by Judith Curry
Will Pachauri’s karma run over IPCC’s dogma? – Peter Foster
Pachauri resignation
The short version of the story is this. Rachendra Pachauri, IPCC Chair since 2002, has resigned from his position as Chair of the IPCC. His resignation was triggered by charges of molestation, stalking and sexual harassment. Pachauri’s defense is that his email accounts, mobile phone, and messages have been hacked. His arrest in India has been delayed owing to Pachauri’s hospitalization for a heart condition and UTI.
The text of Pachauri’s resignation letter is found [here]. An overview of Pachauri’s tenure as IPCC Chair is described by the DailyClimate. Resignation from IPCC is just the tip of the iceberg for Pachauri – the Indian Court has barred Pachauri from the premises of TERI, and there are calls for his resignation as President of TERI. He is also rapidly resigning from his other positions, including India Climate Council.
If you liked Pachauri’s romance novel ‘Return to Almora‘, you’ll enjoy reading the text of Pachauri’s (alleged) romantic emails; for a summary see the Quadrant. ‘Innocent until proven guilty’ and all that, but it seems pretty plausible that these emails were written by Pachauri, and no one seems to be defending his claim that he was hacked.
Will Pachauri’s karma run over IPCC dogma?
So, what does all this mean for the IPCC? Are the peccadilloes and trials of an individual – Pachauri – capable of adversely impacting the reputation of the IPCC and the forthcoming policy negotiations in Paris?
Inside Climate News argues that the credibility of the IPCC and negotiations in Paris will not suffer. On the other hand, the Telegraph writes: He may now finally have gone, but the damage he did to the IPCC’s credibility as a serious scientific body is irreparable.
Donna LaFramboise highlights what I regard as the most serious issue for the IPCC’s reputation.From Pachauri’s resignation letter:
For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma.
Yes, the IPCC – which we’re told to take seriously because it is a scientific body producing scientific reports – has, in fact, been led by an environmentalist on a mission. By someone for whom protecting the planet is a religious calling. Even here, at the end, Pachauri fails to grasp that science and religion don’t belong in the same sentence; that those on a political mission are unlikely to be upholders of rigorous scientific practice.
From an article in The Blaze: Climate change skeptics aren’t entirely jubilant about his exit, said Myron Ebell, director of the center for energy and environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank. “On the skeptics side, he had zero credibility from day one,” Ebell told TheBlaze. “But, his kooky behavior helped to undermine the credibility of the institution.
The bottom line is this. It is very difficult to ‘enforce’ or even defend the IPCC consensus when the leader of IPCC for more than a decade is alleged to have partaken in sleazy and illegal behavior, regards climate change as his religion, has massive conflicts of interest, and has used his position as a platform for personal advocacy. All of this reinforces criticisms that the IPCC is about politics, money and dogma, rather than science.
This situation is terribly unfair to the scientists who have worked very hard for the IPCC, at least some of whom are not dogmatists. It is very disappointing to see no apology from Pachauri to these scientists. Will the top tier of scientists want to sign up for the AR6 after all this?
Whither the IPCC?
There are two issues here:
- Can the IPCC clean up its act?
- How should the IPCC proceed with regards to future assessment reports?
The 2010 InterAcademy Council Review of the IPCC made two recommendations of relevance, which have not yet taken effect:
- The term of the IPCC Chair should be limited to the time frame of one assessment.
- The IPCC should develop and adopt a rigorous conflict-of-interest policy that applies to all individuals directly involved in the preparation of IPCC reports, including senior IPCC leadership.
Regarding the length of Pachauri’s term, Andy Revkin states:
But the real shame is that he stayed in his position so long — and my reasoning has nothing to do with sexual misconduct. In his resignation letter to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Pachauri said he’d planned to step down on Nov. 2 last year after the release of the final portion of the panel’s fifth climate report, but “close friends and colleagues advised me against that action and to continue with outreach efforts worldwide.” Pachauri also had colleagues on the panel who had, privately, been eager for new leadership for years. One reason was his habit of mixing personal advocacy with the authority granted by his position.
Pachauri’s ‘power base’ for continuing in the position so long was apparently a desire to appease developing countries and so to obtain their ‘buy in’. Their ‘buy in’ for exactly what is more about politics than about science. It was a colossal mistake for the IPCC not to have forced Pachauri to step down earlier.
So, what next for the IPCC in terms of its future assessment reports? Sophie Yeo writes: The panel, set up in 1988, will be tackling the questions of a typical midlife crisis: what’s my purpose? Am I going about it in the right way? Does anyone really care about me?
The DailyClimate has a good article IPCC future hinges on greater relevance, amid tricky politics. The IPCC has issued a press release from its recent meeting in Nairobi to discuss the future of the IPCC. Richard Tol sums it up with this tweet: The IPCC continues on its merry old way.
Apart from the details of IPCC procedures, the GWPF highlights the overarching concern: IPCC has lost its scientific objectivity.
Selecting the next Chair of the IPCC
The IPCC has announced that Ismail El Gizouli, current vice-chair, will serve as acting Chair until a new Chair is elected.
Information about the IPCC’s election procedures can be found here. The most relevant point at present is that nominations for Chair must be submitted by national governments.
So far, three individuals have been nominated:
- The US has nominated Dr. Chris Field, who served as co-Chair of AR5 WGII.
- Jean-Pascal van Ypersele of Belgium, see his statement [here].
- Thomas Stocker has been nominated by Switzerland.
Other names of likely nominees mentioned by the Guardian include:
- German economist Ottmar Edenhofer
- Austrian economist Nebojsa Nakicenovic
- South Korean Economist Hoesung Lee
Several of these names are unfamiliar to me, and I don’t know any of the candidates personally. But a brief google search on each of these individuals suggests that any of them would be an improvement over Pachauri. I briefly comment on two of the names that strike me favorably:
- Nebjosa Nakicenovic: I used a quote of his in my paper Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty: “there is a danger that the IPCC consensus position might lead to a dismissal of uncertainty in favor of spuriously constructed expert opinion.”
- Chris Field: As co-Chair of the AR5 WG2 report, about which I wrote: The AR5 WG2 SPM has some startling differences and substantial additions relative to the AR4 version, and is in many ways a much better report.
The actual election of a new Chair is conducted by the member nations, specifically under the auspices of the IPCC Bureau. I suspect that raw politics will be more important than individual credentials or platforms.
While I’m not sure why any scientist/academic would want this (unpaid) position that requires you to travel all over the world and deal with some nasty politics, it seems that there is a strong list of candidates, none of whom would appear to have anything approaching Pachauri’s conflicts of interest.
JC reflections
With the Paris summit looming in December, the credibility of the IPCC would seem to be important, although the UNFCCC seems to be about raw politics and I’m not sure how relevant the IPCC is any more.
In my 2013 post IPCC diagnosis – permanent paradigm paralysis, I wrote:
Diagnosis: paradigm paralysis, caused by motivated reasoning, oversimplification, and consensus seeking; worsened and made permanent by a vicious positive feedback effect at the climate science-policy interface.
Perhaps the Pachauri scandal will be jolt the knocks the IPCC out of its paralysis. Hopefully a new Chair can provide the impetus for torquing the IPCC in a better direction. I am not optimistic, but there is a window of opportunity here.
The IPCC needs to regain its scientific objectivity. WG1 needs to begin addressing natural variability in a more serious and comprehensive manner. If the model projections and observations of surface temperature continue to diverge, continued high confidence in attribution and future projections will become ludicrous. As recommended in my paper No Consensus on Consensus, the IPCC should abandon its consensus seeking approach and do a more serious job of assessing uncertainties, ambiguities and areas of ignorance.
The issue of conflict of interest is a critical one – not just financial and political conflicts, but conflicts associated with lead authors assessing their own research. A serious effort at identifying conflicts and managing them would go a long way towards rebuilding the credibility.
The New American writes of the potential political implications:
The IPCC’s media promoters are afraid that many more erstwhile global-warming believers may jump ship at the very time that the warming alarmnists are trying mightily to win popular support for the UN’s upcoming climate summit in Paris, which they hope will birth a new planetary climate regime to control all human activity. They are afraid that many more scientists (and common taxpayers) will adopt the position of Professor Judith Curry, former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
!!!
Expecting any arm of the United Nations to maintain “scientific objectivity” is asking too much. It is a worthless organization.
https://evilincandescentbulb.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/al-gore-nobel-namastc3a91.jpg?w=600
Maintain scientific integrity? As in “paradigm paralysis, caused by motivated reasoning, oversimplification, and consensus seeking; worsened and made permanent by a vicious positive feedback effect at the climate science-policy interface.”?
“Expecting any arm of the United Nations to maintain “scientific objectivity” is asking too much.”
The IPCC is a political propaganda body, totally useless, except as a provider of fat, taxpayer funded, jobs. Same as the UN.
The best thing would be for both (IPCC AND UN) to close down, but expecting them to do so is asking too much.
Naki is a Serb, and I doubt he’s an economist.
Pachauri’s tenure saw three things:
– The disintegration of the IPCC into its three working groups. Whereas Bolin and Watson were in charge, Pachauri was a figurehead.
– The loss of respect for the IPCC. Whereas Bolin and Watson were respected as academics, good communicators, and free of scandal, Pachauri (pere) was intellectually weak, gaffe-prone, and scandal-ridden. (Pachauri fille is a lot smarter.)
– Mission creep. The original IPCC did one thing only: assessment. The current IPCC is involved in standard setting and training too.
Can the new chair turn this around?
Van Ypersele and Lee are the front-runners. They aren’t much of an improvement, although they keep their pants on afaik.
In their latest meeting, the IPCC Plenary made two decisions. The IPCC should stay the course, but the Bureau should include be expanded to include more people from Africa and Asia. Unfortunately, these countries do not send their most eminent scholars to the IPCC.
Worth remembering that certain people wanted Watson gone, probably for the qualities Richard notes.
hardly.. north south politics was the issue
Some disliked Watson because he was actually rather good at his job.
About Naki, from his bio:
“{He} is … Professor of Energy Economics at the Vienna University of Technology. … Professor Nakicenovic holds bachelors and masters degrees in economics and computer science from Princeton University, New Jersey, USA and the University of Vienna, where he also completed his Ph.D.”
I’m sure Richard knows Naki well and can judge how much he is an economist. I have also met him a couple of times. He has worked long at IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, located near Vienna) before (and also during) his present tenure and is a highly innovative systems analyst. Technological change is one of his main specialties.
Pekka,
“I’m sure Richard knows Naki well and can judge how much he is an economist.”
If I had Naki’s bio, I’d be annoyed if someone said “I doubt he’s an economist.” It’s a brutal statement, given with no support or explanation — no matter how well “Richard knows Naki.”
Pekka, EFM
I’ve known Naki for 20 years, and he never struck me as an economist. Scopus returns 70 papers, only 3 of which are in nominally economics journals (but the papers are not economics papers).
I quite like Naki’s work, and he is great company. He is probably the best of the field of candidates.
Quick, lets you and I vote :)
Prof Tol,
“Scopus returns 70 papers, only 3 of which are in nominally economics journals.”
I don’t want to beat this to death. But as an economist yourself, you know that a large fraction of “economists” (by any commonplace definition) publish little or nothing in peer-reviewed literature (e.g., appearing in Scopus).
On a separate note, I would be interested in your analysis of how an economist could help the IPCC boost its credibility. Rather than someone with a background in the physical sciences (the area of greatest dispute), or an administrator (with a strong science background) with experience at managing large international multi-disciplinary public policy projects.
EFM
Most economists don’t publish much, true. Naki publishes loads, just little economics.
I don’t think that economists are better or worse at leading an organization like the IPCC – although we have the slight advantage of being prepared for such a role from our undergrad days onwards. Economists and lawyers are overrepresented in public policy.
At the moment, the IPCC needs someone who can reform the organization while keeping the old guard happy and calming the discontents.
I nominate Richard Tol. Do I hear a shecond from Shollenberger?
============
Richard writes
“while keeping the old guard happy and calming the discontents.”
Why in your opinion should keeping the old guard happy be a priority? Is this a scientific principle I missed?
Heh, Rob, to avoid Caesar’s fate.
==============
Editor of…. wrote, “…a background in the physical sciences (the area of greatest dispute)”
Personally, I don’t think the physical science part is the area of greatest dispute. The area of greatest dispute is what do (or can) we do about CO2 emissions. And the options range from do nothing to destroy the world economy. Of course deciding what to do partially depends on knowing how bad the problem is, the area of greatest uncertainty. But at the end of the day, the how bad is the problem part becomes moot when you consider, what can we do about it from an economic point of view.
Dick,
“I don’t think the physical science part is the area of greatest dispute.”
The data from public polls clearly shows that a majority of the American public does not believe that global warming (or climate change) is among the most serious problems we face (i.e., it ranks very low vs other needs). Therefore how to address the problem is a secondary question until that fact changes.
EFM,
How a person ranks GW in seriousness vs. other issues may very well be based on economics. Also, the majority of people are not capable of understanding or making judgments on the physical science. I think more are capable of understanding the economics.
Re van Ypersele, he has a track record as a warmest hysteric, see
http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/tony-thomas/2014/11/climate-hustles-hot-brussels/
‘Warmist hysteric, :( ‘ see Quadrant re van Ypersele …
‘ We hafta” promulgate that goddam noble myth!
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=EyNHBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA174&lpg=PA174&dq=Quotes+Hayek+%27Road+to+Serfdom+%27+on+%27Myth%27&source=bl&ots=eBSo0Y6xn4&sig=hy56UmouIGmYpKO1Wjvd4ZeNCvk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=gcf2VPzbCsPM8gWj3YBg&ved=0CD0Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=Quotes%20Hayek%20%27Road%20to%20Serfdom%20%27%20on%20%27Myth%27&f=false
Tsk! Supposed ter bring up a specific passage from Hayek
re political exploitation of myth. That van Ypersele gets it,
knows the value of developing the general acceptance of
a common weltanschauung. ‘Weltanschauung … never
leave home w/out it. https://beththeserf.wordpress.com/
” It is very difficult to ‘enforce’ or even defend the IPCC consensus when the leader of IPCC for more than a decade is alleged to have partaken in sleazy and illegal behavior…” – JC
Thank god Judith remains focussed on the real scientific issues and hasn’t been distracted by trivia such as Willie Soon and $$$$ for keptic ‘deliverables’.
Who said Judith Curry and ‘vacuous blather’? – know they now better!
Oh, and Judith notes, with due concern, conflict of interest.
Without, apparently, blinking.
Where’s Joshua!!
Georgia Tech has a very stringent COI policy. The IPCC never thought about the issue until the IAC report, and then after paying lip service to the issue, they thought it unfair to ask AR5 authors etc to fill out COI forms.
Judith:
AR5 authors did fill out COI forms. Forms were not checked, there were no consequences for those who declared a COI, and the forms are well hidden.
Hi Richard, thanks for the clarification.
“Where’s Joshua?”
Out to lunch, as always.
> … after paying lip service to the issue, they thought it unfair to ask AR5 authors etc to fill out COI forms (curryja)
Yes, I’ll never forgive Pachauri for that bottomless pit of cynical hypocrisy
Delivereables that were kept?
Ignore the donkey. He considers braying loudly to constitute informed discourse.
Well, it’s a good opportunity to link Soon’s response and call for science over smears.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/02/statement-by-dr-willie-soon/
harkin,
What a concept!
After years of almost daily smearing of scientists here at CE, as being primarily motivated by advancing their careers, or being in it for the $$, now it will all cease.
Amen to that!
The deliverables were established by the Smithsonian not Soon and have zero to do with skeptics. All you have to do is read the Smithsonian contract, which Soon never signed, and you would have known that instead of embarrassing yourself with false accusations. “Deliverables” is clearly defined in the Smithsonian contract as progress updates which is common to most research funding agreements.
Your lack of knowledge is exceeded only by your juvenile anger/tantrum directed towards Judith.
Cut Michael some slack. One can’t expect donkeys to exhibit a sense of embarrassment. Even talking ones. It isn’t in their makeup.
Sun,
Don’t forget Soon failed to declare what he should have declared.
And we know how very very concerned ‘skeptics’ are about scientific INTEGRITY.
Think of the INTEGRITY Sun.
Michael
Does it trouble you at all that the head of this supposedly scientific body states something other than getting to the truth of what the science can tell us regarding the impacts of human released CO2?
Is an individual with a religious like view on sustainability and survival of all species the appropriate person to evaluate the science? Doesn’t it seem highly biased?
Rob,
I’m still not clear on how anything “Intergovermental” is supposed to be a scientific body. When I first started out in a quest for more information there was an expectation of a scientific disagreement. Now, perception is a political disagreement with (some) contrary scientific evidence exists and money is playing each team. I cannot get away from my personal “belief” that the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
Rob,
Do you really think that he was the evaluating the science??
I know you’re not that dumb.
“the leader of IPCC for more than a decade is alleged to have partaken in sleazy and illegal behavior…”
So has the former President of the USA, the most honorable William Jefferson Clinton. Happens to the best of people!
“All of this reinforces criticisms that the IPCC is about politics, money and dogma, rather than science” – Curry
Spectacularly vapid nonsense Judtih.
The chair doesn’t assess the science or write the reports.
He arranged the trains before they left the switching yard though.
Agenda 21, for instance?
And black helicopters!
“The chair doesn’t assess the science or write the reports.”
Of course not. He is too busy indulging in “sleazy and illegal behavior”
I never made sense for someone like him to chair the IPCC anyway. He’s just as inept as Joe Biden.
How do we go about nominating Dr Curry? I’m serious.
