something useful to examine the components of recent global temperature change.
Contrast that with the false “pause” statistics of the deniers.
If you state that Republicans favor fracking or nuclear power without citation you have Joshua thread-jacking.
So to forestall this I give;
Gallup 2012 nuclear power by party
http://www.gallup.com/poll/153452/americans-favor-nuclear-power-year-fukushima.aspx
Pew Fracking
http://www.people-press.org/2012/03/19/as-gas-prices-pinch-support-for-oil-and-gas-production-grows/
“WebHubTelescope | June 13, 2014 at 3:11 pm |
Too bad tja doesn’t understand that any attempt to connect theoretical and experimental physics involves curve fitting in some capacity. Name something that doesn’t.”
Modeling from first principles.
lolwot,
“Contrast that with the false ‘pause’ statistics of the deniers.”
You really should stop calling the MET Office and IPCC mean names. They might cry.
…Well somehow the US has done better at reducing emissions since Kyoto than just about everybody ..
Decline in productivity? Amazing how skillful economists and publicists are at hiding the decline or growth in this that or whatever.
Business as usual eh
That’s called theory. At some point one has to match theory to the experimental evidence. Invariably this requires curve-fitting — if nothing else, one will have to at least rescale, phase shift, bias offset, etc.
One wonders how many curve fits have been done to pin down the cosmological constant?
Thanks Web. That is all I wanted. I wanted to understand where your model was and the assumptions behind it, I think I do now, at least to my satisfaction. I hope your model works out. As of now it proves nothing, and,BTW, I thought that their was no warm period in the forties.
“If you look at the attached plot you will see that the
land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know).
So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC,
then this would be significant for the global mean — but
we’d still have to explain the land blip.
I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an
ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of
ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common
forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of
these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are
1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity
plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things
consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from.
Removing ENSO does not affect this.
It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip,
but we are still left with “why the blip”.” – Tom Wigley ClimateGate.
And then there is this:
“The new study, published in the journal ‘Geophysical Research Letters’, confirms this requirement. This is because, taking into account the data recorded for the level of solar radiation, the scientists made a surprising discovery: in the 1940s and in the summer of 1947 especially, the glaciers lost the most ice since measurements commenced in 1914. This is in spite of the fact that temperatures were lower than in the past two decades.”
http://www.ethlife.ethz.ch/archive_articles/091214_gletscherschwund_su/index_EN
So the “data” showed that it was not that warm in the forties, yet the glaciers melted really fast, they claimed this was due to increased sunshine. If the data actually showed it was warm in the forties, they wouldn’t have had to even do this study.
My feeling is that this is the kind of harm that comes from doctoring the data, that it leads science down incorrect paths. For instance, how can you trust your CSALT results if the input has been doctored to “get rid of the warm blip in the 1940s”
A lot of the creation of skeptics, and even “deniers” has to do with using transparent rhetorical techniques. It makes the user of the techniques look like a careful liar and makes the audience for these techniques feel like their intelligence has been insulted.
I appreciate his libertarian bent. I so wish Republicans would never address moral issues. I so wish Democrats would get out of my life with all there regulations and “benefits.”
there should be their. Ack!
Happy Halloween
“I so wish Republicans would never address moral issues. ”
Me too, Jim. It’s where they lose me. They don’t seem to see the inconsistency in the desire for small government, coupled with the belief that the government can and should enforce issues having to do with our most basic civil rights, as in full ownership of one’s own body. I can’t imagine much more antithetical to my understanding of what it means to be free, than allowing the government to enter my bedroom, or throw me into prison for ingesting plants that exist in nature.
In fairness, many of them seem slowly to be catching on
Perhaps we should form our own party.
timg56,
Absolutely, please do. If liberaltarians and”moderates” stopped voting Democrat, Republicans would never lose another national election.
By the way, the GOP is actually run by social progressives. The problem for most libertarians is that those “leaders” are with a few exceptions also economic progressives.
Honesty is a moral issue, one that is severely lacking in way too many politicians, scientists and journalists.
jim2 and pokerguy,
What you liberaltarians and former progressives fail to realize is that a properly functioning free market depends on morality.
Besides, everybody wants to legislate morality, no matter what they claim. Conservatives just prefer the Judeo-Christian ethic which has been implemented over millennia, with a lot of trial and error and learning along the way.
You folks are no different from progressives in one way, you want to sh*t can a system that evolved over millennia,and substitute your own current preferred set of values. The only difference is progressives want to do that in both economics and moral issues.
Show me an a moral society that ever had a free market for any length of time.
I suspect you wouldn’t;like a free market disconnected from morality nearly as much as you might think you might.
should be “amoral” not “a moral”
GaryM. You conflate massive regulation with reasonable regulation under the Rule of Law and personal freedom. We would still have to have laws against con men, stealing, murder, etc. Just a whole lot less of them than we have now.
I’m rather fond of the Constitution. And I’m a bit confused over what you believe I’m for getting rid of.
Steven Hayward states that it is a categorical imperative of
conservative climate policy that whatever policies are
developed, they must be compatible with individual liberty
and democratic institutions and not rely on unaccountable
bureaucratic administration.
Isn’t this the crucial division between conservatives and liberal progressives regarding policy per se? Like Plato’s ‘noble lie,’
the metals in men, justified in a ‘good cause,’ ‘liberal’
progressives promote policies that are not liberal ie. not
protecting freedom but enacting more controls over individuals’
lives.
Underpinning conservative and democratic laws are the moral
values of freedom and equal justice before the law, equal right
of every individual to life, liberty and security of person, regardless
of diversity of race or belief.
Liberal Progressives’ policies present attempts to censor free
speech. In Australia, for example The Finkelstein Legislation
was an attempt to introduce amendments to 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act, that Senator Bolkus, seemingly unaware
of the Orwellian resonances of the rhetoric, told Parliament
was designed to eliminate ‘speech crimes.’ Opposition Senator
Brandis noted that as Winston Smith discovered, there is hardly
any distance between speech crime and thought crime, censoring language, at a deeper level is an attack upon intellectual freedom
itself. Had the 18 c legislation been successful there would have
been punitive censorshipthe press and free speech.
And of course there are all those other policies, you know,
energy policies, promoted in the name of climate change
uncertainties, carbon taxes, subsidies for government
favoured industries and so on. But globalisation and free
trade are the bete noir, because, well, they’re about open
societies and L P’s, well, they want things managed, by
the new version of the philosopher king, by LP elites.
bts
Serf, all such New Left finger-waggers should be punished by being given names like Finkelstein and Bolkus.
Stop makin’ me laugh, mosomoso, I’m tryin’ ter be
serious here! Serfs get brain hurt when they start
thinkin’ ‘moral precepts.’
Hi Beth
Great reply.
I think the trouble is that these days people are very easily offended, or to be more precise we have a large group of professionals who get offended on others behalf and seek redress
Free speech, comment and open debate is gradually being replaced by greyness and a desire not to offend, even though being offended is one of the great cornerstones of free speech as not everyone is going to agree with your point of view.
tonyb
Thx, Tony.
When you think what freedom of speech and enquiry signify :)
as you, Tony, so engaged would know, much as we might
prefer courtesy in debate, once we impose on argument that
‘you can only say this but not that,’ yer headin’ down the
primrose path of speech ‘n thought control. If someone says
something vicious or untrue in the robust debate, well let them
face the feedbacks, kinda’ like Chaucer said, ‘Modre will out!’
(Or some such. )
I’m sending you this, Tony.
http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2012/10/in-defence-of-freedom-of-speech/
beth the serf.
jim2,
“I so wish Republicans would never address moral issues”
If you didn’t mean it, fine. If you did, you don’t understand how free markets function.
Look, economies depend on the will of the people. One of the reasons the free market, in the US in particular, created the richest, freest, most just, most generous society in the history of the world was that the free market was never the laissez faire caricature progressives make it out to be. It was tempered by the moral precepts of the Judeo-Christian ethic. It therefore was the best system for all the people, not just the entrepreneurs.
It is arguably better to be an greeter at Walmart in the US than an engineer in Bengladesh. Our poor are better off by any measure than the middle class in most countries. And that is not an accident.
As for moral issues other than fraud and theft, you can see communities in the US that have the benefits of a (less but largely still free) free market and no enforcement of moral norms. The illegitimacy rate, the illiteracy rate, the rate of drug addiction and the rate of poverty among women and children are astronomical and growing.
And guess how people who thus become dependent on government vote?
Gary,
I suppose the only explanation for your blindness in this area is that it’s congenital. You can’t see what you can’t see. All you passionate adherents of one political philosophy or another possess a certain blindness. With you Conservatives, it’s in the area of individual morality. Honestly hard for me to think of anything more pernicious, than your eagerness to impose your Old Testament ideas of right and wrong…using the terrible, crushing power of the State to do so.
GaryM – There is a series titled “The Men Who Built America.” Watch it.
These men were in many cases brutal. There were gun battles between the Pinkertons and unions in Carnegie’s steel mill. And some of them read the Bible and were Christians.
Then there is the little matter of slavery in the US. I don’t recall the chapter and verse in the Bible that says God’s followers are to take slaves. Maybe you can point it out.
While I agree we need moral guidelines, something like the 10 commandments, what we don’t need is religious politicians making us live by their religious rules.
.”..what we don’t need is religious politicians making us live by their religious rules.”
Jim,
Do you suppose Gary notices how it’s often the most piously intolerant who turn out to have the most to hide?
Maybe some day one of you liberaltarians/moderates/independents will address the arguments I actually make and the questions I actually ask. But I’m not going to hold my breath.
Gary – The Constitution does posit a separation of church and state. What if Muslims take over the government here – what then? We can certainly have laws based on the more simple moral principles, but we can also have laws that tug people in the right direction. One might be a law that fathers have to support children – married or not. Or if a couple has a child, they are married by common law. Or that an abortion is legally murder. Just because we don’t accept other people’s religious dictates does not mean society will be amoral. We still have religious organizations for that. That’s where moral teaching belongs.
jim2,
That’s just simply not a coherent response to what I wrote.
Some governments commit mass murder. Therefore we should do away with government?
Some governments are socialist, therefore we should not have a government that practices free market economics?
People do bad things. People do bad things in the name of “morality.” That does not mean you do away with morality.
If you want to actually address what I wrote,describe for me your response to the problems I described in places where people live in a “libertarian” environment.
Oh, and the separation of church and state is nowhere in the Constitution. It is, however, in the Bible. Which is where the concept comes from in western society (the only society that really practices the principle).
And please, Leviticus? When we are talking about modern society and politics?
We need morality, but we shouldn’t legislate it. This is the incoherent type of argument liberaltarians love to make. Until you point out to them that liberty is a moral precept, and one of the main points of the Constitution and our laws in general is to use the force of government to ensure that liberty.
What you get then is silence.
==> “enforcement of moral norms.”
What a fascinating concept. And it sums up GaryM’s concept of “critical thinking” oh so well.
That would be somewhat ironic, if the Constitution was following the Bible in deciding to separate Church and State.
Jim D,
It’s only ironic to those who understand neither.
When I say that the conservative lacks principles, I do not mean to suggest that he lacks moral conviction. The typical conservative is indeed usually a man of very strong moral convictions. What I mean is that he has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions. It is the recognition of such principles that permits the coexistence of different sets of values that makes it possible to build a peaceful society with a minimum of force. The acceptance of such principles means that we agree to tolerate much that we dislike. There are many values of the conservative which appeal to me more than those of the socialists; yet for a liberal the importance he personally attaches to specific goals is no sufficient justification for forcing others to serve them. I have little doubt that some of my conservative friends will be shocked by what they will regard as “concessions” to modern views that I have made in Part III of this book. But, though I may dislike some of the measures concerned as much as they do and might vote against them, I know of no general principles to which I could appeal to persuade those of a different view that those measures are not permissible in the general kind of society which we both desire. To live and work successfully with others requires more than faithfulness to one’s concrete aims. It requires an intellectual commitment to a type of order in which, even on issues which to one are fundamental, others are allowed to pursue different ends.’ F. A. Hayek
As early as the 4th century St Augustine the doctrine of the two cities – the city of God and the city of man.
These are the two loves: the first is holy, the second foul; the first is social, the second selfish; the first consults the common welfare for the sake of a celestial society, the second grasps at a selfish control of social affairs for the sake of arrogant domination; the first is submissive to God, the second tries to rival God; the first is quiet, the second restless; the first is peaceful, the second trouble-making; the first prefers truth to the praises of those who are in error, the second is greedy for praise, however it may be obtained; the first is friendly, the second envious; the first desires for its neighbor what it wishes for itself, the second desires to subjugate its neighbor; the first rules its neighbor for the good of its neighbor, the second for its own advantage; and these two loves produce a distinction among the angels: the first love belongs to the good angels, the second to the bad angels; and they also separate the two cities founded among the race of men, under the wonderful and ineffable Providence of God, administering and ordering all things that have been created: the first city is that of the just, the second is that of the wicked. Although they are now, during the course of time, intermingled, they shall be divided at the last judgment; the first, being joined by the good angels under its King, shall attain eternal life; the second, in union with the bad angels under its king, shall be sent into eternal fire.
It echoes the biblical injunction to render unto Caesar – as well the distinction made between life in the flesh and in the spirit in Romans 8 and fulfilment of the Judaic law by an allegiance to the spirit of Christ in Romans and in the Gospel of St Matthew.
The idea of separation of church and state commenced its modern evolution with Luther in the 16th century with the two cities doctrine. The worldly Kingdom includes everything that we can do and see in the world. The Kingdom of God includes only faith in Christ, a personal relationship with God, grace and redemption. In its original sense separation of church and state existed to prevent coercion by the civil and profane state into the realm of the spiritual and the sacred. It should be understood in that light – and we should continue to insist that the state vacate the Kingdom of God and not the other way.
The Kingdom of man on the other hand is a social construct. Its modern manifestation relies on an overriding commitment to democracy and the rule of law. Any personal values are equal in some sense and I can – like Hayek – make no distinction on general principles between values I approve of and those I don’t. They are lawful or they are not – and the balance is determined in the cut and thrust of democratic process. One may in all good conscience – and if the case one should – disobey.
If I have my ears on and am rubbishing your science – rest assured I am taking the whole thing with excessive gravitas and solemnity.
When discussing serious stuff and not mickey mouse science – I will take off my ears.
==> “enforcement of moral norms.”
I still can’t get over that.
Unintentional irony at it’s best. The fundamental contradiction of arguing for the enforcement of moral norms is really, just spectacular.
GaryM – you’re a work of art and a thing of beauty.
Michael Mouse,
Hayek is excellent on political principles as far as they reflect maintaining a free market. But as a libertarian, his mis-understanding of conservatism is no different from others.
If you want to understand conservatism, you don’t rely solely on critiques by those who reject it.
Every comment here has been a reflection of the modern cultural rejection of objective morality that has been actively promoted by the left for decades.
The truth is, no one believes it.
As you note in part, everyone wants to legislate morality. Even libertarians, who just redefine their moral precepts as something else.
I am still waiting for someone to point out to me when there was ever a libertarian, free market state in actual existence, that endured. It’s like asking a progressive to point out an economically successful socialist system.
I would also settle for an explanation of how libertarians would deal with the social pathologies I described, which are a direct, proximate result of the lack of enforcement of moral standards. We have the libertarian experiment writ large. It’s in the effectively lawless inner cities of this country. Drugs, the devolution of marriage, unrestricted promiscuity, abortion on demand, and the results aren’t pretty.
Someone explain how libertarians will deal with that. And when you’re done, explain how a free market system will continue in a country where the majority are dependent on government because of those pathologies.
But no, all you get here is “you can’t impose draconian old testament law like a western Taliban.” In other words, those who are arguing they are libertarians, or moderates, make the same kind of arguments from ignorance you get when lolwot and WHUT write about skeptical arguments in climate science.
And for the same reasons.
Gary,
Nurturing a pluralist society in which democracy and the rule of law prevails is not the same thing as admitting that a moral equivalency exists between the likes of Joshua and a man of light.
‘There is a light within a man of light, and it gives light to the whole world. If it does not give light, there is darkness.’ the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas
But you have misunderstood the fundamental liberal enlightenment principles of Hayek. By all means impose laws by whatever moral compass you choose and by whatever arts of persuasion you posses – if you can.
No one – btw – posits government at less than about 25% of GDP except extreme nutcases and progressives to frighten children.
Cheers
I am going to stop Michael Mouse – the jokes wearing thin anyway.
I am just disappointed that no one asked whether he was a Mann or a mouse.
“Robert I Ellison | June 16, 2014 at 1:26 am |
I am going to stop Michael Mouse – the jokes wearing thin anyway.”
—
It was as thin as graphene the very moment your little mouse fingers decided to once more change your name. You are a living example of sudden, rapid, and unpredictable name change.
Michael Mouse, I’ll leave the main ongoing debate aside except to say that I have no religious beliefs but maintain high moral standards and believe that it is positive for both societies and individuals to maintain high (and soundly-based) moral values. But I don’t attempt to impose my standards, based on my experience and understanding, on others, though I will respond to those who seek advice.
On the “about 25% of GDP” figure, around 1985-90 I read a large variety of studies attempting to relate the rate of economic growth to size of government, and all, as I recall, came up with 22% as optimal. Not 20, not 25, not a range, but, to my surprise, a consistent 22. Of course, life is not all about economic growth, but it’s been a pretty good proxy for general well-being for a long time. Perhaps at certain high levels of income and wealth, it will be less relevant.
Nor are arguments about the size of governmental all about growth, in general, the greater the reach of government, the less scope there is for self-reliance and individual enterprise, for freedom of action and even thought.
Chief Mickey,
I understand Hayek just fine. He’s just wrong about a number of things. Milton Friedman thought so too. The fact that liberaltarians only understand a caricature of modern conservatism doesn’t mean conservatives don’t understand you.
Faustino,
“But I don’t attempt to impose my standards, based on my experience and understanding, on others….”
Everybody believes certain of their standards should be imposed on others.
Murder; rape, statutory rape; theft, fraud; slavery (there’s a lot more of this than most realize, including in the US, where we minimize it by calling it “sex trafficking”).
All of the above are prohibited by law, backed by the force of government.
Quick show of hands – who here is for repeal of which of these laws?
Everybody believes in legislating morality, it’s just that most don’t admit it, even to themselves.
Oh, and the typical dodge of “only behavior that harms another should be legislated” doesn’t really say anything. You still have to define harm, not to mention person. It is indisputable that the sale of crack, heroine or methamphetamine to another person harms that person when it is used. It is indisputable that an abortion kills a human being, regardless of whether you define it as a “person.”
There is no question that morality is, and should be legislated. Every country in the history of the world has done so. The prudential question is which moral precepts should be enforced by law. Take the ten commandments. It would be a harsh world if murder and theft weren’t against the law. But it would also be a harsh world if citizens were forced to go to church, or believe in God, let alone law against coveting.
Which is why you won’t see any modern conservatives arguing for such laws.
Gates,
As you were the butt of the joke about cartoon science amongst a select few – it surprises me not at all that you didn’t find it funny. Nonetheless – the point about you pathetic narratives sans much in the way of in depth understanding of science About par for the course I would say for an undereducated government employed camera operator with an evangelical progressive bent. Now go away the adults are talking.
Michael,
My number derives from Keynes and Hayek – on which I seem to remember them being agreed. The Rahn curve I remember as well being a bit more flexible.
However, I see no reason why government expenditure should not be limited to maximize growth. Perhaps we should try for 25% – or even 30% – as a first step in most places?
Gary,
Can we usefully discuss the flaws of Hayek without actually mentioning what they are? Management of interest rates to prevent bubbles? That sounds fairly Milton friendly. Effective prudential regulation? An intellectual commitment to democracy and the rule of law?
You may rail and rant against whatever you wish – but if commitment to democracy and the rule of law as the central values of a just civil society is too enlightenment liberal for you – I’m not sure what I can do.
Liberty is a moral precept. That doesn’t mean it’s religious.
The Greeks knew this. Serfs know it. Human freedom is a
noble and inclusive value. The right to individual conscience
in a democratic society transcends race, gender. But if your
particular dogma -put in action – harms another individual’s
rights under equality in law for all, well, you should expect
the penalty from infringing those just laws.
Chief,
“Can we usefully discuss the flaws of Hayek without actually mentioning what they are?”
I did “mention” one area where Hayek was off base.
You pasted a lengthy quote from Hayek high included his description of what he defined as a conservative, which included this: “What I mean is that he [the conservative] has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions….”
I responded: “Hayek is excellent on political principles as far as they reflect maintaining a free market. But as a libertarian, his mis-understanding of conservatism is no different from others.”
The point being that on social issues, libertarians argue like progressives, straw men, caricatures of those who hold different views and appeals to authority. Hayek said it so it must be true. Baloney.
It’s funny that Hayek claimed that conservatives have no political principles that allow them to compromise, given that the conservatives who dominated the Constitutional Convention compromised on an issue about which they felt so strongly that it ultimately led to war – slavery.
I know liberaltarians try to claim that the founders weren’t really conservatives in the modern parlance, they were the first libertarians, but since so many of them owned slaves and supported state religions in their own states, you all might want to re-think that.
Most of what is taught about history now, just ain’t so.
beththeserf,
“Liberty is a moral precept. That doesn’t mean it’s religious.
The Greeks knew this.”
Yes, and the Greeks adhered to that principle so well.
There was an historical experiment in the 18th century to test the “natural law” source of human rights, as opposed to rights devolved by a creator.
The French Revolution took the first path, and the American Revolution took the latter. Judge for yourselves which had better results.
Nietzsche was the only honest atheist. Without god, all there is, is the will to power. If liberty is a natural right, why is totalitarianism the natural state of affairs in human history? Why did the few countries who adhered to moral precepts founded on something greater than themselves, create the freest, richest, most generous nation in the history of the world?
Secular humanism is to political theory what globalclimatewarmingchange is to climate science. Everybody believes in it because people believe in it because it is the “consensus.” There is nothing so unhip in today’s culture as religion. And not surprisingly, its adherents really don’t understand what it is they are rejecting, and can’t articulate it. They just know they are right.
It is the recognition of such principles that permits the coexistence of different sets of values that makes it possible to build a peaceful society with a minimum of force. The acceptance of such principles means that we agree to tolerate much that we dislike. There are many values of the conservative which appeal to me more than those of the socialists; yet for a liberal the importance he personally attaches to specific goals is no sufficient justification for forcing others to serve them.
Here the terminology of liberal refers to a classic liberalism. The essence of the Hayek essay was that both progressives and conservatives have despotic inclinations.
You may believe and legislate anything you like Gary – but it must come with a democratic mandate. You have a problem with how democracy is shaping up – I got no solution for you.
GaryM @ 2.22 am: Good response. When I wrote “But I don’t attempt to impose my standards, based on my experience and understanding, on others, though I will respond to those who seek advice,” I don’t seek to insist that people live in a way that I see as wholesome. That doesn’t mean that I support total licence as to what one does. Of course, I support legislation against actions such as murder that you cite. I’d like people to have high standards of honesty and integrity, I think that all would benefit, but I can’t legislate it.
I think that you and I probably have very similar world views, while I don’t adhere to any organised religion, I appreciate that the core values of many religions (not always realised in practice) are similar to mine.
Gary M, The Judeo-Christian ethic is clearly the basis of Western democratic Society as you state, ‘implemented over millennia with
a lot of trial and error and learning along the way,’ and including separation of the powers of Church and State.
But of course there are other non-Christian traditions where the
will to power was unacceptable. Socrates ‘Care for your soul’
meaning ‘psyche’ meaning to deepen yourself as an ethical
human being, Euripides tragedies at the Festival of Dionysus,
were reflections on human action and hubris.
The Buddha, on Enlightenment viewed human beings as born
from ignorance, not original sin. According to the Buddha,
imperfection and bad karma did not come from the outside
but from the mental function of each individual.His steps to enlightenment were like Socrates ‘care for your soul’ as potent
a guide to the societies they lived in as Judeo-Christianity in
the West. And Socratic critical thinking became an important
part of western conservative tradition also.Guess I’m saying,
we can be ethical human beings with or without God.
Prof Curry: There is a lesson in Hayward’s Weekly Standard essay for those on the other side of the climate debate – inflammatory words make you stop reading (which was your reaction to the title and first paragraph of Hayward’s article). So when you rail on about the Koch brothers funded denial machine, the people that you would most like to reach tune out and turn off. Use of inflammatory words is useful in preaching to the converted, if that is your goal, but it does nothing to influence people on the other side of the debate and turns off the undecided and more reasonable people.
I agree, but I suspect that the “preachers” get more contributions from “preaching to the choir” than from thoughtful and measured prose. I also suspect that “preaching to the choir” stimulates a larger voter turnout from the choir on election day. Lastly, I suspect that the metaphorical preachers and their choirs believe that, at this late date, any undecideds are “acting in bad faith” and not open to reason; or, as Gavin Schmidt wrote, [perceive] such undecideds as “acting in bad faith” (“fake skeptics” and so on appearing in the texts); or “in the pay of” somebody.
The basic theory says we’re supposed to continue warming at about 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade, but since the late 1990s we’ve stopped.
Hayward can’t even get his basic facts straight. Here is the warming since Dec 1998:
HadCRUT4: +0.11 C
GISS: +0.14 C
Cowtan & Way: +0.19 C
NCDC: +0.10 C
UAH LT: +0.21 C
RSS LT: +0.04 C
And, of course, the ocean has heated up enormously in this time, which is the surest sign of a planetary energy imbalance.
“And, of course, the ocean has heated up enormously in this time…”
how many degrees is enormous?
“how many degrees is enormous?”
Whatever David and his fellow alarmist’s deem it to be. As far as I can make out given the fractional differences that distinguish this or that “hottest year ever.” or the “third most broiling 12 months in history,”
It doesn’t take much.
The top 700 meters of the ocean has gained 160 zettajoules since 1955. The top 2000 meters has gained 82 zettajoules since 2005.
“The top 700 meters of the ocean has gained 160 zettajoules since 1955. The top 2000 meters has gained 82 zettajoules since 2005.”
And that is how many degrees? You know that the rate of warming of the oceans puts it on a pace to regain the energy lost during the LIA of about 0.8 C degrees per 300 years. That is a big reservoir that holds a lot of Joules.
Do you need a primer on the difference between heat and temperature?
Looks like David Appell needs a primer on heat and temperature. Maybe just a short one. Adding 4.186 joules to 1 gram of water will raise its temperature 1 degree C.
Write that down, David. Do you need further help answering the question?
JC SNIP
“David, Cappy needs more than a primer.
He doesn’t have a SciTech degree and in retaliation tries to impersonate someone that does by using big words and fakey numbers.”