No chance – playing Monday-morning quarterback is way more fun.
talk to the U.S. secretary of state. Hard to imagine a worse job (and I hate traveling all over the place). Re the IPCC, my preferred position is armchair pundit
“Hard to imagine a worse job (and I hate traveling all over the place). ”
Well, how about nominating the US sec state? A good defender of the dogma, and he likes traveling all over the place. He’ll be available in a couple of years.
Judith,
Better tell Tom!
;) I think you’d be an outstanding Chair!
Honored Chairmarm.
================
Is there any reason to resort to consensus except when the underlying science does not speak for itself? So it would seem that abandonment of the consensus route is unlikely until then.
“Working Group II … considers the vulnerability and exposure of human and natural systems.” (ipcc.ch)
E.g., scareware.
There is much use of the word “Consensus”. Liberally used, so to speak. The IPCC does not have consensus.
So what is “Consensus”?
“a conflict-resolution process used mainly to settle complex, multiparty disputes.” “Consensus building offers a way for individual citizens and organizations to collaborate on solving complex problems in ways that are acceptable to all.” I my experience, all participants should agree that the process was fair (mutually acceptable).
Characteristics:
“Problems that may be effectively addressed with a consensus-building approach tend to share some general characteristics. Some of these characteristics are:
– The problems are ill defined, or there is disagreement about how they should be defined.
– Several stakeholders have a vested interest in the problems and are interdependent.
– These stakeholders are not necessarily identified as a cohesive group or organization.
– There may be a disparity of power and/or resources for dealing with the problems among the stakeholders. Stakeholders may have different levels of expertise and different access to information about the problems.
– The problems are often characterized by technical complexity and scientific uncertainty.
– Differing perspectives on the problems often lead to adversarial relationships among the stakeholders.
– Incremental or unilateral efforts to deal with the problems typically produce less than satisfactory solutions.
– Existing processes for addressing the problems have proved insufficient and may even exacerbate them.”
Essential ingredient: Fair process
— a decision-making approach that addresses our basic human need to be valued and respected. When people feel a decision affecting them was made fairly, they trust and cooperate ….”
Burgess, Heidi, and Brad Spangler. “Consensus Building.” Management. Beyond Intractability, September 2003. http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/consensus-building.
Kim, W., and Renée Mauborgne. “Fair Process.” Harvard Business Review, 1997, 65–75.
http://www.unmc.edu/media/gpphli/interregional/fair_process__managing_the_knowledge_economy.pdf
I have taken part in Groups that did use consensus to make decisions.
Consensus means that the decision group agrees to accept the decision.
Usually, this is because the boss told the group that they would accept the decision. Often, it is the decision that the boss wanted all along or it was about a matter that the boss did not care about.
Consensus does not mean that all in a group agrees that it is the best decision.
Then it would not be “fair”, would it?
> regards climate change as his religion
I thought Patchy was referring to “the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems,” Judy.
If you focus on our specie, you get humanism, which is an old tack:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism
Misreading might not be the best way to bash religiosity.
Fiddlesticks Willard – why should we try to understand differing world-views when we can instead engage in a crude and trivial food-fight??
The whole quote is:
“For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma. ”
What do climate campaigners claim they are doing? Protect Planet Earth? Check. Help the survival of species? Check. Sustainability? Check.
Willard and Michael are reduced to arguing that the man was indeed on a mission, but he abandoned it for the last decade to work on climate change. Good luck with that.
My personal take is that you’re almost right. He and many others thought AGW was a way to force the sustainability agenda rather that a search for functional alternatives to fossil fuels. He and many others are discovering they were wrong.
“For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma.”
Plus a lil’ tail on the side.
Andrew
Well, it is part of the UN, which has hosted sex scandals in Burundi, Haiti, Congo, Liberia, Bosnia…. etc etc ad infinitum
its also been rather good for his pocket too , remember the TERI funding feed to it while Pachauri has head of both organisations. Of course that was proved OK by an audit, only the firm that did the investigation made clear it had not done an audit and it lacked information from Pachauri to do a good job.
Like St Gore and others on ‘the Team’ it has been a rather nice ride on this gravy train , not by any means just a question of a mission.
1000-
Good job. Gish Gallop of the highest order. Please nitric that you didn’t actually answer any of the questions.
Humanism is not the only alternate religion, and the point is that we ought not to be conducting this according to religious principles and motivations in the first place.
> Humanism is not the only alternate religion, and the point is that we ought not to be conducting this according to religious principles and motivations in the first place.
That humanism is not the only alternate religion is false and irrelevant, and the point is that principles are principles, whether they’re religious or not.
Principles stand or fall on their own merit, not because one can dismiss them as religious.
That humanism is not the only alternate religion is false and irrelevant, and the point is that principles are principles, whether they’re religious or not.
Uhmmm…..
But as you know, it has been observed by some that the attitude of many people toward climate change takes on elements that we normally associate with religion. For example, when people say that they “believe in” climate change this can be an example of faith, which does not always lose strength in the absence of corroborating facts. Whether or not you think that humanism or some other philosophy is a religion, the idea is that the motivations spurring climate change “believers” should not be those that we association with religion, such as faith, sin, absolution, infidels, prophesy, salvation, sacrifice, evangelism.
> when people say that they “believe in” climate change this can be an example of faith
Unless you can show that belief reduces to faith, this is incorrect.
Like Stephen Colbert once said, I believe in America, I believe it exists.
INTEGRITY ™ – It’s a gut thing.
No, I am certainly not saying that belief reduces to faith. I am saying, however, that there are many people whose belief in the truth of global warming is more akin to a religious faith than it is to a rational belief founded upon evidence. In the first place, how many people are there who have an education sufficient to allow them to evaluate the evidence? So what are they basing it on? Many people conceive of it as all part of a grand program to oppose the evil influences in life. Oil companies play the same role in their thinking as demonic forces did in the middle ages. “Sceptics” are scorned as infidels who have sold their souls to the devil for a few pieces of silver. In addition, if they were to change their mind on global warming they would lose one of the most important things they have in common with all their friends. Michael Crichton talked about environmentalism as a religion, http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/ArticlesMain/tabid/56/ID/2818/Crichton-Environmentalism-is-a-religion.aspx, and a similar thing could be said about climate change. The more peoples’ attitudes are controlled by influences characteristic of religions, the more difficult it becomes to make decisions that are founded exclusively on rationality.
So I don’t think that this is true. The religious aspect brings entirely new forces to bear.
Nice try Willard.
“Principles stand or fall on their own merit, not because one can dismiss them as religious.”
Now explain how Pachauri’s stated principles fit with the responsibilities of his position as IPCC Chair.
When you’re done with that, address the difference in how one’s stated principles might clash with one’s actions and which is more telling.
> I am saying, however, that there are many people whose belief in the truth of global warming is more akin to a religious faith than it is to a rational belief founded upon evidence.
We were talking about Patchy, so I believe the “many people” serves another of Swood’s bait and switches.
Compare and contrast:
There are many people whose belief in nullius non verbal is more akin to a belief in an implausible principle than anything else.
There are many people whose disbelief in AGW is more akin to market fundamentalism than anything rational.
Wasn’t the following text a part of the article at the top of this page?
Doesn’t this raise the question of the general impact of holding scientific beliefs religiously, not just its effect on “Patchy” specifically. Furthermore, someone made this statement:
This is a statement about religious principles not limited to “Patchy,” right? So why the sudden assertion that we’re only talking about “Patchy” and the specific religion he holds?
Nullius in verba?
I’m afraid that the meaning of your final two paragraphs has eluded me.
1000-
==> “But as you know, it has been observed by some that the attitude of many people toward climate change takes on elements that we normally associate with religion.”
Hmmm.
“Takes on elements….”
Rather a vague reference.
At what point does noting shared elements become useful for understanding the issues? At what point might pointing to shared “elements” between two phenomena, in the face of much greater incongruity between those two phenomena, look more like building on unrepresentative sampling to fallaciously steer towards unsupported conclusions?
Where is the balance here of similarity versus dissimilarity? What is the evidence?
==> “For example, when people say that they “believe in” climate change this can be an example of faith, which does not always lose strength in the absence of corroborating facts.”
Really? Faith? How many people have “faith” in climate change in the same way that people have faith in God? I mean I hear the claim made quite often that belief one way or the other about climate change is “like a religion,” but where is the evidence supporting the claim?
What is the prevalence of people who think that there is no doubt about climate change in the same way that people think that there is no doubt about the existence of god?
How many people think that the fact of climate change cannot be proven with scientific evidence in the same way that people think that the existence of god cannot be proven with scientific evidence?
Since we should be careful about distinguishing between belief based on evidence and belief based on other influences, what is your “evidence” that you use to qualify and quantify your claims?
==> “…the idea is that the motivations spurring climate change “believers” should not be those that we association with religion, such as faith, sin, absolution, infidels, prophesy, salvation, sacrifice, evangelism.”
Interesting, isn’t it, that those associations you list are often seen by “skeptics” as existing between “realists” and their belief in climate change Should we then conclude that “skepticism” has elements associated with religion?
1000-
And btw….to follow up something I said in my previous comment….
Keep in mind two things:
1. Most people who have firm beliefs one way or the other about climate change are not very familiar at all with the evidence, and don’t have the technical skills needed to evaluate that evidence at any rate.
2. I am often told by “skeptics” (when they aren’t telling me that “skeptics” aren’t monolithic), that hardly any skeptics “doubt” that the Earth is warming, that ACO2 causes warming, and that ACO2 is contributing to the warming of the climate.
Hmmmm.
Does climate “skepticism” “share elements” with religious belief?
If so, do you think that is important?
> Doesn’t this raise the question of the general impact of holding scientific beliefs religiously, not just its effect on “Patchy” specifically.
People raise questions, not whatever is referred by “this”.
Also, Swood’s assumption that the AGW belief is held religiously begs the question at hand.
The indirect admission that Patchy was used as a bait to switch to the AGW belief us duly acknowledged.
Joshua –
1. Normally when scientists want to test a theory they make a prediction based on the theory. If the prediction fails the scientific approach is to revise the theory. In a religion if a prediction fails the faithful are typically undeterred. Let’s consider the response by climate believers to the ‘hiatus’. It seems to be more like the religious approach than the scientific approach, even so far as to deny the existence of a hiatus.
2. Historically, religion has relied on the Appeal to Authority but science has had no need for that, instead relying on observations. But we see that climate science relies heavily on an Appeal to Authority.
3. Historically, religions have often relied on intimidation or force rather than on logic and explanations. But my experience is there are few people more contemptuously overbearing than a climate change true believer on a blog. They have even come up with their own term of derision: the ‘denier’. A ‘denier’ is a person to be marked and shunned. Is this the scientific approach to convincing someone of the correctness of one’s scientific belief, or does it more resemble a sad chapter of religious history?
4. The observation that climate change has religious elements has been made by many. For example, Freeman Dyson: “The main point is religious rather than scientific.” http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson Freeman Dyson was then subjected to outrageous personal abuse. Is that the scientific approach, or is that the medieval strong-arm approach?
5. Here you can watch a confession: http://hotair.com/archives/2011/04/22/cnn-anchor-confesses-his-eco-sins-to-cleanse-for-earth-day/
6. Nobel prize winner Ivar Giaever referred to the statement from the American Physical Society
So the APA is treating climate change just like Christians view the Gospel. It cannot be denied.
7. Judith Curry was called a “Climate Heretic” by Scientific American. Is this not a religious expression? See http://judithcurry.com/2010/11/07/no-ideologues-part-iii/ which describes five characteristics of an ‘ideology’ (also of a religion):
Few will deny that these are characteristic of the approach taken by climate change believers.
There seem to be very many who view it in exactly the same way – as something not open to question. Don’t you agree?
I don’t think that “cannot be proven with scientific evidence” is a necessary characteristic of religion. There have been many people who have thought that the existence of God can be proven with scientific evidence. They have just not been able to convince everybody. There have also been many people who have thought that the existence of God can be proven logically. Similar difficulty.
See above.
Don’t follow.
Willard –
‘This’ referred to the immediately preceding quotation.
I supplied examples, not just assumptions.
What indirect admission was that?
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-A8IujZs2zAI/Uo-fUfmeQ-I/AAAAAAAAHq8/iq8JmoZQSdo/s1600/89935828-global-warming.jpg
good one :)
1000-
http://judithcurry.com/2015/03/03/ipcc-in-transition/#comment-680233
FWIW, exchange with you has become increasingly disappointing. I had hopes.
Don’t get down in the mouth, Josh. I’m sure there are thousands of people on the web who would play small beer games with you.
Do you believe in atoms, Swood?
> ‘This’ referred to the immediately preceding quotation.
Indeed, and the preceding quotation is not the one that raises the question. You are. Own it.
Nobody’s making you do it.
***
Do you believe in the Big Bang, BTW?
> Few will deny that these are characteristic of the approach taken by climate change believers.
One should not conflate religion with ideology.
Willard –
Your point being that “believe in” is an alternate form of asking if I believe that there are atoms. No doubt many people use it with this meaning. But I think that this expression is typically used under circumstances in which the person is not aware of clear and logical proof to rationally support the proposition.
I believe that the Big Bang is the current best explanation, although http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html
The quotation included this: “By someone for whom protecting the planet is a religious calling.” This raises the issue of those who approach climate change from a religious perspective.
I can leave my life of perdition if I only set my mind to it?
Religion and ideology are not the same but have many attributes in common. A belief in God is characteristic of religion but is not necessary. For example, Buddhists do not believe in God. What is necessary is a central all-encompassing belief system that gives one’s life meaning and which is regarded as the way to salvation. One typically feels joyful about what has been revealed to be possible, wants to spread the Good News, and is contemptuous of the enemies named by the religion who have resisted attempts to proselytize them, who have unaccountably turned a deaf ear to the Good News, and who are the downfall of innocent souls who could have been saved. It is a belief system that typically is held regardless of the evidence. When I hear somebody say that he “believes in global warming” I usually take him at his word. To believe in something is typically a religious act, or at the very least usually signifies something beyond mere rationality.
Perhaps I could say that I don’t have enough faith to believe the claims made about climate change, but no doubt I would also need to be on board with the whole complex of other goals typically shared by the faithful.
> I think that this expression is typically used under circumstances in which the person is not aware of clear and logical proof to rationally support the proposition.
I’d settle for any kind of clear support, but I don’t think requiring logical proofs for empirical propositions is that clear. One might even argue it’s not quite rational.
Are you aware of clear support for the existence of atoms?
> Perhaps I could say that I don’t have enough faith to believe the claims made about climate change, but no doubt I would also need to be on board with the whole complex of other goals typically shared by the faithful.
Begging the question with the “faithful” again. The good old Ann Coulter gambit. From an alien perspective, everything looks like a cargo cult.
There is no need for any Internet dog to be on board of anything. If AGW is the best explanation we have, it is the best we have. It’s easier for AGW to be the best explanation than Big Bang theory, since there is no other plausible alternative anymore.
I am not aware of any physicists who question it. It appears at least to be a remarkably good explanation for the observations we have made despite the fact that problems in quantum mechanics have not been resolved. I am also not aware of any movement to shun or denigrate anyone who questions the existence of atoms. If a scientist came along who questioned the existence of atoms there would be no writing of vitriolic diatribes denouncing him and no thundering demands for his dismissal.
The problem is that people confuse “the best we have” with “the best one possible” and “sufficient to justify trillions of dollars in expenditures, major changes to our economic system, and a huge drop in the standard of living for most people on the planet.” Geocentrism was the best explanation we had for over a thousand years.
How about the alternative that doubling CO2 will not bring about catastrophic changes to climate? Not plausible? Of course the direction that warming has taken is not in accord with predictions but that can be ignored. What cannot be abandoned is the basic supposition. There is a name for that style of thinking.
swomill, one of the things I find intriguing is that it is that AGW is perfectly rational, and CAGW is practically psychotic. What is up with that?
Somehow a mundane scientific phenomenon has been transfigured into an existential crisis requiring world shaking re-ordering of human society.
Oh well, these pathologies have their crises. Hope it ain’t a quartain.
=============
Another thing, and I mentioned this elsewhere after being thought provoked by Cap’n D. The meme, ‘Future climate will not be as bad as we thought’, is a perfectly rational, easily marketable, true narrative, yet it is taboo to say it. Serfs, that’s pathological. The Master is not well.
===================
Joshua –
Apparently you cannot comprehend such a concept because it contradicts your core belief. The idea is that a doubling of CO2 will result in a 1°C rise in temperature, there will be no catastrophic positive feedbacks, and everything will go on as before.
1000-
==> “Apparently you cannot comprehend such a concept because it contradicts your core belief. The idea is that a doubling of CO2 will result in a 1°C rise in temperature, there will be no catastrophic positive feedbacks, and everything will go on as before.”
Apparently,you have no idea about my “core beliefs,” let alone my non-core,beliefs, but don’t let that get in the way of speculating about them. Do you consider yourself a”skeptic?”
Anyway, outside your speculation about my briefs, would you care to assess my points?
Kim –
Name-calling is resorted to when rational explanations fall short, when the need is felt for a blunt object.
I think there is something to be said for the proposition that there has been a “green” movement for some time now, with a variety of goals, but it just couldn’t get the traction that its supporters had hoped it would. Some of them see this as their last best hope.
Joshua –
For some people, no doubt it does. But they just don’t seem to approach it with the same messianic ferver.
> I am not aware of any physicists who question it.
Here:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr
Now you know one.
***
> It appears at least to be a remarkably good explanation for the observations we have made despite the fact that problems in quantum mechanics have not been resolved.
Arguing from ignorance is seldom a good explanation.
> How about the alternative that doubling CO2 will not bring about catastrophic changes to climate?
What evidence do we have?
How is that an explanation?
How could it be a scientific claim if “catastrophic” is not defined in a scientific manner?
If that’s not a scientific claim, does it mean it’s ideologically driven?
Could we go so far as to say that it introduces a belief base akin to religiosity?
***
“But CAGW” is a straw man.
You asked “Are you aware of clear support for the existence of atoms?” I replied “I am not aware of any physicists who question it.” You referred me to the link about Niels Bohr with the statement “Now you know one.” But the link says
So why do you say that Bohr questioned the existence of the atom?
Isn’t it the alarmist side of the question that raises that type of argument, saying that their theory must be regarded as true unless a better one can be shown?
Furthermore, saying that something is a remarkably good explanation is not the same as saying that it is true. It is saying that it is a theory with much practical usefulness despite theoretical inconsistencies.
The burden of proof is on those who argue for a sudden catastrophic change in climate, not on those who question it.
There have been many claims about the harmful results of climate change. http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm These claims are collectively and colloquial what is referred to as “catastrophic”.
Don’t see it.
Nor that.
1000-
==> “saying that their theory must be regarded as true unless a better one can be shown?”
When “they” provide error bars and CI’s, does that mean that “they” are saying that “their” theory must be regarded as true unless a better one can be shown?
==> “The burden of proof is on those who argue for a sudden catastrophic change in climate, not on those who question it.”
Do you think that something can be “proven” here one way or the other?
Do you think that playing games is a good substitute for good faith discussion?
“The burden of proof is on those who argue for a sudden catastrophic change in climate, not on those who question it.”
Huh?
do you think the “burden of proof” is just a thing that magically appears?
that we can look at a situation and say “oh, logic says the burden of proof belongs to X”
Lets take a simple example. Your neighbor and you share a stream for drinking water. Neither of you own the stream but you both use it.
One day you see your neighbor pouring a liquid in the stream.
You: what you doing?
N: just getting rid of this stuff
Y: in our stream?
N: ya
Y: Is it safe?
N: been doing it for a while, and you are still alive.
Y: but is it safe?
N: The benefits are great. I cant afford to truck the stuff away
so it saves me money. and I use that money to buy your cow milk.
whats the problem.
Y: is it safe?
N: well, seems to me the burden of proof is on YOU.
Y: really? seems to me the burden is on you.
Y: what if the stuff is cancerous?
N: you know you cant actually prove things like that, its all probabilities.
But go ahead try to prove its dangerous, I have a host of skeptical
techniques honed to perfection over the centuries. They work
to prevent agreement between reasonable people.
Question: is burden of proof observable? can we disagree about it?
Not always.
I think only that scientific theories can be proposed and a statement made as to certainty, which can be disputed.
Can you elaborate on what constitutes playing games?
> Isn’t it the alarmist side of the question that raises that type of argument, saying that their theory must be regarded as true unless a better one can be shown?
No, it simply argues that it’s the best explanation known to date.
On the other hand, Swood’s argument that he doesn’t know of any physicist who denies the existence of atoms is an appeal to ignorance, in this case his own.
There’s a big difference between appeals to ignorance and inference to the best explanation.
***
> Furthermore, saying that something is a remarkably good explanation is not the same as saying that it is true. It is saying that it is a theory with much practical usefulness despite theoretical inconsistencies.
Strictly speaking, only facts should be said to be true.
Saying that a theory is true is oftentimes just a way to that it’s the best explanation we have. It works because facts rely on them. (Hint: transitivity.) Why facts are said to be true while resting on conjectural theories is left as an exercise to Denizens.
Must be something religulous.
***
Now Swood is left with a wedge between “is true” and “is the best explanation we have.” If that’s all we Denizens have, we stand little chance.
Steven Mosher –
In your example, if the fellow were to be charged with a crime the burden of proof would be on the prosecutor. In general it seems to me that if someone is asserting that some change is going to take place the burden of proof is on that person to prove his assertion.
the issue of who bears the burden of proof was discussed in my paper Nullifying the climate null hypothesis
https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/null-wires-numbered.pdf
1000-
==> “…must be regarded as true…”
Let’s try again.
If someone provides error bars and CIs with respect to a theory, are “they” saying that “their” theory “must” be true?
That’s what i mean by playing games.
> There have been many claims about the harmful results of climate change.
They don’t help you define your own hypothesis in a scientific manner.
Saying “I claim non-P because you say P” is pure contradiction:
> if the fellow were to be charged with a crime the burden of proof would be on the prosecutor.
First, it was a conversation between two neighboors, not a court room.
Second, it’s not always true:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_Code
Third, here would be a more proper setting:
http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/OfficeofMedicalProductsandTobacco/CDER/default.htm
Compare and contrast Swood’s lawyerly mode with the tobacco’s industry’s smokes and mirrors.
Must be a religulous thing.
Shorter version of Mosher’s hypothetical.
“I have a headache. I theorize that it’s because you poured something in the stream. It’s up to you to prove – a. that I don’t have a headache even though you saw me blasting AC/DC on my headphones just now and b. That you didn’t cause my headache (that may or may not be real).”
I’m left wondering if, when “skeptics” say that emissions mitigation is “economic suicide” that will starve millions of children in Africa, “they” are saying that their theory “must” be true. Previously, even though those “skeptics” who say that don’t provide error bars and CIs to quantify “their” certainty, I didn’t assume they were arguing that their theory “must” be true…but maybe i should consider otherwise. Although, i will say that the alternative interpretation of their argument sounds awfully “alarmist.”
=>> “the issue of who bears the burden of proof was discussed in my paper Nullifying the climate null hypothesis.”
Did you explain that burden of proof finger-pointing in the climate change wars are irrelevant tribal games?
swood
“In your example, if the fellow were to be charged with a crime the burden of proof would be on the prosecutor. In general it seems to me that if someone is asserting that some change is going to take place the burden of proof is on that person to prove his assertion.”
You missed the point. The point is you cannot simply “read” the burden of proof from the circumastance. in this case you appealled to the law.
specifically US law.
But that’s not the question. The question is where is the burden of proof WRT C02.
When the regulations are changed, and they will be, then the burden of proof will change under your conception of burden of proof.
So here is the burden for you.
our politicians listen to the IPCC.
you want them not to? the burden is on YOU to come up with a better theory
who bears the burden of proof isn’t a scientific question.
Does a bear burden the woods with proof?
============================
“I’m left wondering if, when “skeptics” say that emissions mitigation is “economic suicide””…”
Skeptics don’t say that emissions mitigation is economic suicide. The emissions mitigation that came from the natural gas boom in the US has been economically fantastic. The emissions mitigation from the construction of nuclear plants has been economically great. That’s why you could have bi-partisan emissions mitigation if you really cared about emissions mitigation.
Skeptics say fake “emissions mitigation” policies – billions blown on “Easter Bunny solutions,” tax schemes, and pie-in-the-sky mandates – would be economic suicide.
And that’s not a “theory.” I always find it amusing that if the topic is AGW, then “everybody knows” raising energy prices won’t hurt the economy, but when the topic is an actual real energy price increase, “everybody knows” it hurts the economy. Here’s one example from Time Magazine:
http://business.time.com/2011/03/09/gas-price-spike-a-long-term-job-killer/
It is the signal achievement of the left to politicize AGW such that you earn the label “anti science” or “denier” only by refusing to do something truly ridiculous that would have no impact on emissions. It’s a great political strategy, a lousy environmental strategy. But that’s a feature, not a bug, right Josh?
It’s a mad political strategy for perilous short term gains. Desperate, frenzied, doomed. A tarentella.
============
==> “Skeptics don’t say that emissions mitigation is economic suicide”
Lol. Just one of many, many examples:
http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2013/05/02/european-green-movement-verge-collapse-due-failed-climate-change-and-global-warming-polic#axzz3TSGjqpoB
I have frequently pointed out to “skeptics” that they fail to acknowledge uncertainty when they talk about the economic outcomes of mitigation. And that’s without even discussing the net uncertainty even before they double down by assuming outcomes w/r/t benefits/loss with of externalities. Such over-confidence, and reliance on un-unverified and in-validated economic modeling is one of the reasons that i put “skeptics” in quotes, as i consider a failure to address obvious uncertainties to be a “tell” for confirmation bias.
I do remember one time, however, when Judith expressed some uncertainty about the outcomes of economic modeling. I gave her kudos for that. It’s good when she shows a little consistency when taking about uncertainty. Ordinarily, mr. Monster just ups and walks out if the room when she considers what “skeptics” have to say.
Josh,
Thanks for proving my point! I said skeptics oppose fake-mitigation and you link to an article where skeptics can be found opposing…. wait for it…. fake mitigation.
“EU energy prices have skyrocketed, families have been forced into energy poverty; meanwhile the EU carbon market has collapsed with no evidence of healthier environment or ‘abundant’ green jobs.”
That’s actually true, in fact it’s the reason EU countries are dialing back the fake-mitigation- reducing subsidies for Easter Bunny renewables, rethinking carbon markets, trying to figure out how to spin the fact that they’re nowhere near emissions reductions targets.
Here’s the New York Times being all skeptical- why just as skeptical as the GWPF in fact:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/business/energy-environment/german-energy-push-runs-into-problems.html
By the by, I don’t think this is because Europe suddenly went Republican. The fact is that Germany can’t bail out Greece and have a generous welfare state and shut down it’s industrial base. Wealth is a prerequisite to redistribution of wealth,. Since they won’t give up the first and second, they can’t do the third.
It is a part of the policy debate. As Judith puts it in her paper Nullifying the climate null hypothesis:
Whether or not “catastrophic” is defined in a scientific manner, the concept is used over and over in a scientific context to describe the problem. Also from Nullifying the climate null hypothesis:
Is this not the pot calling the kettle black? Alarmists seem ready to jump into it without much consideration at all of the economic consequences, and with a simple calm assurance that everything will be OK and will at least be better than the alternative (catastrophe).
> Whether or not “catastrophic” is defined in a scientific manner, the concept is used over and over in a scientific context to describe the problem.
The “catastrophic” is mainly used by those who use the CAGW strawman.
Those who use the CAGW strawman may sometimes use it in a scientific context, like Judy does, but it’s usually done in the public sphere.
The term is not use to “describe,” but to evaluate.
Swood’s rope-a-dope evades his task, which is to formulate an alternative hypothesis, which he confused for an explanation:
Claiming in a scientific context that doubling CO2 will not bring about catastrophic changes to climate has the burden to provide what “catastrophic changes” means.
Claiming the same in a PR context like a congressional hearing only requires enough saliva to cover one’s track with a Gish gallop.
When the UNFCCC refers to “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” is that a CAGW strawman? When Trenberth refers to “climate disasters” is he raising a CAGW strawman? What is a CAGW strawman? Can you give me a simple explanation of exactly what you are objecting to and why?
You are proposing that the null hypothesis has been reversed. What reasoning leads you to that conclusion?
Willard –
By the way, Judith did not in her paper use the term “CAGW”. She referred to “Trenberth” which I replaced with “[A person who asserts that skeptics now bear the burden of disproving CAGW]”.
> When the UNFCCC refers to “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” is that a CAGW strawman?
Since when “dangerous” equates to “catastrophic”?
***
> When Trenberth refers to “climate disasters” is he raising a CAGW strawman?
Yet another loaded question. Swood is more and more sounding like a lawyer.
Some context on Judy’s exploitation of that single word Trenberth used:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/2744926652
Which reminds me when Judy read “elite” when Schneider said “expert”:
http://judithcurry.com/2011/01/11/politics-of-climate-expertise-part-ii/#comment-30967
***
> What is a CAGW strawman?
Brandishing the CAGW strawman is using the public statement of a talking head to raise concerns about mainstream science. In other words, it’s level 2 in the Contrarial Matrix and up:
https://contrarianmatrix.wordpress.com/do-not-panic/
***
> You are proposing that the null hypothesis has been reversed.
Not at all. I’m saying that instead of offering an alternative explanation to AGW, Swood’s using non-CAGW as an alternative hypothesis while refusing to define it.
A nice lawyer we got there, peddling his new reading list. This time, it’s Trenberth. Let’s revisit all this five-year old material.
The audit never ends.
> Judith did not in her paper use the term “CAGW”.
Her paper was funded by the NOAA. It requires some decorum. That decorum did not prevent her to meander Trenberth’s discussion of AGW to her own favorite pet topic, whether she referred to it as CAGW, alarmism, or else.
In other words, what I refer to as the “but CAGW” strawman.
I asked for a simple explanation of exactly what you are objecting to about the term CAGW and why. Are you able to do that?
CAGW refers to the “climate disaster” that Trenberth referred to.
Is the term “climate disaster” no longer “operational” as Nixon used to put it?
Do you recognize a distinction between these two concepts: (a) a warming caused by anthropogenic activity that is not something to worry about, and (b) a warming that likely will be dangerous?
> I asked for a simple explanation of exactly what you are objecting to about the term CAGW and why.
AGW is scientific, while CAGW is not. CAGW is a contrarian construct. The corresponding label is “alarmist.”
Those who claim that the mainstream messages surrounding AGW are alarmist have the onus to prove that the messages are indeed alarmist.
Basic critical thinking, which one should expect lawyers have studied.
Let me just ask you this. Do you regard the prospect of AGW as alarming?
Not at all. Let me explain the rationale for my question. You said:
This implies that the mainstream messages are not alarmist. If you believe that the mainstream messages are not alarmist then what are we talking about? If you believe that the mainstream messages are alarmist, then why are you saying that I must prove it?
> Let me just ask you this.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions
Is there a Willard-interpreter present who can explain to me Willard’s position, what he means by “Just asking questions,” and why my questions are invalid?
Nope, I’ve been unsuccessful for years at figuring this out.
> This implies that the mainstream messages are not alarmist.
Not at all. It only implies that those who make claims have the onus to show their evidence for it.
If the claim is that mainstream climate science is alarmist, then the onus is on the claimant to show that it is indeed alarmist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophic_burden_of_proof
This ensures productivity, a requirement “just asking questions” evades.
> Is there a Willard-interpreter present who can explain to me Willard’s position,
Does that ring a bell? Ah yes:
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/climate-dialogue/#comment-48898
***
For more on leading questions, start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question
Let me ask you this: is this what Swood has been doing since day one at AT’s?
I could answer in two ways. I could cite you as an expert on the question as to whether mainstream climate science is alarmist and ask your opinion. What is your opinion?
But look, hasn’t this gotten just a little too ridiculous, like your Monty Python sketch? (Quite amusing, by the way.) Unless you are asserting that mainstream climate science is alarmist, that the prospect of climate change is alarming, then there is no issue for us to discuss.
I freely acknowledge that I am often unable to understand what you are talking about. Is it a logical fallacy to ask for help?
swood1000, engaging with Willard and Joshua can often be like entering a black hole of pointlessness. My advice is not to bother responding to comments addressed to you that are pointless or seem not to be in good faith, or seem to be ‘gotcha’ attempts.
> I could cite you as an expert on the question as to whether mainstream climate science is alarmist and ask your opinion.
May I ask where’s Swood’s subpoena?
Instead of asking me a leading question regarding the contraposition of an hypothesis he himself introduced earlier, why wouldn’t he offer his reasons why he believes mainstream climate science is alarmist?
> Unless you are asserting that mainstream climate science is alarmist, that the prospect of climate change is alarming, then there is no issue for us to discuss.
What discussion?
How does citing Denizens and asking them loaded questions qualify as a discussion?
Does it mean that Swood is asserting that mainstream climate science is alarmist, otherwise he would not be discussing?
It’s asking for an interpreter the same as asking for help?
Is asking for an interpreter a good faith question?
Is there an interpreter here?
Is asking for an explanation as efficient as asking for an interpreter?
Is asking clarifying questions a good faith way to communicate?
Is pointing to specific points not understood a good way to clarify if you don’t understand?
Is there a way to describe asking if there’s an interpreter as a bad faith rhetorical device?
Are you smart enough to understand that asking for an interpreter is likely to be interpreted ads a bad faith rhetorical device?
Is there a way to consider ask possible rhetorical questions in so little time?
Actually I am enjoying swood1000’s contributions, and they make more sense to me than anything you are willard are criticizing him over.
What is the difference between saying that and saying that I don’t understand what that last posts meant? Where is the element of bad faith?
Indeed. That one had definitely run its course.
Excellent advice, which I will follow.
I am still clinging to the advice given to me by ATTP:
> My advice is not to bother responding to comments addressed to you that are pointless or seem not to be in good faith, or seem to be ‘gotcha’ attempts.
Shouldn’t this advice apply to Swood’s leading questions?
Why should this advice apply to Donna’s and Judy’s gotcha game with Patchy’s letter?
Why is the word “faith” used right after raising religulousness as the most “serious issue”?
Should we be surprised that Judge Judy rubber stamps Swood after the latter piggy backed on her “but CAGW” argument against Trenberth?
***
Sometimes, pointlessness goes all the way up to congressional hearings.
Q.E.D.
I’ve recently found Counselor Gattinara’s advice to the young Charles the Fifth, contemplating war with Francis. He gave seven reasons against warring and ten reasons for warring.
Such modern sophists as these are both obvious and indelicate.
================
“Is there a Willard-interpreter present who can explain to me Willard’s position, what he means by “Just asking questions,” and why my questions are invalid?”
See? you did it again.two invalid questions.
“just asking questions” is a tactic. Like the question you ask here. You really are not asking for a willard interpreter. You just mean to insinuate that there isnt an interpreter. All you have to do to understand willard is to read what he links to. slow down, and think about what you are doing with language. And your second question. Well, that question has been answered in several places. Its not a real question.