So it takes a SciTech degree to convert Joules to degree C for the upper 2000 meters of the Oceans? Where do I pick mine up? Kmart? Simple questions tend to not get answered by the SciTech degree holding tribe.
I WHT JC Snipping himself as a pity ploy?
WHT has been getting a bit testy lately.
It was of course an ironic allusion to the frequency of webby snips. A subtlety webby is not likely to grasp even if spelt out.
The usual crazed gerbil nonsense he has been called on yet again – by Bob Tisdale this time – I see.
No david.
The problem is not that he gets “the facts” wrong.
The problem is that he does not specify what he means.
He makes an ambiguous claim. He might not have the best motives for doing this. You supply information about your motives when you interpret his text.
1. What does “late 90s” mean?
2. What does “stopped” mean.
You interpret late 90s to mean Dec of 1998.
of course given the text, there is nothing there that gives you license to make this decision. This is eisegesis. You cannot help yourself. You probably were not trained in critical reading.
one could make a different choice trying to figure out what he meant
Maybe he meant this..
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1998/to:2015/every
The bottom line is how people read texts will very often tell you more about them than it does about the text.
Or maybe he meant this:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1998/to:2015/plot/rss/from:1998/to:2015/trend
Yes, I took the late 1990s to mean “Dec 1998,” in the absence of further clarifying information. To get the El Nino out of the way. Correcting for ENSOs, volcanoes, and solar variability shows a consistent underlying trend due to GHGs (Foster and Rahmstorf, Env Res Lett 2011).
A pause by any other name would smell as sweet.
Bottom line:
The pause is killing the cause.
david.
we see that you took it mean dec 1998.
that is not in dispute.
the question is
Why?
what in the text told you that dec 1998 was the right choice?
and what does your choice say about you?
Now, you could have said
“its ambiguous, and here are the options and here are the results for all those options” that would have been clear and complete. but you chose not to be clear and complete. that says as much about you as his artful ambiguity says about him.
basically, neither one of you are worth reading much except for rhetorical insights.
Read more carefully — I said why I picked 12/1998.
Hayward is using the common tactic of claiming uncertainty everywhere he can. Picking an interval that is not representative of climate is one way to do that.
Don’t be a pause denier, David.
david
‘Read more carefully — I said why I picked 12/1998.”
It doesn’t matter WHY you claim you picked it.
moreover, you use the selection to prove he was wrong, but this presupposed an interpretation.
Finally, the text gave you no basis for the selection.
Now, if you want to argue that he was ambiguous and potentially wrong
I have no issue.
its pretty damn simple.
There is definitely a consistent underlying trend. It is 0.6K/century or 0.06K/decade. What causes it is not actually known. The mainstream thought they knew a few years ago it was AGW because their circular reasoning told them so but the pause caused them to think a little harder and they came up with natural variation cooling hiding the expected warming. If they think yet harder then they might one day conclude it’s all indistinguishable from a natural recovery from the little ice age. Pretending a minute trend is AGW is not proof; it’s a belief.
David Appell: The top 700 meters of the ocean has gained 160 zettajoules since 1955. The top 2000 meters has gained 82 zettajoules since 2005.
That may be true, but it was not what was forecast by any of the “basic theory” cited by Hayward. The basic theory forecast surface temp and troposphere temp increases, and the forecasts of the IPCC have been consistently too high since they were recorded. Starting with the most recent temps and looking backward, we have experienced 17 years of totally unpredicted flat surface temperature records. That shows that the theory is too poorly substantiated by data to justify an increase in government power.
“Obviously, a compilation of global temperature variations must include ocean temperatures.”
– IPCC AR1 (1990), section 7.4.1.2, p. 209
“Global-mean temperature alone is an inadequate indicator of greenhouse-gas-induced climate change.”
– IPCC AR1 (1990), Chapter 8, Executive Summary, p. 244
Starting with the most recent temps and looking backward, we have experienced 17 years of totally unpredicted flat surface temperature records.
This is completely false. Do you not know how to calculate these things?
David Appell: This is completely false.
Well, yeh, not quite exactly flat. Are you saying that the near 17 year record of very little to no temp increase was predicted by someone?
“Now Cap’n, you understand that if he states the warming in degrees rather than joules, that his argument will lose rhetorical powe”
It’s rather more the case that deniers will exploit a figure in C by incorrectly comparing it to the same increase at the surface.
That is why you guys are so eager to have a small number to play with so you can imply it’s a small change. Just like you do with the “Co2 is only 0.00….% of the atmosphere BS
lolwot, “It’s rather more the case that deniers will exploit a figure in C by incorrectly comparing it to the same increase at the surface.”
Who is exploiting what? Tell the class the answer to , “what is enormous” in terms of temperature?
“Do you need a primer on the difference between heat and temperature?”
Nope. You need one? How many degrees is enormous? You are the one bringing up Joules.
Climate change is about balancing heat changes, not temperature changes.
“Climate change is about balancing heat changes, not temperature changes.”
Well, it is now since the temperatures didn’t rise by the 0.2 C per decade as projected. How many degrees is enormous?
If you thought the global mean surface temperature was predicted to rise monotonically by 0.2 C per decade, every decade, then you haven’t understood the first thing about climate.
Thank you. Since the IPCC AR4 SPM said exactly that, are we to infer that the IPCC ‘hasn’t understood the first thing about climate”?
No, we just remember what people were saying twenty years ago.
No one 20 years ago said the GMST would increase by 0.2 C/decade monotonically. Nor is anyone saying that today.
Meanwhile, Hansen’s 1988 projection was pretty good:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/03/21/hansens-1988-predictions/
Not perfect, but it doesn’t need to be perfect to know that CO2 is going to cause a significant amount of warming.
Well, check the IPCC AR4 SPM: “For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2C per decade is expected for a range of emission scenarios.”
Whatever. We have already seen that you interpret comments invidiously then attack based on your interpretation of what was said. Usually this is called battling straw men, but people have become deaf to that argument. Mosher put it quite nicely.
I have seen denial of the pause. Denial that the stratosphere hasn’t cooled in something like 20 years. Not sure how the ocean is heating without the stratosphere cooling if it is due to AGW, but I am sure you have some kind of answer for that.
“If you thought the global mean surface temperature was predicted to rise monotonically by 0.2 C per decade, every decade, then you haven’t understood the first thing about climate.”
I didn’t and don’t. Steven Hayward just noted that the globe was projected to warm by about 0.2 C per decade and you said the oceans are warming “enormously”. So in degrees C, at the current rate of “enormous” warming, how much will the average temperature of the 0-2000 meter layer of the oceans have warmed/increased by the year 2314?
Now Cap’n, you understand that if he states the warming in degrees rather than joules, that his argument will lose rhetorical power. Just like his trick of picking a specific date for the beginning of the pause to the month that would bolster his case, then not giving the results in terms of trends, but absolute numbers. Another conscious choice to maximize the rhetorical effect of his claim while minimizing the informational aspect of it.
They he wonders why people don’t trust what he says.
David Appell: Climate change is about balancing heat changes, not temperature changes.
Really? When did David Hansen and John Holdren first testify to that?
Appell is still trying to play the shell game – but he just has not gotten the hang of moving the pea under the shells yet, so the 6 year old kid will point and laugh at him as they tell him the pea is in his hand.
David Appell –
Champion T-ball player demonstrating what happens when he steps up to the plate against a Major League player.
Nice play Dr Curry.
What I mean is skeptics prefer ocean heat gain to be expressed in degrees C rather than joules because that way the number looks really small.
It’s similar to skeptics who complain that CO2 is expressed in ppm and say they want it in % instead. The reason they want it like that is so the number looks really small. Whether they realize that is misleading or not I don’t know.
lolwot, “What I mean is skeptics prefer ocean heat gain to be expressed in degrees C rather than joules because that way the number looks really small.”
And the pure of heart, not the skeptics, divert attention from less than anticipated “surface” warming in C to “enormous” warming of the oceans in Godzilla Joules.
lolwot,
Never heard of unit conversion? Doesn’t matter if someone “wants” to make a big number look small or a small number look big if you understand unit conversion.
lolwot: What I mean is skeptics prefer ocean heat gain to be expressed in degrees C rather than joules because that way the number looks really small.
No, it’s because the forecast changes were in degrees C. Degrees C are the best units for appraising the forecasts.
If you predict a certain temperature change for a certain number of decades, don’t you think you have to wait for at least one decade after the prediction, to judge if it has failed yet or not?
“”During the 15-year period beginning in 1998, the ensemble of HadCRUT4 GMST trends lies below almost all model-simulated trends (Box 9.2 Figure 1a), whereas during the 15-year period ending in 1998, it lies above 93 out of 114 modelled trends ((Box 9.2 Figure 1b; HadCRUT4 ensemble-mean trend 0.26°C per decade, CMIP5 ensemble-mean trend 0.16°C per decade). “”
Quick estimate 0.21C per decade, start with Mosher’s at 1998, add “”Hiatus periods of 10–15 years can arise as a manifestation of internal decadal climate variability, which sometimes enhances and sometimes counteracts the long-term externally forced trend. Internal variability thus diminishes the relevance of trends over periods as short as 10–15 years for long-term climate change (Box 2.2, Section 2.4.3).””
Top it with AR4 “”There is close agreement of globally averaged SAT multi-model mean warming for the early 21st century for concentrations derived from the three non-mitigated IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES: B1, A1B and A2) scenarios (including only anthropogenic forcing) run by the AOGCMs (warming averaged for 2011 to 2030 compared to 1980 to 1999 is between +0.64°C and +0.69°C, with a range of only 0.05°C). Thus, this warming rate is affected little by different scenario assumptions or different model sensitivities, and is consistent with that observed for the past few decades (see Chapter 3).””
“”The close agreement of warming for the early century, with a range of only 0.05°C among the SRES cases, shows that no matter which of these non-mitigation scenarios is followed, the warming is similar on the time scale of the next decade or two. Note that the precision given here is only relevant for comparison between these means…It is also worth noting that half of the early-century climate change arises from warming that is already committed to under constant composition (0.37°C for the early century).””
And a whole bunch of other or similar statements can be found.
curryja | June 13, 2014 at 3:34 pm |
“Thank you. Since the IPCC AR4 SPM said exactly that, are we to infer that the IPCC ‘hasn’t understood the first thing about climate”?”
curryja | June 13, 2014 at 3:32 pm |
“Well, check the IPCC AR4 SPM: “For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2C per decade is expected for a range of emission scenarios.” ”
Well I did.
“For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios.” (AR4, SPM. p.12)
Substituting “expected” for “projected” is interesting.
Hmmm, so where is the AR4 saying “exactly” that “temperature is predicted to rise monotonically by 0.2 C per decade, every decade”??
Exactly nowhere.
Checking the SRES gives us some further important caveats.
Let’s just say that David is closer to the truth here.
Stay tuned, a full post on this is coming tomorrow. In summary they say 0.2C for the first few decades of the 21st century, acknowledging that you need to average over 2 decades to account for internal variability. We’re at 16 years and counting for the hiatus – a heck of a lot of warming is needed for the next 4 years – hold your breath and wait for that big El Nino.
Actually the AR4 says the warming is independent of scenario out until about 2050
So, there is a rising trend from 1999.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1998/to:2015/plot/rss/from:1998/to:2015/trend/plot/rss/from:1999/to:2015/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1999/to:2015/trend
It is 0.03/Decade for RSS and 0.07/Decade for HC4.
Micheal, “Substituting “expected” for “projected” is interesting.”
Good point. Most everyone should be aware that you cannot “expect” anything “projected” by the IPCC.
How do climate scientists define:
1. Expected
2. Projected
3. Predicted
If we have to niggle with word games, I want to know what the rules are. (Although I suspect it’s a make-it-up-as-you-go thing.)
jim2, “How do climate scientists define:
1. Expected
2. Projected
3. Predicted”
The beauty of Abby-Normal Science is that it depends. When you put error bars on a “projection” and the data fits inside the error bars it becomes a prediction. If not it remains a “projection” which could possibly become an expectation, meaning you have to prepare for the worse.
Circle the wagons boys!
Meh, saved their bacon by throwing it into the deep ocean. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
If I have seen fire, it is because I blacken the pots and the pans.
==============
Oops, pots and kettles only, bouys and gulls; no knives in the dishwater. Keep your fork, there’s pie.
============
Judith wrote:
Well, check the IPCC AR4 SPM: “For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2C per decade is expected for a range of emission scenarios.”
Judith, why would you of all people — someone who is constantly stressing natural variability — imply that warming should increase monotonically? You know perfectly well it will not, and the science (4AR WG1 Ch10) does not say it will.
I’m not the one implying it should increase monotonically, the IPCC is! Stay tuned for my post tomorrow on this topic.
Michael: Substituting “expected” for “projected” is interesting.
Hmmm, so where is the AR4 saying “exactly” that “temperature is predicted to rise monotonically by 0.2 C per decade, every decade”??
Exactly nowhere.
If the changes are “projected” but NOT “expected”, does that imply that the proposed expensive CO2 mitigation schemes have no reasonable expectation of making a difference? The “projections” are presented as though they are accurate portrayals of what will happen.
The point again is being missed here. At all time scales up to 30 years, model projections of temperature increases have been far too high on average compared to actual data. See Climate Audit and The Blackboard for the calculations.
Here is a link.
http://climateaudit.org/2013/12/09/does-the-observational-evidence-in-ar5-support-itsthe-cmip5-models-tcr-ranges/
You know, I have been enjoying the weekend and am late to this thread, but that “projected” is different than “expected” is hilarious. Too precious.
Geez David. Nice Cherry Pick on the temperatures. Kind of meaningless without the confidence interval and margin of error.
Secondly, we have little information on ocean temperature data. ARGO was completed in 2007. Curry has a great article regarding this:
http://judithcurry.com/2014/01/21/ocean-heat-content-uncertainties/
We do not have any reliable ocean temperature data back in 1955. And your point about the top 700 meters is what? The ocean on average is 4000 meters in depth. And you want to examine only 18% of the ocean volume in regards to heat content?
“Kind of meaningless without the confidence interval and margin of error.”
IRONY alert.
Since when have skeptics put confidence intervals and margin of error on their claim that temperature has paused?
Answer: never.
“David Appell | June 13, 2014 at 1:23 pm |
The top 700 meters of the ocean has gained 160 zettajoules since 1955. The top 2000 meters has gained 82 zettajoules since 2005.”
Does anyone know what % of the worlds oceans were sampled for 0-700m readings in 1955?
Does anyone know what % of the worlds oceans were sampled for 0-2000m readings in 2000?
If we could measure the 0-700m temperature profile in 1955, why have we spent an eyewatering amount of money on ARGOS?
And, of course, the ocean has heated up enormously in this time, which is the surest sign of a planetary energy imbalance.
The asymmetry in the planetary response is quite clear.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4sh/from:1996.6/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4sh/from:1996.6/mean:12/trend/plot/hadcrut4nh/from:1996.6/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4nh/from:1996.6/mean:12/trend
the arguments promoted for energy entering the oceans in the SH are spurious,as we have differential forcing’ s,such as the orbital changes in insolation and a lag in the GHG forcing of around 7ppm (the lag time of ghg mixing increasing from18 months to 4 years in the 21st century in the SH ) which suggests a greater efficiency in the SO sink.
Subsurface temperatures in the SH especially in the pacific are exceptionally sparse, argo showing around 1 per 2 million sq KM in the South pacific between NZ and south america yesterday.
Both Lucia and McIntyre have excellent posts on this comparing model predictions with actual data for time periods up to 30 years and your data David A. is in fact correct. The issue is that model predictions are on average so much higher.
The IPCC in its decadal predictions applied an arbitrary decrease factor to the model projections. They would not have done that if they didn’t know about the issue raised by Lucia and Steve.
JC said: “There is a lesson in Hayward’s Weekly Standard essay for those on the other side of the climate debate – inflammatory words make you stop reading (which was your reaction to the title and first paragraph of Hayward’s article)”
Both sides, perhaps. I consider myself a conservative. I was nodding along positively as I read Hayward’s thoughts — until I hit the Weekly Standard subtitle and abruptly lost interest. Your prediction was, in fact, 100% on target. I got only 1.5 sentences into the delayed opening paragraph before I reflexively skipped down to the next heading.
I clicked the weakly standard link Judith linked on twitter and ddidn’t get past the first paragraph either.
Similarly, I dismiss people who say ‘carbon pollution’ out of hand.
I was surprised at his knowledge regarding the frailties of the climate consensus; he is obviously not a curious observer. As more work is done over time more truth will surface; of late, researchers at the University of Texas Austin have concluded that the Thwaites Glacier melting has a geothermal cause, not a global warminlg cause.
http://www.jsg.utexas.edu/news/2014/06/researchers-find-major-west-antarctic-glacier-melting-from-geothermal-sources/
” filter out the name calling garbage and try to figure out what people are actually saying, or stop the name calling.”
More generally, this can be achieved by refusing to categorize. Easy to say, hard to do.
It requires staying focus on an individual argument, not the individual,
staying focused on what X says rather than what people like X say.
its hard to be a nominalist. opps, really hard.
Yup, and in this case as soon as you label ideas as being anywhere on the political scale, the idea is lost and it becomes a political battle of wills. Loser every time. Assigning the label of ‘cultist’ to liberals and ‘deniers’ to conservatives is silly. It’s a Robert argument.
> Assigning the label of ‘cultist’ to liberals and ‘deniers’ to conservatives is silly.
“Silly” is way better.
Judith –
==> ” The phrase ‘climate cultist’ may be the best one I’ve seen to counter the epithet of ‘denier’.
There are so many to choose from, used here in the threads of Climate Etc. day after day, how did you decide that one is the best?
==> ” So, by one standard, Hayward’s Weekly Standard article is a bit over the top; but by the standard of say the daily op-eds in the Guardian on climate change, it is pretty much comparable.”
Of course, two wrongs make a right is always such a winning strategy among adults who are serious about building bridges.
Yeah, I see you all the time over at The Guardian chiding them for their over the top demonization of skeptics.
I tell realists that I think that the term “denier” is pointless, founded in poor reasoning, and probably counterproductive.
I certainly don’t justify the use of that term on the basis of vitriol from “skeptics.”
That said, I think that there’s a whole lot of people who need to strap on their big boy pants.
The only difference between your use of “realist” and the word “believer” is that you believe what you are being told is reality. It is not like you understand it yourself. You trust people who have shown themselves to be untrustworthy, probably due to your politics.
Josh,
When have you made any effort to pitch in a help build bridges? But then it must be hard for you to find the time, seeing how much effort you put into boring people to the point they start looking for a bridge to jump off of.
“No one seems to know how to solve immigration.”
Not so — even Mexico knows how to solve, ‘immigration.’
Hayward is a rightwing whack job who writes for the nutty Powerline blog, whose claim to fame was to rescue Bush from his military service record, and therefore help solidify the cesspool that Iraq has turned into.
This class of people are worse than deniers, they are war criminals.
And I am just a scientific cultist who is interested in using mathematical models to unluck the dynamics of the climate phenomenon known as ENSO.
Note the distinction.
:)
John Kerry’s own platoon buddies painted the true picture of the man who later threw medals he bought at a surplus store over the capitol fence, claiming they were his own. When Kerry did that was he “swift-boating” himself?
And the doctor who treated the scratch he got getting out of a boat said Kerry’s biggest concern was getting him to sign off on a purple heart.
Choose your heroes wisely Webby
WebHubTelescope: Hayward is a rightwing whack job who writes for the nutty Powerline blog, whose claim to fame was to rescue Bush from his military service record, and therefore help solidify the cesspool that Iraq has turned into.
More preaching to the choir.
If you could direct our attention to a left-wing blog that is regularly at least as informative as Powerline, I will give it a few readings. I don’t claim that Powerline is perfect, but it is more informative than any left-wing (or even center-left) blogs that I have come across so far.
Yes Powerlies blog is informative on the topics of soccer and 1950’s crooners. The rest, not so much.
Lawyers and war-mongers should stay away from topics of science.
Haywards description of the floundering of the cult of climate alarmism is accurate. You know it. It hurts. You squeal. We are amused. Carry on, webby.
I have tracked the Powerliners for years. They are cornucopians in terms of editorial content never mentioning oil depletion concerns until the wimpy results from Bakken started coming in.
The Powerline law firm represents Koch Industries, which owns refineries in the state next door to the Bakken.
Koch is also involved in the shady Weather Derivatives market and hired the Powerliners law firm to defend themselves in their partnership with Enron.
This has relevance because the weather derivatives were dealing with betting outcomes of climate events such as El Nino.
Who are the cultists, eh?
You all are afraid of turning over the rocks and finding out what kind of critters slither and scurry away
No Web, I don’t care about your obvious politics. I wan’t to know why your CSALT model isn’t an exercise in curve fitting. I guess that makes me a denier.
WHT,
It never ceases to amaze me that a denizen of Oildrum.com – which featured whole threads devoted to preppers contemplating survival of the petrocolypse (now past-due) – enjoys calling people “whack jobs” and blogs “nutty.”
I’ve hesitated to point this out, but you do understand, for example, that it’s one thing to be called “nutty” by your local banker and another by your local Hare Krishna.
I think the answer to sites like the Oildrum and its “campfire” is to politely point out it’s, shall we say, incongruities, rather than call it a nutty land of whack jobs. I recommend the approach.
Wow, JeffN is criticizing people for taking an interest in EARTH SCIENCES which is the scientific discipline that this blog falls under.
One of the subjects that gets taught in earth sciences is the laws governing non-renewable natural resources.
Surprise, surprise that the first rule is that they don’t renew!
JeffN did not read that Steven Hayward said in his piece that “the age of oil and had is a long way from being over” and that is due to fracking for oil.
His buddies at the Powerline blog from where he writes are legal counsel to Koch Industries in class action lawsuits concerning oil land purchased in the Bakken.
Conflict of interest anyone?
We are not a bunch of cornucopian rubes like you appear to be JeffN.
LOL – looks like Webby never got the memo that Dan Rather’s career was destroyed by his attempt to promote fraudulent papers on Bush’s military service before an election. KInd of like tree ring proxies, when you manipulate/fabricate data to reach a pre-determined conclusion, you’re practicing something other than ethical behavior.
And oh yeah, Joe Biden claimed that Obama transformed Iraq from the cesspool Bush left it to its present Obama and democracy-loving stability.
“Cornucopian”- one who sees the man on the street corner holdind the sign saying “the world will end Friday” and says to himself, the w
World will end one day, but I’ll still make plans for Christmas.
The SwiftBoat campaign was organized by political operatives and PowerLine blog did nothing to correct those smears.
There you go Tom Harkin.
Matthew,
It’s too bad no one has thought about doing research on conspiracy theorists and climate change. WEB would make a great test subject.
Heh, swabbies sick of the hogwash.
=============
Yes timmy, mathematics is very conspiratorial.
It must pain you to no end that you are incapable of doing this kind of work — applying math and physics to reveal the trajectory of the climate.
Be more convincing if you could be bothered to argue with some of the things he actually wrote. Your sneering, smearing style of “debate” is contemptible.
Above meant Web.
ack. *for* web.
Pokerguy was a progressive most of his life, or so he claims.
So don’t be hatin on me, cuz I could turn into U.
WHT: In this comment you write as a vicious polemicist. Highly charged words, no debate, and those who disagree with you are deniers and war criminals.
Aldous baby, it’s a brave new world and all I am doing is following the money.
Huxley,
Exactly right. Beneath contempt.
WHT: You make my point.
So if those of us who support the Iraq War or climate skepticism are basically deniers and war criminals, Nazis in other words, you are not really interested in debating us, so much as looking to defeat us by any means necessary as Malcolm X once said. Name-calling is a standard weapon in such a war.
This is the bedrock where most of my discussions with liberals end up. If that’s the way they see it, then that’s the way they must play it, I suppose.
I prefer the model: Informed citizens of good conscience can, and often do, disagree.
“by any means necessary”
So it wasn’t John Kerry that got SwiftBoated and George Bush had clear sailing to an election win?
By any means necessary they inverted the facts that Kerry was a hero and Bush was a zero.
‘We was takin’ it to ’em’.
===========
He has found the enemy and it is risus.
================
I notice that some have a knack of cheating every dialogue by name calling and smearing others.
I meant “cheapening the dialogue.” Spell checker strikes again.
.. to unluck .. a Freudian slip, maybe.
Congrats WEB,
You beat the President to blaming Bush for what’s going on 6 years after he left office.
Prof Curry: As a cloud physicist with with a new book on the topic in press Thermodynamics, Kinetics, and Microphysics of Clouds,
That reminds me: I have pre-ordered the book. Any hint of when it is coming out?
Hayward did not actually say that clouds “are” water vapor, only that they are in the “water vapor feedback”; it is perpetually difficult to be succinct, accurate, complete, and clear.
Hi Matthew, I appreciate the book order! Current publication date is anticipated at Sept 30.
==> ” and the conservatives have just come up with a stinging new name. An interesting development in the ‘climate wars.’
Really? You think that using the epithet of “cultist” for anyone who thinks there is a significant risk of significant climate change as the result of ACO2, is new?
How could you possibly have spent as much time as you have reading these threads and think that is something new?
Not for anyone who thinks. For anyone who believes without thinking.
Even if that were true, how would you know? Psychic powers?
Interesting that the new first paragraph is considered, at least by JC, to not be neutral, even though it ascribes to liberals and environmentals being ANTI-democratic and ANTI-personal liberty, reserving the pro side for conservatives.
Having presumed that a) conservatives are in favor of democratic institutions, and personal liberty and b) that liberals and environmentalists are not, he then gives them a lecture on, well, to stop being liberals and environmentalists presumably. Or, as he says more directly in the other column, to stop being cultists, salem witch triers, and so forth.
But both his presumptions are just that. He provides no evidence either to support that conservatives (whatever they may be) actually support personal liberty, nor that liberals (or environmentalists) are opposed. Ditto with respect to support, or opposition, to democratic institutions.
So, really? JC considers it a productive and considered approach to start a discussion with the ‘other side’ with “We know you all hate liberty and democracy, but if only you’d let go of that and do things our way, we’d listen to you.”
Two books may explain the pinnings of the climate consensus; The Closing of the American Mind, and Coming Apart. Here is what I’ve gleened.
1. Students entering the super elite universities arrive with the highest IQ’s and with worldly views that cannot be logically defended
2. The students find, on the super elite campuses, a plethora of like-minded students and professors, all with similar and illogical beliefs.
3. When the students graduate they move into clusters (bubbles) of super elite, super Zip, communities. All graduated from super elite universities, all with the same undefendable beliefs, and all holding influential positions in government, media, and academia.