You ask leading questions, loaded questions, rhetorical questions.
None of these work. stop it.
Here is a challenge. write what you believe without asking a question.
if you respond with a question you lose.
if you respond with what you believe then you’ll bear a burden of proof.
Steven Mosher –
Well, there are two issues here. One is your objection to my asking questions. The other is your assertion that a person who states what he believes always bears the burden of proof about that. Consider these statements of my belief:
1. I don’t know what you mean by a CAGW strawman.
2. When Trenberth refers to “climate disasters” I understand him to be doing what is referred to as “raising a CAGW strawman.”
3. You appear to regard AGW as alarming.
4. If a person is finding a balance between being effective and being honest, as Schneider proposed in one interview, that necessarily involves a little bit of compromise to each. Nothing else can be meant by “balance”.
5. Two scientists should report the results of a study the same way, regardless of their policy preferences.
The first three are statements of personal belief which require no proof. The last two statements are ones that I would have no objection to supplying proof for. There have been two difficulties, however. The first is that if my immediate goal is to ascertain a person’s position it should make no difference whether I ask the person’s position in the form of a question, of if I state a belief and ask the person whether he disagrees with it. Do you see a difference? The second is that whichever way it is asked, there is nothing illegitimate about these questions. Number four assumes that Schneider did make such a proposal, so if that is doubted it is proper to ask for proof of this. But each of these questions was met with evasions and/or assertions that the question was illegitimate as “just asking questions” or as a “hypothetical question” or as beneath the dignity of a response for some similar reason. Can you explain any of this, as well as what is objectionable about asking for a person’s position?
1000-
==> “One is your objection to my asking questions.”
Not that I could, or want to, speak for mosher…but I would suggest that it isn’t the simple act of asking questions that he was criticizing.
Can you see that there are different kinds of questions?
Can you see that some questions can look more like an expression of bad faith than a real effort to clarify understanding?
Can you see, for example, why asking if there’s an willard interpreter here might seem like that kind of question to some?
Do you see that for some that might look more like a criticism of willard than a good-faith attempt to understand something?
Can you see that even if you didn’t intend such a question to be an expression of bad faith, with a little bit of forethought you might have been able to anticipate that people might respond that way?
Can you see that if you had given that kind of forethought, you might have been able to express yourself in ways that would be able to advance the discussion more constructively?
Well, there are two issues here. One is your objection to my asking questions. The other is your assertion that a person who states what he believes always bears the burden of proof about that. Consider these statements of my belief:
why do you object to my objection? I dont understand you.
why do you think you bear no burden of proof if you assert something?
1. I don’t know what you mean by a CAGW strawman.
Look up CAGW. Look up strawman. you understand english.
read HARDER. think deeper.
2. When Trenberth refers to “climate disasters” I understand him to be doing what is referred to as “raising a CAGW strawman.”
You would be wrong.
3. You appear to regard AGW as alarming.
Wrong again.
4. If a person is finding a balance between being effective and being honest, as Schneider proposed in one interview, that necessarily involves a little bit of compromise to each. Nothing else can be meant by “balance”.
wrong again.
5. Two scientists should report the results of a study the same way, regardless of their policy preferences.
wrong again. you are making assumptions about the impossibility
of objectively describing the same thing in different ways.
The first three are statements of personal belief which require no proof.
I believe you do know what people mean by CAGW strawman
and you are feigning ignorance. This is my personal belief
and by your reasoning requires no proof.
Second, if you dont know what people believe by strawman you
can hardly apply that to trenberth. Third, you think I find agw alarming.
you are wrong. I believe you are made of cheese. This according to
you requires no proof. See how that works
“The last two statements are ones that I would have no objection to supplying proof for. There have been two difficulties, however. The first is that if my immediate goal is to ascertain a person’s position it should make no difference whether I ask the person’s position in the form of a question, of if I state a belief and ask the person whether he disagrees with it.”
Wrong. It does make a difference.
Do you see a difference?
Yes.
The second is that whichever way it is asked, there is nothing illegitimate about these questions.
wrong again
Number four assumes that Schneider did make such a proposal, so if that is doubted it is proper to ask for proof of this.
Perhaps it was his personal belief and requires, as you argue, no proof.
See how that works?
But each of these questions was met with evasions and/or assertions that the question was illegitimate as “just asking questions” or as a “hypothetical question” or as beneath the dignity of a response for some similar reason.
I haven’t read a single question of yours that strikes me as valid.
That is my personal belief.
Can you explain any of this, as well as what is objectionable about asking for a person’s position?
Yes.
Want to play some more?
bet you cant.
Joshua
Not that I could, or want to, speak for mosher…but I would suggest that it isn’t the simple act of asking questions that he was criticizing.
#############################
This is true. I think if people would ask willard an honest question, I did once I think, they will get a good answer. He pointed me to an author to read so I could understand where he was coming from. It required work on my part. The work was rewarding.
Can you see that there are different kinds of questions?
Can you see that some questions can look more like an expression of bad faith than a real effort to clarify understanding?
########################################
I am far more aware of my own tendency to use questions in this way
because of willard’s efforts. I do wish he were more expository, but
I cannot fault him for being cryptic.. hehe.
Can you see, for example, why asking if there’s an willard interpreter here might seem like that kind of question to some?
###############################################
My bet is he wont see that.
Do you see that for some that might look more like a criticism of willard than a good-faith attempt to understand something?
Can you see that even if you didn’t intend such a question to be an expression of bad faith, with a little bit of forethought you might have been able to anticipate that people might respond that way?
Can you see that if you had given that kind of forethought, you might have been able to express yourself in ways that would be able to advance the discussion more constructively?
####################
I will merely note that when challenged, he could not avoid questions.
Funny thing I forgot. I used to force students to remove all questions from
their text. Not that asking questions is necessarily bad, but just an an exercise to find better ways of expressing themselves. I cannot estimate the number of freshman papers that started with a throat clearing question.
Steven Mosher –
When I try to understand your reasoning you respond with nonsense, apparently attempting to imply that my statements were nonsense, but falling short of the requirements of basic rationality. I do believe that you would not insist on the irrational answer if you were aware of a more reasonable one, although I do detect a seething bitterness on your part for which this kind of response can serve as an outlet. Either way,
No.
to “the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems”
More anti-science from the consensus.
So, no new species? As in no evolution?
It’s kinda ironic, because behaviour is largely genetic, and we’re evolved to be religious!
Hopefully, higher order brain activity prevails, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
> So, no new species? As in no evolution?
Right. Patchy forgot about all that could grow out of toxic wastes, eg:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Pit#Extremophiles
What would happen to the poor extremophiles if the mining industry was forbidden to dump their waste in our lakes?
Ask your USAA agent.
Willard, like Pachauri, is seemingly unaware that new species are continually arising.
WIllard, like Pachauri. is seemingly unaware that as a new species arises the old may be considered extinct.
Full quote
‘“For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma. ”
The difficulty is not that he has a dharma. Being charitable I would say that
his use of the word “religion” was unfortunate, but it’s probably the closest one can come to dharma.
The problem is he instituted no checks against his dharma.
It’s fine that he have a “world view” or guiding principle. There are other dharma, I see no evidence that these world views were accorded their due by the IPCC.
> I see no evidence that these world views were accorded their due by the IPCC.
All the evidence we have leans toward yet another half-baked editorial.
Mosh:
Very well said Steve. This to me is the key point. Note Donna switches from ‘religion’ to ‘political mission’:
I think the last part is fair comment, given Pachauri’s record. But I think it’s fine for science and religion to be in the same sentence, like this one and Donna’s. Indeed, I can imagine even more interesting sentences in which the two words may appear :)
Proper politics is about compromise between all interested parties, which in this case means all users of energy and enjoyers (or otherwise) of climate on planet earth. With a constituency of every living human being checks and balances should be absolutely of the essence. The disregard for such is a reason to say good riddance to the Doctor. I have no idea who is best placed to do better – but much, much better it has to be.
Who was it who wanted to separate religion and state anyway? And why, for Gaia’s sake?
============
Mary Dyer.
No Willard. It would be very easy to institute controls.
For the same reason that fish did not discover water.
It’s a little like one religious fanatic believing that the other religious fanatic’s beliefs are quite moderate.
> It’s a little like one religious fanatic believing that the other religious fanatic’s beliefs are quite moderate.
I thought the fanatics believed they were less fanatics than the fanatics they fanatically fought.
Ideology is what the otter entertains.
swwod
“For the same reason that fish did not discover water.”
Huh?
1. your analogy sucks
2. arguing by analogy sucks
3. understanding WHY they do not use controls is useless speculation.
In short, you cannot elect a head of the IPCC who is free of having a ‘world view” or “religion” or set of principles that they will not subject to
investigation. your job is to propose a BETTER approach for controlling for the “world view” of the IPCC leader.
For Example, Judith has a view about our obligations to species and sustainability. Were she the head of the IPCC what process would you use to control for her views on these matters.
That Patchy had views is UNREMARKABLE. Pointing that out is boring.
suggesting a better method gets you points.
I have to agree with Mosher the use of the word religion was a mistake. Religion is a belief system; something people believe to be true based on faith not necessarily proven facts. Science is about proving something to be true or factual. Science is a process. Religion is a personal spiritual experience that can be shared.
Patchy may have a personal spiritual feeling about climate change and it may be a shared experience. I don’t think the IPCC was set up for that purpose. Not reading their mission statement, I think it was set up to study the ramifications of human caused climate change and what can be done about it. In other words it should be a scientific process not a shared spiritual experience. Ahh the end is near!
Moral imperatives are not science. Nature has no moral code those are either invented by humans or handed down by God takes your pick.
“the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion”
Science reveals that 99,9% of all species that ever lived are now extinct. Ecosystems aren’t sustained by interference from other species, they all collapse with time, and are replaced by something better able to exploit the niche. Given that humans evolved like all other living things our technologies are a natural outgrowth of evolution.
I find it ludicrous to say in the same breath that humans are a product of the same evolutionary forces that created all other species while at the same time saying that human industry is unnatural. Given that humans weren’t specially created by a bearded sky thunderer then by definition all human industry is a natural product of evolution.
Environmentalists are as religious as anyone else they just claim a different source for their moral imperatives. That source is no more or less credible than other and in no case is it based on scientific inquiry or the study of nature.
Ordvic can you demonstrate that all species should be preserved? That sounds like an article of faith to me completely devoid of math and science. Pachauri made no mistake in calling it religion,
dont get me wrong. i dont think there is a hard line between science and any other way of explaining the world. as in science is a religion
Hi ordvic. The UN has prayers to recite which say that we’ve lost our senses and our sensibiities.
So I doubt you can say the IPCC is clear of the UN reilgiosity.
David in TX and thisisnotgoodtogo,
I should have made it more clear. What I meant by mistake was not implying Patchy considered it a mistake but that his honesty was a mistake from a PR standpoint. If people think the IPCC has been run by a zealot all this time (hard not to come to the conclusion anyway) it’s credability can’t escape scrutiny.
@david TX
http://judithcurry.com/2015/03/03/ipcc-in-transition/#comment-680249
Re human industry an extension of evolution….I agree completely and have often voiced that view. That was an extremely good comment IMHO.
Willard, you’re right that misreading is isn’t the way to go.
Neither is leaving out the most pertinent part of a quote.
“For me the protection of Planet Earth”
He was referring to protecting Planet Earth, which means saving it from CAGW.
Protecting all the species isn’t the work which he was talking about, after all. It’s saving the Earth from CAGW.
> > Neither is leaving out the most pertinent part of a quote.
Right after this, no less:
https://nofrakkingconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/pachauri_my_religion12801.png
No mention of dharma nor sustainability there.
***
> He was referring to protecting Planet Earth, which means saving it from CAGW.
It rather means something about the sustainability of ecosystems, This, a challenge that may be a bit more general than the challenge AGW provides.
Denizens’ own CAGW straw man has very little to do with this.
The fragility of ecosystems is their strength, adaptability.
‘Sustain’, in the parlance has taken a tragically frozen connotation.
When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?
===============
Willard, Pachauri was talking about leaving his IPCC work. That is about anthro climate change, not generally about saving species. Hotter might be better for some species :) .
And you know he’s fighting anthro warming.
Dr. Curry’s take was closer to the mark than yours was.
It really is better not to exclude the main thrust eh, WIllard?
> It really is better not to exclude the main thrust eh, WIllard?
The main thrust of Patchy’s letter was not that climate change is his religion. Judy got suckered in by Donna’s trick. You just can’t win, This.
The main thrust of the quotation, WiIlard.
You really lost the argument when you excluded it.
Repeat as much as you want, This.
One does not simply “highlight” an issue by forging two sentences, by eliding both subjects and complements, and then grafting the two together.
Frankensteinian editorial practices ain’t good enough for “the most serious issue for the IPCC’s reputation.”
This is a no brainer. Disputing this highlights what may be the most serious issue for the Denizens’ reputation.
A very basic reading exercise, which even engineers should grasp.
Willard, you’re switching to Donna, when your comment was directed against Dr. Currry.
Funny, that.
Pachauri was talking about his IPCC work, which is about climate, not about species, per se. The protecting of Planet Earth was wrt to climate change.
You know it.
Frm Donna’s article:
“For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma.”
She showed the whole thing, Willard. And she offered an abridged version, which actually does capture exactly what Pachauri was saying, minus the farce.
The “abridged version,” which fits into the green bashing narrative being sold by churnalists since the heydays of Thatcherism, has been transmogrified into “climate change as his religion.”
Even the Daily Mail would have problems defending this.
“the green bashing narrative being sold by churnalists since the heydays of Thatcherism”
Looks like Pachauri just supplied the evidence that they were right, eh, Willard?
He couldn’t help but puff himself up. Heheh, done, Willard.
So you try to dechurn the butter. Too late. Have some warm milk and get some rest.
> Looks like Pachauri just supplied the evidence that they were right,
Torturing two lines into forced confession finally confirms 30 years of editorial lines and yellow journalism.
The last stake in the last nail of the final straw.
The truth is now out there.
Well played!
Only there was no torturing other than what you’ve been up to, Willard.
Donna’s abridged quotation only omitted the fluff accompanying Pachauri’s statement.
Pachauri offered confirming evidence that his work was driven by religious conviction, not scientific curiosity
All that is unfortunate for the perpetually dishonest alarmist, but that’s the way the cookie crumbled, eh,WIllard?
Joshua asks- “Do you think that something can be “proven” here one way or the other?”
Probably not “proven” to everyone’s satisfaction, but certainly there should be better evidence available to support the claims that a world with higher CO2 levels will have worse conditions for humans. It may get warmer, but so what? Can you point to a SINGLE thing that you are confident is significantly worse overall as a result of humans having had a significant role on raising CO2 concentrations by 70%?
> Can you point to a SINGLE thing that you are confident is significantly worse overall as a result of humans having had a significant role on raising CO2 concentrations by 70%?
http://borgenproject.org/wp-content/uploads/air_pollution1.jpg
Source: http://borgenproject.org/7-million-killed-annually-by-air-pollution/
***
If you don’t say beforehand what would be good enough evidence for you, Rob, what warranty can we have that any evidence will ever convince you?
Heh, Willard, now that’s a simple logical fallacy. Can you name it?
===============
> now that’s a simple logical fallacy
Yet it is one of Denizens’ favorite:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#AdHocRescue
Tougher to argue against AGW without it.
I’ve quit asking Fan this, but did you read your link, Willard?
===============
I mean the link to the pollution study. Note that indoor air pollution kills more than outdoor. Note that nations still struggling with poverty don’t scrub emissions to outdoor air. Note that developed nations don’t pollute outdoor air.
There is a simple solution. Cheap energy, progressive development. No, not that meaning of ‘progressive’.
===============================
> Note that nations still struggling with poverty don’t scrub emissions to outdoor air.
https://contrarianmatrix.wordpress.com/do-no-harm/
A yes before the “but do no harm” would be nice.
Dr Curry, may I comment now?
When dealing with anything attached to the UN, one is dealing with politics, international politics as well as big money. From its inception with Woodrow Wilson’sLeague of Nations to today’s UN, financial & political supporter leadership has been vested in POTUS, now community organizer Obama. He is sure to advocate an even larger role for IPCC.
IPCC from its inception was to establish a quasie legitimacy for a political agenda. That is why the science of natural variation has not been investigated until the “pause/plateau” made for an unconveniant truth. This why science was never really a part of Climate Science. When the science took some researchers away from CO2 as The Control Knob, the mudslinging and academic bad behavior dominated and the funding stopped.
Obama has billionaires speaking loudly in his face so the full weight of the now corrupted Environment Movement is energized for this final push in Paris. There will be no let up. A strong CAGW advocate will be enshrined shortly to carry the torch. I hear the warrior drum beats from the likes of Trenberth, Schmitz, Mann and other already, their efforts to carry the day. Make no mistake, this is war. The first casualty of war is the truth.
The IPCC has the full backing of Obama as an instrument of his battle plan. The science is the next casualty. Scientist’s reputations are the next to fall.
No good deed will be left unpunished.
+1
I’m not optimistic about any greater attention to natural variability. That would require analysis of the strongest case for such with data, historical perspective and graphs. Just cracking the door open a little bit will bring on a flood of questions. Not by the climate establishment, but by the legions of citizens who have accepted IPCC’s judgment about AGW, without reservations. Once the hockey stick’s demise is given any authenticity, the rock solid case for AGW begins to crumble.
What percent of the public are able to cite the arguments for and against the MWP or LIA? What percent of the public are aware of the similarities of the rate of warming or SLR between 1910-1940 and 1975-2000. I suspect a very small percent.