“1. Students entering the super elite universities arrive with the highest IQ’s and with worldly views that cannot be logically defended”
It is my understanding that gaining attendance at a ‘super elite university’ is more a matter of money than IQ. Moreover, a high IQ is not necessarily a requirement for anything. IQ tests only measure some aspects of intelligence; I have scored 75 on a particular IQ test which was biased against my strengths and toward my weaknesses.
This should be filed under humor. The response from the left is exactly the response of ignorance and knee jerk. They see “conservative” and immediately go into “must be neanderthal” mode.
The tunnel vision represented by those tweets is worth the price of admission. They will never learn.
They are deaf to the people they are trying to convert. That is why they devolve to name-calling. You see, it is too much trouble to explain why they are right and others are wrong just to save the planet.
WHT has been cracking me up. Higher in the thread is Robert, but I’m pretty sure he was being satiracal/snarky. Dave Appell has also made me laugh (Especially we he responded afirmatively to robert). No sense of irony.
Robert was being serious.
He also argues that China’s form of government is superior to what is practiced in the US.
I’ve been reading Stephen Hayward for several years. He’s quite good. He’s not really a polemicist like Ann Coulter on the right or Bill Maher on the left. He’d prefer, I think, to have rational discussions but since the left resorts to bad faith manipulations constantly, he can give as good as he gets.
The basic approach I see from liberals, which includes the climate orthodox, is to prevent civil rational debate on issues like climate change, Obama’s policies, same-s*x marriage, or the Iraq War by labeling opponents as deniers, racists, homophobes or warmongers.
There is no reason for liberals to debate such people and mostly liberals don’t. In climate change discussions they routinely censor and ban their opponents.
I was a liberal for most of my adult life until I started to diverge from the “consensus” and then I quickly discovered that open-mindedness, tolerance, and reasoned debate went under the bus from my friends. I found myself directly and indirectly under constant attack from today’s liberals.
On climate change I’m lukewarmer. I am persuaded anthropogenic emissions do affect climate. I want scientists to work on the problem, but I want them to work honestly — no more Climategates, Glieckgates, hockey sticks — and would like them to build trust rather than coerce with frightening language.
+10
If ‘climate cultists’ is over the top how about, corruptocrats in white coats?
Nothing shows interest in discussion of science better than spending your time making up names to call your enemies, does it.
If it was about the science it wouldn’t be a Left vs. right issue now, would it?
Al Gore accused his mentor Roger Revelle of being senile and the Left attempted to demonize famous hurricane hunter Dr. William Gray by labeling him a ‘denier’ (with all the nasty connotations that word implies).
So, global warming has never been a scientific discussion except by skeptics. There are no skeptics among government scientists. Misleading the public with claims of a scientific consensus has actually been a big lie from the get-go.
Freeman Dyson says, “I think any good scientist ought to be a skeptic.” As for Dyson’s opinion about climatologists he says, “I just think they don’t understand the climate.” Dr. Hans von Storch labeled the Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ as quatsch and, Dyson’s view of climatologists is similar –i.e., “Their computer models are full of fudge factors.”
There are few skeptics that actually do research in the field of climate science, period.
plutarchnet | June 13, 2014 at 3:22 pm | Reply
Nothing shows interest in discussion of science better than spending your time making up names to call your enemies, does it.
—
You mean like “deniers” ?
too long
@wag So, name calling is indeed all you’re interested in. And seems to be norm around here. Good to know.
In the jump-to article about the ‘hockey stick,’ McKitrick’s details an instance — undoubtedly comprising part of the Mann v Steyn lawsuit — about which he says Mann’s claim was ‘obviously misleading.’ A better example of being misleading as opposed to simply lying is given by Walter Stark –e.g., “To call the warming induced by CO2 a greenhouse effect is highly misleading. A greenhouse affects its warming by enclosing the air inside with walls and a roof. Without a roof only very limited warming is possible before convection wafts away heated air like a hot air balloon.”
In my comment above, when discussing influential people in government, it is unelected government officials that are most influential.
If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.
— Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird
When I was young I thought this was a big part of the liberal ideal. At least it was for me.
I was liberal; now I’m conservative. I know both sides reasonably well. I can understand the extreme language the two sides use against each other. The problem is that extreme language works, at least in the short term.
Today we are such a long way from Atticus Finch.
I agree with you here. Conservatives are much better at summarizing the arguments of liberals accurately than vice versa. It’s “science” so don’t deny it. But you don’t even have to go the the study, just look at any thread and tell me how many times you have ever seen a liberal recapitulate a conservative argument before refuting it. They can’t. It’s “Reject first, ask rhetorical questions later!”
Could you illustrate, say by describing Michael Mann’s position on climate change? In terms that he’d be using.
God can make a Mann, but only man can change the climate. There, I ran his words through the succintifier.
=================
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
Well I am prepared to go ‘Buffalo Bill’ on Appell, but I can assure you the hide wouldn’t fit.
DocMartyn Regarding you comments on IQ and entrance to elite universities:
I got the information from Coming Apart by Charles Murray. He correlates high IQ to high SAT scores and shows that, as a result of the admissions requirements, Harvard SATs rose dramatically between 1952 and 1960, and today this is also seen at the other elite schools. He says that these high IQ students are the result of two high IQ parents, period.
“I was liberal; now I’m conservative.”
What is amazing is how few there are going the other direction as a result of genuine critical analysis of their own opinions. In fact, I can’t think of any.
Most conservatives who become progressives were never really conservative at all. Charlie Crist of Florida and David Brock come readily to mind.
No True Scotsman would become a progressive.
That old saw doesn’t apply. It has nothing to do, unless the “True Scotsman” is being compared to a group of people calling themselves Scotsmen who are not.
Oh, I forgot, in progressiveland, everybody gets to decide for themselves who they really are.
Except of course for conservatives, and skeptics, and religious, and anybody else with whom the progressives disagree. They are all really a bunch of reactionary, racist, sexist, homophobes who want women and children to die.
Judith, This is a perfect illustration of what greens and their allies have wrought with their rhetoric. Climate policy is a manifest failure and there is plenty of blame for the climate advocates and their surrogates on the internet. I have observed that anonymity is hcorrelated with the worst, but will not name names. You know who they are.
==> “Judith, This is a perfect illustration of what greens and their allies have wrought with their rhetoric.”
Good point. They made Steve do it.
Sheece.
“Sheece”
I think you mean, “sheesh.”
No one made anyone do anything. I’m just saying that actions have consequences. If a policy push is a manifest failure it does naturally lead to the question of why.
==> ” I’m just saying that actions have consequences.”
So you’re saying that there’s a direct line of causality? That the cause of vitriol and tribalism among “skeptics” is vitriol and tribalism among “realists?”
And the realists say the same except in reverse.
Same ol’ same ol’.
What would be nice instead, IMO, would be if more people would step up to show accountability. But when the goal is to justify a sense of self-victimization and demonizing, there’s no gain in doing that.
This is about identity-protection and identity-aggression, David.
Josh, Why has climate policy been a manifest failure? Those who are its advocates must surely bear some responsibility for this.
David –
==> “Why has climate policy been a manifest failure?”
I’m not sure how you define manifest failure.
Climate change has become a deeply polarized issue for a variety of reasons, and addressing that polarization is not well-served by simplistic cause-and-effect attribution that isn’t well supported by data, and that not coincidentally aligns with partisan orientation.
Both sides claim that the root of the problem lies in the vitriol from the other side. Maybe that should tell you something.
There is abundant evidence that the public is highly polarized about the science even thought they aren’t familiar with the science in-depth, and don’t have a very good grasp on the perspective of scientists.
In such a context, I don’t view a lack of clear direction to be a failure, but to be a natural outgrowth of the complexity of the issues within a society that is strongly divided along ideological lines.
It’s no different than any number of other issues, like immigration or gun control policies. Climate change has become just another proxy for ideological battles and identity politics – where people are absolutely certain about the “facts” because they pick and choose the “experts” that they trust after first running them through an identity filter.
I don’t defend the tribalism and vitriol on the “realist” side. Never have. Never will. It’s part of the problem, no doubt – but attributing a causality for the lack of clear policy direction to the behaviors on only one side of the battlefield is not only obviously just more identity politics, it also reverses the causal mechanism. The vitriol and antagonism exist because the issue is a proxy for identity struggles. Saying that people choose an identification because of the existence of the manifestations of those identifications (vitriol, tribalism, etc) gets it backwards.
Just look at this thread, and the identity politics that run through it. It’s as plain as day. Nothing stimulates the comments quite like posts that play out the identification battle.
In such a context, I don’t view a lack of clear direction to be a failure, but to be a natural outgrowth of the complexity of the issues within a society that is strongly divided along ideological lines.
It’s no different than any number of other issues, like immigration or gun control policies. Climate change has become just another proxy for ideological battles and identity politics – where people are absolutely certain about the “facts” because they pick and choose the “experts” that they trust after first running them through an identity filter.
I don’t defend the tribalism and vitriol on the “realist” side. Never have. Never will. It’s part of the problem, no doubt – but attributing a causality for the lack of clear policy direction to the behaviors on only one side of the battlefield is not only obviously just more identity politics, it also reverses the causal mechanism. The vitriol and antagonism exist because the issue is a proxy for identity struggles. Saying that people choose an identification because of the existence of the manifestations of those identifications (vitriol, tribalism, etc) gets it backwards.
Just look at this thread, and the identity politics that run through it. It’s as plain as day. Nothing stimulates the comments quite like posts that play out the identification battle.
I don’t defend the tribalism and vitriol on the “realist” side. Never have. Never will. It’s part of the problem, no doubt – but attributing a causality for the lack of clear policy direction to the behaviors on only one side of the battlefield is not only obviously just more identity politics, it also reverses the causal mechanism. The vitriol and antagonism exist because the issue is a proxy for identity struggles. Saying that people choose an identification because of the existence of the manifestations of those identifications (vitriol, tribalism, etc) gets it backwards.
Just look at this thread, and the identity politics that run through it. It’s as plain as day. Nothing stimulates the comments quite like posts that play out the identification battle.
Climate change has become just another proxy for ideological battles and identity politics – where people are absolutely certain about the “facts” because they pick and choose the “experts” that they trust after first running them through an identity filter.
Just look at this thread, and the identity politics that run through it. It’s as plain as day. Nothing stimulates the comments quite like posts that play out the identification battle.
Of course, Josh, there is plenty of blame to go around here. Usually, however, those advocating a policy accept some blame if that policy is a manifest failure. Just look at the collapse of the emissions targets and the lack of any real prospect of any being approved anytime soon. I don’t see how anyone can argue that climate policy has had any effect whatsoever. The US switch to natural gas has been the only thing that has really much reduced emissions.
The simple answer, at least in the US, is that the Republicans refuse to take any action. It’s not surprising since a large chunk of their funding comes from fossil fuel interests.
What do you mean by “action” Joshua?
Do you mean “Actions” that cannot be supported by rational analysis?
Do you mean “Actions” that would waste enormous amounts of money for no benefit?
Do you meant “Actions” because you and other climate cultists have a belief?
In other comments upthread you said:
And in this comment you demonstrate your own identity politics. You’ve accused the Republicans for acting rationally but not the Democrats for their irrational advocacy of unjustified and unjustifiable policies.
Woops. Wrong person. Sorry
David Young | June 13, 2014 at 10:35 pm |
…If a policy push is a manifest failure it does naturally lead to the question of why.
It was the skeptics fault.
‘Nothing stimulates the comments quite like the posts that
play out the identification battle.’ (Joseph’ @ 1.13 ,) just
one of at least six ‘Joseph comments’ in the space of
an hour. Lol.
“The Cato Institute devotes just two people to the issue. The main opposition to climate fanaticism is confined to the Heartland Institute, the London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and a scattering of relentless bloggers who have acquired surprisingly large readerships.”
This is not a conspiracy. The skeptics have few resources. But reading this article it occurred to me what they’ve become. Skeptics are a stand in for receiving much of the disappointment of policies that didn’t happen. For the continued fracking, drilling and mining.
If I were a consensus scientist and unhappy with the lack of progress, I’d be hesitant to blame my government and fellow citizens. I’d blame the skeptics. I’d say skeptics are different from most of us and are a threat. The current situation is a measure at how ineffective they’ve been at getting their message out and acted upon.
“The point here is not to sneak in climate skepticism, but policy skepticism…”
We are still policy skeptics. Almost anyone can get behind this with remembrances of past failed policies.
“The basic theory says we’re supposed to continue warming at about 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade…”
That actually represents the low-end projections below which it was originally decided we simply needn’t get hot and bothered enough to actually do anything. Projections that reality is under-shooting.
The real alarmist models aimed far, far higher. And, of course, are being proved to be by far the worst predictions/projections. They effectively died some time ago. But the IPCC don’t like to talk too loudly about that. The ship sails on.
But it is a sign of some progress that they are now willing to haggle about the low, non-scary numbers, even if the rhetoric is still shrill.
michael,
don’t tell that to David and lolwot.
You will ruin their day.
They both know it. It must suck. Every day.
The name-calling is not going to stop any time soon. But it wouldn’t be difficult to come up with neutral, non-judgemental terms for all the major positions in the climate debate. For example, here’s my suggestion for a simple “Climate Concern Scale”:
Concern Level 0 (the “stasists”) – Nothing unusual is happening to the Earth’s climate so no action is required
Concern Level 1 (the “naturalists”) – Global Warming is happening but is largely or wholly due to natural causes so the only possible response is to adapt to it as best we can
Concern Level 2 (the “adaptionists”) – Anthropogenic Global Warming is happening but the consequences are not likely to be very serious so gradual adaptation is a sufficient response
Concern Level 3 (the “mitigationists”) – AGW is happening and the consequences are likely to be very serious so adaptation will not be sufficient and large-scale mitigation efforts are required
Concern Level 4 (the “catastrophists”) – AGW is happening and the consequences are likely to be catastrophic so mitigation strategies must take priority over all other political, economic and social concerns
Concern Level 5 (the “fatalists”) – It is already too late to prevent CAGW so all attempts at mitigation or adaptation will be unsuccessful
Note that none of these terms specifies exactly what form mitigation or adaptation measures should take – free market incentives or government regulation, national policies or international treaties, etc. That’s a separate debate involving value judgements about the legitimate powers and responsibilities of government which cannot be settled by scientific evidence. It is also a debate about which of the proposed responses would be most effective and which would be the most efficient use of our limited resources. To address those questions we must use economic arguments and relevant historical examples, such as how government agencies and private companies have handled different types of risk before.
Therefore it is important to maintain a clear distinction between the different types of debate and to know which one we’re trying to have at any given time. That in turn means we need some neutral terminology to describe what each person thinks about the current state of the climate, as distinct from the political and economic views that lead them to advocate particular responses to it.
OK, normal partisan warfare resumes in 3..2..1..
AndrewZ: That’s a pretty good crack at it. Nicely distinguished in neutral terms. However, there might be room for “uncertainists” who can’t place themselves exactly in any category.
James Lovelock might be one of these. He was a fatalist in his 2006 book, “The Revenge of Gaia.” The only hope left in his view was to retreat to northern latitudes, let 90% of humanity perish, and cross one’s fingers.
Now Lovelock says, “I was a little too certain in that book. You just can’t tell what’s going to happen,” and “It’s just as silly to be a denier as it is to be a believer. You can’t be certain.”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/30/james-lovelock-environmentalism-religion
The back and forth between alarmists and skeptics is just that; a back and forth between alarmists and skeptics. It involves a relatively small number of people and has no impact on the outcome of the climate discussion. That discussion is currently controlled by the wealthy and influential in the bureaucracy, media, and academia. And the control will not change unless science can overwhelmingly prove them wrong; they are too dogmatic. They live in a bubble where everybody thinks the same and where their beliefs equal the truth.
In other words three out of five climate change response strategies are basically wait and see. I’m going with the majority for a change. Wait and see.
AndrewZ,
I like your Concern Scale.
Put me down for CL 1.
Granted, I’m an odd duck — a Republican who is a Greenie, a person of Faith, and believes AGW is occurring (without a clue though on the amount and timing).
Called “Green RINOs” (Republican in name only) folks like me are attacked from both the political right and left. We talk about the need to apply Conservative principles of “bottom-up” rather than Liberal “top-down” approaches. We talk about needing to use international free trade in achieving AGW objectives. We talk about the need to focus on people (poverty).
Here’s and example of one of my posts: Where Obama is Wrong on Coal — http://www.greenenergy.blogspot.com/2013/11/where-obama-is-wrong-on-coal.html
Six Things Michael Mann Wants You to Know About the Science of Global Warming
http://billmoyers.com/2014/06/12/six-things-michael-mann-wants-you-to-know-about-the-science-of-global-warming/
One thing you need to know about Michael Mann and Bill Moyers. They are congenital FIBBERS.
Yeah, that Moyers piece on Mann was a load of crap!
David Brancaccio as co-host of NOW used to force Bill Moyers into reasonable objectivity. Nevertheless, the show came under attack from Republicans for its Katrina coverage. CPB pulled funding, prompting Moyers to leave the show. NOW was then reduced to 1/2 hour, then canceled.
Meanwhile, Bill Moyers was brought back in full bias mode.
Only one thing you need to know about Michael Mann and Bill Moyers. Both are serial misinformers.
You mean Michael Mann isn’t a war hero?
From the first sentence of that link: “There is nothing controversial about the work of climatologist Michael Mann,” – that’s as far as I got. I don’t mind reading other peoples views even when they conflict with my own, but such denial of reality is gobsmackingly ignorant and/or so politically biased as to be worthless.
Dr. Curry, what population are trying to reach. Of what do you wish to persuade them?
“Denier” Warmist” “Lukewarmist”
The Weekly Standard is just another factory in an industrial town. The product is political division. That’s where the money is. I was a worker in that industry. (liberal side)
Name calling is essential to raise money.
I follow Climate Etc, because I’m really hungry for basic facts. I believe in science.
The scary thing for me is not sea level rise. it’s the politicization of science. The CAGW proponents behave very much like “cultist” in my opinion.
If you are interested in persuading ordinary folk like me, (of what I’m not sure) – good ‘ol science facts are what I’m interested in (if such things exist).
John, the point is that there are very few scientific ‘facts’ n all this. The heart of the disagreement is this:
http://judithcurry.com/2014/05/26/the-heart-of-the-climate-dynamics-debate/
At some level, all we can do is wait and see how the climate changes, and then see which (if any) of theses hypotheses holds up
Dr. Curry,
Do you think that the recent report from the University of Texas Austin importantly advances our knowledge? It concludes that glacial melting in Antartica is caused by geothermal heating, not by global warming.
Re the geothermal melting of Antarctica – geothermal heating of the ocean and ice sheets is at the knowledge frontier. It has been ignored by the climate establishment and the IPCC; however, there are now too many papers out there that make me think that this is significant, or at least needs much more investigation. The main point is this: if large regions of Antarctic and the Southern Ocean reflect cooling, and one small region reflects rapid warming, then the warming occurring in this relatively small region might not be caused by global radiative forcing such as CO2.
The paper on geothermal effects on the West Antarctic ice sheet should remind everyone of what the consensus might have said if a skeptic had suggested the possibility 10 years ago. Absurd! What do skeptics know. Any skeptic who had the temerity to suggest that causes other than global warming might be in play would have been ridiculed.
Hmmm … after Cowton and Way went out of their way to find a way to divine warming from “climate change,” this could be a real hoot if it’s due to geothermal heating.
OMG! The real political divider is Obama and his ilk.
Hi John-
There are actually many basic facts underpinning this whole debate. I wouldn’t recommend getting them from any one blog in particular, but if you must, I’d search out comments from Andy Lacis here to get a handle on the elementary physics that drives this whole discussion. One can spend many years in grad school and read many textbooks on thermodynamics, radiative transfer, atmospheric dynamics, etc in order to build the foundation for an education in climate.
Unfortunately, most of the debates that come up on blogs stem from disagreement on the facts rather than in the interesting details. No one here is arguing whether the ITCZ might shift by 2 or 4 degres latitude in response to Antarctic ozone hole forcing, and what this might mean for precipitation in Argentina, but you’ll find a lot of people who think the greenhouse effect violates thermodynamics and that Venus is being heated through a “lapse rate” rather than through radiative transfer. The widespread belief in those, and related views, are simply not compatible with high-quality discourse.
Most scientific fields, including climate, have had sufficient time to mature such that there are many well understood realities that give immense explanatory and predictive power. The strong supporting scaffold that underlies such disciplines then features a lot of fine details that must be hung along the way. For example, it is well-acknowledged that plate tectonics and evolution are realities, but predicting where a particular island chain migrates to in 5 million years, or the details of how a species will diverge into two or three given some environmental perturbation, is more challenging
The job of a good scientist embarking on the communication journey is then to:
1) Acknowledge what we do know.
2) Acknowledge what we don’t know.
3) Put (2) in an appropriate context given items in (1).
Sadly, much of (1) and (3) are completely missing on this blog, and items (2) are often just made-up out of thin air. Made-up uncertainties while ignoring the real interesting questions in climate science does a disservice to everyone involved. This leaves a fundamental hole toward improved intellectual discourse.
Fortunately, we now know enough about climate to discuss the physical nature behind the terrestrial greenhouse effect. We know that most aerosols cool the planet and CO2 warms it, and of higher magnitude than methane or N2O. All of these are useful statements. We know enough to attribute the late 20th century warming to mostly anthropogenic causes. Judith may disagree with this, but has not really provided a compelling argument to the attribution community to disregard their assessments. This leaves for little more than hand-waving about “natural variability” without constraints imposed by OHC measurements, spatio-temporal patterns of warming, etc. Likewise, we know from paleoclimate and observations that climate sensitivity cannot reasonably be very low or very high. This allows us to rule out the end-member scenarios argued by people like Lindzen, or on the other extreme, the groupies at AMEG who think we’re in store for a runaway greenhouse any day now.
Much of this sensitivity stems from the water vapor feedback discussed in this article, which actually can be separated from the cloud feedback in a useful way, since clouds only form in saturated regions at the extreme tail in a pdf of humidity, really decoupled from the time-mean humidity (that is governed by the large-scale dynamics and temperature without the need to appeal to irresolvable microphysics). There are many papers on this.
Of course, attribution and sensitivity are just two (albeit important) aspects of the problem. Much of what we talk about scales with those two metrics though, so I highlight them.
“No one here is arguing whether the ITCZ might shift by 2 or 4 degres latitude in response to Antarctic ozone hole forcing, and what this might mean for precipitation in Argentina”,
No one here is arguing whether 2 or 4 more angels can dance on the head of a pin in response to a diet of bread and water. The people in Argentina and very religious so the angel argument would be of more concern to them than yours.
“you’ll find a lot of people who think the greenhouse effect violates thermodynamics and that Venus is being heated through a “lapse rate” rather than through radiative transfer”
Not any more. Too many complaints. Principally from me.
Venus is being heated internally, by the way. 90 bar of CO2 works as good as rocks for insulating the molten interior of the planet. If you dig down 20 kilometers into the earth it’s as hot as the surface of Venus. Insulation is like that. Perhaps you don’t understand how insulation works.
What we know is infrared emission of carbon dioxide, that is the basic physics underlying all this. And we understand the basics of weather-scale atmospheric circulations, as per the successes of weather prediction models. Pretty much everything else is uncertain, with a smattering of unknowns.
The most important uncertainty is climate sensitivity – whether it is 1C or 4.5C makes a great difference in terms of policy response. Underlying this uncertainty in sensitivity is primarily the fast thermodynamic feedbacks (water vapor, clouds, lapse rate.) I’ve written more than a dozen papers on these thermodynamic feedbacks; they are not separable in the way that Colose likes to think they are. The other major uncertainty is the importance to climate of coupled modes of atmosphere-ocean internal variability, particularly that which occurs on multidecadal time scales.
“Pretty much everything else is uncertain, with a smattering of unknowns.”
Don’t forget an uncertain number of unknown unknowns.
But it isn’t 1C.
The fact that the water vapor distribution and sea ice loss emerges in a much more robust manner, across any credible model, than do clouds, suggests that the physical controls on these feedbacks can be made intelligible without a full understanding of those climate aspects that are uncertain. If the water vapor feedback relied critically on one sort of convective parametrization than the argument would be more compelling, but it doesn’t. This doesn’t mean feedbacks are completely independent, of course.
The arguments for a low climate sensitivity require a strongly negative cloud feedback. A credible mechanism for such has not been observed or identified, not can it be reconciled with Earth’s history. Any appeals to uncertainty, no matter fancy-sounding, cannot circumvent this basic observation.
If you look at the estimates of climate sensitivity shown by the IPCC, there are many estimates that go down to 1C. I am placing no large bets on the sign of cloud feedback (but I suspect it is negative). So I personally do not rule out 1C, and I think values much over 2.5C are unlikely. But my main point regarding sensitivity is that is a flawed concept, and we cannot infer from climate sensitivity (or existing climate models) abrupt climate change of the dragon king nature. Go the Climate Etc. category on sensitivity and feedback for all of the posts that I have written on this topic.
Is cloud feedback a constant or variable, Chris?
Baron Fourier, the first formulator of the greenhouse hypothesis, in 1824 wrote:
You boys haven’t actually improved on that. In fact you are totally distracted by the atmospheric greenhouse effect and completely ignore Fourier’s assertion that the ocean is a greenhouse fluid. I’ve been pointing out the same thing as Fourier for years now. Maybe you ought to revisit some basic properties of materials, Chris.
Chris Colose writes “But it isn’t 1C.”
The value of climate sensitivity has never been measured. The no feedback climate sensitivity value cannot be measured. So the value of no feedback climate sensitivity is meaningless, and all other values of climate sensitivity, however defined, are nothing more than guesses.
No-one, and I mean no-one, has any idea what the value of climate sensitivity is.
> I am placing no large bets on the sign of cloud feedback (but I suspect it is negative).
How about small ones?
One can reflect on the intellectual arrogance of CC and this
http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w318/DocMartyn/1997and2009_zpsc79b5968.png
then one can study non-equilibrium thermodynamics and steady state kinetics analysis.
Chris Colose: I wouldn’t recommend getting them from any one blog in particular, but if you must, I’d search out comments from Andy Lacis here to get a handle on the elementary physics that drives this whole discussion.
I have countered or queried a few of the propositions written here by Andy Lacis, and he has never responded to me. Here is a question for you: if the DWLWIR increases by 3.7W/m^2 over the 85% or so of the Earth surface that is non-dry, how much of the increased energy transfer will go into warming the surface, and how much will go into evaporating water than then ascends to the upper troposphere and warms it? As far as I can tell, no one knows.
Much of this sensitivity stems from the water vapor feedback discussed in this article, which actually can be separated from the cloud feedback in a useful way, since clouds only form in saturated regions at the extreme tail in a pdf of humidity, really decoupled from the time-mean humidity (that is governed by the large-scale dynamics and temperature without the need to appeal to irresolvable microphysics). There are many papers on this.