Most troubling is the likely very great number of persons who see nothing wrong with Pachauri’s statement about this mission being a religion. Whether they care to admit it or not, they embrace it as a religion.
I’m AM an optimistic about a greater attention to natural variability.
Mother nature throws snow on the Alarmists and the World sees that.
The world sees Natural Variability. The world does not see anything in nature that matches Model Output. The media covers it up, or tries to, but the world is watching the actual events as they happen. The world sees the climate carrying along the same temperature and sea level cycles that have been mostly the same for ten thousand years.
They see the “adjusted” data and “Hockey Sticks” challenged and thrown out. They see a Hockey Stick in one IPCC report and not in another. They see the 2013 IPCC with a much lower projection that the 1990 report. They see the “hide the decline” in Climate-gate emails.
The world sees Germany building coal fired power plants to help the wind and solar that didn’t work so well. In Australia, they voted the alarmists out of office. In the US, we voted some of the alarmists out of office. We are not done yet.
The world sees and the world is paying a greater attention to natural variability.
“In the US, we voted some of the alarmists out of office. We are not done yet.”
Doesn’t matter. The alarmists have absolute control over EVERY executive and regulatory department and have a closed loop ‘sue and settle’ scam that is essentially funded by tax dollars. If the alarmists lose control of the legislature or the presidency, doesn’t matter much. One judge, ruling on a suit filed by an environmental group funded in part by the government, can vacate any legislation and force the imposition of policies that the legislature specifically refused to enact. CO2 ruled to be a pollutant that the EPA is REQUIRED BY LAW to regulate? The result of a suit filed against the EPA by groups funded by the EPA.
Restrictions cannot be placed on regulatory bodies by congress nor, without absolute, veto proof majorities in both houses of congress, can funding for them be cut.
As our government is currently constituted the congress is largely irrelevant.
Headline today: “Obama “Very Interested” In Raising Taxes Through Executive Action”
Any chance that the congress will point out that it is the taxing authority under the Constitution and that any tax imposed by executive action is prima facie unconstitutional? Or that anyone would pay any attention to it if it did? Or that if someone refused to pay the Obama imposed taxes, citing the Constitution, that their assed tax liability would change a dime? Or that the penalties imposed by the IRS for refusing to pay would go away?
AGW dont need no stickin HS
Of course it does, Mosher. Because of the silent letter “C” in front that you forgot about.
So, let them denounce the HS bad science and statistics. Why to they stick to it if they don’t need it?
If the Hockey Stick was a mistake, it needs to be corrected.
Judith,
“This situation is terribly unfair to the scientists who have worked very hard for the IPCC, at least some of whom are not dogmatists.”
Sure, but the problem is the ones who are.
One other point: if nothing else, the charges of sexual harassment, if true, suggest an appalling lack of judgement. A big issue for the IPCC is that his lack of judgement may very well have applied to a range of subjects….. and it seems to me the “my religion and my dharma” comment is confirmation of this. The question that needs to be asked of the next IPCC Chair is if they are comfortable with: “For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission.”
Whoever becomes Chair, I expect they will think pretty much the same way, so the IPCC will continue to have serious problems.
The situation HAS been unfair to the scientists who are not dogmatists.
Some, like Dr. Curry, don’t get invited back and maybe would not go back.
Getting a change at the top has a good chance of making it less unfair to the scientists who are not dogmatists.
Appointing an economist to head the IPCC would be no better than the outgoing mechanical engineer. They need a climate scientist, or someone with relevant hard science training and extensive experience as an administrator of similar large international projects.
Economists tend to have an unjustified belief that economics is the key to unlock all social science questions — or even all science questions (see “Freakonomics”.), and excessive confidence in their theories. The IPCC already has far too much of both, imo.
This would take them in the opposite direction from that needed to increase their credibility.
Climate Scientists have been educated to be biased.
There are exceptions, I would support Dr Curry in that position.
They don’t need an administrator of similar projects.
They do need an administrator of un-similar, unbiased, projects.
What about appointing an honest person?
Jacobress,
If you have a touchstone to detect honesty, choosing an IPCC official is the least of its applications.
In the 4th century BC Diogenes of Sinope searched for an honest man using a lantern to illuminate the faces of people he met on the street. Sadly, that doesn’t work and no better method has been found.
Honesty falls, not like the gentle rain of mercy, but the soft white damn of a snowflake.
===========
I got it. Never trust anybody without apparent dandruff. Diogenes wasn’t illuminating faces, rather collars. Looking at their faces was just to allay the suspicions which even an honest man might have under such close examination of his neck.
==================
Pachauri: “For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma.”
I am bothered by the religion quote especially combined with “survival of ALL species”. It seems highly non-scientific and tied to a belief that nature is perfect as is and ignores that evolution and the diversity of life on this planet are dependent upon and driven by extinctions. Not that widespread extinctions would not be a cause for concern but 99.9% of all species that have ever existed are extinct.
Bingo.
PE, I think you are my favorite contributor here at CE.
Every scientist should cringe when they read Pachauri’s statement.
Yup. Well said. And yet up thread even the likes of Mosher are trying to pass off religion as simply a mistake. Nope, the whole context tells one it was not a mistake, it is his purest belief.
Correct. I don’t see why I should support the survival of mosquitoes and flies.
The only way IPCC can get any credibility is to start again with a new name and a new location and new people. Unfortunately, this also applies to the UN itself.
Wouldn’t it be better* ter disband it? Dream on I guess. (((
* ‘n cheaper.
Beth
That was the very hypothesis I explored with and article here over three years ago which garnered over 700 comments
http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/06/ipcc-discussion-thread/
Our dear departed friend max suggested and part wrote it.
Tonyb
Good post, Tony and comments. This link from Max Anacker.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/mclean-disband_the_ipcc.pdf
bts.
(6) Author – reviewer circularity, wouldn’t yer say’
‘a case fer conflict of interest, the topic de jour?
The problem now is that the IPCC may opt for an acceptable face. If that someone is faintly tinged with skepticism or on the lukewarm side that just means that the IPCC will have a greatly extended life. Since there is not a soul on the planet who has a clue as to future climate, those claiming any degree of knowledge are a hazard to prudence and preparation. “Uncertainty” treated as yet another fascinating abstraction for intellectual fondling kind of misses the whole point of being uncertain.
Remember: the difference between warmist and lukewarmist is that the one boils your economy while the other cooks it slow.
In the end, the money is gone.
“The IPCC needs to regain its scientific objectivity.”
From Wikipedia:
“The IPCC produces reports that support the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is the main international treaty on climate change.[5][6] The ultimate objective of the UNFCCC is to “stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic [i.e., human-induced] interference with the climate system”.[5] IPCC reports cover “the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”[6]”
In other words, since its establishment it has treated the ‘fact of’ the danger of ACO2 as axiomatic and its job is to provide scientific reports that confirm the danger and make recommendations for adaptation and mediation. It assumes, as a given, that ‘the science is settled’.
It can’t regain what it never had and was never INTENDED to have.
It needs to ESTABLISH its scientific objectivity.
I would say that there are two chances of that happening: slim and none. Except that I don’t think that ‘slim’ actually has a realistic chance.
I think they lost the last chance to do the right thing when they wrote up the initial papers. What a large omelette on their faces to retrace all the fear mongering and say “We didn’t really mean it. We were just foolin’ ya.”
What an honor it will be for whoever is chosen to follow in Pachauri’s footsteps… the Bill Cosby Chair of Global Warming Science has a nice ring to it.
Well spoken, Judith.
Lost in translation I’m sure
“And the nearest analogy I can uncover of somewhat similar attraction
Is that of a moth around a candle and its tragic fate,
Where the intense heat and fire are for the moth coldly destructive,
But the fire that beckons me does my drab life magically rejuvenate!
Nor forget Parbati’s li’l critter.
===================
Two peas in a pod.
https://toryardvaark.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/al_gore_rajendra_pachauri_20080114.jpg
‘That one may smile,and smile and be a …’ well you know.
H/t The Bard.
They are afraid that many more scientists (and common taxpayers) will adopt the position of Professor Judith Curry, former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
I work toward that goal, every day. It is not so difficult, The consensus side only has model output on their side. All the actual data works against them.
More and more people are coming to realize that a skillful model would at least, agree with real data. They don’t even sometimes get that lucky.
“Several of these names are unfamiliar to me, and I don’t know any of the candidates personally. But a brief google search on each of these individuals suggests that any of them would be an improvement over Pachauri. I briefly comment on two of the names that strike me favorably:”
Stocker is non starter from the transparency point of view.
OMG, I am so shocked: I absolutely agree with Steven Mosher.
He’s dead right often. Most in the center ring, some way off when the wind is up.
=========
Well, as tb would say, Stocker will at least admit privately that we don’t understand the oceans. If only the humility would take root and thrive. The soil is rich.
================
Kim
For how long the deep oceans cant be measured for warming not even tonyb knows.
Tonyb
Calling Captain Nemo. Well, the archivist of his records.
They are there. Believe.
=================
Tony, you’re gonna make me go reread ClimateAudit on Stocker. I thought I’d successfully forgotten that, but your being the only ‘wandering wonderer’ who touts him, and you’ve tooted terrifically always before, makes me wonder.
===========
Kim
I can only go by what I saw and heard during the climate conference in Exeter we both attended. Me as a questioner and him on a distinguished panel. Is he totally transparent or someone sceptics would like to have? No I suspect not, but to publicly admit that climate science has its failimg is rare and for that he scores points.
Personally I would go for prof richard betts of the met office who I also met at the conference and also had a meeting wth just last Monday. In Margaret thatchers words , ‘ he is someone we can work with.’ however I don’t think he is in the running.
Tonyb
jones went to meet with Stocker to discuss strategies for FOIA and the IPCC. its in the mails
here is a clue. we disagree on the science.
FOIA aint about the science.
IPCC leadership aint science
Ar6 will not be science. it will be a summary of science
people who cant separate scientifc views from policy, from transparency, etc.. need to think a little deeper.
but thanks for agreeing
http://climateaudit.org/2012/01/12/stockers-earmarks/
http://climateaudit.org/2012/05/14/stockers-earmark-an-update/
http://climateaudit.org/2012/10/04/will-stocker-retaliate/
There’s a fine Keith DeHavelle at the beginning of your second link, AK.
===============
Leading the Church of Carbon Sin
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/artwork/portrait/ipcc-chairman-pachauri-mesothelioma-sml.gif
Our Father, who art in Deep Bandini…
https://adamfowlersopinion.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/cartoon_climatechangeprayer.jpg
The new head of the IPCC should be an intelligent, honest person, who has no Climate Bias. A best choice might be A Judge. They are called on to make decisions about matters in which they are not the Expert. They call on Experts from all sides to testify and and determine what is truth.
Pick someone with a Climate Bias, and we will be no better off.
https://nofrakkingconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/pachauri_my_religion12801.png
I detect an exaggeration in the report at the end of the post.
A friend, continuing on a local site council after his child progressed beyond grade school, was categorized as a ‘former parent’, to his great delight.
=================
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-A8IujZs2zAI/Uo-fUfmeQ-I/AAAAAAAAHq8/iq8JmoZQSdo/s1600/89935828-global-warming.jpg
http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/wp-content/uploads/science-and-religion1.jpg
http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/images/pics4/cartoon-church-of-gw.jpg
The AGW debate exposed the UN as a worldwide propaganda machine after seventy years’ (1945-2015) operation.
The danger now is desperate acts to retain the delusion of world control:
1. Inciting religious or ethnic violence
2. Genuine or “false flag” wars
3. Economic collapse
Dr Curry. I’m kind of surprised to see you quoting New American. I’m familiar with it and it has a tinge of right wing fringiness to it. It’s put out by the John Birch Scociety. I’m no left winger and there’s probably nothing wrong with the article. But just in case you didn’t know, I thought I’d warn you before Sou and the wabett start hopping all over you.
Canman, I appreciate your concern. I quote statements i find interesting from a wide range of sources. Sou and the idiots are hopping all over me anyways, I most definitely don’t worry about playing to that crowd.
Good reply. I think the
!!!
following also leaves some wriggle room :)
Thanks, Richard, I’d misinterpreted the exclamation. Now I see she doesn’t think she can part the Climate Sea for safe passage through. Well, she’s wrong there.
============
Love the sentiment but (a tad seriously) I think parting seas is more of a team game these days. The !!! spoke to me of humility, something we all need. And we must all have courage to step forward, be Moses for the next man. (Alliteration plays against gender neutrality. Need your help as always.)
Be moaning for the modest woman, or bemoaning a maunderous minimum.
===============
Why would an accomplished scientist like Curry give a rat’s ass what Rabett or Sou thought about them?
Non sequitur.
She has a rather moderate image, and someone might use this to start a twitter storm to tar her as some kind of right wing ideolog.
A twitter storm started by twits, eh? I repeat, why should she care?
Maybe they can start a twitter storm over this instead:
https://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/search.php?name=judith+curry&cycle=All&sort=R&state=GA&zip=&employ=&cand=&submit=Submit
Seems Professor Curry made three political donations while she lived in Georgia. All three to Barack Obama for President. Seems a bit atypical of right wingers, eh?
I am no longer making political donations, since they are public. While my donations to Obama have been ‘convenient’ in certain arguments, I prefer to keep my voting preferences out of my public debates on climate change.
I certainly don’t blame you for not wanting anyone to know you’re an Obama supporter. He is a prime mover in keeping global warming science alive and so the contribution is enlightened self-interest on your part. It should therefore surprise no one.
I think the lesson learned from Train-wreck-in-Chief Obama is don’t vote for someone just because of their race, gender, or national origin. Vote for someone qualified to run the US. Period.
He fooled a lot of people. McCain was attractive to the press and not the people. Romney was attractive to the people and not the press. They both came close to beating him. My tuppence worth. You pays your money and you takes your chances.
For the present, we endure, and hope for change. Some even work for change, spare change.
=================
Canman,
That’s got nothing on that rabid Oz rag, Quadrant ,that Judith has a strange attraction to (it has a total of 5 paying subscribers in Oz).
It’s gone from an anti-communist propaganda organ, to attacking Indigenous Australians, and now bored with that, has taken up the anti-science cudgels, with a particular focus on climate science.
Pelple concerned about dogma would steer well clear. Fringe conservative lunacy.
I can see why Michael doesn’t like Quadrant. Thanks for pointing it out. From the article:
…
Gone are apolitical scientists who once told the whole story. In their place are activists who distort, omit crucial facts, cherry-pick and torment data contrary to common science ethics. I was initially prepared to write it off as incompetence, but we’ve seen so much of it, time and time again, not to grasp that some darker influence must be at work. The Climategate emails pulled back the curtain on a cabal of scientists who “hide the decline”; select a small subset of, in one infamous instance, tree ring-data that supports their claim while ignoring a broader base of survey findings; conspire to have scientific journals’ editors sacked, and discuss how to stall and stymie perfectly legal Freedom of Information requests. As those emails showed, the climate cabal even expressed joy over the death of a persistent critic.
…
http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2015/03/global-warming-killing-scientific-integrity/
RE: Michael | March 4, 2015 at 1:46 am
“That’s got nothing on that rabid Oz rag, Quadrant , . . .”
Thanks for the tip Michael. I’m a guess’n if’n yer ag’n it, I’m fur it.
Just a guess tho . . . as I’ll have to check it out to be sure . . .
‘rabid Oz rag’, has got a ring to it,
Froth on the lips, haply from sing of it.
=====================
The appointee will be chosen purely on political grounds.
No scientific credentials are required, just a pure outlook that whatever the question is, it’s the “Fault” of us, that Carbon Dioxide is bad & we must be punished for our sins of creating it, by paying our Climate Indulgencies.
Transparency is definately off-limits, a degree of opacity that defies the most penetrating rays is definately a prerequisite.
Being white & male is incompatable with this role, indeed being female & coloured would be good, but since a good chunk of the beneficiary countries operate rampant misogeny, the female bit is a no-no, so it’ll be a non-white male who gets the nod.
Let’s pray to Gaia that Edenhofer doesn’t get the job. He’s Pachauri on steroids.
“First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion
that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.”
Sounds like Edenhofer was custom made for the position.
It doesn’t matter a rat’s ass who get’s the job. The UN/UNFCCC/IPCC is a corrupt bureaucracy intent on world government. The sucker scientists who “contribute” their time to IPCC AR’s are getting high off the international travel and high end hotel living. Those that participated early on with the idea of making important scientific contributions have seen the light and moved on.
Everything we need to know about the IPCC report credibility can be found in the glacier incident. The glacier incident was actually a tiny issue, but it is instructive to the built in process of bias and protectionism in the IPCC.
-non peer reviewed source.
-pointed out as incorrect in review, ignored and overruled.
-pointed out as wrong, ignored.
-pointed out as wrong in a more serious matter in official Indian government report…..and the head of the IPCC chose to attack the scientist with “voodoo science”.
-continued to ignore or defect until attention to the mistake reached danger point. Such as the typo excuse used for a while.
-Then issue a correction and claim how well they respond to criticism.
There was a systematic flaw that not only allowed the flaw ( more likely encouraged it), but protected the flaw at every step of the way. How scientific is a report that passes over the whole scientific literature on this area, to use a magazine interview as a source? You can’t tell me that people referenced a magazine interview thinking is was credible scientific resource without comparing it to peer reviewed literature. And then you can’t tell me they chose the interview number, over the peer reviewed data, for anything other than alarmism. And again getting the chance to correct in review, and still choosing the ridiculous one. And again whenever it was questioned, they could have corrected at any time, but they “chose” to keep in the unscientific alarmist point over the scientific number at every step. From the top down, at every step.