That may be so, but thunderclouds form in vast regions of the Earth in the summer time as the Earth warms faster than it can equilibrate to, and wet and dry thermals carry heat from the surface to the upper atmosphere in amounts poorly summarized in the Graeme Stephens et al and Trenberth and Fasullo flow diagrams. How the process that generates those thunder clouds and the subsequent rainfall will be affected in the future by future CO2 is totally unknown.
Isaac Held posted some excellent simulations of cloud formation over water in the tropics a while ago — excellent work. But the simulations were of a steady-state case, and not something like the often observed and wide spread thundercloud formation that I described in the last paragraph. The equilibrium assumptions are necessarily inaccurate to some degree because the Earth is never in equilibrium; about cloud formation, the errors are of unknown size and sign.
If you link to some good recent review papers, I’ll download them and read them.
And Chris knows sensitivity isn’t 1C because:
a) a model told him otherwise
b) Andy Lacis told him it wasn’t
or
c) he’s smarter than everyone else
Matthew Marler, evaporation simply doesn’t help restore the top-of-atmosphere radiative balance, so its effect is neutral in regards to mitigating the surface temperature change that has to happen to balance the budget. It is like paying your debt with the wrong currency. Only physical heating and reflection matter as far as radiation is concerned.
Evaporation may indeed negate any radiative imbalance caused by non-condensing greenhouse gases. It works by raising the average height of cloud tops higher, into thinner air, where there are fewer non-condensing greenhouse gases above them to impede radiative cooling to space. Due to lapse rate feedback the cloud tops are the same temperature they were before only now there is less resistance above them.
Colose wrote: “clouds only form in saturated regions at the extreme tail in a pdf of humidity”
Yeah. Cloud cover is “only” about 70% of the planet at any one time. Maybe you meant the extreme tale not the extreme tail?
Chris Colose: A credible mechanism for such has not been observed or identified, not can it be reconciled with Earth’s history. Any appeals to uncertainty, no matter fancy-sounding, cannot circumvent this basic observation.
I hope that my appeal to ignorance did not sound too fancy. “Credible” mechanisms for increased cloud cover have certainly been identified. What hasn’t been studied, as far as I can tell, is whether the increased cloud cover so proposed will in fact occur.
It takes 550 times as much energy to vaporize a gram of water as to raise the temperature of a gram of water by 1K. If in fact the increase DWLWIR vaporizes 1 gram of water for every 550 grams of water that it warms, then only half of the increased energy flow can go into increased temp. Since every square meter of the surface passes into shade each day (except small areas at the poles), there is a good chance that the increased DWLWIR can not cause much temperature increase, and there is a good chance that the increased cloud cover will block the hypothesized increase.
The calculations in Raymond T. Pierrehumbert’s book “Principles of Planetary Climate” assume equilibrium: they assume that the Earth surface is nearly uniform, that the surface is nearly uniformly illuminated, that the Earth surface has a nearly uniform temperature; and that the increased radiation lasts long enough to establish a new equilibrium distribution of the water vapor in the atmosphere. With a varied surface, 70% covered by water, with fluctuating radiant input and with non-uniform temperatures, the inaccuracy of the model must be accepted, and Pierrehumbert addresses the issue in several passages of his text. The error in the model is sufficiently large that changes in cloud cover that result from changes in CO2 can not be calculated, and they could be such as to prevent the calculated global warming from occurring.
This isn’t an especially abstruse argument: the shortcoming of the consensus theory is obvious, and a mechanism is visible to everyone who walks outdoors regularly in the summer. What’s missing are the necessary details, quantified.
Nearer 2 C is the best estimate of effective climate sensitivity based on the last 60 years. That is plus or minus depending on whether natural variation net warmed or net cooled in this period, but we don’t know the sign of natural variation since 1950, so that would put 2 C as the central estimate for the transient response. Bengtsson and Schwartz put 2 C as a lower estimate because they suspect aerosols have increased, and you get 2 C by assuming aerosols didn’t change.
Jim D: evaporation simply doesn’t help restore the top-of-atmosphere radiative balance, so its effect is neutral in regards to mitigating the surface temperature change that has to happen to balance the budget.
The condensation of the vapor into water and ice transfers heat to the upper troposphere, which then radiates at a slightly higher temperature, in that region, than it otherwise would have. On net, the upper troposphere radiates more energy than it receives via radiation, the water cycle thus contributing to maintain its temperature within the observed range.
The increase in CO2 can increase the rate at which the upper troposphere radiates heat in both the upward (net cooling) and downward (net heating of the lower regions); and it can increase the rate of non-radiative transfer of heat from the surface to the upper troposphere.
What the increase in CO2 will in fact do, I maintain, is not known.
Matthew Marler, the water vapor effect you describe is like the negative lapse rate feedback, that includes the hot spot, and that is taken into account already.
Taken into account… yeah clouds are taken into account too. That doesn’t mean the accounting is correct.
Jim D: the water vapor effect you describe is like the negative lapse rate feedback, that includes the hot spot, and that is taken into account already.
You are just not into the dynamics of the latent heat transfers related to the phase changes, are you? You like the equilibrium humidity profiles.
MattStat, I believe you are asking entirely too difficult questions for the current panel of experts to field. I do offer K. Kimoto’s “On the Confusion of Planck Feedback Parameters for a simple unappreciated illustration of the “average” surface response to the “average” estimated forcing based on the “average” pre-Stephen’s et al Earth Energy Budget estimates.
http://edberry.com/SiteDocs/PDF/Climate/KimotoPaperReprint.pdf
Matthew Marler, the mean profile of the dynamics is the lapse rate. The lapse rate is governed by the surface temperature and water vapor over oceans. Water vapor there itself depends on the temperature and cannot be taken as an independent variable, which looks like the mistake you are making.
Chris, you aren’t really going to pull out that weak internal variability warming the surface requires a loss of ocean heat content argument, are you? Now which patterns of warming do you believe counters the idea that some, most, or all of the 20th century warming couldn’t have been from natural variability?
Jim D: the mean profile of the dynamics is the lapse rate. The lapse rate is governed by the surface temperature and water vapor over oceans. Water vapor there itself depends on the temperature and cannot be taken as an independent variable, which looks like the mistake you are making.
You are missing the thunderclouds for the vapor. The lapse rate is the mean profile of the statics.
Matthew Marler, the lapse rate already accounts for everything you mentioned including latent heating. This is why the tropics has a reduced lapse rate (more latent heating at higher levels).
Doc I think intellectual is the wrong word to apply to some people’s arrogance
CC that warming was so last century wasn’t it. In case you haven’t noticed we are in a completely different century and that other one is now so long ago I forgot your argument.
David Springer: It works by raising the average height of cloud tops higher, into thinner air, where there are fewer non-condensing greenhouse gases above them to impede radiative cooling to space.
That is a part of the story. The part I have been addressing is the increase in the rate of non-radiative transport of heat from surface to upper troposphere; and the potential for the increase in cloud cover to decrease the insolation of the surface. There are at least 3 different changes in the mechanism that are poorly quantified; they are not large changes and the errors in quantification may not seem large, but they are large compared to the proposed increase in surface temperature.
I have been addressing the summer thunderclouds that can be witnessed almost everywhere on Earth that the surface is not dry. How accurate are the lapse rate calculations in the thunderclouds as they form? In the moist air columns beneath the visible thunderclouds? How accurate are the calculations in the subsequent rainfalls? There is no reasonable basis for thinking that calculations based on equilibrium are accurate with respect to such systems that are clearly not in equilibrium.
Don’t forget that the amount of rainfall is driven by two things: the amount of hail/rain that actually reaches a size to fall, and the amount that evaporates on the way down. Small systematic changes to the latter could result in changes to heat transport (upwards) and moisture.
The same is true of entrainment of surrounding dry air with cloudy, resulting in evaporation of cloud droplets before they can get trapped by hail. Systematic changes here could also lead to significant changes to heat transport and total moisture.
And changes in moisture could (probably would) lead to changes in albedo.
John don’t get too concerned about politicization of climate science. There was nowhere else for it to go. Computer science, rocket science, materials science and so forth are in no danger. People understand the difference between soft sciences that produce opinions and hard sciences that produce practical knowledge.
John, I feel your pain. The field is very highly politicized on both sides. This is why climate etc is valuable because Judith has no obvious horse in this race for a number of reasons. You know of course that Big Green has a very large horse in the race and it tends to overlap the climate science community. Of course fossil fuel industries have a horse in the race too, but they are willing to go green or renewable if it is profitable.
Actually Judy has the same horse in this race that Bill Dembski and Michael Shermer have in the evolution debate. They both make money off the uncertainty. If there were no uncertainty there would be no debate. Judy and her husband have a consulting company advising various clients on how to deal with the uncertainty of climate change. If everything was certain she’d be out of business.
Actually 90% of our income is from uncertainty in the 1-15 day weather forecasts.
Does being in the spotlight like congressional testimony on climate change help your business?
Nope. We have a few high end clients, and provide content to other weather service provider companies. (we are mainly an R&D company)
It’s positive that the topic was picked up since it gets to the essential schism, that is political, revolving around AGW agendas.
Not so positive that Dr. Curry commentary is mostly limited to the subject of “name-calling”. There is so much more that could be discussed once a mind is opened regarding AGW agenda setting and the nature of why groups formed around the topic from inception. Since it’s existential to the survival of AGW advocacy every dialogue distraction and straw-man will be implemented to define or redefine what is essential about AGW. “Name-calling” is trivial to the context of the politics relative to AGW social and political engineering.
Over decades we have developed entire social categories, certainly of AGW advocates but also many in the skeptical frame who insist the AGW debate was/is driven by actual “science” in varying forms of legitimacy. At the most basic root levels this is completely false. AGW was always a method to rationalize expanded government authority first over carbon production but also the entire society along green memes.
I like Hayward’s articles and will read more.
I understand why our progressive alarmist cultist associates are trying to nit pick him apart.
But we do know. One ton of ordinary granite, the default stuff continents are made of, has the same useful energy content as 50 tons of coal (+ 130 tons of atmospheric Oxygen), with much better ores available for millennia and plenty for the rest of Earth’s lifetime.
Not all nuclear technologies are created equal. Our current industrial base is hopelessly outdated, plutonium factories in pressurized vessels which need active cooling, with energy as a byproduct at less than 1% fuel efficiency are Cold War relics, an absolute no-go. We could use a highly efficient fuel cycle instead at low pressure with passive safety, no chance for weaponization &. no long half life isotopes left in waste.
The technology to tap this source safely &. cheaply was all but developed decades ago, then shelved for political reasons. Just a bit more R&D effort is needed for commercialization, with no insurmountable engineering issues ahead, RTFM mostly. Let’s go for it.
Reblogged this on I Didn't Ask To Be a Blog and commented:
“The modern world, especially those still billions of people striving to escape energy poverty, demands abundant amounts of cheap energy, and no amount of wishful thinking (or government subsidies or mandates) will change this.”
Dr Curry,
As I read the first excerpts you posted from Hayward I kept thinking he could not be more on target. And so far from the comments made here, no one critical of him has made a single solid counter argument – just calling him names.
BTW – I liked how you presented his arguments and then hit us with the headline / opening paragraph. Leave it to Josh to focus on climate cultist and ignore everything else.
Given that he was name calling from the start — the quote JC provided — why would there be any response to other things? And, given JC’s approval of the name calling, by Hayward and her commenters, why should it be ignored?
Except that the way Dr Curry presented his comments, he didn’t.
We didn’t know about that until the end.
So you have the choice of offering an alternative opinion, ignoring him because you don’t like what he’s saying, or be an apologist for those who can’t offer and alternative and just name call.
timg — The first quote JC gave is
Starting out by calling the other side anti-democratic and anti-liberty strikes me as name-calling. That this is so much water to the local fish says what kind of place this is.
“Starting out by calling the other side anti-democratic and anti-liberty strikes me as name-calling.”
What part of “…must be compatible with individual liberty and democratic institutions, and cannot rely on coercive or unaccountable bureaucratic administration.” is calling people “anti-democratic”?
plutarchnet bicycles by, polluting the discourse with fish pee.
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Nice bit of ignoring the whole quote Kneel!
“Nice bit of ignoring the whole quote Kneel!”
Ah ha! So the call of “anti-democratic” was in the part you quoted that I left out? This bit then:
“Liberals and environmentalists would do well to take on board the categorical imperative of climate policy from a conservative point of view, namely, that whatever policies are developed, they…”
Still don’t see it myself – please be kind enough to point out to me where the “anti-democratic name-calling” is. Thanks in advance.
“So if you think that there is justification for calling people ‘deniers’…”
It’s a projection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
Also interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False-consensus_effect
The “pause” deniers are out in force, howling, frothing, waving their little arms and indignantly stamping their little feet tonight, I see.
Something’s rattled their cages.
Smells like desperation to me…
Given the instability in Iraq there is going to be a rise in the price of oil, so US gas prices will rise, and all the stuff moved by trucks will undergo a price rise.
In the run up to November the Democrats will be running on the EPA saving America from global warming and the Republicans will be crying “Drill, baby, Drill”. Someone may even dust of the ‘Convert 18-wheelers to natural gas’, to cut oil usage and make the USA energy independent.
Should be an interesting election.
Rick Perry added to his resume of four more years of balanced budgets and economic growth in a state that ought to be a model for the nation.
The Department of State Health Services’ Texas Vaccines for Children Program, under Perry’s direction began offering the vaccination in February 2007. This was extended to boys in 2010, and the vaccine protects people from HPV cervical cancer in women and HPV penile cancer in men.
Perry caved in on this public health measure when challenged that it was an endorsement of promiscuity, a stupid, stupid decision that demonstrates his complete lack of ethics. As it is my daughter got her three shots and my son only one via the state program.
How can you trust someone who sways in the wind so easily? This is Texas, he could easily have said “I understand your objections, but I think the health consequences outweigh your moral qualms” and he would have been respected as a man of conviction, even by those who did not buy the argument.
For your children’s sake I suggest you check out how many strains of HPV those v-accines protect against and how many strains exist. It’s a shield made of tissue paper and if your children aren’t aware of how thin the veil of protection they may choose to protect themselves by less reliance on vaccines and more reliance on traditional moral restraint against s-exual p-romiscuity.
Good grief. Too many words in the blacklist.
David, why do you think less than perfect protection is worthless? You think police officers and troops should not wear body armor because it provides no protection against head shot or high velocity rounds?
You didn’t check out how many strains it protects against, doc, otherwise you wouldn’t have asked such an ignorant question. There are 40 types of HPV. Guardasil works against four of them.
I know girls who got the vaccine and later got HPV and now may not be able to conceive. Should I put part of the blame on you because your knee jerk reaction against objections made by people who might believe in God makes you too lazy to investigate their claims?
With Obama’s feckless, Jimmy Carter like, leadership and the VA debacle, the Bergdahl exchange and now Iraq; it is the Republicans to lose. His signature piece in Obamacare is still a liability.
Immagrant children pouring over the border and the humanitarian crisis it has created all due to Obama policies wont help much either.
The Sadim Touch, everything handled turns from gold.
==============
While it is interesting that after two decades of skepticism they still only have a handful of poorly funded organizations with few personnel, these organizations do offer the Republicans and fossil-fuel supporting politicians in other countries the excuses they need, and that is their purpose, not to generate objective scientific studies that could come down on either side, especially after the Muller experience. They rubber-stamp ideas that the conservatives want to refer to in support of not doing anything, and it doesn’t matter how few of these people there are because it doesn’t take many people to produce these biased reports. At some point people will notice how small the circle is behind all these reports with the same names appearing again and again.
Jim D: At some point people will notice how small the circle is behind all these reports with the same names appearing again and again.
I wouldn’t rule that out. But I think a lot more people than before have noticed how little science there is behind the alarmism, and that the IPCC reports are themselves biased. You mentioned funding; people have noticed as well that a lot of alarmism comes from people who are dependent on government for funding — it is a source of suspicion, an “appearance” of “bad faith”.
The AGW ideas predated any outside interest in the subject or any incentive to pull in one direction or another. They are founded in basic science, so it doesn’t have the appearance of bias to those who look at its roots which are deep.
Jim D runs into a truth he can’t handle, do he dances while trying to ignore it.
Jim, just about every science fiction novel I’ve read has some basis in science. They are still works of fiction.
Jim D: They are founded in basic science, so it doesn’t have the appearance of bias to those who look at its roots which are deep.
Taxpayers look as well at the funding that comes from the taxes. Had the scientists kept at basic science instead of advocating large sums of money for themselves and the pre-existant green causes there would not be an appearance of bias.
Did you totally miss the point about the advocacy of more money for themselves, or did you merely wish to direct attention somewhere else?
Almost all of science is funded by the government.
Why I think “climate cultist” is a fair and accurate term.
In my world people who in believe in CAGW do so with religious fervor. They do so not because of their objective reading of the evidence but
because of their faith in the leaders who tell them it’s true and their social objection to people they deem “conservative.”
Like an atheist in medieval Europe it’s best to keep my skepticism about CAGW to myself. (Thanks Dr. Curry for a safe place to vent.)
Most educated western people (particularly in science) are “devout” humanist. Oddly, with laughable logical inconsistency, they remain dualist. They believe there is “man” and “nature”, (used to be “God” but never mind). A beaver damn is “natural.” Hoover damn is against “nature.” The industry of man is a blight upon nature even if the evidence were to indicate otherwise.
This is simply a quasi-religious almost puritan point of view.
Nothing exist that is not “natural.” Their is only nature.
I’m not really against limiting CO2 emissions.
I’m just irked at what I perceive as CAGW rhetorical stupidity (and dishonesty).
Oops meant “dam”
Another thing. If the conservatives want adaptation and resilience instead of mitigation (a bad omission in my view), they need to calculate the real cost of carbon to pay for it. This is like with the extra taxes paid on tobacco and alcohol, which are known to be costly to society, but instead of banning them, they try to make them pay for themselves. Fiscal conservatives want things to be paid for in a self-contained way, so they should accept this kind of pricing. The alternative is we all pay maybe with raised income tax or local taxes, a socialist-sounding solution which I doubt conservatives would support. What other free-market solution is there for adaptation and resilience, if there is no money put aside for it from somewhere? Should local communities build their own seawalls, or support their own local farmers against drought, or does a national-scale cost redistribution plan, that draws from general fossil-fuel burning, seem more fair? Similar issue on a global scale, with countries fending for themselves or supported by those that are raising the CO2 level most. Bottom line is that it is all very well to focus on adaptation and resilience but where would the costs come from, and would it be every community for themselves in a libertarian way? What would be fair?
Jim D,
Honesty – try it some time. Your tobacco and alcohol analogy might be good, if it was true. Taxes on both have little to do with capturing their cost to society. If that were true, why then are they not 100% dedicated to covering the ills attributed to their use? If you are willing to believe a politician when he tells you that, it explains why you are willing to believe people who tell you burning carbon fuels are dooming us.
I haven’t seen the numbers as to whether they pay for their own effects on health, but I support the idea of trying to, whether it is 100% or less. This is both a deterrent and a partial solution.
They do tend to die earlier … that’s some savings for tax payers.
jim2, perhaps that’s what they mean by “adaptation” without mitigation. People will just die off in regions where the climate gets too bad to support them, I suppose. Problem solved.
Jim D,
How much does to prevention or to defraying the cost of the negative health effects varies by state. I haven’t checked every state, just those I’ve lived in (and not recently), but I do not believe any state allocates 100% of tobacco and alcohol taxes in this matter. Some allocate little to none. In many cases the tax goes into the general tax fund. They are designed as a revenue stream, nothing else.
Jim, the word you are looking for is hypothecation and the present level of gas tax can pay for mitigation many times over.
But what about the more expensive problems of adaptation and resilience? Can gas tax pay for that too?
Clang, adaptation way more cost effective than mitigation.
==========
@Jim D
So energy is now a luxury to you? Those taxes are not paid to mitigate any perceived damage to society. They are called “Luxury” taxes (see the game Monopoly). They have nothing to do with the extra costs to society, but are meant to garner additional revenue for the State. Indeed, none of the taxes go for any mitigation of the perceived ills of either (Tobacco is used for S-Chip – so you are saying kids are smoking now?)
A new idea from alarmists. Energy is a luxury. At least you were honest enough to state it. Most tried to hide their contempt for the poor behind flowery words.
” the fact that nearly all of the models failed to predict a “pause” of this length, and if the “pause” continues for another 5 to 10 years, all of the models will be falsified”
Yes, the models supported by the IPCC are supposed to contain all our climate science are an abject failure.
The last thing the IPCC wants is a debate on their models, we are not capable of belonging to their priesthood of models. Unfortunately the IPCC came in rather late (in the 1960’s) to climate studies and ignored the 1940 singularity. Had they studied that singularity they would have realized that climate has an om/off character and is not the continuous dynamic activity that they would like it to be.
But in science it is easier to criticize the work of others than to come up with a better solution , so I have tried to do so. See my theoretical model underlined above.
This is a dangerous time for the US. It drifts from one disaster to another – economic, military, political. It has no credible foreign policy – which is polite way of saying it is a global laughing stock. It’s enemies – Russia, China and the Vatican– the latter symbolic of it’s loss of moral ascendance – go from strength to strength and are forging the most powerful military and economic bloc in human history.
The US excels in navel gazing and political deadlock. It is undermined from the inside by the new barbarians. It has a few advantages. Natural gas, a technological capacity, venture capital and an entrepreneurial culture. What is needed is not another mess of rehashed potage – thin gruel indeed – from such as Hayward. What’s needed is a conceptual breakthrough and a new confidence in taking the policy and science high ground.
Climate science is the key vulnerability – why else would they like it so much. The science of abrupt climate change is the key to undermining this. Climate shifts on decadal scales as the system is pushed past a threshold at which stage the components start to interact chaotically in multiple and changing negative and positive feedbacks – as tremendous energies cascade through powerful subsystems. So we may get some warming – until the system spontaneously – that is responding only to internal changes – shifts to a new and unpredictable configuration.
The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) defined abrupt climate change as a new climate paradigm as long ago as 2002. A paradigm in the scientific sense is a theory that explains observations. A new science paradigm is one that better explains data – in this case climate data – than the old theory. The new theory says that climate change occurs as discrete jumps in the system. Climate is more like a kaleidoscope – shake it up and a new pattern emerges – than a control knob with a linear gain.
This idea is the most modern – and powerful – in climate science and has profound implications for the (discontinuous) evolution of climate this century and beyond. This is an idea that was pioneered by a veritable who’s who of climate science – and undoubtedly represents the future for the discipline. It recognizes what we have always known – climate changes naturally and substantially – and defines a mechanism by which the system – when pushed past a point – starts to evolve abruptly by internal processes alone. In the true sense of science – it better explains climate data and suggests at least limited predictability. It seems more likely than not that the current surface temperature hiatus will continue for decades hence – but this comes with an inherent instability in the system.
The latter suggests that it may be at least justifiable to reduce pressures on the global climate system – if with unknowable outcomes – and I suggest that this is best achieved globally through integration of the Copenhagen Consensus analysis of the UN proposed 2015 extension of the Millennium Development Goals. There is currently an opportunity to combine aid, environmental and climate factors into a coherent policy position based on rational economic analyses. Pressures on the system include CO2 from fossil fuels, black carbon, tropospheric ozone, land clearing, loss of soil carbon, nitrous oxide, methane, sulfide – which are compounded by population and development issues – and where CO2 is the smaller part of the problem. The other factors may be more profitably and successfully addressed in the short term. There is little – after all – to object to in focusing money that is already being spent into the areas with the greatest social and environmental returns or into facilitating free trade.
‘In a world of limited resources, we can’t do everything, so which goals should we prioritize? The Copenhagen Consensus Center provides information on which targets will do the most social good (measured in dollars, but also incorporating e.g. welfare, health and environmental protection), relative to their costs. Some of the world’s top economists have assessed the targets from the 11th session Open Working Group document into one of five categories, based on economic evidence: Phenomenal, Good, Fair, Poor and not enough knowledge.’ http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/final_un_ccc_2015.pdf
In a relatively short order the world will require a much greater abundance of low cost energy. I would add another line item in the energy section of the Copenhagen Consensus analysis – to propose a $1B triennial global energy prize to support innovation in energy technology, energy efficiency and energy systems.
There are cultural enemies – and pragmatically they will never be reconciled. They can only be defeated. They have no answer to any of this – only to ignore it and – like the hiatus – hope it goes away.
Robert I Ellison | June 13, 2014 at 7:59 pm | Reply
“This is a dangerous time for the US. It drifts from one disaster to another – economic, military, political. It has no credible foreign policy – which is polite way of saying it is a global laughing stock.”
Yeah. The rest of the western world is doing so much better in all these things. Oh wait… they’re doing even worse. LOL
In any case you must have us confused with people who give a phuck what the rest of the world thinks.
‘It’s enemies – Russia, China and the Vatican- the latter symbolic of it’s loss of moral ascendance – go from strength to strength and are forging the most powerful military and economic bloc in human history.’
Well it’s lucky you don’t care because the rest of the world think you’re comical phuckwits stumbling about with a deadlocked polity, excessive debt, zilch foreign policy credibility and an inflated sense of entitlement.
If springer is the best answer you’ve got – you’re in deep merde. .
The conservative view is that millions of individual decisions organize things better than any command decisions.
Ignoring predictors of global warming gloom, for example.
It’s a feature.
rhhardin, no, it’s the philosophical concept of Emergence and the Constructal Law.
Clouds are a continuation of water vapour by other phases.
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The lovely irony about this is that clouds as water vapour feedback is simple enough for the public to understand, and too simple for the rigourous climate scientists to understand. What’s especially sharp about this one is that clouds are probably where the biggest miscalculation by the climatologists was made. So, they are sneering past the graveyard with this objection.
Simple, eh? Yeah, now fix it.
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@curryja | June 13, 2014 at 6:18 pm |
Why Not?
I’m not being a smart@ss, or actually asking for my own knowledge, I’m asking a rhetorical question: why is there no explanation of how the realities of non-linear dynamics impact climate science available, easily linked to, that would at explain to the Chris Colose’s of this world why their fundamental assumptions of “separability” aren’t appropriate to the study of climate?
In a general way, Tomas has tried several times, I’ve tried (although I lack credentials), others have tried, but why is it that the discussion isn’t presented in a way that could demonstrate to anybody willing to practice “sympathy” how their fundamental assumptions of linearity conflict with the recent studies of Chaos Theory?
If there is close to a ’98 like spike in surface temps due to the supposed coming of El Nino then it’s global warming to the fore once again.
Judith,
Thus is really an interesting post. Hayward is clearly no scientist, so his gaff of “water vapor/clouds” seems forgivable… but should of course be corrected. Where I think Hayward fundamentally errs, where he should be an ‘expert’ is in this statement:
“To suggest human beings can’t cope with slow moving climate change is astonishingly pessimistic, and the relentless soundings of the apocalypse have done more to undermine public interest in the issue than the efforts of the skeptical community.”
These words suggests a rather naive and uninformed view of those who are most concerned about GHG driven warming. Those people are most certainly NOT mainly concerned about the human capability to adapt to a warming climate; they object to humanity warming Earth’s climate because of the effects that will have on ecosystems and wildlife, not because they think humanity can’t adapt. It is a fundamental morals/values issue: they do not think humans have the right to substantially change Earth’s climate (intentionally or otherwise), in ways which might harm other species. And, not coincidentally, they think there are already far too many humans in existence, and that the only moral path is for humanity to take steps to drastically reduce human population and so drastically reduce its influence on Earth and its ecosystems.
It is only when viewed in this light that the profundity of the divide between ‘global warming cultists’ and everyone else can be fully appreciated.
Climate changes so slowly that plants and animals can adapt to some extent.
Saying we have discovered volcanoes doesn’t mean they will cause the apocalypse … but, OTOH, they probably have a better shot at it than “climate change.”
Yes, but your distinction only takes the error further, to the assumption that the biome can’t adapt to however humanity changes the environment.
==============
Interesting use of “they” there, Steve.
==> “they think there are already far too many humans in existence, and that the only moral path is for humanity to take steps to drastically reduce human population and so drastically reduce its influence on Earth and its ecosystems. ”
Maybe a touch of over-generalization, you think?
Joshua,
I am unsure if you are joking or not, since this seems to me pretty obvious. In the case that you are serious; No, I believe I make no over-generalization: there is an enormous hatred for humanity prevalent in the eco/green movement. ‘They’ really do think there are far too many humans, and that human population should be reduced drastically, based on the moral imperative of ‘preserving nature/saving Gaia’. Like I said, I am not sure if you are joking, but I think any reasonable observer would recognize this.
Steve –
Do you know anyone who identifies as a Green?
I know a few. None of them “hate humanity.” Many of them think that population growth is a problem, both because of the impact of a dramatically increased population on the environment, and because they believe that a dramatically increase population will cause hardship for humans. They don’t think we should take “drastic steps to reduce human population,” but do think that it is important to take steps to help reduce population growth.
I think that your characterization is a cartoonish over-reach. To each his own, I guess.
Anecdotes = Scientific studies
To Joshua.
This is the proto typical Sophistry and delusion that make Joshua a legend on these threads. You will never meet a better example of “they” aside from the Columbia School of “journalism” or the NY Times editorial board. Lockstep conformity in a nutshell. He doesn’t know anyone who calls themselves “green” because he doesn’t know anyone outside of his culture who might say they are not.
Cognitive dissonance.
Joshua,
This past week I spent two days visiting a company in Oregon. The staff made it clear upon my arrival that being ‘green’ was required of all working at their facility. No disposable cups of any kind allowed at the facility, nor many available drinking fountains… so no coffee for me, and I ended up having to drink water from my hand at the sink in a men’s room. Ya, there are lots of greens around, with plenty of cartoonish over-reach.
Good point, steve. No disposable cups = hating humanity. How could I have been so foolish?
Joshua,
As it seems is your want, you take what I say and twist it into something I do not say. You asked: Do I know any greens? Answer: yes, just spent a couple of days with them. I said nothing about these particular greens hating people…. not a subject to be broached during business meetings… that was all you. But it is clear they really are more than a bit nuts.
One fellow took pity on me, and after looking carefully left, right, and behind, to make sure nobody could hear, offered to go to his car and get a disposable cup, hidden in his glove compartment, so that I could have a cup of coffee. I told him it wasn’t that important. I do not know if you can begin to appreciate just how crazy the whole green movement is… but it really is crazy.
SteveF, we used to have a sink with dishwashing liquid instead of disposable cups. I think we even had saucers in case someone fancy stopped by. I guess that just wasn’t all that green.
No it is absolutely on track.
http://judithcurry.com/2014/06/10/how-extreme-can-it-get/#comment-593843
Can we be expected to take people like Joshua seriously if he can’t acknowledge even the most obvious of realities?
I’m reminded of a Randy Newman song – Let’s drop the big one. Boom goes London, boom Pariee, there’ll be more room for you and more room for me.
Steve, how is it the folks who are so morally concerned about ecosystems and wildlife and believe there are too many humans in existence, never show the courage of their conviction?
stevefitz: The Urgent Mitigationists certainly include the radical greens who see human impact on the world as intrinsically evil, but it also includes a lot of humanistic technocrats who are primarily concerned about impacts on human life. In addition, of course, are all the special interests who see ways to profit from the accumulations of power and subsidy that mitigation will create.
“The point here is not to sneak in climate skepticism, but policy skepticism, as the future is certain to unfold in unforeseen ways, with seemingly spontaneous and disruptive changes occurring outside the view or prior command of our political class.” Hmmm, where have I heard that before? :-)
The excerpts here are perhaps the best short piece I’ve seen on the policy side of the CAGW issue. Nothing Hayward says is invalidated by his clouds comment.
A new hero!
Heh, just call it ‘water feedback’. There, problem settled, if not the science.
===========
MIchael Mann writes today The Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-e-mann/interests-ideology-and-th_b_5474549.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
The Kochs, Scaifes & others have used their billions to construct a vast “Potemkin Village” (in the words of science historian Naomi Oreskes) of denialism, by funding groups like “Americans For Prosperity”, the “Heartland Institute”, the “Competitive Enterprise Institute” and a whole cadre of other front groups, organizations, and hired guns implicated in the campaign to discredit climate science and climate scientists. I should know since, as I describe in my book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, I found myself at the center of that campaign more than a decade ago because of my scientific work establishing the unprecedented nature of recent global warming.
This network of front groups, organizations, and paid advocates is sometimes referred to as the “Climate Denial Machine” or just “CDM”…
—-
This kind of twaddle is accepted by the mainstream, but these same people are horrified by someone writing about ‘climate cultists’. Well, climate cultists are people that spout the kind of nonsense seen in that Huffington Post article.
Heh, a ‘whole cadre of other front groups, organizations, and hired guns’ AKA ‘a scattering of relentless bloggers.’
==============
==> “This kind of twaddle is accepted by the mainstream, but these same people are horrified by someone writing about ‘climate cultists’. ”
Horrified? Just a touch hyperbolic, perhaps?
Anyway, it certainly doesn’t “horrify” me, anyway. It’s par for the course in the climate wars. It is to be expected from climate combatants.
The point being made w/r/t the term “climate cultists” was the selectivity in the pearl clutching about epithets and vitriol.
Yes, not so much “horrified” as expected from the Hayward political types. It would be surprising if he said anything else, in fact. This is the type of language they have to use these days to draw attention away from science, where he is on more shaky ground.
==> “Yes, not so much “horrified” as expected from the Hayward political types. It would be surprising if he said anything else, in fact.”
Of course it’s expected, not the least, because we’ve been seeing it for years – which is why it’s so odd that Judith said that there’s something new about “climate cultist.”
The only thing that I can see that’s different, really, is Judith’s increasing enmeshment in the political foodfight. I don’t know if she is investing less energy on the scientific side, but she’s clearly stepped up the activism and the embrace of tribalism and vitriol, and clearly walked further into the hard core Jell-O flinging zone.
Hell I got bored with pretending there was some kind of moral, political, scientific of humour equivalence years ago.
The persistent sniping by those with the intellect of crazed gerbils – on the basis of morally repugnant policy, extreme and fringe politics, cartoon science and smug condescension – seems something more to laugh at than regard seriously.
My take on Judith is that she has little to lose by being fully honest because as she has said her career has little upside potential at this point. I suspect she also is genuinely concerned about the truly despicable attacks on her integrity, honesty, and scientific credentials. It happens in this field, but in normal fields, one would expect the leaders to step up and defend her or at least tell the Manns to just leave her alone.
JC SNIP
‘“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.” Moby Dick
He’s really not much good at anything. It’s a bore and about as productive as having a discussion with a crazed gerbil. Not worth a skerrick of seriousness on.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/moys2002_zps629c54ee.png.html
Moy et al, 2002, present the record of sedimentation shown above which is strongly influenced by ENSO variability. It is based on the presence of greater and less red sediment in a lake core. More sedimentation is associated with El Niño. It has continuous high resolution coverage over 12,000 years. It shows periods of high and low ENSO activity alternating with a period of about 2,000 years. There was a shift from La Niña dominance to El Niño dominance that was identified by Tsonis 2009 as a chaotic bifurcation – and is associated with the drying of the Sahel. There is a period around 3,500 years ago of high ENSO activity associated with the demise of the Minoan civilisation (Tsonis et al, 2010). It shows ENSO variability considerably in excess of that seen in the modern period.
Stick that 97% up your bum webby.
JC SNIP is keenly upset with the progress I have made in modeling ENSO.
http://contextearth.com/2014/05/27/the-soim-differential-equation/
Note that I have opened up the underlying algorithm as an open source project. This is quite at odds with the goals of someone like Steven Hayward from the Powerline blog which is known as the legal counsel for the Weather Derivatives division of Koch Industries.
Weather Derivatives are used as a way to make money off of the misfortune of others.
Years ago the Powerline law firm and Koch won a law suit against former employees that tried to spinoff their technology.
http://www.faegrebd.com/7091
Isn’t that disgusting keeping knowledge on climate shifts such as El Nino secret so that one can profit off of it? Profiting off of the misfortune of people that will feel the brunt of climate change?
That is the way of the right-wing cult — profiting off of the misfortune of others — otherwise known as disaster capitalism.
wrong place.
JC snip is amused at what he considers progress. He understands so little of what he is trying to stuff into an ill fitting box.
JC snip is ironic by the way.
Richard Scaife? His wikipedia page doesn’t make him out to be such a bad guy. Scaife recently announced he has untreatable cancer.
Yes we all know Judith hates and seems somewhat obsessed with Michael Mann.
I would broaden the purpose to include opposing anything that might adversely impact big business.
Based on a quick scan of the 40 most recent articles at Heartland, about 30% of them are about global warming. Heartland mentions global warming education, words to that effect, as one of a number of other goals.
‘If as suggested here, a dynamically driven climate shift has occurred, the duration of similar shifts during the 20th century suggests the new global mean temperature trend may persist for several decades. Of course, it is purely speculative to presume that the global mean temperature will remain near current levels for such an extended period of time. Moreover, we caution that the shifts described here are presumably superimposed upon a long term warming trend due to anthropogenic forcing. However, the nature of these past shifts in climate state suggests the possibility of near constant temperature lasting a decade or more into the future must at least be entertained. The apparent lack of a proximate cause behind the halt in warming post 2001/02 challenges our understanding of the climate system, specifically the physical reasoning and causal links between longer time-scale modes of internal climate variability and the impact of such modes upon global temperature.’ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL037022/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false
1. The duration of such shifts over 1000 years – 20 to 40 years.
2. It may be more speculative to imagine that the hiatus will finish early – or that it will necessarily shift to yet warmer.
3. It may be superimp0osed but how big are the multi-decadal shifts?
4. The failure to entertain the possibility is the defining characteristic of the Borg collective cult of AGW groupthink space cadets.
It is why they have lost the game and the plot.
For those playing along with the home game of CE, “Donald Duck” is another multiple-identity sokkkpuppet of Chief Skippy.
Since the core of climate deniers is relatively sparse at the 3% level, the deniers use multiple-identity puppetry to try to inflate their numbers, and try to demonstrate that there is more support for their failing ideas than actually exists.
They are somewhat clever, aren’t they? All they have to be is more clever than their gullible audience.
Ignore the millenial at your perennial.
=========
Ding, Hui et al, 2013, have made major progress in predicting abrupt climate shifts based on analysis of the 1976/1977 and 1998/2001 climate shifts. Mojib Latif – Head of the Research Division: Ocean Circulation and Climate Dynamics – Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel has commented publicly on the research. ‘The winds change the ocean currents which in turn affect the climate. In our study, we were able to identify and realistically reproduce the key processes for the two abrupt climate shifts. We have taken a major step forward in terms of short-term climate forecasting, especially with regard to the development of global warming… However, ‘since the reliability of those predictions is still at about 50%, you might as well flip a coin.’ Numerical prediction of climate shifts using powerful climate models is now as accurate as tossing a coin – although perhaps we should not make light of such a difficult problem in climate science.
Stick that 97% up your bum webby.
Webby is incapable of understanding or addressing the science quoted and goes of like this instead – apparently in the hope that sound and fury will drown out the obvious.
Mann doesn’t need a “campaign to discredit climate science and climate scientists” – he seems to be doing a perfectly adequate job of that himself.
This piece by Mann is very heavy on unsupported assertions and very short on actual evidence. The argument is really just an argument by assertion.
Ironically – the ‘editing’ highlighted was yet another deletion of webby’s habitual abuse.
JC snip is amused at what he considers progress. He understands so little of what he is trying to stuff into an ill fitting box.
Not a real JC snip I might add – just used ironically – shouldn’t have bolded it.
That is beyond the pale to fake another’s editorial content — also known as forgery. For some places, you just don’t go there, but old skip has no problems with making stuff up. These types will do whatever it takes.
Whoops
Ironically – the ‘editing’ highlighted was yet another deletion of webby’s habitual abuse.
His book must have really tanked. He keeps promoting it in every editorial he writes.
Doc,
Rick Perry has been effective in selling Texas with his pro business approach. However, Ted Cruz has a Rush Limbaugh like approach politically. Wishy washy doesn’t sit well with them. That black and white edge rallies the troops and the conservative mainstream is still in control of the party much to the chagrin of the eastern establishment repubs. Eric Cantor is a case in point.
I am a fiscal conservative and am socially liberal, an atheist who doesn’t give a damn what spiritual guide people follow. I live in Houston and rather like our Democrat Lesbian Mayor, but would support most Republicans in an election.
Perry is a good governor, but he mistakes the loudest voices for his most numerous supporters.
Public heath policies should be as apolitical as possible and anyone who believes that personal morality means that STD’s should be treated differently form other diseases is turning their backs on 2,500 years of medical ethics.
Perry doesn’t mistake anything to do with constituent makeup. Right or wrong he has consultants to answer those kinds of questions. His track record of winning elections speaks strongly against any significant mistakes. You have an uphill battle convincing anyone otherwise due to that record of success.
Nobody’s perfect.
=============
Public policy with regard to preventable disease should focus on prevention as the first priority. If people are dying young because of poor dietary habits then public policy should focus on changing dietary habits. If people are dying young because of moral indescretion then public policy should focus on changing moral habits.
It’s not exactly rocket science there, doc. Just logic and engineering.
Diplomacy in negotiations with our viral co-members of the biome is the continuation of war by artificial immunities.
===============
Doc,
I left a reply but once again it went to the botton as my tablet is a tricky way to post. I suppose that since health care is second on my poll link below that that could effect Perry one way or the other. I tend to agree with the notion of that polling public perception does not always lead to good pollicies. Since your in the medical profession, I get what your saying about prioritizing things can be a tricky business and political hacks could make it worse.
Aside from that though, I still think conservatives, rightly or wrongly, see a bit of tricky dicky in Perry and more ronald reaganish in Cruz.
How many of you have heard of Tim Scott (R, SC)?
The guy has a great story, raised by a single mom, achieving success through hard work, not through political associations (as a certain Chicago area Senator) and he’s gotten very little attention from the media. Alan West, who has gotten some attention due to his outspokenness, is another Republican lawmaker I admire.
==> “This kind of twaddle is accepted by the mainstream, but these same people are horrified by someone writing about ‘climate cultists’. ””
Geez – and I just can’t figure out what Pekka was talking about when he spoke of Judith’s trajectory within the climate wars constellation.
It is nice to see Judith step out from the shows of indirectness and plausible deniability, however.
If it don’t fit, you got to… diverge.
Rossiter told Climate Depot:
“If people ever say that fears of censorship for ‘climate change’ views are overblown, have them take a look at this: Just two days after I published a piece in the Wall Street Journal calling for Africa to be allowed the ‘all of the above’ energy strategy we have in the U.S., the Institute for Policy Studies terminated my 23-year relationship with them…because my analysis and theirs ‘diverge.'”
You are unable to see a pattern in this unwinding, yet?
He took the road more and more travelled, and this taking the time will make all of the difference.
Who has time? Well, this is the time.
========
Here. I took a look at their web site (use their link on my next link), and found very good news WRT Obama’s new initiative: EPA’s Carbon Rule Falls Short of Real Emissions Reduction
(Note the bait-and-switch: they’re talking about CO2, which arguably puts the world at risk from climate change (and other “dragon kings”), then all of a sudden “families living in their shadow continue to breathe toxic emissions.” (my bold) Toxic?!!? CO2? No, just a typical liberal bait-and-switch.)
Funny, we have to go to a radical (probably socialist) site to get an idea how essentially harmless the new EPA regs probably are. They actually allow each state to make its own decision how to implement CO2 reductions, they are highly tolerant towards offsets and other systems for making up for large emitters, and, as they will probably (IMO) be implemented, they will provide a strong market for independent carbon capture from the air.
In fact, AFAIK, a state if it wanted to could allow anybody who takes any sort of biowaste, wraps it up, and dumps it into an anoxic ocean trench to claim and sell carbon credits to make up for cheap coal-fired power plants. Reading this article gave me a much more rosy picture of how these EPA regs could affect the carbon economy.
> Toxic?!!? CO2? No, just a typical liberal bait-and-switch.
The sentence was about power plants, not CO2.
Lie.
The article was about CO2, and regulation thereof. The paragraph, in context, was about offsets, as applied to power plants’ emissions of CO2. The sentence, in context, was referring to emissions of CO2 by power plants.
A typical example of the never-auditor’s use of dishonest semantic squirming to defend fellow liberals’ dishonest semantic squirming.
Here’s the sentence, AK:
> Power plants keep polluting, and the families living in their shadow continue to breathe toxic emissions.
Hope this helps.
Another sentence with “power plant”:
> Because this rule applies to only one segment of our economy, existing coal-fired power plants, the reduction targets fall far short of the IPCC’s goals for developed countries of economy-wide emissions of 25 to 40 percent below 1990 emissions by 2020.
And here’s the relevant paragraph:
http://www.ips-dc.org/pressroom/epas_carbon_rule_falls_short_of_real_emissions_reduction
Next time, dear AK, please read harder (H/T Bart R) before entering into your villainous monologue mode.
More semantic bait-and-switch from the never-auditor:
Precisely! And in context, the exact same context we both quoted, and both linked to, they are talking about CO2 when they say “Power plants keep polluting” and “toxic emissions.” Read the whole article you linked to:
These are goals for CO2 reduction. Not particulate carbon or any other type of “polluting”. In context, they are calling CO2 emissions “toxic emissions.”
The same is true of their
… Which you quoted and bolded: their words “dirtiest power plants” applies, in context, only to CO2 emissions. (Same for “pollution”, another issue.) Not particulate carbon or any other type of “pollution”.
Bottom line, they indulged in a semantic bait-and-switch, a particularly nasty form of dishonest semantic squirming. And so did you. The sentence was about power plants, and CO2 emissions. Which you knew, having clearly read the article. So when you said
… You lied. You told a knowing, deliberate, untruth with intent to deceive.
IMO, of course, like everything anybody says here.
> their words “dirtiest power plants” applies, in context, only to CO2 emissions.
No, it applies to the dirtiest power plants, which are among the “existing coal-fired power plants,” those we know are producing toxic emissions families living in their shadow continue to breathe, which we are supposed to know is not CO2, but (say) carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matters, etc. Notwithstanding other sources and channels of pollution, like mercury in lakes, and disregarding that more efficient power plants produce even more CO2 compared to the CO it releases, i.e. power plants get cleaner and cleaner.
That CO2 is a pollutant is because of its relationship to AGW, not to the fact that we breathe it. Of course, one can argue that smog is related to AGW:
http://www2.epa.gov/carbon-pollution-standards/learn-about-carbon-pollution-power-plants
But in the end, smog does not consist of CO2. The equivocation you see is in your own eye, AK. Ask your occulist.
***
I thought Denizens agreed that coal was the new Skydragon.
Since they don’t say anything about any other type of pollution in the article, there is no reason for a casual reader to suppose they’re talking about some other sort of “pollution”. Perhaps somebody already steeped in their jargon might realize their statement was only true if you apply “dirtiest” and “toxic emissions” to your “(say) carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matters, etc.” But that simply proves that it’s a semantic bait-and-switch: the choir they’re preaching to understands their statement in a way that makes it true, but the casual reader understands CO2 to be “dirtiest” and “toxic emissions”.
Especially as, even reading with sympathy, it’s very hard to see them applying the CO2 regulations as a way of stopping emissions of your “(say) carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matters, etc.” The EPA is perfectly capable of stopping emissions of those substances independently of CO2, with far less opposition. As, potentially, are the suffering “families living in their shadow”.
For that matter, their lead paragraph says:
This clearly states the goal of their argument: CO2 emission reduction, which they equate to “carbon emissions” (i.e. excluding particulate carbon).
In that statement of purpose (of their argument) they say nothing about your “(say) carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matters, etc.” It’s appropriate to assume they exclude that, since they clearly exclude particulate carbon. Therefore, the injection of your your “(say) carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matters, etc.” represents an invention on your part, a specious (tacit) fallback rationalization on theirs, or perhaps both.
> Since they don’t say anything about any other type of pollution in the article, there is no reason for a casual reader to suppose they’re talking about some other sort of “pollution”.
Sure, and when the author speaks of
it’s to convey the idea that power plants produce CO2, CO2 is toxic, and families living in their shadow continue to breath CO2 emissions. It’s certainly not to convey the idea that coal power plants pollute by emitting toxic waste into the atmosphere. That would too much to ask of casual readers.
God this is silly.
So willard is the latest to abandon honest discorse.
The EPA sets standards addressing emission of CO2 from power plants and willard pushes the fairy tale that it is meant to cover emission of toxic pollutants. There is a reason we are seeing increased use of the term carbon pollution. It is meant to confuse.
On second thought, there could be another reason. It is possible the people using the term (Kerry, Obama, Jay Inslee for example) are simply that stupid.
> willard pushes the fairy tale that it [the EPA’s policy] is meant to cover emission of toxic pollutants.
I’m not even talking about the EPA’s policy.
Read harder.
You’re talking about a sentence in an article about the EPA’s CO2 policy. Whatever fantasy meaning you assign based on unstated “context” you assume readers know, the sentence is clearly, in its actual context talking about the EPA’s CO2 policy.
Another effort at misdirection.
> You’re talking about a sentence in an article about the EPA’s CO2 policy.
So I guess that makes all the sentences should be about the EPA’s CO2 policy and that all its predicates it contains should apply to CO2.
Look, AK, you’re “bait-and-switch” was wrong. It was based on a stupid misreading. No big deal.
You don’t even need it to rant against the EPA’s willingness to rule CO2 as a pollutant. The article you underline is not even for the EPA’s policy. You’re just using it for your boring rant.
> Whatever fantasy meaning you assign based on unstated “context” you assume readers know, the sentence is clearly, in its actual context talking about the EPA’s CO2 policy.
You would not even be able to quote the sentence and the relevant context to make that case with a straight face.
Try it. I dare you.
I already did above.
> I did above.
Come on, AK. You have not even identified what the authors are talking about yet. Here’s a hint:
http://www.ips-dc.org/pressroom/epas_carbon_rule_falls_short_of_real_emissions_reduction
That press note says something about the EPA’s decision to incorporate emissions trading and offsetting in their new carbon dioxide rule, AK. What do they say about that decision to incorporate emissions trading and offsetting in their new carbon dioxide rule, you may ask? That it undermines its ability to deliver the real reductions in carbon emissions so urgently needed.
And why is that, you may ask? “Because this rule applies to only one segment of our economy, existing coal-fired power plant“, the press note reads, AK.
***
Is there another argument that you can read against the EPA’s decision to incorporate emissions trading and offsetting, AK? Why yes, of course:
Are you starting to get the drift of what this press about, AK, or should I read it to until you decide to take your glasses on and, well, read it for a change?
***
And after you do that, why don’t you read the byline too:
Please tell more about context, AK.
willard’s “I’m not even talking about the EPA’s policy.”
Sure you aren’t.
“Read harder.”
What go would that do when you can be honest in what you write?
Joshua, you basic premise is that physiologic biase’s account for people be drawn to either the CAGW or ‘denialist’ camps. For reasons known only to yourself, you have placed Judy in the ‘mentally unable to comprehend the full horror of thermogeddon’ group and consign all her analysis to ranting from an hysterical woman with an over active ideological defense mechanism.
Of the many major problems with this analysis, one stands out. You are among the most physiologically challenged posters on CE and your deeply rooted misogamy makes you unfit to make an empathetic of anyone one, but most especially a woman.
Now I know that your posting here and on other climate sites is a form of therapy for you, but can you please tone down your attacks on the host.
Doc –
==> “Joshua, you basic premise is that physiologic biase’s account for people be drawn to either the CAGW or ‘denialist’ camps. ”
Not exclusively “psychological biases” – there is a purely cognitive component also.
=> “For reasons known only to yourself, you have placed Judy in the ‘mentally unable to comprehend the full horror of thermogeddon’ group and consign all her analysis to ranting from an hysterical woman with an over active ideological defense mechanism.”
Not at all. Nothing I have ever written comes close to your description. Not. Even. Close.
Not,.
Even.
Close.
==> “You are among the most physiologically challenged posters on CE and your deeply rooted misogamy makes you unfit to make an empathetic of anyone one, but most especially a woman.”
Fascinating. It never ceases to amuse me that “skeptics” project some kind of “misogamy” onto me because I criticize the biases that I feel are embedded in Judith’s reasoning, sometimes.
Do I hate men, also, because I criticize RPJr.’s reasoning, or Keith Kloor’s? Do I hate people who love unintentional irony because I criticize Chief’s reasoning? Do I hate animals because I criticize Don’s reasoning (sorry, couldn’t resist).
Joshua, if you were not such a misogynist you would be able to recognize your misogamy. The fact that I can recognize your misogamy, and you cannot, should be recognized by even you as an obviously proof of your deep seated inability to deal with women.
Nice way to duck, doc. Argue by assertion to insult me. When challenged to defend your reasoning, argue by assertion to insult me. Notice how you ducked the logical inconsistency that I pointed out?
I criticize Judith’s reasoning just like I do the reasoning of others. I see no reason why Judith’s being a woman is relevant. Apparently you do – but that’s on you, bro, not me.