And is anyone surprised now that Pachuri claims “religion” and “mission”? Is anyone surprised that the man who threw out “voodoo science” claims at reputable scientist (as opposed to say, checking the IPCC facts), is now lying his a** of again claiming he was hacked? It is in perfect character to what he oversaw at the IPCC. He could say anything, no matter how ridiculous, and legions of people would defend him voraciously.
It doesn’t matter if you are a denier, sceptic, lukewarm, warmist, alarmist or any other thing people have been called, Pachuri has overseen and contributed to the loss of credibility. The IPCC made the matter worse by not getting rid of him after everyone saw his true colors before. Indefensible.
the man is worthy of a cot in the Ecuadorian Embassy.
Pachauri has benefitted financially in a big way from being IPCC chair, with big grants coming to TERI which pays him. So much for it being an “unpaid” position.
Thomas Stocker has in the past done various monkey business (see history on Climate Audit).
Chris Field is a good scientist but is a committed believer in bad things happening from climate change–not exactly objective IMHO.
> Pachauri has benefitted financially in a big way from being IPCC chair, with big grants coming to TERI which pays him.
It might be interesting to compare with Pat Michael’s salary.
For everything else, there are congressional hearings.
Why shouldn’t he believe? Look what fervent faith in and acts for his religion have wrought for him? Well, ’til now, that is, and that is a lesson.
===============
Really Willard? You think those are the same? The grants are because he is IPCC chair.
Denizens ought to ask if the belief in efficiency akin to some kind of faith in Grrrowth:
http://youtu.be/fguJod_voPc
40% of how much is not made clear.
willard –
Is “belief” in the free market a religion?
Joshua, no, it’s commonsense based on vast experience.
Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.
Willard – I’ll remind you that you are a denizen.
My faith in Grrrowth knows no bound, Lucifer. Once you are touched by its Grace, sustainability becomes irrelevant. Everything is, actually, except Grrrowth. What about you?
UN jobs not only highly paid but global tax free to boot.
Not sure how anyone could take him seriously since day 1 especially with all his baggage.
I blame Bush.
==========
Better blame both, just to cover your bases.
Blame it on Rio.
“The bottom line is this. It is very difficult to ‘enforce’ or even defend the IPCC consensus when the leader of IPCC for more than a decade is alleged to have partaken in sleazy and illegal behavior, regards climate change as his religion, has massive conflicts of interest, and has used his position as a platform for personal advocacy.”
This will have zero impact for the IPCC among progressives, and probably none even for Pachauri, once he goes on Oprah and cries.
Anybody ever heard of Bill Clinton? He’s still a rock star of the left, Juanita Broderick and Chinese campaign contributions be damned,
“While I’m not sure why any scientist/academic would want this (unpaid) position that requires you to travel all over the world and deal with some nasty politics, it seems that there is a strong list of candidates, none of whom would appear to have anything approaching Pachauri’s conflicts of interest.”
Progressives are all about the power. Get the power and the money will follow. Ask the Clintons, Obamas, Gores, Hansens….
just a quick dose of reality from earth to the climate blogosphere…
again, I live in a major US east coast city, choked by a major university
most folk I know have post graduate degrees or more
None of them have ever heard of the IPCC
much less that it’s leader has resigned over sexual misconduct
they believe without doubt in AGW and that their flex-fuel SUV is helping the polar bears
I can’t see where the machinations at the IPCC change anything outside of our little cyber world
‘Climate Change’ is the new religion of the western secular elite, just like the guy says
So, now that the former pope of the IPCC has confirmed it, I shall go forth and be criticized for calling it a religion
Interesting point. This topic is not getting much traction in the twitosphere, either.
Religion? Ah, that’s so first two millenia.
============
Netanyahu said today the greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of radical Islam with nuclear weapons. Silly me, and here I’ve been thinking all along it was anthropogenic climate change.
“This topic is not getting much traction in the twitosphere, either.” – JC
Maybe that’s because it’s just trivial titillation and those who want it to “get traction” are engaging in tribalistic food-fights?
It’s a really good point. Most people are also not all that into politics.
Until they are. Meaning that people do care about the bills they pay and the jobs they can no longer get. And when the former goes up, they start looking to find out why. And when the lights go out in Britain they’re really going to ask why. That’s when they will stumble on this site, that’s when they’ll find out about the leadership of the IPCC. That’s the moment the Willards and Michaels fear.
Right now, frankly, AGW is a joke to most people “it’s 20-below, where’s my global warming!” Or another example of goofball tree-huggers- “let’s study Keystone for another six years because all us pro-science, reality-based types can’t accept the reality and the science supporting Keystone!”
> … And when the lights go out in Britain they’re really going to ask why. That’s when they will stumble on this site
Nope …
Because: 1) when the “lights go out”, computers, internet, ATM’s etc wont work; 2) in the fleeting moments when the grid is working, all of us will be struggling to survive – apportioning nuanced blame will be utterly irrelevant
Ah, but when the lights go back on!
================
@kim
> Ah, but when the lights go back on!
That’s my point 2)
I appreciate your light touches of irony, but it is a disappointment to find that you may not be able to count :)
The best thing we could do is stop buying things on line and delete our facebook and twitter accounts. Target is getting ready to lay off thousands of people in anticipation of building up the on-line business. If we met out friends in restaurants or otherwise visited with each other, we would spend more money on snacks or meals and might even find face-to-face is more enjoyable than re-posting the latest amazing video. Getting off social networks would also make NSA have to spy the hard way, with boots on the ground. They would have to be a lot more selective.
Eventually Scottie gets the generator for the operating room tent working in the rain and you can fix all the glorious and bloody mistakes made while the lights were out, and from the concussive destruction of the event causing the blackout. Or so it goes in the movies.
==============================
Oops, an ugly thought. Get it out and begone. Who expects nuanced blame? Also, anger is a survival mechanism, often quite useful when directed against the cause of the threat to survival.
I once hoped that ridicule and derision would end this willful mania for catastrophe, but my friend Peter Bocking told me that too many people have died already. No such easy answer.
==========================
ian,
sorry to be so late to respond, but when the lights go out there is no reason to believe the apportionment of blame will be “nuanced.”
Which is why the lights won’t actually go out. Like Germany, they’ll build coal-fired plants, frack for gas, connect to nuclear plants in other countries and issue press releases extolling the virtues of the windmills and solar panels powering (barely) the coffee pots of the local “deputy sub minister of sustainable bureaucracy” .
The IPCC is doomed because it’s no longer useful. The “sustainable bureaucracy” is in place, the funding mechanism for it is there (albeit at a lower level than many had hoped), and nobody really took the issue seriously anyway. So, next host to parasite!
John Smith,
Hmmm. Interesting that this follows what we see in public opinion polls. If so many folks partictular areas of the globe (like the East Coast this winter) aren’t showing signs of warming then “what, me worry?”. Thanks for the reminder. Found out today that if one isn’t a full blown AGW’er accepting of all things SPM from IPCC then one is and can only be a denier. Skepticism no longer exists. Must be a new edition of the “Psychology of Climate Change Communication”.
If it was the head of the Heritage Foundation, my bet is that it would be receiving a bit more attention.
Bingo!
@ John Smith
“……..believe without doubt………”
The three key words to CAGW.
And as you well realize, in the world of post graduate progressives that you find yourself unavoidably immersed in, the impact of actual, observed DATA has been and will continue to be exactly zero.
No matter WHAT the empirical climate actually DOES, they will continue to ‘believe without doubt’.
Pachauri’s defense is that he is not the only serial abuser of data among the “careerists in the $1 billion-a-day global-warming industry.”
I doubt who leads IPCC matters much. The full time Geneva staff is only 12. Best as I can tell, they are the ‘wedding planners’ for all the meetings. For AR5 WG2, there were 8 main meetings all over the world–not counting the near countless various sub topic meetings. Tough places like Venice, Boulder, Tsukuba.
What matters are the lead authors. And those without fail have conflict of interest because their grant funding depends on climate change being a problem needing further study. Color me pessimistic.
What will halt the momentum scientifically is continued pause/model divergence, recovery of Arctic ice, continued non-acceleration of sea level rise… To the point where the basic discrepancies are scientifically embarrassing. What will halt it politically is voter education: a ‘ blow up’ or two concerning the prescriptions. UK, German, California grid going down thanks to renewable intermittency. Removal of renewable subsidies by strapped governments causing massive renewables bankruptcies and shareholder pain, as is now likely in Spain. More massive voter rejection of ‘energy pain’ as has happened in Australia. UNFCC Annex one country rejection of annex 2 demands for a $100 billlion/ year Green Climate Fund wealth transfer scheme exposing UNFCC for what its head Christina Figueres openly says its agenda actually is…
I fear the next chair will be the orthodox Jean-Pascal van Ypersele as he has personally prevented a public presentation of skeptic Fred Singer in Belgium.
I have little time for pachauri but I think the reference to The protection of planet earth being his religion is merely a reference to the Hindi philosophy of nature that the universe is one family, rather than the western interpretation, whereby a green zealot might say that environmentalism is his religion.
I saw Stocker was dismissed as a potential new ipcc head By mosh up thread. I met Stocker in Exeter last year where he secured the rare honour of being one of the few scientists to admit that there were limitations to scientific knowledge, in this context it was that he admitted we did not have the technology to measure the temperature of the deep ocean.
Assuming that Dr Richard Betts of the Met office would not stand, who I think would be excellent in the job, it would be Stocker that would get my vote but perhaps additional and better contenders may come along.
Tonyb
tony –
==> …”but I think the reference to The protection of planet earth being his religion is merely a reference to the Hindi philosophy of nature that the universe is one family, ”
Geez. Ya’ think? You mean it doesn’t just happen to mean exactly what would confirm the bias of “skeptics?”
Shocking thought…
==> “I met Stocker in Exeter last year where he secured the rare honour of being one of the few scientists to admit that there were limitations to scientific knowledge,…”
Lol! Yeah. So rare. The vast majority of scientists think that there are no limits to scientific knowledge.
And it’s so “rare” to get one of them to “admit” it.
Too funny.
Joshua
I was talking in the context of post modern climate science where the big gaps in our knowledge of the climate system are rarely articulated in public.
Who would get YOUR vote, other than Judith, obviously?
Tonyb
tony –
==> “I was talking in the context of post modern climate science where the big gaps in our knowledge of the climate system are rarely articulated in public.”
You mean unlike when the IPCC “admits” the uncertainty with all those estimates that quantify uncertainty?
Lol.
Don’t you see, tony, that the hyperbole undermines your point?
==> “Who would get YOUR vote, other than Judith, obviously?”
I’m not a fan of personality politics, tony.
But if I were (heh), Latif and John NG seem like good blokes – who as near as I can tell, try to avoid all the gutter politics and tribalism.
Tamsin would be a fascinating choice, although she’s too invested in the personality politics for my liking.
Joshua, “You mean unlike when the IPCC “admits” the uncertainty with all those estimates that quantify uncertainty?
Lol.”
Where the climate science warmists admit uncertainty is in the direction of policy influence. If the models are wrong, to them that means it is worse than they thought, e.g. Gavin’s 110% in order to keep the high end alive.
The absolute limit of possible natural/internal variability has been +/-0.1 until the “pause” that doesn’t exist now it is creeping up towards, +/- 0.2 C. The one big thing you will never hear a die hard warmist say is , “it’s not as bad as we thought.” That should tell you something even it you don’t follow the science.
Joshua
So that uncertainty would be of the 95 or 97% would it? Sounds pretty certain to me.
I suspect Tamsin would be too young and too female to win universal approval from the very diverse countries that make up the ipcc.
Tonyb
It’s very powerful, Cap’n, that ‘it’s not as bad as we thought’ is a completely marketable true narrative and it still can’t be said. Where, really, was the sin that would ask for contrition, absolution, and forgiveness? There was trust, mutually, by all. Until there wasn’t.
This is one of the enduring mysteries of the debate. To a large degree, everyone got trapped by this extraordinary tropical social storm.
===============
C’mon, kids, all the job requires is an honest and effective executive, er administrator. Find me one, please. They’re all over.
=================
tony –
==> “So that uncertainty would be of the 95 or 97% would it? Sounds pretty certain to me.”
Notice that you left out the >50% portion of the statement, which leaves in the end a great deal of uncertainty even at 95%.
And notice that you left out the stated, quantified uncertainty w/r/t sensitivity.
And notice that you left out the stated, quantified uncertainty w/r/t the impacts.
All uncertainty “admitted” by scientists. Kind of looks like there’s a lot of room there for “admitting” that there are “limits to scientific knowledge.”
Like I said, tony, the hyperbole doesn’t suit you, IMO.
It’s that kind of tribalisitic leveraging of uncertainty that, IMO, discredits “skeptics” when they talk about the importance of acknowledging and being up front with uncertainty (which is something that I agree with). Every time I here “skeptics” trotting out the tired “they said that the science was settled” meme, I scratch my head and wonder why they think that they advance the ball by using fallacious arguments.
Ask swood1000 about that one.
==> “I suspect Tamsin would be too young and too female to win universal approval from the very diverse countries that make up the ipcc.”
You asked who would get my vote, not who I thought was likely.
The science is not as bad as we thought but the policy is
a lot worse than we think.Think global dimming like in WW 2.
Joshua
Have you actually read Ar5 or, as few people do, the much more influential and widely read summary for policy makers?
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf
You will see that most categories are likely or very likely with increasing certainty as the projections are made for the decades ahead.
Tonyb
If we are voting for females unlikely to be elected I will nominate Judith.
I don’t know much
but I know the Gita
and I know the Sutras of Patanjili
if he’s worried about the future, he ain’t read his good books
can’t blame his new religion on his old religion
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/nominate-judith-curry-next-chair-intergovernmental-panel-climate-change/2PYxtyQF
WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
Nominate Judith Curry as the next Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change.
Given Judith’s previous statements, she might want to dust off General Sherman’s quote “If nominated, I shall not run: if elected, I shall not serve.” :)
Seeing that “Mr Smith” has responded to Tony’s reference to Patchauri’s “Hindu philosophy,” I’ll add to it. The concept of pancasila (five-fold morality) developed in India perhaps 3000 years or more ago (it was around long before the Buddha used it as the foundation of his practice more than 2600 years ago). That involves abstaining from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and harsh speech and intoxicants. When abstaining from all impure actions, only pure actions remain. (In addition, maintaining the moral practice is an essential prerequisite to developing samadhi, concentration of the mind, and panya, wisdom, understanding based on direct experience of reality as it manifests from moment to moment.) The concept of karma, whereby the volition which drives your actions will bear fruit, negative, neutral or positive depending on the volition, in the future, has been around for a similar length of time. So, Tony, I think that if you seek to interpret Patchauri’s use of the word “religion” in terms of Hindu views, you need to conclude that he was not a devoutly practising Hindu.
Faustino
I would not disagree with you. Many who proclaim (and believe themselves to be) on the moral high ground do not always live up to the heights of their own expectations.
tonyb
Faustino-
Does Buddhism say anything about attributing malicious intentions and motivations to others?
what is karma practice?
Ramana Maharshi said,
“karma yoga is ceasing to arrogate to yourself the origins of your actions”
if you aren’t doing it’s not bearing fruit for anybody
fortunately, there is no consensus on Hindu philosophy
this is just the one I pick
I just don’t think the man’s cultural religion is an excuse for turning science into religion
I completely yield to Faustino on these matters
How deep was the deep ocean he was talking about?
Bottom ‘half’. Average depth is about 4km; ARGO samples to 2 km (2000 meters).
jch
below 2000 metres
tonyb
Pachauri is not the problem. It’s been obvious for a long time that he is a trough-swiller par excellence, heavily into lechery and exhibitionism at public cost. (The chartered plane from NY to India for cricket practice was never a secret.) Nobody could possibly have been in doubt as to his qualifications and background, since those things have also been in plain view.
Religious impulse is not the problem. I went to Catholic schools in Sydney in the 1950s and 1960s and had absolutely NO experience of creationism. Evolution has been widely accepted for yonks (probably in far too facile a way), yet we have lately been bombarded with Heroic Atheism and Defiant Darwinism as if these notions were new and their proponents a persecuted elite. Richard Dawkins may have a special appeal to doe-eyed sophomores, but what he actually represents is an old, stagnant, dull and intolerant mainstream.
People who have been calling themselves “climate scientists” need to avoid posturing as heroic defenders of method and accept that their own incurious, mechanistic, literalist approach to a subject of fantastic complexity has been far more silly and costly than anybody’s religion. Even Pachauri’s.
FWIW, I suspect Pachauri’s “my religion and my dharma” is as profound as his love and consideration for younger female employees and their wellbeing and careeers: Lots and lots of sugar candy words to say Me Myself I. I think any guy & girl in the street is able to spot this.
He could have said “science” in stead of “religion”, but I can’t see how it would make much difference.
Pachauri’s departure may pave the way for some new thinking in the IPCC, Although Pachauri was not entirely responsible for the misdirection, that went back earlier to his instructions from the IPCCC that the ‘science was rettled’, so Pachauri did not have to run a scientific research institution;. One of the more serious mistakes was to ignore the history of climate in the early 20th century. so they missed the singularity at 1940 which contained vital information on the on/off nature of climate change and the role of the ocean’s transport delay in the next ttemperature tise.
Pachauri and Gore are the Borgia popes which the climatariat deserved. There should be no vote on a new IPCC leader because there should be no IPCC.
The climate is old and nasty, cannot be altered. The climatariat is new and nasty, but there may yet be time to at least shrink it. As a first step, let’s lobby for the abolition of the IPCC, the head from which the fish has been rotting.
The money saved could be spent on beer – or even debt reduction if you are the frivolous type.
(And for future eventualities: Never trust any institution with a name which sounds like it came out of a Superman comic.)
Or a name like someone out of Star Wars. I denounce myself.
==================
The UN should be moved of Africa — with the members commuting to and from their homelands by bullock — and, then they can show us by their example how to get by on less energy.
moso, for once I disagree with you. You say that “The climate is old and nasty.” No, the climate is not “nasty,” it is what it is. Any attribution such as nasty is purely in the eye of the beholder. The climate for thousands of years has been good enough to support the rapid growth and development of our species; be grateful for that.
You are right, Great Cunn. I was thinking of Melbourne. And even there a kind of life is supported.
Bottom line , the IPCC is a UN organisation, this tells us two things , one its main aim is to ensure to keeps going not to solve the issues it was formed to deal with , and two its senior appointments have little to do with ability and much to do with politics and with the UN that can mean ‘whose countries turn is it now ‘
After this you can see how the IPCC like other UN bodies can display a mixture of self serving interest and incompetence. Which has come out time and again in its reports.
Has for his replacement , well remember point one , a ‘safe pair’ of hands is a shoe in , ability and experience are not needed .
I gotta funny feeling BRICs’ll call the turn. The Works are turning grand, and the tragic victims queue.
==============
David in TX,
nice shot of Al and Raj. The Nobel certificates are out of focus. The one held by Raj actually shows “Michael Mann” as the awardee. If it didn’t, it would mean the picture of the Nobel Certificate posted by Dr. Mann on Twitter and Facebook was a forgery. The Nobel Foundation commissioned certificates for the Peace Prize, with recipients’ names hand-penned in. Mann, and an estimated 2000 other leading contributors to the TAR received photocopies (Mark Steyn waggishly says printed by Kinko’s), in which IPCC was whited out, and the contributors’ names were penned in by somebody who wasn’t authorized by the Nobel Foundation.
Mann, according to his own testimony, was unaware that genuine, bona fide Nobel Laureates received phone calls (wee-hours for American winners), paid-travel-and-stay-expense invitations to go to Oslo (or Stockholm) from the Fuoundation, medals, and shares of approx. $1.4M, with a maximum of THREE sharers, or over$400,000 per Nobel Prize shared recipient.
I knew these things in college. Like Dr. Mann, I did my undergrad work at Berkeley, where I was exposed to the controversy of the 1975 Nobel not being co-awarded to the man (Harry Rubin) who discovered and proposed that viruses could have RNA, not DNA, which his student Howard Temin won. He was shot down, and crawled away from his proposal. He was a Caltech postdoc, but “only” had a DVM. Never mind that he also rocketed cell culture by coming up with the idea of feeding mammalian cell cultures fetal serum. If you want to do modern cell and molecular biology without using “Harry’s” innovation in your medium, good luck with that. He also created the “reverse plaque assay” for isolating cancer cells. Three Nobels that he arguably could have won, in Physiology or Medicine, and he was nominated, zero actual awards.
Anyway, I learned a lot about Nobel Prizes in the 70’s. Michael Mann didn’t understand that a photocopied Nobel certificate, with “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” whited out, and his name penned in, by somebody working for Raj Pachauri, did NOT make Dr. Mann a “Nobl Lareate”. Where was his medal, or share of the monetary prize?
Nevertheless, Mann filed suit against Mark Steyn, and in his suit, Mann claimed to be a Nobel Laureate. He was represented by an ex-Joe Camel /RJ Reynolds (winning) law firm. “Leading global warming scientist hires a Big Tobacco firm to sue a critic.” Did the NYT, LA Times, WAPO mention this FACT?
It’s almost comical, isn’t it? And now IPCC Chairman Pachauri is revealed to be a lecher, skirt-chasing and sexually harassing an assistant young enough to be his granddaughter?
I started doubting CAGW when the UEA emails were leaked. Get new editors, re-invent “peer review” to reject anthropogenic global warming questioning papers, “hide” things, use “tricks”, destroy emails that might be subject to FOIA. If anyone didn’t realize these represented ANTI-SCIENCE moves, he/she doesn’t know what science is.
I’ve read MBH ’98. There isn’t enough statistics demonstration to establish anything. There isn’t a statistician coauthor, which was vital to a project that pushed “not well established” statistical methods..
M & M dismantled it, despite Mann’s blocking release of the raw data.
I don’t blame Mann. I believe somebody suggested to him, “The IPCC needs a gun, because control of fossil fuels by the capitalists is not being reversed. Nobody has given us one. Make the gun, and your future is secured.”
Poor guy. A nobody at Berkeley. (Advancement to first-rate graduate school in physics, to MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Caltech, Princeton or Berkeley, required more than a B+ /borderline A- GPA. A nobody at Yale, where it took him 9 years to get hisPhD.
He was given the chance to be A SOMEBODY. A VIP. So, he took it. Glomming onto the UN IPCC mandate to find that global warming needed a worldwide changeover from free-enterprise to authoritaian-controlled communism, Mann bit.
BTW, the IPCC/GoreNobel award was a Peace Award, not a Nobel science award. Barack Hussein Obama won the Peace Nobel without doing anything beyond community activizing.
++++++++++++++
Thank you, Fart!
Que Blammo!
==========
Patchy is the innocent victim of hackers. Just like the Climategate kidz. Birds of a feather.
Slightly off-topic for this thread – but experimental test of Biotic Pump Hypothesis (Makarieva/Gorshkov) here:
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2776099/without_its_rainforest_the_amazon_will_turn_to_desert.html
Excellent article! Deforestation is a REAL problem. When I was in Manaus, Amazonas it would rain everyday at 2pm, “as chuvas as duas” (the rains at 2) they called. A torrent.
I believe in Benjamin Netanyahu:
https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/572913149944324096
No, you don’t. He is in an existential struggle with a powerful nation led by fanatical, regressive fanatics. He is no trained rat.
The trained rats can be found here:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_(1971_film)
By regressive fanatics, I wonder if you are referring to this, Justin:
http://www.medhajnews.com/article.php?id=MTQwNjk=
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
… and my friends are never fanatics.
Fancy that.
But my enemy is a fanatic.
Willard has friends?
willard has, like it or not, transformed the climate wars as they appear on blogs. Deal with it.
I wish he would use an expository approach to explain his perspective. But then again I cant criticize being cryptic now can I?
sometimes he is annoying. meh I cant complain about that either
SO not on topic.
What’s the deal Willard, you got no friends to talk to about things in the news that bother you? What a surprise. You’re such a little pest.
Don’t you believe in Nethanyahu, Big Dave? I believe he exists. I know it in my gut.
Would you prefer cartoons? Here’s one:
http://capewest.ca/overpopulation_nero_syndrome_cartoon.jpg
Another one:
http://capewest.ca/sustainability_cartoon.jpg
I rather like the last one. What about you?
The IPCC is a UN bureaucracy and it’s leader is chosen by a UN committee. There are so many UN rice bowls supported by the IPCC that it’s impossible to believe that the next IPCC chair will change the organization’s direction. Bureaucracies are like vampires; they live forever and consume human blood!
It is shakedown of first world economies.
The Chinese expressed their chagrin at the failure of the shakedown in Copenhagen by feigning outrage at the neo-colonial manipulations of one Barack Obama.
The ants go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah.
Down in the sewer for me and you
And the ants go marching on.
=====================
I scored 90%.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/1209/Are-you-scientifically-literate-Take-our-quiz/Composing-about-78-percent-of-the-air-at-sea-level-what-is-the-most-common-gas-in-the-Earth-s-atmosphere
Only 97% qualifies. Sorry.
I know. I didn’t make the cut.
Impressive. I scored 80%.
Will El Nino finally come to the fore?
http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/elninometer-current.gif
Is this the 51st question?
http://www.journalism.org/files/2014/10/10-20-2014-2-31-55-PM.png
Darn it! We self labeled independents are left out once again.
Willard only talks to Labels he learned tnat from Joshua.
Obviously the country will benefit from unification under the new religion:
I pledge allegiance to the pennant
Of the low-carbonfootprint of America
And to the totalitarian state for which it stands
one nation, under the iron fist of Gaia
With no liberty and no justice for all!
Ordvic-
I get it was a cheap shot, but i don’t know what it it’s in reference to. Care to explain?
Joshua, yeah it was a cheap shot an attempt at half hearted humor. Some posts back we had a conversation about left/right politics and your constant reference to labelistic memes you use to tweak denizen sceptics.
Ordvic-
==> ‘and your constant reference to labelistic memes you use to tweak denizen sceptics.’
I think you’re mis-remembering. I try to avoid labeling. If you could provide examples. it might help me prevent such lapses inn the future.
Massive unintentional irony. Almost every time you use the word “skeptic”, whether or not you put it in scare quotes.
> We self labeled independents are left out once again.
Quiye right, although the last plot may be for you, unless you’re likely to vote for the Tea Party but would never associate yourself with them.
One day, we might be all independents:
https://twitter.com/pewresearch/status/569979747654094848
Willard,
Re:”, unless you’re likely to vote for the Tea Party but would never associate yourself with them.”
You see, I could, about 10% of “them”. And about 20% of “conservatives”, 50% of moderates, 20% of “liberals”, and even 10% of socialists: And as a representative (Head, Leader) of IPCC this would be exactly the kind of person I’d love to see in place. Then, should they be willing to take on the task, I’d ask them to give 110%! It’s my worldview and relating to WWII it’s how folks come together. As it stands for this observer, most are in the the middle area and it’s the outliers that won’t give.
AK speaks well for my view in his response to Joshua:”The alarmist “consensus” position is clearly unitary, with anybody who questions any tenet open to being labeled a “denier”. (E.g. the Pielke’s.) IIRC you’ve even been critical of this process. But you seem to miss the obvious corollary: if anybody who questions any aspect of a unitary consensus is a skeptic, “skeptic”, or “denier”, then the positions of these people are exactly the opposite of unitary. Nobody can honestly be held responsible for anybody else’s opinion(s).”
None of whom need Russian gas or have relatives on the Space Station.
=================
Ordvic-
It’s AK offering an example of what you were talking about? It is that just another example of a “skeptic” arbitrarily jamming whatever he wants into a definitin to confirm his biases?
@Joshua…
Just think about how often you hold “skeptics” responsible for what one another think. Rather than considering that each individual person skeptical (or “skeptical”) of the alarmist “consensus” position could be skeptical in a different way.
The alarmist “consensus” position is clearly unitary, with anybody who questions any tenet open to being labeled a “denier”. (E.g. the Pielke’s.) IIRC you’ve even been critical of this process. But you seem to miss the obvious corollary: if anybody who questions any aspect of a unitary consensus is a skeptic, “skeptic”, or “denier”, then the positions of these people are exactly the opposite of unitary. Nobody can honestly be held responsible for anybody else’s opinion(s).
> Nobody can honestly be held responsible for anybody else’s opinion(s).
The same should apply to everyone.
“Yes, but Denizens” amounts to special pleading.
Lost in the Weellards.
===============
> As it stands for this observer, most are in the the middle area and it’s the outliers that won’t give.
Indeed, hence the trick to portray the mainstream position both as monolithic and acting like an outlier.
As long as it speeds up appearances in congressional hearings, anything goes, I guess.
Willard,
What subset are you defining as “mainstream position”?
Here, Danny:
https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml
Beat this and you’re rich and famous. Or richer and famouser.
As a bonus, you could get invited to congressional hearings.
Willard,
You’ve made my point for me. From you view, “the consensus position” is “mainstream”. From my view, there are billions of folks do not share that context. Part of the evidence comes from Pew where CC isn’t even on the radar.
I’ve no desire to “testify before congress” but nervously would if asked in order to make the case that: 1) the science is not settled and even one with a background lacking science can see that 2) There are reasonable positions on all sides of the conversation and all views should be considered.
Then, I’ll take the rich part but with my name care not so much for being famous. All those photogs and such.
> From my view, there are billions of folks do not share that context.
Denizens might need to wonder why you’d fantasize about worldwide referendum, Danny. The mainstream is mainstream within the relevant institutions. What may believe retired engineers, amateur IT specialists or contrarian physicists is as relevant as specialists in Vulcan sexuality or zombie apocalypses. Speaking of which:
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/unscientific.png
Willard,
Been traveling so apologies for the delay.
I’d asked for how you were defining “mainstream” and you came back with effectively the consensus view.
This is the note to which I was responding and I’m sure “the denizens” here and elsewhere might not agree with the view you offered as being “mainstream” in their sense. But that is up to them to decide.
As far as the rest of you response, once you go back and see why I responded as I did, I think the context will appear out of place.
> I’d asked for how you were defining “mainstream” and you came back with effectively the consensus view.
Guilty as charged, Danny. That we have a scientific consensus over AGW tells a lot about the kind of mainstream we’re talking about, don’t you think?
If you wished to define mainstream on the political axis, that would change, since the big energy interests are pretty well established on both sides of the democratic circus. By circus, I am not referring to congressional hearings.
These interests are so well established their cognitive frame is being replicated by climate zombies and other kinds of freedom fighters:
http://youtu.be/Qh3TeTxgNVo
Willard,
Since you asked: “That we have a scientific consensus over AGW tells a lot about the kind of mainstream we’re talking about, don’t you think?”
What I actually think is that the so called “consensus” if one were to take the time to ask, might fall much as it does in the “blog-o-sphere”. Warming, sure. But nuts and bolts, not so much. By this, I mean that if we took the very same folks and asked each of them specifics point by point w/r/t cause, attribution, SPM, (all the nuts and bolts which make up the entirety) then that “consensus” might be found to vary upon a scale from catastrophe to a large yawn. That “consensus” I’d expect to be of some value (or confirmation of the B-O-S). The current one is only a propaganda tool being used to supporting the politics behind. As I do not support the “entirety” I’ve been called a “denier” myself but am indeed more of a lukewarmer. So “mainstream” is equivillent nonsense when it’s used to describe the topic of climate, IMO. Disclosure, no big oil paying me.
> As I do not support the “entirety” I’ve been called a “denier” myself but am indeed more of a lukewarmer.
You can’t support the non-entirety without knowing enough nuts and bolts, Danny.
I expect the blogosphere blogosphere to follow what the Pew Research Center found, with those who drive the political discussion getting the most political klout, which includes congressional hearings to those who otherwise may not be under anyone’s radar.
Lukewarmism ain’t about attribution, BTW. It’s about sensitivity. It’s also about playing the middleman, like you just did. So you got that part right.
Willard,
“You can’t support the non-entirety without knowing enough nuts and bolts, Danny.” You are so right. Looking forward to edification.
What I know I don’t know:
CFC’s and Ozone’s place in the equation. Deep oceans. Why temps aren’t doing as modeled. Why Antartica sea ice extent is at record highs, opposite of models. CO2’s actual sensitivity. Total solar radiation which does not reach the surface due to GHG. Why’s and what’s of AMO/PDO. What caused all warming prior to +/- 1850. How much of that cause is currently affecting GW. El Nino/La Nina causes. Full effects of trade winds. Aerosols extent and impact. Actual SLR. Actual global temps since 1700. Volcanos contribution. Why clouds are sometimes neg. and sometimes pos. feedbacks and when. Why methane is consider such an issue when ruminent populations are approx. the same as 1850 at least in the U.S.
Why IPCC needs a “consensus” to put forth an agenda if the science was so settled. Why the science is not settled and the IPCC acts as if it is. (Just a couple of things I can think of off top of my head)
Do tell.
(Post already to long to list that which I’m comfortable stating I do know).
A little exercise for you to see the connection between attribution and sensitivity.
The higher the sensitivity of temperature to CO2, the colder we would now be without man’s efforts.
So find a sensitivity figure that frightens you, and calculate how cold we would now be without man’s efforts.
There are other ways to illustrate the connections between the two concepts, but this one is graphic and simple. Bon voyage.
====================
Joshua, too hard to go through all the posts. It could be I’ve misremembered. I first remember you making fun of skeptics for their butt-hurt at being called deniers. Second you often end comments calling out denizens for ridiculous claims or comments when it was probably only one with such a notion. Now caling people here denizens is not necessarily labeling unless you are using a broad brush implying everyone thinks the same. After being called out on labeling you decided to use your own terms that I can’t remember whatyamacallit and whoyamacallit something like that. You then began to refer to your tribe as ‘realists’.
Danny,
Just caught your comment. Thank you for your shopping list of known unknowns. I’ll see if I could add some of them to level 0 of my Matrix:
https://contrarianmatrix.wordpress.com/lots-of-theories/
If you have any citations for some of them, that would be great.
***
I take it you accept that nothing we know about them provides a better explanation of GW than A. To prefer known unknowns to known knowns would amount to arguing from ignorance. So unless these known unknowns become known knowns, there’s little much to do about them than to be thankful for the concerns they help raising.
You could try to argue that unless such and such known unknowns become known knowns, you won’t buy AGW. That would sound like ad hoc rescue to me. So I’d rather not consider that’s not what you mean.
Let me just ask you this: if someone were to tell you that “if humans use 3,000 quads of coal by 2075, we’re ruined,” what would you respond?
Many thanks!
Willard,
Just got home after more travel. I see no answers to my list.
But I will answer yours:”Let me just ask you this: if someone were to tell you that “if humans use 3,000 quads of coal by 2075, we’re ruined,” what would you respond?”
I’d ask for proof.
Dig deeper – most of the msm is left wing and created, inadvertent ply, the market for Fox. Prior to Fox, that market was not served.
Somehow, the left hijacked the term “liberal” and got away with it. The left is not liberal.