I wound up at this site cause I once heard Judith on the radio – quite a while back, making what I considered to be a very interesting argument about tribalism among climate scientists. As I spent more time here, I began to find, to my disappointment, that her arguments about that tribalism employed a double-standard. So that became the focus of my interest on her blog.
A similar process took place with my involvement at Kloor’s blog, and at Roger’s blog.
But as always, Doc, thanks for reading. I can’t tell you how much it means to me.
Hey Doc –
Here’s a question for ya’
Why do you suppose that Judith allows comments like yours, labeling me as a misogynist, to stand, yet she deletes my Judith deletes my comment referring to the racism of “you all look alike,” in response to Peter Lang confusing me with Joseph?
Do you have a defense for that kind of reasoning? Or do you agree that it reflects a double-standard?
Am I a misogynist for pointing out her double-standard?
I don’t read every word of every comment. I snip the objectionable statements that I catch.
Unintended irony is Josh insisting I should stick to science and leave the politics to him. That he confuses tedious nit picking repeated ad nauseum with rational analysis is a bit of unintended irony as well
It’s not too late to “snip” his comments calling me a misogynist, Judith.
Allow me to be clear. I have no objection to him doing so, and I think it’s funny that anyone would. It’s juvenile blogospheric banter. Not something to be taken seriously.
My point is that you apply a double-standard along in a number of different areas. Willard thinks it’s an “own goal” for me to point that out. But I find it quite interesting that, IMO, you are increasing the disparity in how you apply standards.
Everybody should just stop picking on little joshie. The inattention would drive him crazy.
Don –
Nobody’s picking on me.
People are simply displaying their juvenality. Doc calling me a misogynist has nothing to do with me. Judith failing to “snip” those comments once they are pointed out to her, has nothing to do with me.
I know that nobody’s picking on you, joshie. You are asking for it. Begging for it. A little brat seeking attention. Judith will probably snip this one. She actually protects you more than the she does the average customer. Judith has empathy. Do you know what that is, joshie?
This has nothing to do with Pekka’s comment that I can see.
“The right conceptual understanding of the problem is that we need large-scale low- and non-carbon energy sources that are cheaper than hydrocarbon energy.”
No we don’t. You just bought into the warmie message. If someone comes up with the means to store masses of energy then low/non-carbon will likely be cheaper and more efficient than fossil fuels and nukes. Centuries supply of lovely coal will be left lying in the ground. We’ll likely need solar and wind – but they won’t be the solar and wind we’ve been frittering billions on lately.
The answer is to make what works (that’s coal!) even better so you have lots of yummy money to buy into something better still when it comes along (that’s storage!) White elephants are actually killing alternative technology, including the wind and solar which might actually prove useful when their output can be stored.
Say no to a white elephant today. Modernise your coal power. And do remember about the Middle East and Venezuela etc before making any decisions about energy. We live in a world, not a model.
In suggesting adaptive resiliency, at least Hayward is ahead of several US state houses (e.g., NC, NJ, FL) where any kind of thought about high future sea levels is not allowed to enter into planning as a casualty of their Republican principles. Perhaps Hayward can start by trying to talk to those people about his adaptive resiliency ideas, and see how his brand of conservatism gets treated there.
At 2-3mm / y there’s plenty of time to address the issue. In the meantime there may be more pressing problems.
Any areas that also suffer subsidence , like Bangladesh, may need to look at “future subsidence planning” rather than rising sea levels.
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/06/13/Climate-McCarthyism-claims-yet-another-victim
top comment reads: “Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY White country and ONLY into White countries.
Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY White country and ONLY White countries to “assimilate”, ie., intermarry, with all those non-whites.
They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white.
Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.
Diversity is a code word for White Genocide.”
Just the kind of drivel we all expect from lolwot. Your insight is breathtaking. Just like your science.
I don´t keep up with politics in the USA as much as I should, I suppose.
Unfortunately many of you aren´t aware of how you are manipulated and deceived by ALL media and information sources. Yesterday I was watching CNN International as I used my walking machine and I had to stomach their coverage about Iraq, which was quite deceitful. I presume Fox and the others would be just as bad.
This means all the coverage and opinion making I read about just about anything is probably slanted, distorted and aimed at making me behave in a certain way. And the same applies to all of you whether you are aware or not.
The punchline is that I read a lot of garbage about “the Kochs” and so on from the extreme dogmatic school, and similar content from the extreme dissenter school when it comes to anthropogenic global warming and the potential solutions. So, I´m having to spend a lot of time researching the subject so I can try to figure out what´s going on by myself. Lucky for me I got the time.
Fernando,
Read up on what the Koch is doing with respect to the financial instrument of Weather Derivatives.
The law firm of the Powerline Blog, of whom Stephen Hayward is associated, is a legal counsel to Koch’s Weather Derivatives division.
Is this considered “garbage” about the Koch’s?
They may want to spread disinformation about climate to serve their own interests, i.e. making money off of climate change.
Some would call this conspiratorial thinking but they are the ones that are following their predecessor and one-time collaborator Enron.
If you are going to be a johnny one note,better to try to contribute something with your blog.
Note the deep deep psychological projection and Rovian tactics used by TJA.
He attacks his opponents strengths, realizing he has nothing on his end.
Typical winger
Pingback: Climate cultists | And Then There's Physics
Judith, Thanks so much for this – together with you ‘reflections’ this posting truly resonated with me.
Question – are the costs of maintaining this blog so infinitesimal that there is no need to have a ‘tip jar’?
Once I retire from Georgia Tech, I may set up a tip jar or take on advertising – until then I can subsidize this with my own funds. Thanks for asking tho!
A donation button for your favorite cause may be appreciated, Judy.
Junior has Médecins sans frontières, a very good choice.
Eli has Save the Keeling Curve, also a good choice.
Perhaps this one could be to your taste:
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/make-donation
I’m sure you could find something about women or women in science.
Best of luck!
Interesting idea. If I was to do something along these lines, it would be related to crowd funding of worthy projects, either simple adaptation projects in developing world or small scientific projects (some help is needed to support some unfunded ‘gentlemen’ or citizen scientists).
I don’t know if these guys take money or if the model is worth its net beans, but here is an open source climate model.
http://jcm.climatemodel.info/index.html
Oops! The last update was 2011, guess it was a fail.
The American Brain Tumor Association is quite wonderful
http://www.abta.org/
I just looked up some numbers for 2014.
%Americans dead from Cardiovascular diseases,30%, NIH spending $2,015m
%Americans dead from Cancers, 13%, NIH spending $5,418m
%Americans dead from Stroke, 10%, NIH spending $291m
%Americans dead from HIV/AIDS, 4.5%, NIH spending $2,978m
%Americans dead from Global Warming, 0%, US spending $9,878m
So research on climate change costs the American taxpayer about as much as research into diseases that will kill almost 60% of them.
http://report.nih.gov/categorical_spending.aspx
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43227.pdf
Very interesting perspective Doc, but don’t you realise that the “carbon pollution” causes cancer, AIDS, heart-disease and strokes, not to mention flatulence?
That kinda undermines your calculations ;)
If we only spent ALL our money on CO2 mitigation we could solve all the worlds problems.
Carbon pollution also causes the dread disease nigglelitus. It’s a mental disorder.
I guess you better ask Joshua to explain
Well, one explanation is that he compares NIH spending to “costs [to] the American taxpayer”
Granted, much spending on cancer research, say, comes from non-governmental NPOs and the private sector, but a quick check seems to show that cancer research extends into the $billions annually.
I suspect that his specific comparison might look a little misleading if he instead of singling out the NIH, compared total “costs [to] the American taxpayer” for all cancer research to “costs [to] the American public” for spending on research related to climate change.
Interesting how selective “conservatives” are about when they argue that private sector spending eventually trickles down to the taxpaying public, isn’t it?
Joshua,
Yes, a casual glance suggests Doc is playing a silly game with numbers, in the service of an ideological position.
Michael –
What’s funniest about Doc is that he’s very prideful about his scientific chops, and it would seem deservedly so, but then throws dreck like that at the wall in hope that it would stick.
Interesting how mosher, who displays similar behaviors, lapped it up.
Oh, and BTW –
http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/05/accusations-that-climate-science-is-money-driven-reveal-ignorance-of-how-science-is-done/
One would think that a bit of skepticism w/r/t Doc’s $9.878 billion might be in order. You know, from a “skeptic.” Funny how a scientist like Doc cites such a specific number w/o doing any checking.
Nice – the article makes assumptions that are not born out by the evidence. But keep on touting it. I guess you need the delusion,
Concerning Steven Hayward’s writings: has anyone noticed how he picks and chooses to place the “Red Meat” out there depending in his audience?
Consider his two recent soft-science/opinion articles.
In the Weekly Standard article, he brings up the notion of “climate cultists”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/climate-cultists_794401.html?page=1
However in the other article, no direct mention of climate cultism because he is targeting a more “objective” audience than the fire-breathing right-wing:
http://issues.org/30-3/steven/
He replaces the direct mention with innuendo.
How quaint. Isn’t that so considerate of Stephen Hayward?
So what? He runs around in his underwear when home. Don’t we all?
e.g. Pajamas Media. Armchair warriors all of them.
Underwear?
O/t :’Underwear?’ Say Faustino, take a look @ me 17th Edition
of Serf Underground, ‘The Theatre and the Dance.’Nureyev as
Nijinsky !
bts
Afternoon Ms. Beth.
Beth, I never went to see Nureyev dance, but he came to see me dance once. After he and Margot Fonteyn finished their performance at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, they came down to the Middle Earth club at the other end of the block. They didn’t dance while they were there.
Faustino – the underware comment is an analogy. We are more blunt when discussion issues with like-minded people (eg the family). But more reserved (clothed) when in more diverse groups.
It’s called writing for an audience to sell magazines. Each magazine or journal has its own style. There is no change in the message. One is a short piece meant to drive home the point quickly. The other is more thoughtful and carefully developed philosophical piece. I thought the latter was simply the best analysis of the situation I’ve yet read.
It’s what writers do to make a living.
Michael Crichton has an interesting essay on this subject:
http://www.michaelcrichton.net/essay-stateoffear-whypoliticizedscienceisdangerous.html
Hayward: “The computer models are still too crude and limited, especially about the crucial question of water vapor “feedbacks” (clouds in ordinary language)”
Yes it’s an error, he should have said: “The computer models are still too crude and limited, especially about the crucial questions of water vapor feedbacks AND clouds.
To be more correct he would also have added: AND precipitation.
But I would not want to get between any of these anal-retentives and a good Enema.
.
To be correct, concise, and sciency just say feedback from the water cycle.
Doc,
Yes I was lamenting what you said in the thread above about this being an interesting election cycle. I jumped ahead to the presidential election. In this election as with all elections jobs and the economy rank number one. Since the economy (but not necessarily jobs) has recovered somewhat that issue may be of less importance and voters may look at other issues. Now I know Reagan’s ‘morning in america’ was an effective reelection campaign, I don’t know if that will work for Obama in the midterm. I sense that there is a lot of angst among the electorate and often other issues play a bigger importance in the off year local elections anyway. Obama has plunged in popularity and one crisis after the next has made him a liability for the local races. So you are right this is an interesting midterm.
But if not the pocket book what will the locals be looking at and how will the bad feelings toward Obama play out? Number two on the list is health care:
https://www.pollingreport.com/prioriti.htm
After the main pocketbook issues (including health care) immigration weighing in at 6% and climate at 5% wouldn’t seem to play much importance. I suspect they would both be looked at in terms of Americans losing jobs but who knows? The activists on those issues could have either a net positive or negative sway depending on how one looks at it.
I take it that you think energy may be important. Since it is not on that list I suppose it would be reflected in the jobs catagory. When I read this energy poll I realised there is an interesting dichotomy:
https ://www.pollingreport.com/energy.htm
While the Keystone pipeline is 61 favor 27 oppose, it is a very narrow margine about whether or not congress should overturn Obama’s emissions regulations. In general though it looks like the response to those energy questions favor Republicans. So your assessment about the effect on the election regarding energy and jobs seems to be a good one.
https://www.pollingreport.com/energy.htm
I suspect that $4.00 gas will reduce peoples discretionary spending over the next two years.
On January 1st 2015 Schwarzenegger’s AB 32 kicks in an emmisions tax that will cost an extra 12 to 40 cents a gallon in California. I suspect it will be closer to $5.00 in California. That still may not be enough to get Californians to vote Republican.
In “Storms of my Grandchildren”, Dr James Hansen used “deniers” 10 different times. Of course we know of many more examples by others. I had never heard the term “climate cultists” until today. When my progressive friends call me names for asserting my independent views, I will keep this term in mind.
Professor Curry, do you find it not the least unseemly that you’ve chosen to align yourself with people of Hayward’s character and attitude? I would have to imagine that you have had to prove yourself over and over again as a female in a male dominated field – yet you still choose Hayward as someone to promote? Or perhaps you agree with him that physical retaliation is the answer to sexual harassment in the classroom or workplace.
The tide of history has clearly turned against the homophobic, misogynistic male-dominated society and that is a rueful matter for those of Stephen Hayward’s ilk.
They mislead, lied and stalled as long as they could on tobacco and they’re trying the same tactics with climate change. It’s just weird that any intelligent person would want to join their cause.
I look at the arguments, I don’t care who is making them. I discussed Hayward as someone of rising prominence in the public debate about climate change, and I used his essay to make a point about how we communicate and what is not effective.
==> “I look at the arguments, I don’t care who is making them. ”
Then what explains your selective reasoning w/r/t tribalism and vitriol in the debates.
You have stated, explicitly, that you evaluate tribalism and vitriol on the basis of who it is that is engaging in those behaviors.
Not to mention that you apply a similar double-standard w/r/t scientific arguments as well as the “authority” of arguments.
==> ” and I used his essay to make a point about how we communicate and what is not effective.”
Indeed – that vitriol like “climate cultist” is effective whereas “denier” isn’t. What distinguishes those rhetorical devices, respectively, if not who it is that is using them?
Kevin, you really are way out there aren’t you. Some day you will understand how such generalizations and hyperbole make you look silly. Hopefully it will be soon to spare you more embarrassment.
Kevin O’Neill | June 14, 2014 at 4:06 pm |
“…the energy policy of both political parties since the first energy shocks of the 1970s has been essentially a frivolous farce of special interest favoritism and wishful thinking, with little coherence and even less long-term care for the kind of genuine energy innovation necessary to address prospective climate change on the extreme range of the long-run projections.”
I can ‘align’ with the above. Climate scientists are up against experienced teams of political veterans of all stripes. The plan to, now do politics, may have been given more consideration.
What is Kevin O’Neill talking about? Has he misread some piece somewhere that Hayward has written about the excesses of sexual harassment law? The world wonders.
Much of the world yawns.
Kevin, anyone who has been in a serious profession where complex high risk decisions are often confronted will be handicapped if they don’t develop a very high tolerance for different individual qualities/values/language of individuals. We are not talking “parenting” here. The decision needs the best minds. I suspect you already know this!
Judith –
This one is really just hard to get over:
==> “and the conservatives have just come up with a stinging new name. An interesting development in the ‘climate wars.”
So you think that the invention of a new epithet (which actually isn’t a new epithet at all, it has been used in a modified form countless times on these very threads), is an “interesting development?”
Really?
And this?:
==> “The phrase ‘climate cultist’ may be the best one I’ve seen to counter the epithet of ‘denier’. ”
You think that an epithet merits the description of “best?”
Judith – this is all just same ol’ same ol’.
Josh, I think Judith would like the name calling to stop all around. That is not going to happen with the likes of Mann and even Lacis who I see has posted a somewhat less offensive than usual comment below. I find the label “cultist” amusing but not something I would use myself. It could be a useful rhetorical tool to use as a response when the d work is hauled out by the name callers.
Yes, it would be nice if the name calling would stop, it makes serious discussion impossible. Unfortunately, with President Obama using the ‘denier’ word, the situation is hopeless. Cultist seems an appropriate response for people that use the word denier.
David –
I think that most of us would like the name-calling to stop all around. So then one question might be whether any of us can, individually, do anything that might reduce the name-calling. And then the follow-on question would be if it were possible for an individual to make a difference, what that might be.
I don’t know that anything an individual might do would make a difference, but I would say that if anything would, it would be to (1) eschew name-calling (2) be equally critical of name-calling on the different sides of the aisle, and (3) not justify name-calling with a logic of “Well, if they do it, then we’ll do it just as well as or better than they do.”
Now look at this:
==> “Unfortunately, with President Obama using the ‘denier’ word, the situation is hopeless. Cultist seems an appropriate response for people that use the word denier.”
So, (1) if Judith thinks that it is “hopeless,” then why is she so focused on its presence? Why focus on the “hopeless?” (2) if she thinks it is “hopeless,” then why is she so disproportionately focused on the name-calling on one side in comparison to the other? and (3) if she thinks it is “hopeless” then why does she also argue that some names are an “appropriate response?”
In order to maintain my belief that Judith really would like the name-calling to stop, then I conclude that there is some kind of an ill-logic in her reasoning, as her reasoning seems to me to be inconsistent with that goal.
If someone could explain to me how her actions are consistent with wanting it to stop, unless an ill-logic is involved, then I welcome the explanation.
My point is that name calling on from one side is regarded even by the President of U.S. as acceptable, but when the other side indulges in name calling there is outrage. The situation is asymmetrical – I am calling out the hypocrisy of people using the D word, and who then object to the other side using the C word.
The word ‘denier’ is meaningless in the climate debate. What is being denied? Hayward is not a denier – he prefers adaptation and investment energy technologies, rather than energy regulatory policies. He also thinks climate models are unconvincing. These are hardly irrational positions, and this is where the heart of the climate debate lies. The climate debate is not about people accepting or not the physics of the CO2 infrared emission spectra.
The physics of CO2 emission spectra is fine and good but what’s really lost in the debate is the biochemistry of CO2 in green plants. I remain totally unconvinced that a world with less ice and a more fertile atmosphere is undesirable.
Yes Josh, we can refrain from using these names ourselves and call out others who do. There is an emotional polarization that happens when these emotional words are used at supposedly scientific places like even Real Climate, which I have noticed has lapsed into oblivion recently.
David –
Sure. Emotional polarization happens. At RC. Here. Many places.
Joshua wants the anti-alarmist side to engage in unilateral rhetorical disarmament. That worked great for the Constitutional Democrats and Mensheviks back in the day.
It is working well for the Democrats now that the Republicans have surrendered all arms, silk scarves, and pink ribbons. Well, they hid some pink ribbons – just couldn’t part with them.
There’s a cute joke where the chicken and the turkey
call each other names,
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=Jokes+on+name+calling&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=kUCdU6bSMoKUkwX-0oHoAg&ved=0CEEQsAQ&biw=1152&bih=703#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=0x1c248oj8yOIM%253A%3BqTiU_dJWVVa7xM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.donationcoder.com%252Fforum%252Findex.php%253Faction%253Ddlattach%253Btopic%253D24694.0%253Battach%253D53178%253Bimage%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.donationcoder.com%252Fforum%252Findex.php%253Ftopic%253D24694.0%3B400%3B400
curryja | June 14, 2014 at 7:01 pm |
“Yes, it would be nice if the name calling would stop, it makes serious discussion impossible”
The hypothetical hyperbolic nature of CAGW makes serious discussion impossible. The devolution into a political football with associated name-calling across the aisle is a predictable progression. There’s nowhere else for pseudosciences to go.
==> “My point is that name calling on from one side is regarded even by the President of U.S. as acceptable, but when the other side indulges in name calling there is outrage.”
This is true, among some people. And among others, the name calling is considered acceptable, or “best” or “most appropriate” on one side, and the “worst sort of intolerance” (paraphrasing) on the other side.
==> “The situation is asymmetrical ”
I disagree – and challenge you to provide evidence of such.
The theory of motivated reasoning, IMO, predicts that partisans on either side would see the sort of asymmetry that you see, Judith.
==> “I am calling out the hypocrisy of people using the D word, and who then object to the other side using the C word.”
Which in and of itself, is fine, IMO. It is hypocritical. I agree.
But the hypocrisy is asymmetrical – and people on both sides claim an oppositional asymmetry. It is to be expected. It is predicted by motivated reasoning. And it is same ol’ same ol’. And it is non-productive (IMO).
==> “The word ‘denier’ is meaningless in the climate debate.”
Judith, you will not find me defend the use of “denier.” It is meaningless, I agree. It is based on a fundamental conflation of fact with opinion. But it is no different, in that regard, than: (1) using the term “climate cultist” or (2) justifying the use of “climate cultist” or arguing that it is “best” or most “appropriate.”
Sorry – the hypocrisy on each side is not ….
Those dang Freudian slips get me every freakin’ time.
Lets just look at the words used by scientists or other scholars, and by politicians (forget journalists, bloggers and anonymous commenters, and advocacy groups for the moment). Scientists and politicians on the warm side use the denier word; what names do the likes of Lindzen, Christy etc use for those that they disagree with? And the politicians, e.g. Inhofe, Smith? The only word that pops into my mind is ‘hoax’, but that describes the argument, not the individuals. ‘Alarmists’? Lindzen might have used that word, I’m not sure. My perception (which may be wrong) is that the name calling (from scholars, politicians) is predominantly coming from the consensus side.
If there were an academic pursuit of niggleology, you would have a PhD and be at the very zenith of your field. You would be widely cited in Dr. Mann’s papers.
Of course, on the scale of hard to soft sciences, niggleology ranks below even sociology. So, you have your work cut out for you if you want to raise the intellectual gravitas of the field.
> what names do the likes of Lindzen, Christy etc use for those that they disagree with?
Lindzen used “Lysenko”:
http://www.jpands.org/vol18no3/lindzen.pdf
Christy used “gatekeepers”:
http://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/files/Hearings/EP/20120920/HHRG-112-IF03-WState-ChristyJ-20120920.pdf
That’s small change compared to Spencer’s “GW nazis”:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/02/time-to-push-back-against-the-global-warming-nazis/
***
From the top of my hat.
If you need more, feel free to ask.
Josh, You are trying to establish a moral equivalency that is not correct. The public discourse is very asymmetrical in this regard. People like Mann, Gore, Holdren, are excused and their obvious errors are ignored. No demonization of Judith is beyond the pale however. Judith continues to be very mild by comparison. This episode just confirms an earlier track record including climate gate, Bertstrom, Peilke Jr., and many others. It is really climate McCarthyism and a shameful track record.
> It is really climate McCarthyism […]
Subtlety, understanding, and ability for self reflection impersonated.
Do you have any idea what was real McCarthyism, David Young? Here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
Perhaps you meant real “climate McCarthyism” but not “real McCarthyism”?
What would Steven Hayward say if he had an objective understanding of global climate change? For someone who fancies himself to be a “scholar”, a broader sense of objectivity might be expected.
But that is clearly much too much to hope for, because these days, “conservative” has become synonymous with “ideologically biased”, or less charitably, “ideologically stupid” – the very same label that would have been quite applicable to “liberals” some decades ago.
Hayward is defensive about the Republican political class for being cited as being “anti-science” – citing instead, “numerous instances of liberals . . . cutting funding for certain kinds of scientific research”, notably Bill Clinton’s cancelling the super-conducting supercollider, to which I might add the Clinton administration’s stupid decision to close down the fourth generation sodium cooled nuclear research facility in Argonne. But perhaps the more outstanding example of ideological stupidity by “liberals” is all the Ralph Naderites voting against Al Gore in the year 2000 in Florida to make George Bush their president (with happy deserts to all).
When it comes to climate issues, ideological stupidity seems to be distinctly a conservative Republican problem. Look at what happened to Congressman Bob Inglis of South Carolina in 2010. Congressman Inglis was clearly a conservative in his political views. But in addition to that, he was also open minded about the science issues of global warming and was concerned about the adverse environmental consequences that unchecked global warming would produce. He lost the election in 2010 because (in his own words) “the most enduring heresy that I committed was saying the climate change is real, and let’s do something about it”.
The clueless opinions (e.g., climate science is a hoax) of Sen. James Inhofe and Congressmen Dana Rohrabacher, Joe Barton, and Paul Broun (well funded by political contributions coming from fossil fuel interests), are characteristic of the conservative Republican view of global climate change. We need competent people in Congress who will look objectively at all the facts and heed the findings of scientific research in order to make competent decisions on climate, or on any other topic. Those Republicans who may know better are exceedingly reluctant to speak out against the climate deniers of their party, petrified out of fear that what happened to Eric Cantor for perceived differences with the Tea Party Taliban thinking on immigration, could well happen to them too, if they spoke out too openly on issues of global warming.
If Steven Hayward has any sense of objectivity, it is the Republican and Tea Party “anti-climate cultists” that he should be concerned about. To keep on denying climate science is erroneous, counter-productive, and downright irresponsible.
Steven Hayward’s rant that “climate change crusaders . . . appear to be going clinically mad”, appears to be a reflection on himself and his fellow climate deniers. Climate science always has been, and it will continue to be, an open forum for the discussion of climate science issues and research. If you pet theory or opinion of how global climate is supposed to operate gets trashed in the public forum, then perhaps your pet climate theory is simply contrary to known facts and physics.
I use the term “climate denier” purely as a descriptor term. The basic understanding of the terrestrial greenhouse effect, and the key role of atmospheric CO2, has been understood for over a century. Recent climate research has only clarified the details and more fully confirmed the basic facts about the ongoing problem and impending consequences of global warming. I have no problem about people being skeptical, but there comes a time when they should decide whether they understand the problem, or whether they don’t.
For the climate denier folks, the First Amendment gives you the right to express your opinion, but for any of your claims to be credible, physical evidence is required.
As I have noted here before, the climate system is indeed very complicated, and there are many things about the climate system that are poorly understood, and thereby uncertain. But that clearly does not mean that everything is therefore uncertain and beyond understandability. In particular, it is the global warming due to the increase in greenhouse gases that is best understood.
Apparently, it has been a difficult point to comprehend that global climate change is comprised of two components – a “natural” variability about a zero reference point, and the rather steady increase in global warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. This is where the climate denier cult goes airborne over a supposed “17-year global warming pause”, while atmospheric CO2 has continued to increase. Don’t worry folks, when that decadal cooling phase of the natural variability component switches signs, the accumulated global warming will be sure to make its presence felt.
As I have also pointed out before, the basic facts and physics of global warming are all there in the public record for anybody who cares to look. Atmospheric CO2 has increased from its pre-industrial level of 280 ppm to over 400 ppm. The spectral absorption properties of atmospheric CO2 are well known, and are tabulated in the HITRAN database. And, there is the Clausius-Clapeyron relation that has been known for 200 years, that describes the exponential temperature dependence of the atmospheric holding capacity for water vapor (for every 10 C increase in atmospheric temperature, the water vapor amount doubles).
All that was illustrated in a climate sensitivity experiment performed 30 years ago (Hansen et al., 1984). Doubling atmospheric CO2 produced a 4 W/m2 global energy imbalance. Running the model to equilibrium resulted in the global surface temperature warming by about 4 C, causing also the atmospheric water vapor to increase by about 30%. That is fully consistent with the Clausius-Claperyon constraint, which serves to characterize the nature of the water vapor feedback effect. More recent model physics refinements (primarily diminished cloud feedback effects) yield an equilibrium global warming of about 3 C for doubled CO2.
Those are the basic results obtained with a physical model of the global climate system. They are most robust in describing the global changes that take place the climate system (with the regional fluctuations averaged out). You can check out the basic feedback response of the atmosphere by simply comparing the seasonal surface temperature changes with the seasonal changes in atmospheric water vapor. They should follow closely the Clausius-Clapeyron relation exponential temperature dependence.
A Lacis
Running the model to equilibrium resulted in the global surface temperature warming by about 4 C, causing also the atmospheric water vapor to increase by about 30%.
Does the NOAA have a good idea of what has happened with the atmospheric water vapor over the past 50 years?
A 10 percent drop in water vapor ten miles above Earth’s surface has had a big impact on global warming, say researchers in a study published online January 28 in the journal Science. The findings might help explain why global surface temperatures have not risen as fast in the last ten years as they did in the 1980s and 1990s.
“Current climate models do a remarkable job on water vapor near the surface. But this is different — it’s a thin wedge of the upper atmosphere that packs a wallop from one decade to the next in a way we didn’t expect,” says Susan Solomon,
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100128_watervapor.html
Earlier there was disagreement about where does the warming effectively happen? This is sugesting that the stratosphere is a significant place. If this is true, what changes that? Dobson circulation?
What she’s saying seems to be, a 10% drop reverses 30% of the expected rise.
Andy, what is the zero reference point? Got a number? Got a number on how far from the zero reference point that natural variability can vary?
A. Lacis, ” Running the model to equilibrium resulted in the global surface temperature warming by about 4 C, causing also the atmospheric water vapor to increase by about 30%. ”
At what absolute temperature? A 30% increase at -18 C would be about a 0.06% increase in the water vapor fraction at sea level. At 30C the 30% increase would be from about a 1% increase in the fraction of water vapor per unit volume at sea level.
> I use the term “climate denier” purely as a descriptor term.
This is a stupid rhetorical stance.
My comment is purely descriptive.
Nicely done, Willard.
Thanks, Poker, but I think I’ve just been outplayed:
> You are a demagogue, that’s not name calling, that’s real time taxonomy.
http://judithcurry.com/2014/06/13/steven-hayward-conservatism-and-climate-science/#comment-597986
We must both bow to the master.
btw, If the current surface latent cooling is 88 Wm-2 assuming a linear increase for the 30% would result in 26 Wm-2 of additional “surface” cooling. It wouldn’t be linear of course, but just for an estimate that looks like a lot of latent cooling.
I honestly don’t get it, Don. Do you still have problems in America? Sure–the VA was a scandal when I got out of the Navy and surprise, surprise–it isn’t fixed yet. There are many other issues that are ongoing, from the looming retirement issues for Boomers to future competitiveness issues caused in part by the intransigence of my party. But disaster? You’re kind of defining disaster down, aren’t you?
China’s pollution–that’s a disaster.
What is it you don’t get, Tom? If the VA has been bad since you got out of the Navy, that’s makes it no less a disaster for the current sufferers of studied neglect and dishonesty. Your man was supposed to clean it up. You don’t think the influx of kids across the southern border is a disaster? Added to the disaster of the uncared for kids here already. You don’t think it’s a disaster that 90 something million able bodied people have dropped out of the work force? Plus 11 million on disability. It’s not a disaster that Obama is ruling by decree? If Bush was in office, you would be screaming about all these disasters. Oh, there’s the war on women and war on the environment and education. Repubs want to destry public schools with those evil vouchers. Guns! Don’t get me started on the massacres (ignore Chicago).
Tom, your crowd do on the climate scam just as they do on a wide range of other progressive issues. They exaggerate, they lie, they marginalize and demonize. I wonder why you caught on to the climate scam, but you can’t see the other crap.
A Lacis
Frankly, I find your rant on what Repulicans should be doing, well, clueless.
Paying attention to the electorate’s priorities seems what politicians do.
Climate change is just not a national priority except in some elitist circles and of course in the isolation of the Executive suite.
When no one is listening, the most prudent thing to do is shut up for a while.
Entitlement reform is not a national priority either, but it still needs to be done. And it may not be a top priority, but 70% of Americans still think we should do something to mitigate the problem according to this WaPo poll.
I believe attempts to shoehorn this debate into a conventional political topology have been successful from a political standpoint. Climate change has become a left/right issue. This thread is but one of many examples.
I don’t think it has benefited the debate from a scientific standpoint.
As a progressive liberal I am saddened and surprised to see boilerplate consensus dogma issue forth from the pens of people I respect and admire, from Paul Krugman and Kevin Drum to Andrew Sullivan and President Barack Obama. Those are all political statements, not scientific ones.
Similarly, I have seen common sense on climate change come from conservatives with whom I share no other points of view.
I find it fascinating when thinking about it as a meta-issue. I find it boring in comment threads.
Just for the record, I believe our President is wrong on climate change and right about just about everything else–including a rapid reduction in the use of coal to provide electricity in the United States.
And just for the record, George W. Bush lost Iraq. Obama just got out troops out of the burning building.
That’s interesting,Tom. Do you have any idea why you deviate from the left looney liberal progressive party line, only on the climate scam? Have you ever considered the possibility that you may be getting incrementally wiser and eventually you will realize how silly you have been? You may wake up some day and and not even think of blaming Bush for the liberal progressive left looney disaster du jour. Scares the crap out of you. Don’t it, Tom.
Seems like a lot more of the Middle East has burned to the ground after Obama took over.
Gee, Don, I’m looking around–I don’t see the disaster. Not in the United States. You have peace, economic expansion, lowering unemployment, increased access to healthcare, increased supplies of energy and lower prices for manufacturing, increased exports, dramatically lower levels of crime… what disaster are you referring to?
We have the IRS targeting the opposition to the Dimowit status quo, the spy agencies spying on everyone but terrorists, the lamest recovery in recent history, a wreck of a socialized health care system, a dead ambassador, veterans dying for lack of health care, the Middle East up in flames with the concomitant increase in oil prices, Russia thumbing its nose at us, an inundation of immigrants that Obama blindly doesn’t even consider a problem, the US giving guns to Mexican cartels, a border that is pretty much non-existent, carbon regs that if they are implemented will turn us into Europe WRT to high energy prices … yep, Robert, everything is just coming up roses.
Give Obama a chance to think about this latest crisis, jim. A little fundraising and golf will relax his mind. He will weigh all the options and chose the one with the least political risk for Barack Obama. At least, that is the calculation that will be made by the feckless CinC and his sycophant national security politicians. They are still unaware that the chickens are coming home to roost. Their interface with the military and intelligence communities is with the highest ranking REMF lap dog flunkies, who depend on political patronage for advancement. The troops doing the fighting and dying hate those people.
Yes tommy, I forgot how well things are going here. Especially that healthcare thing. You said you live in Shanghai, right?
Didn’t Nobel Krugman say that the VA was the way to go with national healthcare? Too bad you all didn’t listen to him.
My apologies–I put this in the wrong nested thread.
I honestly don’t get it, Don. Do you still have problems in America? Sure–the VA was a scandal when I got out of the Navy and surprise, surprise–it isn’t fixed yet. There are many other issues that are ongoing, from the looming retirement issues for Boomers to future competitiveness issues caused in part by the intransigence of my party. But disaster? You’re kind of defining disaster down, aren’t you?
China’s pollution–that’s a disaster.
I replied in the other place, but it went into moderation. I won’t bother writing it again. I just wonder why you can see through the climate scam, but you don’t see that your crowd uses the same tactics from the same playbook to impose on us their solutions for a wide range of pet progressive issues. My scotch is more interesting, so I won’t be looking for any reply.
“Gee, Don, I’m looking around–I don’t see the disaster…You’re kind of defining disaster down, aren’t you?”
“Dr. Sam Foote just retired after spending 24 years with the VA system in Phoenix.
…
Foote said that the number of dead veterans who died waiting for care is at least 40.”
40 dead veterans in one hospital alone. But that’s not a disaster.
Iraq descending in chaos with Islamists murdering people in mass beheadings in Obama’s 6th year, because he intentionally avoided reaching a status of forces agreement. But that’s not a disaster.
A new “healthcare” system that hasn’t insured anywhere near enough people to make the system work, not to mention they don;t even know how many are insured, and how many of those actually paid, and how many of those who actually paid are actually covered.. But that’s not a disaster.
The unilateral release of five top terrorists, with a fig leaf of a prisoner exchange for one American who was at best AWOL, and at worst a deserter collaborator. But that’s not a disaster.
Unemployment among black youth in Chicago, according to the Urban league, 92%. But don’t worry, it’s only 83% nationally. But that’s not a disaster.
A real national unemployment rate of 13% throughout this presidency, if you count the millions who have been unemployed so long they have stopped looking for work. But that’s not a disaster.
These are not disasters if you’re an employed progressive safely removed from the actual policies of the worst, most incompetent, most clueless president ever elected in the United States.
After all, it’s all Bush’s fault. 6 freakin’ years into the “fundamental transformation of America.”
Forget about murdered law enforcement personnel from Fast and Furious; a dead ambassador and four dead American heroes in Benghazi;the IRS intentionally targeting political opponents of the president;the Justice Department colluding with the IRS,and jailing film makers for the same reason; and serial lying on all of the above.
If you like your political myopia, you can keep your political myopia.
Don Monfort,
” I just wonder why you can see through the climate scam, but you don’t see that your crowd uses the same tactics from the same playbook to impose on us their solutions for a wide range of pet progressive issues.”
That is a a fascinating phenomenon I have thought about for years. For every David Horowitz who makes a complete change from progressive to conservative, there are dozens who can do so to only a limited extent. Christopher Hitchens being a great example.
The reason? Progressivism appeals to vanity. By being a progressive you are one of the elite, because the elite tell you so. It becomes who you are. That is why I always say progressives are progressives first and everything else second.
That sense of superiority is really hard to give up. You spend your adult life convinced you are part of an intellectual vanguard. Everyone you know thinks the same way you do. You are taught from pre-school on not to even listen to counter-arguments, let alone actually think about them.
Then one day, you come across an issue and you just can’t swallow the cognitive dissonance on that issue any more. For some it is climate, for others like Kirsten Powers it is abortion.
So what do you do? Do you rethink all the issues you learned from the same people who taught you that one issue? What happens if you do that?
You end up admitting to yourself at the very least that you have been wrong on virtually every major policy issue of your lifetime. Not only were you wrong, but those stupid conservatives you ridiculed and laughed at, the ones who made you so certain of your own superiority, were right.
Not many people can do that. It takes real humility. And funny enough, it also takes confidence in yourself. You have to learn to value principles over your own sense of self.
And THAT in my opinion is what stops those who finally engage in critical analysis on one issue, from engaging in it on all the others. It’s also why so many who flirt with critical thinking often end up giving up and scurrying back to the progressive tribe entirely.
It’s so much easier to stop short and declare yourself an “independent” or “moderate.” That way you can accommodate your new found realization regarding the one issue, with the added benefit that you can now feel superior to both progressives and conservatives. Which was why you were a progressive in the first place.
GaryM, I’m a progressive and proud of it. We’ve done a lot for the country and the world and I’m happy to be where I am on the political spectrum.
I don’t tell conservatives how they should think or that they should change–conservatives at various times have been just as good for the country and the world and they have a record they should be proud of. In my honest and humble opinion, most of that record is not recent.
And there’s a word for the long list you provide and the word is not disaster. It is ‘problem.’ Problems will always be with us.
Veterans died waiting for care for a century before Obama was elected. I’m a veteran. My father is a veteran.My grandfather was a veteran. I know.
The Middle East has been a problem for millenia before Obama was elected. He didn’t solve it? What a surprise.
etc., etc.
As for Obama’s penchant for golf, when Eisenhower, Kennedy, etc. did it nobody complained. Even their opponents commented that it could keep them out of trouble. Give your opinion of Obama, you should be praising any tendency for him to play King Log rather than King Stork.
Tom Fuller,
That reminds me of what Bob Dylan (Robert Zimmerman) once said something to the effect of people always asking him to choose which tunnels he should go down. He was, like me, fairly apolitical.
Tom Fuller – If Obama causes enough problems at once, it IS a disaster! Obama is the most destructive President to the US ever!
From the article:
…
Chris Cabrera, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 3307 in the Rio Grande Valley, said that confirmed gang members in Mexico — including those from Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) — are coming into the country to be reunited with their families, National Review reported Friday.
SEE ALSO: Border Patrol changing diapers, heating baby formula for surge of children
“If he’s a confirmed gang member in his own country, why are we letting him in here? … I’ve heard people come in and say, ‘You’re going to let me go, just like you let my mother go, just like you let my sister go. You’re going to let me go as well, and the government’s going to take care of us,’” Mr. Cabrera told the magazine.
…
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/14/border-agents-lament-mexican-gang-members-entering/
A Lacis: All that was illustrated in a climate sensitivity experiment performed 30 years ago (Hansen et al., 1984). Doubling atmospheric CO2 produced a 4 W/m2 global energy imbalance. Running the model to equilibrium resulted in the global surface temperature warming by about 4 C, causing also the atmospheric water vapor to increase by about 30%. That is fully consistent with the Clausius-Claperyon constraint, which serves to characterize the nature of the water vapor feedback effect.
How accurate have those results been to date? Say annual means and daily profiles? The disparity between Equator and poles? Land vs water surface?
At given places and times, how accurate are the Clausius-Clapayron approximations to the actual vertical distribution of water vapor, clouds, rainfall, and their ongoing changes?
How long does it take for the equilibrium to occur? If it’s an asymptote, how long before the transition toward the equilibrium is say 99% complete?
A Lacis: I use the term “climate denier” purely as a descriptor term. The basic understanding of the terrestrial greenhouse effect, and the key role of atmospheric CO2, has been understood for over a century. Recent climate research has only clarified the details and more fully confirmed the basic facts about the ongoing problem and impending consequences of global warming. I have no problem about people being skeptical, but there comes a time when they should decide whether they understand the problem, or whether they don’t.
What I deny is not “climate” or “climate change”, but the idea that the details of CO2 and climate have been worked out in sufficient detail (completeness and accuracy) to predict the effects of a doubling of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere; and the idea that a massive reduction of CO2 concentration will have any beneficial effect. You quoted eventual increases of 4W/m^2 and 4K in surface temperature, without much evidence of when half that change will have occurred. Those changes are so small that they are below the limit of resolution of the models used to get them. Even the sign of cloud feedback is disputed in the peer-reviewed literature. I agree with lots and lots of particular statements in the scientific literature, including that an increase in CO2, other things being equal, ought to produce and increase in the heat stored in the atmosphere (some sensible, some latent.) but I also assert that “other things” are not likely to be equal, many are little understood, and there is no reason to believe particular model projections (“expectations”, forecasts, predictions etc) in the future.
You name some Republican opponents of large-scale disinvestment in fossil fuels and large-scale restrictions on CO2. Surely you do not claim that a lot of the Democrats (Biden, Obama, Gore, Kerry) actually understand the science better than Inhof?
If “climate denier” is “purely descriptive”, I have to ask, Who denies climate?
A Lacis argues that AGW is real because it passes the “duck test”. R. Lindzen counters that AGW proposal is misleading because it is a “circle ellipse” situation
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck but it needs batteries, you probably have the wrong abstraction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_test
My sympathy to both sides. This is a tough fundamental problem (the underlying anisotropy, … Needing to resort to proof by induction where strict objectivity is unavailable)
Mathew –
The simulation of global climate with current GCMs models atmospheric changes in temperature, water vapor and cloud distribution in similar fashion to what is happening in the real world. Water vapor is evaporated from water surfaces at a rate that is dependent on wind speed, relative humidity, and water and air temperatures. The evaporated water vapor is transported upward and horizontally by atmospheric dynamics. When moist air parcels get mixed into colder air such that the relative humidity exceeds 100%, water vapor condenses to form clouds (that is where the Clausius-Clapeyron relation comes in).
All that day-to-day simulated weather is too variable and complicated to keep track of. Instead, monthly averages are accumulated of the temperature, water vapor, and cloud fields for closer examination. It is in those averaged quantities that the Clausius-Clapeyron exponential temperature dependence is still fully evident.
Climate modeling comparisons are typically made between climate equilibrium states (e.g., current climate quasi-equilibrium and doubled CO2 quasi-equilibrium). Approach to equilibrium is clearly asymptotic, but the climate system has nowhere else to go but toward its equilibrium point, with natural variability fluctuations about that point.
Hansen et al. (2008) http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha00410c.html (Figure S7 shows that the climate system achieves about 40% of its equilibrium sensitivity within about 5 years, 60% within about a century, with 99% taking longer than 1000 years. There is uncertainty in the time scale of ocean heat uptake, but not that much uncertainty in the equilibrium point. As I said before, the climate system has nowhere else to go but toward its equilibrium point. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is not appreciably affected by the climate system’s approach to equilibrium (magnified by the water vapor feedback contribution, the atmospheric amount of CO2 is what determines the equilibrium point).
A Lacis,
Thank you, but it’s “Matthew”.
Approach to equilibrium is clearly asymptotic, but the climate system has nowhere else to go but toward its equilibrium point, with natural variability fluctuations about that point.
High dimensional non-linear dissipative systems do not have equilibria even with uniform surfaces and uniform inputs, so the claim that “toward the equilibrium” is the only destination that the climate system has to go to is essentially empty.
The simulation of global climate with current GCMs models atmospheric changes in temperature, water vapor and cloud distribution in similar fashion to what is happening in the real world. Water vapor is evaporated from water surfaces at a rate that is dependent on wind speed, relative humidity, and water and air temperatures. The evaporated water vapor is transported upward and horizontally by atmospheric dynamics. When moist air parcels get mixed into colder air such that the relative humidity exceeds 100%, water vapor condenses to form clouds (that is where the Clausius-Clapeyron relation comes in).
Well, sure. I have a lot of respect for the GCMs and the people who write and run them, but my questions are about accuracy and completeness. I know “where the Clausius-Clapayron relation comes in”, but it is an equilibrium result, and so my question is how accurate is the mathematical relationship in describing actual distributions in the air, especially in the summer storms that can be easily witnessed in most parts of the non-dry regions of the globe.
My most frequent question is: If the amount of downwelling long-wave IR increases, how much of the energy striking the non-dry surfaces of the Earth is converted to the latent heat in vaporizing H2O and how much into warming the surface. In the non-equilibrium dynamic case, this question matters a lot. Of the increase in dwlwir, how much of the increased energy is thus transported to the upper troposphere by the process that you outlined there in the quoted text? Because equilibrium is not obtained (even if it existed) with fluctuating input, the question becomes How much warming can the extra forcing actually cause before nightfall/winter etc.
“In similar fashion” as you wrote I accept, sort of. But how accurate is all that, and can the change of cloud cover be predicted?
“In similar fashion” as you wrote I accept, at least sort of with some elaboration on “similar fashion”. But how accurate is all that, and can the change of cloud cover be predicted?
Lastly for today, how much time passes between the change in CO2 concentration (doubling, for the sake of discussion) and 50% (or 90% or some other fraction) of the equilibrium response.
Averages are useful summaries, but everything that happens is caused by the circumstances of the place and time, not by the spatio-temporal averages. Back to clouds again, the effects of cloud changes depend on whether the changes occur principally at night or in the daytime; and on their altitudes. Working with spatio-temporal averages necessarily entails errors of approximation.
Among the reasons that I cite the textbooks by Kondepudi and Prigogine, by Pierrehumbert, and by writers on dynamical systems such as Strogatz is to show where the hints to the inaccuracies of the models come from, and that I am familiar with most of what you have written. You are trying to predict an effect that is smaller than the aggregate approximation error of the models that you are using.
Add to that, to date the actual global mean temp is “increasing” at a lower rate than predicted. Not only is there random error, there is to date significant bias.
So why did you and Hansen not foresee the pause? Looks like all you have is Consensus. Pack it up and let the scientists figure it out!
It looks lke there is still a serious misunderstanding about what GCMs do internally and how much influence an individual researcher has in affecting the output.
“All that was illustrated in a climate sensitivity experiment performed 30 years ago (Hansen et al., 1984). Doubling atmospheric CO2 produced a 4 W/m2 global energy imbalance. Running the model”
Calling computer model runs “experiments” is ridiculous, Lacis. Buy a clue. Your precious GCMs are hypotheses expressed in software. A model run produces predictions based upon the hypothesis. Comparing the predictions to reality is what constitutes the experiment. Write that down.
And, there is the Clausius-Clapeyron relation that has been known for 200 years, that describes the exponential temperature dependence of the atmospheric holding capacity for water vapor (for every 10 C increase in atmospheric temperature, the water vapor amount doubles).
It has been equally well-known for 200 years that the potential for increased water-holding capacity is not evidence that the water content of the atmosphere will increase. Consider, for example, the enormous chunks of arid and semi-arid land on the Earth’s surface. Consider, too, that some regions, especially those over the water of oceans and large lakes, are already saturated with water content so that the water rapidly precipitates out. Consider, that the leaves of some vegetation have taken charge of their own fate and self-control the gains and loss of water independent of the potential water-holding capacity of the atmosphere.
Consider, finally, that some of the exchanges of mass and energy at the interfaces between subsystems within the Earth’s climate system are dominated/controlled by physical phenomena and process at the interface and not the bulk-to-bulk driving potential. The latter is merely a convenient replacement approximation for the actual gradients in the driving potentials on each side of the interface. Those gradients were annihilated when the local-instanteous formulations of the basic equations were averaged.
Finally, over the small ranges of suggested temperature changes the exponential dependency can be accurately approximated by a linear relationship. Throwing in the word “exponential” adds nothing to the discussions.
Theory has to be backed by data – I’m thinking total column water vapor is the proper metric and it isn’t increasing according to the data I’ve found.
Nice scientific word salad. I am sure annihilation is a convenient excuse for a conservation of energy Get-Out-Of-Jail card.
What would Andy Lacis say if he had an objective understanding of global climate change? For someone who fancies himself to be a “scholar”, a broader sense of objectivity might be expected.
But that is clearly much too much to hope for, because these days, “green” has become synonymous with “ideologically biased”, or less charitably, “ideologically stupid”. And climate scientists, sadly, are mainly “green”.
You do yourself a disservice by denigrating those who disagree with you on ideology and priorities. You should stick to the science, and more to the point, you should do that science a lot more rigorously than you have done so far. (Your paper on positive cloud feed-backs was an embarrassment; as Troy Masters showed… you selected the single temperature data set…. a ‘reconstructed data set’, not actual measured temperatures, which would support your preferred positive cloud feed-back outcome. Most data sets showed exactly the opposite). And even while the text of your paper admitted that there was far too much noise to conclude with any certainty that clouds have a net positive feed-back, you immediately began to point to your paper in public comments as ‘proof’ that cloud feed-backs are net positive. Please, do you really think everyone is so stupid as to believe such rubbish?
The weight of the observational evidence suggests an ECS value far lower than the canonical Charney value of 3C per doubling… more like somewhere under 2C per doubling. Does that matter? Yes, very much so, since the urgency of public action, and the cost for that action, depend very much on the true value for ECS.
Please stop using science as a camel that is forced to carry the burden of your preferred policy ideas.
A. Lacis- Don’t worry folks, when that decadal cooling phase of the natural variability component switches signs, the accumulated global warming will be sure to make its presence felt.
Glecker et al (2006) Krakatoa lives … Fig 1c (blue line VOLC) suggests a century or longer residency for ‘natural variability’. … Your models. Your settled science …. And seemingly so far off kilter to your earlier predictions as to raise fearful doubts and concern.
Sorry but its your models by your experts indicating a 100+ year latency in the ocean. I don’t know who to trust any more, quite frankly
http://www.image.ucar.edu/idag/Papers/Gleckler_Krakatoa.pdf
Obama tells graduates to beware climate change deniers
ANAHEIM, Calif. — President Barack Obama said denying climate change is like arguing the moon is made of cheese, as he issued a call to action on global warming to Saturday’s graduates of the University of California, Irvine.
Obama issued the call to the tens of thousands gathered at Angel Stadium even though he said Congress “is full of folks who stubbornly and automatically reject the scientific evidence” and say climate change is a hoax or fad.
http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/obama-tells-graduates-to-beware-climate-change-deniers/
UC Irvine is probably the most conservative public university in California. I lived in close proximity to it for nearly 20 years.
Global warmingClimate change has been a political football from the word go and Obama refuses to acknowledge that. He doesn’t personally know science from shinola and it shows.I would reserve the term denier for those who completely reject the IPCC sensitivity range analysis. They are effectively denying what is a consensus view among the experts. Some don’t have an alternative view, so they simply deny, and this term is the only way to describe them. Others are almost certain the temperature rise is primarily natural, not anthro-CO2, so they may be called “naturalists”, I suppose.
Or, better still, “naturists” because they use the generic term “natural variation” like a fig leaf to cover that they really don’t know why the climate is changing.
I don’t think this is a good litmus test, since people are still disagreeing about how to calculate and interpret sensitivity, and even whether it is a useful metric
Exactly! Sensitivity is a myth. There is only one reason for assuming it actually represents a constant number, or even a number: IPCC politics would be impossible without it. And that’s not a scientific reason, it’s political.
Judith, you write “I don’t think this is a good litmus test, since people are still disagreeing about how to calculate and interpret sensitivity, and even whether it is a useful metric.
Climate sensitivity cannot be calculated. It cannot be measured with current technology. No feedback climate sensitivity is impossible to measure. All numeric values of climate sensitivity are estimated, and are little more than guesses.
Jim:
I agree with you 100%.
What we can do is compute the difference in global mean temperature at 2100 and subtract the global mean temperature from 1850.
That will tell us how much the temperature has changed from 1850 to 2100 – but it is not climate sensitivity (which is just the temperature change from doubling CO2).
I call this the effective climate sensitivity – as it is an all feedbacks and all forcings delta T measurement.
I anticipate that alarmists will quibble with this number in 2100. If it is low (1.2C to 1.5C delta T) alarmists will say, well that is not the true CS, because of the volcanic eruption of 2080, or the sun was not very active for the last 25 years – or some other excuse.
On the other hand – skeptics will quibble if it is high (3 C to 4.5 C).
In the end – this number (the delta T from 2100 – 1850) is totally useless, because what we really need is to separate out warming from natural causes from warming from human causes.
We don’t seem to have a good handle on how to do this yet.
Will you let us know when you have made your mind up, jimmy? A couple of us are really interested. You can call me a denier, jimmy dee. Every time you do I’ll send a hundred bucks to the Heartland folks.
“Consensus” is not a tenet the scientific method. Science is not conducted by head count. Who say the IPCC range analysis is correct? The latest AR5 report now indicates there no best estimate for ECS. LOL. The U.N. One of the most corrupt organizations on the planet.
It is ironic that while the skeptics/deniers promote uncertainty, they have an even narrower equilibrium sensitivity range than the IPCC, being almost certain that it is below 2 C per doubling. What gives?
I like how the IPCC works out that equilibrium climate sensitivity thing, jimmy. From wikipedia:
“A committee on anthropogenic global warming convened in 1979 by the National Academy of Sciences and chaired by Jule Charney[12] estimated climate sensitivity to be 3 °C, plus or minus 1.5 °C. Only two sets of models were available; one, due to Syukuro Manabe, exhibited a climate sensitivity of 2 °C, the other, due to James E. Hansen, exhibited a climate sensitivity of 4 °C. “According to Manabe, Charney chose 0.5 °C as a not-unreasonable margin of error, subtracted it from Manabe’s number, and added it to Hansen’s. Thus was born the 1.5 °C-to-4.5 °C range of likely climate sensitivity that has appeared in every greenhouse assessment since…”
Very clever stuff.
Don M, yes, and a few hundred estimates from models and paleoclimate to observations, since then have been in the range too, but not narrowed it down, which is why I was asking how the skeptics are so certain.
Which skeptics are certain, jimmy? Can you name a hundred?
The skeptics typically don’t have a wider range, because they don’t add in a grab bag full of dire assumptions and the-sky-is-falling tipping points. Skeptics are skeptical of assumptions. Get it now, jimmy?
Yes, skeptics also plead ignorance. I get it.
‘The climate system has jumped from one mode of operation to another in the past. We are trying to understand how the earth’s climate system is engineered, so we can understand what it takes to trigger mode switches. Until we do, we cannot make good predictions about future climate change… Over the last several hundred thousand years, climate change has come mainly in discrete jumps that appear to be related to changes in the mode of thermohaline circulation.’ Wally Broecker
There seem very few words for the lamentable intellectual shortcomings of the Borg collective.
Sensitivity is a very useful metric for understanding paleoclimate and why it was so warm when CO2 levels were near 1000 ppm, or why the Ice Ages were so cold with CO2 levels below 200 ppm. I can’t think of a reason why it would not be as equally useful for the future as for the past. Remember, that the likes of Lindzen and Spencer are also fixated on sensitivity, and wishing it to be low, because they are aware what a high sensitivity means for the consequences of burning all the fossil fuels. Bengtsson and Schwartz had a whole paper on sensitivity recently, coming up with a lower limit near 2 C just based on observations.
Now if you could just explain what caused the CO2 to drop when temperature and CO2 were both at their peaks then you might have a complete theory. And if you did bother to even think about that conundrum then it’s certainly more than any climate scientist has ever done!
(Not that this CO2/temperature relationship even exists outside of the Antarctic anyway but let’s just skip over that trifling fact – like climate scientists do!)
Climate scientists have explained this James, you are not paying attention.
JamesG, natural variation of only about 0.1 C can explain the pause. You have to be careful about interpreting snippets of time series. Some skeptics don’t believe that natural variation is strong enough to counter CO2 for any length of time, but it can for a decade or thereabouts. The temperature record is consistent with a picture of CO2 combined with +/- 0.1 C of natural variation, and has been since at least 1950.
Disagreement with consensus climate sensitivity is more accurate and diplomatic than denial of same. Denial is more associated with refusing to accept facts. Consensus climate sensitivity is pretty phucking far from a fact.
I agree that the sensitivity is a metric. What I find most interesting is that the climate sensitivity, as defined, is lower when it is based on actual observations but is higher when based on model output. This suggests to me that the models need more work.
Some writers here seem to think that the right answer is the goal of research. (Yeh, it’s 2! We can all go home now.)
Hayward sounds like a nice guy but he has confused “conservative” with “libertarian”, aka “classical liberal”. It is true though, that libertarians tend to have more in common with conservatives than leftists, especially on the climate policy issue – which has really become a question of top-down kyoto style versus bottom-up adaptation.
So the thread went right down the rabbit hole regarding “Name-calling” and every other distraction the likes of Joshua prefer to blather on about. Dr. Curry’s comments were an assist to the process by setting up the false priority. Calling people holocaust deniers is appalling but the standard MO, it’s more of a concern that substantial part of the AGW agenda supports think and believe along a particularly common political line, leftist, obfuscate the point at every turn, dominate the particular “science” niche in question and resent any inquire or observation of the fact. Of these two faults, name-calling or massive coordination and corruption along a political line from alleged objective “experts” which warrants more attention?? Why would Dr. Curry emphasize a comparatively minor abuse while remaining relatively indirect and obtuse to the most serious failing that the listed article is observing? The article wasn’t about name-calling but something far more important.
This partisan tilt—real or exaggerated—among the scientific establishment aggravates a general problem that afflicts nearly all domains of policy these days, namely, the way in which policy is distorted by special interests and advocacy groups in the political process.
The issue is that leftist politics aren’t peripheral to the AGW agenda but central, name calling is trivial in that perspective. It’s obvious why Joshua would thread-jack and get board grief for it. Dr. Curry writes many sensible things about “name-calling” but the actual content of the Hayward’s point are not commented on. Much of the board quibble with Joshua, ignore Dr. Curry’s obfuscation of the Hayward theme. So the main topic was trashed, Joshua is pleased and it’s fair to assume Dr. Curry is as well.
==> “:Much of the board quibble with Joshua, ignore Dr. Curry’s obfuscation of the Hayward theme. So the main topic was trashed, Joshua is pleased and it’s fair to assume Dr. Curry is as well”
Yes, indeed. I managed to “distract” and “derail” all you “skeptics” from your important work of slinging the same insults in thread after thread, day after day.
How will you ever recover from my dastardly deed? You must feel devastated. Your momentum has been lost. I made such a difference…
I earned my money yesterday, didn’t I? Another victory for The Team!!!!!
The Hayward article had something meaningful included that Dr. Curry obfuscated by heading into the woods in a sidebar about “name calling”.
Lets list priorities, score them relative to the debate;
A. Name-calling, telling in that advocated invented the lexicon “denier” which references “holocaust deniers” leftist cultural coding. 2% of the AGW debate value.
B. Left-wing indoctrination, cultural control of most of what is activist green and AGW “policy” debate define as “science”. At least ten times as important as name-calling. It’s what most of the article was about if not presented in a civil that couldn’t (will not in any case) possibly be reciprocated by the fanatics who lead the AGW cause.
How strong is the climate change orthodox to left-wing ideology? So strong Dr. Curry trivializes it, speaks of it indirectly as one of many factors. Maintains the preeminence that’s all based on a “science” debate in majority. Two legitimate “sides” in disagreement.
In short, nonsense.
The Hayward article was same ol’ same ol,’ Cwon. Not a bleeding thing about it that we haven’t seen thousands of times.
Joshua, you and Dr. Curry have seen and ignored it “a thousand times”, it’s called the core of the AGW meme reasoning. AGW is political not scientifically based. It evolved from other green leftist, Marxist essentially, motivations about central planning and control. While people can bury their lives in science details, make a living, absorb the premise and make it part of their culture it doesn’t change the essential nature that it was all inspired and evolved on a premise that experts and the state should manage, redistribute and control in place of capital interests. The underlying populist dislike of particular carbon interests can be traced to the later 19th century and that is really where the roots of the AGW movement can be linked. AGW replaced traditional “air pollution” themes that were running out politically because of air quality improvements and regulatory authority growth of the EPA formation. Moderate green regulations are broadly accepted while radical inclinations are rejected. AGW is based on radical social agenda and power grasping that are referenced by Hayward.
Political success always leads to excess and new ventures of expansion. The EPA mainstreamed green power and that leads to the dreams of even more power for the self-identified “environmentalists”. The academic underpinnings, regulatory and government supports all expanded and are reflected in the AGW alliance with a biased and similarly partisan main stream media arm. The “science” could be coincidentally correct but of course it isn’t. We have simply watched the degradation of science standards and the requirements for reproducible “proof” in methods and reporting. Hence, the modeling rationalizations and dependency. This is a movement that came with a high social price on basic critical thinking and reasoning. It reflects social decline.
The article wasn’t about “name calling”, Dr. Curry dragged the conversation that way to avoid the point Hayward was making.
Obama nailed the deniers to the wall.
WebHubTelescope | June 15, 2014 at 2:48 am | Reply
“Obama nailed the deniers to the wall.”
It could be worse. He might start nailing them to crosses instead.
Did he say “The science is settled. Period”?
Just like he nailed the terrorist leaders.
Judith, ATTP has a post on this Hayward post and it is very predictable.
We read there in the comments:
1. There are lots of errors in the Hayward piece beyond confusing water vapor and clouds.
2. You are a bad person to have highlighted this piece.
3. At the Guardian they don’t use “denier” so its all OK. The denier label is just descriptive anyway. This is offensive of course.
4. Hayward is associated with all kinds of Koch money and thus is an evil person.
In short, no subtlety, no understanding, no ability for self reflection. There is sure a lot of self-righteousness though. Al Gore or Holdren’s errors are passed over in silence. It’s rank hypocrisy and shows how far gone this debate is in some circles.
The term denier is particularly nasty having overtones of anti-semitism, Nazism, and those who condone its use are themselves nasty and particularly despicable.
I reproduced David Young’s comment at AT’s:
http://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/climate-cultists/#comment-23900
That should increase subtle understanding and self reflection over there.
Yes, I appreciate it Willard. Some at least will read it and understand it. however, we know that some are so involved in the politization of the issue that they will not really get it. You note that Andy Lacis is taken seriously here at Judith’s despite nasty language and strong opinions at variance with Judith’s. Is the same true elsewhere. I think probably not.
You’re welcome, David Young. For measured language, you are an example for us all. For instance, how you associate the D word with nazism (and even anti-semitism!) without batting an eye is quite splendid.
I hope you realize that your “Andy Lacis is taken seriously here” omits that he’s not always taken seriously here, that there’s no equivalent of a contrarian Andy Lacis that goes at AT’s, and that what you presume by this counterfactual you’re implying is false. Even TinyCO2 got a better reception than his manipulative remarks may deserve:
http://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/climate-cultists/#comment-23821
Thank you anyway for your concerns.
You’re welcome, David Young. For measured language, you are an example for us all. For instance, how you associate the D word with N-ism (and even anti-semitism!) without batting an eye is quite splendid.
I hope you realize that your “Andy Lacis is taken seriously here” omits that he’s not always taken seriously here, that there’s no equivalent of a contrarian Andy Lacis that goes at AT’s, and that what you presume by this counterfactual you’re implying is false. Even TinyCO2 got a better reception than his manipulative remarks may deserve:
http://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/climate-cultists/#comment-23821
Thank you anyway for your concerns.
Willard, The association of denial with holocaust denial is quite a clear association, whether intended or not. I believe there are some instances where the association is made more clear by those using the denier label. The same thing has happened to words like racist. The intention when it is used is often to bring up mental images of the KKK or of Bull Conner and to smear people you disagree with. It is just a term used to fire up the base. At bottom though, its use is offensive because it trivializes real racism.
A smear is a demogogic technique in which the perpetrator uses vague associations (often unfounded ones) to try to discredit the opinions of people you disagree with. I would argue that the denier label is a smear in the case where it is applied to people like Judith.
> A smear is a demogogic technique in which the perpetrator uses vague associations (often unfounded ones) to try to discredit the opinions of people you disagree with. I would argue that the denier label is a smear in the case where it is applied to people like Judith.
I’m sure you would, David Young. I’m sure you would. Please tell me more about the “climate McCarthysm” you recently used not far from here:
http://judithcurry.com/2014/06/13/steven-hayward-conservatism-and-climate-science/#comment-597820
How is this not a smear?
Thank you again for your concerns.
David, don’t expect willard to give up name calling. His particular bete noire is Steve McIntyre. He refers to him by the Batman villain moniker of “The Auditor.” You should get him going on it sometime. For instance, did you know that McI’s aside that he doesn’t publish every word he thinks is equivalent to the Mafia’s custom of “omerta.”
” A smear is a demogogic technique in which the perpetrator uses vague associations (often unfounded ones) to try to discredit the opinions of people you disagree with.” – willard
HA HA HA HA HA, ROTFLMAO!
Have you ever looked at your own website? Seriously people, click on his links with this quote in mind. Comedy gold.
Help David Young, TJA, provide links:
http://judithcurry.com/2014/06/05/what-is-skepticism-anyway/#comment-593364
INTEGRITY ™ – Forget about Yamal
> David, don’t expect willard to give up name calling.
Nicknaming is not exactly name calling, e.g.:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/tagged/stevedoesnickname
If I chose a nickname and you use it, that is not name calling. If you label me with one, that is name calling.
They are right. You have no clue what you are talking about.
Well, it appears that Climate McCarthism is a term also used by many of its victims such as Pielke Jr.’s defenders and Bergstrom. It’s intended to call out the use of smears, like the use of the term denier.
TJA, I have found that Willard specializes in irony and likes the finer points of rhetoric. He has taken in upon himself to audit me on the web for some reason. Some would find his attention flattering, but I do not aspire to this level of undeserved fame.
I just wish there was more serious discussion of the real science behind climate models and fluid dynamics. I have mostly given up on this because the vast majority of blog participants, even including the climate scientists don’t have the required background and are unwilling to invest the time to learn.
TJA, Willard on Mcintyre is just such small potatoes. Sure everyone with a long public track record has some questionable statements. It’s so typical of a milder form of smearing people. You look for minor errors without taking into account the whole body of their work. Climate Audit is in general one of the best climate blogs and is a good source of information.
” Sure everyone with a long public track record has some questionable statements.”
Well, you would think so, but if McIntyre has any such “questionable statements,” our friend has not found them.
> Well, it appears that Climate McCarthism is a term also used by many of its victims such as Pielke Jr.’s defenders and Bergstrom. It’s intended to call out the use of smears, like the use of the term denier.
Indeed, David Young, invoking McCarthyism is symptomatic of victim playing. Some would even argue that it is a demagogic technique to try to discredit the opinions of people you disagree with.
But the science of fluid dynamics, I know, I know.
Thank you for the kind words, which I take it were not meant in a smearing way.
There’s really a fine irony in willard missing the scientific forest for the rhetorical trees.
==========
The forest of science is inhabited by at least one fluid squirrel.
That squirrel has been found ca. 2011 (H/T Kevin):
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/09/greenland-meltdown/comment-page-2/#comment-215883
Willard, Do you have anything to say on any scientific topic of importance? I am not your monkey and you are really just obstructing any useful discussions.
Too bad you tune out the chatter, the background microwave of the forest, for the clatterings in the cocina in your treehouse.
=============
David Young,
Considering that I’m not your monkey either, I’m not sure you’re in any position to burden me with any request. Since you ask so kindly, here’s a methodological point. I’ll note you that you can’t even provide one single citation properly to substantiate your recurrent appeals to the bandwagons of future research in fluid dynamics. Even I would be interested to see them. I hope you understand where bad methods lead in science.
***
Let’s also remind you of how this subthread started:
Was this a scientific editorial you wished to submit? I guess not. If I am right, that means that your current challenge is just your own petulant way to distract us from the fact that you got caught (among other suboptimal moves) whining about name-calling and smearing while hurling accusations of MacCarthyism.
Next time you wish to judge subtle understanding and self reflection, I suggest you remind yourself of this exchange first.
Thank you again so much for your concerns.
Willard,
Even though I am suspicious you may be playing climate ball here because the articles are very easy to find with just a little bit of effort based on the information I gave at ATTP, here is information that will enable you to very easily locate them. Some are behind paywall but you can afford the small fees involved.
1. The Aeronautical Journal, July 2002, lead article on Turbulence.
2. AIAA Journal, papers to appear, Kamenetskiy et al, “Numerical Evidence of Multiple Solutions for the Reynolds’ Averaged Navier-Stokes Equations for High-Lift Configurations.”
3. AIAA Journal, papers to appear, Young et al, “Implemention of a Separated Flow Capability in TRANAIR.”
There is one more to appear on design optimization and ill-posedness that is in review and another by Kamenetskiy on increments and fixed grids vs. adaptivity for RANS that is really fine work that will come out in January.
The track record is that people in the climate blog wars say they want to access the papers and then never do. This is an example of bad faith I think and its common amoung the peanut galleries of activists and non scientists.
Seriously, though, if you do read them, constructive negative feedback is always welcome.
I would also urge you to think a little about the way climate ball is played both here and at ATTP and its poisonous effect of scientific communications. I have complained to Judith both here many times and in email about the serial name calling. Sometimes I wonder if you are a help or a hinderance in this goal.
In all honesty Willard, I’ve never seen any of your comments that actually made a constructive contribution, but maybe that’s just me and maybe its time to go back to ignoring you.
Willard has an advanced degree in Niggleology. His sub-specialty is subtle-niggles. He is at times so subtle that only Willard aficionados can delineate the meaning. But alas, niggles are just niggles. The bandwidth consumed by Willard could be termed a Tragedy of the Commons. Opportunity costs and all that.
> very easily locate them
Then do locate them and report. Or ask your monkeys. This is your schtick, and you can’t even cite the author names of the 2002 paper. Kevin believes it’s Leschziner & Drikakis, 2002 [1]. The Aeronautical Journal does not have its 2002 archives online [2].
Also notice that we’re talking about 2002, David Young, more than 12 years ago, and a bunch of articles to be published. What happened in between? That smells fishy, even to me. When was the Drela & Fairman report, where’s Krakos & Darmofal 2010 [3]?
Or perhaps you sit on a gold mine? Then you need to share. Go ahead, write a post. Submit it to Judy. Tell the world about your findings. Start a blog. Be praised. Be famous. Go play “stand aside, I’m a scientist” with otters like you.
Anything is better for you than to whine (again) about poisoning the well after your ClimateBall ™ performance today, which again you refuse to own.
***
In return, perhaps you’d like to contribute to what I call the Contrarian Matrix [4], a project I recently started. If you’d like to add anything of substance, I’d be much obliged. For instance, I have no idea where your actual line of argument would fit, what slogan would represent it, nor what citation to give it. Any ideas?
***
[1] http://agarbaruk.professorjournal.ru/c/document_library/get_file?p_l_id=209298&folderId=231814&name=DLFE-6845.pdf
[2] http://aerosociety.com/News/Publications/Aero-Journal/Online
[3] http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/09/greenland-meltdown/comment-page-2/
[4] http://judithcurry.com/2014/06/07/open-thread-13/#comment-588890
Since my comment is held in moderation, let’s try this:
http://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/climate-cultists/#comment-23981
I think its pretty obvious who actually is doing science here and can produce refereed literature to support their conclusions and who is just playing climate ball. I guess I would like to know Willard, what psychology is at work here. This is not a game for grown ups, but for idle philosophers looking for mischief.
I have no reason to do a guest post here or anywhere else. I’m just a scientist trying to improve our understanding. If I’m right, history will judge me favorably. If I’m wrong, I will admit it. BTW, our recent research showed I was wrong in 2011 about how big a carrot was involved in applying adaptive methods to climate. It does not damage my ego to say so.
David Young,
It’s late now, so I will merely point at this:
> I have no reason to do a guest post here or anywhere else.
and this:
> I just wish there was more serious discussion of the real science behind climate models and fluid dynamics. I have mostly given up on this because the vast majority of blog participants, even including the climate scientists don’t have the required background and are unwilling to invest the time to learn.
http://judithcurry.com/2014/06/13/steven-hayward-conservatism-and-climate-science/#comment-597979
Something’s amiss in your rationalization.
You might also need to revise your beliefs about “serial name calling” considering how you treated me today.
Good night and best of luck,
w
Willard, You really are playing climate ball now. You can’t address the science so you point to a supposed inconsistency that is really such small potatoes that its just noise. That’s perhaps what idle philosophers do with their spare time.
David Young,
You issue an irrelevant challenge. You have no reason to expect me to meet it. Even you refuse to meet it.
If you don’t think that you’re not playing ClimateBall ™, perhaps you ought to reflect harder.
Goodbye,
w
What a mess. Whose turn to do the dishes?
===========
> HA HA HA HA HA, ROTFLMAO!
I was quoting David Young, TJA. See the “>”? That indicates a quote.
Another ClimateBall ™ paratrooper who parachutes himself in an exchange he failed to read.
Whatever willard, so you disown the definition given then? That explains your web site then. You think that these kinds of smears are perfectly acceptable techniques.
You are a demagogue, that’s not name calling, that’s real time taxonomy.
> You think that these kinds of smears are perfectly acceptable techniques.
You know so well how I think TJA that I think I will outsource every thoughts I produce to you. That is, if you think that’s what I think. I’m not sure anymore what I think. Do I think so, TJA?
Thank you for your concerns.
You keep using the smear techniques. Weak as they are.
You’re reading my mind, TJA. Now try reading words:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/tagged/aboutlabeling
Unless you see the words in my mind, TJA?
Do you think TJA could find the greenhouse effect described in Fourier’s text, Big Dave?
Here’s where to start:
http://judithcurry.com/2014/06/08/state-of-the-blog-discussion-thread/#comment-589894
I don’t care about who first vaguely discussed the greenhouse effect. It’s pretty well settled isn’t it, Willard?
It’s really clouds, water vapor, aerosols, all that stuff that is interesting.
“Big Dave” is another commenter, David Young. His comment got deleted while I was commenting. I know that your thing is fluid dynamics:
http://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/climate-cultists/#comment-23955
Sorry for the confusion.
Willard, Willard, Willard. Have I ever given any indication that I doubt the greenhouse effect in any way shape or form, as Kreskin used to say?
It is so much easier to argue with somebody when you put words in their mouth, isn’t it?
I am sure that arguments that you can’t follow seem like “Climateball” to you.
> It is so much easier to argue with somebody when you put words in their mouth, isn’t it?
You tell me, TJA. Was it hard to suggest I believe you doubt the greenhouse effect?
Thanks for playing.
“Was it hard to suggest I believe you doubt the greenhouse effect?”
Of course you do Willard. I am just hiding my true feelings out of “Omerta,” isn’t that right? [To get that reference, you have to go to willard’s risible blog.]
I believe that you have to get to quantum mechanics to get any kind of real explanation for it. As for your conservation of energy arguments, nobody doubts conservation of energy either. What I do doubt is that conservation of energy arguments and invocations of arguments based solely on hard physics explain all of the knock on feedbacks and support predictions of catastrophic warming.
> Of course you do [.]
You must be new here, TJA, for if you were, you’d have paid due diligence to the link I offered you earlier:
http://judithcurry.com/2014/06/08/state-of-the-blog-discussion-thread/#comment-589894
If you read that discussion, you’d see that Mike Flynn tried to argue that Fourier did not mention the greenhouse effect in a scientific report to which the original formulation of the greenhouse effect is commonly attributed. Big Dave tried the “but he also mentions the ocean, so there.” This is of course irrelevant to what Mike claimed, but hey, in ClimateBall ™ you can make rules as you go along.
So this was the last state of our previous exchange. I thought it worth mentioning after Big Dave allowed himself to attack me as if what has been played between us has been flushed down the drain. I included you because I thought you would have liked to read that exchange.
Just think, now, TJA. If I believe you don’t believe in the greenhouse effect, why would I mention you? It makes more sense to include you as someone who accepts it. OTOH, I also know that reading is not your forte: you’d rather editorialize about people than READ HARDER (tm – Bart R).
You just parachuted yourself in a discussion you don’t seem read. Then you conflated nicknaming and name calling. Then, you put thoughts into my mind. Now you conflate mentioning the GH hypothesis and believing it, while yet again showing you haven’t READ HARDER ™, which helped you reconstruct a fiction that falters as soon as you think about it. The demagogy accusation is also silly: do you really think I would write comments the way I do here if I wanted to influence the masses?
Please, TJA, do read harder. Then, try to think before you type.
Best,
w
PS: No, your failure to answer my question about Yamal was not forgotten. Everything in its time.
How about you repeat the question about Yamal, in direct terms, as I must have missed it.
I always feel sorry for the people who try to talk to willard or Joshua.
=====================
Kim, I find them fascinating. I can never tell if they are serious and believe what they are saying, which seems preposterous, or are putting out propaganda to muddy the water, which seems more likely. It is like a Turing test to find out their true nature.
We both know that the Willard character lives in a bubble where he believes the darnedest things, and the WHT character has some serious misconceptions about the possible pitfalls of curve fitting, and is also apparently obsessed with DemocratUnderground type conspiracy theories involving Rove and the Koch Bros.
My question relates to whether the actual people typing these responses can really be that out of touch with reality and with how they are perceived outside of their little circle of the like minded.
I long for the day that significant numbers of left-leaning journalists (rip Alexander Cockburn) start to show the necessary objectivity on climate science rhetoric. Alas they imagine that even if the world isn’t warming that the CO2 ‘threat’ is an excellent excuse to introduce ‘sustainability’ and anti-growth agendas. Even that wouldn’t be so bad if they focused on actual energy solutions rather than hopeless fantasy.
Give up, it’s magical thinking all the way down.
lolwot | June 13, 2014 at 5:31 pm |
“What I mean is skeptics prefer ocean heat gain to be expressed in degrees C rather than joules because that way the number looks really small.”
How about a compromise? A zetaJoule in the top 2000 meters of the ocean results in a temperature rise of hundreds of nanoKelvins! HUNDREDS! My god man, how will our children survive in such a world?
Conservatives sould adopt a cornucopian position on climate with emphasis on research into next generation nuclear. We’re fortunate to have this long pause. We may someday have to deal with a long jump and we don’t want to cede control of the issue to the Malthusians.
Interesting term, Climate Cultist. There is a precedent: Cargo Cult Science.
In 1974, “Feynman cautioned that to avoid becoming cargo cult scientists, researchers must avoid fooling themselves, be willing to question and doubt their own theories and their own results, and investigate possible flaws in a theory or an experiment.”
Wikipedia contributors. 2014. “Cargo Cult Science.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cargo_cult_science&oldid=612550354.
Speaking of “cultists”…..even incoherent ones;
http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2014-06-17-green-left-messiah-desperately-seeking-spin-doctor/#.U6GMVkCgREw
George Monbiot, as inane a climate hack as there may be. Oh!…I’m sorry, is that the same as calling him a “HOLOCAUST DENIER” on the Joshua comparative relational pejorative scale??