It is true at that lefties like to unfriend people that don’t share their political viewpoints. In fact, they are more likely to choose a community based on the politics of their potential neighbors. See the book “the Big Sort”. Disgusting.
Three examples from my on life of “progressives” who are totally ignorant of science of any kind, but get belligerent if I try to show them some data.
> Prior to Fox, that market was not served.
An alternative explanation:
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/27/i_lost_my_dad_to_fox_news_how_a_generation_was_captured_by_thrashing_hysteria/
The old joke about Murdoch is that he found a niche market for Fox, half of America.
===========
> half of America.
Only if we reduce America to those who watch cable TV:
http://deadline.com/2014/01/fnc-extends-cable-news-ratings-winning-streak-in-january-672497/
Yeah, reduce America to only the part penetrated. Sometimes, Willard, you are just too obvious.
=======================
Koldie finds me too obvious.
Moshpit finds me too cryptic.
Denizens are tough to please.
To miss the point
Is obviourse,
Unless of course,
That is the point.
============
Once more, lots of tasty food-for-thought in JC’s remarks. One of the best lines has some typos though. No big deal, I just hate to see a word processor slip mar such a key passage.
“Perhaps the Pachauri scandal will be jolt the knocks the IPCC out of its paralysis”
One can only hope the scandal WILL be the jolt that knocks the IPCC into a sensible position, which includes some maneuvering room for a sane course of action no matter which way the science leads.
I agree that it is good not to have the distraction of Pachauri as the IPCC heads towards Paris. I don’t think changing leadership by itself will gain any converts even if they go with another engineer and economist, like Pachauri, rather than a scientist, who would be an immediate punching bag for them.
OT, but probably the only way the progressives here will hear about this.
Email is increasingly becoming the bete noir of progressives.
Forget Michael Mann and Hansen trying to get people to avoid emails.
Forget Lois Lerner crashing her hard drive and the entire IRS pretending they did know there were back up tapes readily available, as required by law.
Now we have the Secretary of State, the Empress in waiting, Hillary Clinton, flagrantly. violating the law, and putting the country at risk, by creating her own domain for email, outside the Secretary of State’s computer system, so she could hide her emails on official business.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/414773/latest-clinton-scandal-quintessentially-hillary-charles-c-w-cooke
Pretty soon, progressives are going to have to take a lesson from Osama bin Laden, and give up electronic communication. Maybe they can employ the 13 million illegal aliens as message runners.
The most dishonest, most opaque (most incompetent) administration in US history.
Other more recent reports say that the rule only was imposed by the Obama administration after she left office. It is a relatively new regulation, otherwise we would know a lot more about what Bush’s White House was doing prior to the Iraq war, for example, but they didn’t care to make that type of thing known as much as Obama apparently does. Anyway, now at last the conservatives have had a change of heart, so it’s all good. Better late than never.
==> “OT, but probably the only way the progressives here will hear about this.”
Lol! Yeah, because it’s only a front page story at the NYT, ABC news, CBS News, MSNBC, etc.
And how quickly they forget, eh?
Presidential records act only applies to president and vice-president. Which is why the WaPo rant you posted went exactly nowhere as far as prosecution.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N0RLoekOvEk/U9gLcwE_MbI/AAAAAAAAVUg/3jocggLdiWM/s1600/Good+Job,+Dumbass.jpg
+1
In my opinion, the IPCC should change its approach to climate change to include all natural and human factors.
As it is now, the assumption is that any observed climate change must be caused by mankind because no natural phenomena are known to be responsible. This is an “argumentum ignorantiam”, an argument based on ignorance that has no place in science.
If it weren’t for argumentum ignorantiamn.and argumentum terrorem they’d have no argumentums et al!
hahaahahahaha I kill me sometimes!
“I suspect that raw politics will be more important than individual credentials or platforms.”
You Betcha!
Let’s get it all out in the open though.
I’m for a round of FOIA for all involved!
What they really need is somebody who knows what running a big international organization is all about these days.
I nominate Sepp Blatter.
The IPCC needs to regain its scientific objectivity.
Regain?!
It never had scientific objectivity to begin with. It was designed to fake scientific objectivity for political purposes. I doubt it could ever acquire scientific objectivity given its pedigree and history.
My sediments exactly.
I agree, I agree, IPCC be gone!
And leave the money in the till.
“Can the IPCC clean up its act?”
No. It is top to bottom a political body, politically funded, serving politics. It will so continue to always corrupt its findings so as to favour politics.
And more specifically, it is part of the UN, an organisation dedicated to world governance. And climate alarmism is of course god’s gift to that cause …
“The panel, set up in 1988, will be tackling the questions of a typical midlife crisis: what’s my purpose? Am I going about it in the right way? Does anyone really care about me?”
Okay, here are the answers. None. No. No.
Also, the navel-gazy reference to midlife crisis gets its own NO. Go be Blanche Dubois somewhere else.
I have strong sympathy for anyone going through any crisis. But the IPCC is not a person and I just want it gone for good. Don’t bother with any transitions, IPCC. Just go.
It’s not man that we salute it’s his uniform.
Yes, just go. A clear case for the IPCC to be euthanased.
Well, if there’s no there there, just drape a uniform around it. All will be well.
=========================
OT. Oil inventories increased by a whopping 10 million barrels. Some were expecting a decrease in inventories due to rigs coming out of service. Others were expecting ~3 million bbl build. Didn’t happen. Stay tuned.
Sometimes a proxy for coming conflict…
Devil with the Blue Dress …
I don’t think I’ll ever get over listening to liberal feminists trash Lewinsky.
============
I doubt if it will take 4 score years into the 21st century before it dawns on all of the folks that flushing a billion dollars a day down the gullets of the careerists in the global warming industry has produced nothing of value in return but, it might… perhaps the next appointment the UN’s high office of Temperature Adjustment Czar may tell us something about how long it will take to return to societal sanity.
It has been a huge benefit to the champagne and caviar industries.
I wonder if Pachauri responded to a matchbook ad on how to succeed as a professional climate change, global warming alarmist. Like Al Gore, he certainly has no scientific credentials but Western academia is willing to throw the robe of respectability over the shoulders of anyone who is passionate about preaching the Left’s narrative to the great unwashed masses.
Missing child milk carton with ‘Catastrophe of Pachauri’ on one side and ‘Preposterous Catastrophe’ on the other.
======================
More important than changes in IPCC will be the research carried out and published by scientists in the next 4 years. IPCC can’t ignore it without losing credibility no matter who the director is. My expectation is for research that has the effect of reducing the estimates of sensitivity to a doubling of CO2; of course I could be wrong, but such results (and others one could surmise) would be more important than any changes to IPCC. Likewise if the preponderance of the evidence were to raise the sensitivity estimates.
No way will they be able to sustain 95% confidence in attribution, so there should be a tipping point in the trend. But watch ’em try anyway. Maybe they’ll learn about leverage around tipping points.
================
maybe you haven’t noticed the continuing warming.
More warming means higher confidence in human attribution
Not just that, but more TIME, more years means higher attribution.
Because with every passing year that global temperature doesn’t go down the natural contribution becomes less likely.
For instance the lack of cooling during the current quiet sun is already a real problem for those claiming the late 20th century warming was caused by the sun.
Same problem for PDO.
lolwot is trying to out think himself and wants to deny the run up to the MWP. No one has falsified we are on a course to temperatures of the MWP.
More warming is unimportant unless it is at an alarming rate and that results in other dangerous changes. It isn’t.
lolwot: ecause with every passing year that global temperature doesn’t go down the natural contribution becomes less likely.
What is your estimate of the change of evapotranspirative transfer of heat from the Earth surface to the troposphere due to an increase in the surface temp of 1C? Are you one of the “evapotranspirative change” deniers? You understand how this affects (calculations of) climate sensitivity, right?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/04/nominate-judith-curry-as-the-next-chair-of-the-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change/
Judith , on the WUWT web-site an article just came out wanting to petition you to head the IPCC. I personally think they need someone like you.
You might be interested in this. take care
I appreciate the support, but this has the chance of Inhofe’s snowball in hell. Not to mention that I’m not leaving my armchair.
It sounds to me like somebody clearly doesn’t like you, if they’re trying to railroad you into that job.
Judith
35 votes now I have added mine.
As For Chris Field , these are the notes on him that I wrote when he was on the expert panel at the climate conference I attended at Exeter last year. Thomas Stocker was there as well and I have made waves with some denizens by suggesting we could do worse and select him, as although he has a poor record with some sceptics, at the conference he did at least admit that there were serious gaps in the expert knowledge of the deep oceans..
As for Chris field I wrote this as he was doing a 10 minute presentation;
‘Seems a nice guy but very quiet spoken. Could hardly hear what he was saying. Tedious outdated graphics showing climate on one side and socio economic processes on the other. Too soft spoken and undemonstrative to really make an impact. Rather tedious.’
So for those sceptics seeking someone who is unlikely to be able to dynamically lead the IPCC, Chris Field is your man. However, if you want someone who will make waves and get the world to sit up and take notice there are probably better candidates.
tonyb
Ok, what’s it worth not to tell David Rose at the Mail on Sunday about this petition? . They have a readership of some 4.25 million.
tonyb
It’s not going exactly viral
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/nominate-judith-curry-next-chair-intergovernmental-panel-climate-change/2PYxtyQF
oh come on, 23 votes and counting!
Dr. Curry,
No disrespect to your wishes and expressed preferences, but I plan to add my name and here’s why. If nothing else, should enough folks express support you already substantial visibility might even grow. So folks, I ask that you ignore that our host has stated if selected she will not serve, but let’s make the best use we can of a reasonable voice.
All those in favor:
Danny
Well its gathering momentum. I think she needs a British historical climatologist to lend perspective and context and someone who is fairly new at the game who can give the perspective of the man in the street.
Coincidentally that could be you and I. Are you free for the next few years at a modest salary of around £150,,000 a year plus travel?.
tonyb
TonyB,
(Don’t want to appear too interested). Well, I have a few questions. What’s the credit limit on my company charge card? Do I get an electric car for “business purposes”?
I can clear my calendar should we reach an agreement. What will you do with you other current paid staff?
Danny
I am not so sure after all that you are the right person. Obviously there is NO limit to your company Charge card.
Yes you will get a fleet of electric cars. They will be sited at 100 mile intervals around the country until we solve the range problems…
Tonyb
TonyB,
Eh. Okay, I reluctently accept.
Regards,
(now let’s get that British contingent in place, suddenly I don’t wish to miss out)
126 down, only 99874 to go!
landslides start with just a few stones :)
The mongol khans made much of their pony express. Lush transportation and communication facilities.
================
Go, our armchair supremo!
It’s at 273 now. lol
:) :)
Although you will have to work hard to match Pachauri for entertainment value
The job is a meat grinder. Only a Zealot, a Psychopath or a Crook would actually fight to have it. A well-meaning academic would be torn to pieces.
A stairway to Heaven. Look what happened to the poor humble, spiritual little Indian railway engineer, doing his darnedest to keep the trains running on time. Was it his fault or the gestalt’s that the commute became so repulsive for so many?
=============
Another heads up Dr Curry. It looks like your being drafted:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/04/nominate-judith-curry-as-the-next-chair-of-the-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change/#comment-1875171
You would be great, but then again you have to do what you want to do ,not what others want you to do.
What? And lose my editor?
=====
The man who signed on to the ‘Snark’ as a cook, was no cook, but soon proved his worth as a photographer, to Jack London’s and the rest of the voyagers’ vast gastrointestinal relief.
Martin Johnson, not yet husband to Osa.
============
Looks like we need an Inter-Planetary Panel on Climate Change:
http://www.businessinsider.com/giant-storms-on-uranus-2015-3
There’s an IPCC joke in them words but I’m going to leave it alone, low hanging fruit and all.
Genius
completely anecdotal
spoke with a friend this AM who is a self proclaimed ‘climate journalist’
masters in journalism, for him the ‘consensus’ is irrefutable
writes mostly for pop publications
he does not know what IPCC stands for and of course had no idea that it’s leader has resigned
few adherents of any religion actually know their faith
I was born a Methodist
I’d be hard pressed to explain what a Methodist is
there is gambling in Casablanca?
just want to add
I think very few people, even the most educated, have any idea that such a thing as the IPCC exists
they are also unaware of the impact such organizations have on their lives
if they did, there be a lot more skepticism
First of all, the IPCC needs to change its protocol.
It is simply ridiculous, that the Summary for Policymakers is released earlier than the report itself. And, before releasing it, they make sure it is consistent with its own Summary. Even Orwell could not come up with such a convoluted idea.
Why is Rep. Grijalva lending the weight of his office to careerists in the $1 billion-a-day global-warming industry who want to escape the scrutiny of legitimate skepticism when we know that the hiatus is inexplicable by all the global warming alarmists except by finally admitting the role of natural causes in climate change and after we’ve learned that the higher layers of the upper atmosphere over the tropics have not significantly warmed since the 90s? Doesn’t Grijalva love science? Does Grijalva love his country?
If you look at his funding sources, he luvs his unions!
” Does Grijalva love his country?”
Yes, but I don’t think it is this country, Republica del Norte?
I wonder what the chances are that, post transition, the IPCC would start to seek the truth about climate.
The analysis at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com demonstrates that CO2 has no significant effect on average global temperature (AGT). Because CO2 is a trace gas, no significant effect on AGT also means no significant effect on climate.
It and the peer reviewed paper at Energy and Environment, vol. 25, No. 8, 1455-1471 disclose the two natural factors that do explain average global temperatures (95% correlation since 1895) and credible trend back to the depths of the Little Ice Age (around 1700).
This work proves that ‘climate sensitivity’, the effect on AGT of doubling CO2, is not significantly different from zero.
==> “I wonder what the chances are that, post transition, the IPCC would start to seek the truth about climate.”
I suspect the chances are low. Why would a group of people, whose real goal is to increase tax burdens on the American poor, and to starve children in Africa, suddenly be interested in “truth?”
Besides, they’re “progressives” and “progressives” aren’t capable of critical thinking. You can’t seek “truth” if you don’t have the capacity for critical thinking.
Nope. Chances are they will just continue along the same path of seeking what’s false about climate.
Not that it would be a conspiracy, or anything like that, of course.
This is the one-page conclusion to Climategate
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Climategate_Sequel.pdf
There is not much mystery to IPCC nor its leadership, a relious belief, a mission which transcends other’s values; noble cause corruption. The POTUS, NASA, NOAA are on board with the full backing of billionaires of the now corrupted environmental movement.
The Putche is toParis for a U.S. declaration and not a treaty; hence, bypassing the advise and consent of the US Senate.
Only the alignment of Congress and Executive will there be laws to thwart maniacal imperiorism.
The only people who care about “IPCC credibility” are climate deniers and only because they have a strong political need to undermine it.
“On the other hand, the Telegraph writes: He may now finally have gone, but the damage he did to the IPCC’s credibility as a serious scientific body is irreparable”
The Telegraph article written by Christopher Booker. LMAO. I rest my case!
“Donna LaFramboise highlights what I regard as the most serious issue for the IPCC’s reputation”
You just don’t get it. No-one cares. Deniers like Donna and Christopher Booker are frantically trying to undermine the public’s confidence in the science by latching onto anything they can (“omg the IPCC chair is a RAILWAY ENGINEER not a climate scientist!”)
“Climate change skeptics aren’t entirely jubilant about his exit, said Myron Ebell, director of the center for energy and environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute”
I rest my case again (LOL!). An admission that climate deniers NEED these little titbits and hooks on which to spread their “IPCC is damaged” meme.
When Booker writes “the damage he did to the IPCC’s credibility as a serious scientific body is irreparable” he’s not wishing for a “better world” in which the IPCC is perfect. No, he’s telling everyone what he wants them to believe. Trying to create reality by asserting it to be so. A bit like advocates of the pause that never wause then lol.
==> “The only people who care about “IPCC credibility” are climate deniers and only because they have a strong political need to undermine it.”
I think it’s more a matter of CONCERN about credibility.
yep.
Climate skeptics NEED there to be a scandal. They have to talk about scandal loudly at all times because it’s part of their effort to convince others by proxy that global warming is all a hoax.
The fact is for all the skeptic “CONcern” about “standards”, they would secretly far prefer an “economist/railyway engineer” like Pachauri was running the IPCC than a climate scientist who they’d have less angle of attack on.
LOL @ lolwot
So in your view, is there no impact on the crediability of the IPCC. Keep calling anyone who disagrees with your system of beliefs a “denier”. That will convience them!
Credibility in science is about predictions corresondance ter
reality, isn’t it? Oh that AR5 graph!
Ihttp://climateaudit.org/2013/09/30/ipcc-disappears-the-discrepancy/
“The IPCC’s media promoters are afraid that many more erstwhile global-warming believers may jump ship at the very time that the warming alarmnists are trying mightily to win popular support for the UN’s upcoming climate summit in Paris…”
Everyone who might be subpoenaed in Pachauri’s case will most definitely jump ship.
“Pachauri’s defense is that his email accounts, mobile phone, and messages have been hacked.”
There is the measure of the man.
Congressman Anthony Weiner said the same thing about his Weiner pics.
He lied.
He resigned.
Then he did it again, many times.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Weiner_sexting_scandals
There appears to be a typo in Tom Fuller’s letter of nomination proposing Professor Curry.
There should be an ‘N’ before ‘IPCC’
Getting serious for a moment here – merge them.
Joshua writes- “I have frequently pointed out to “skeptics” that they fail to acknowledge uncertainty when they talk about the economic outcomes of mitigation.”
Joshua you typically write nonsense in regards to the economics of CO2 mitigation actions.
1. There is certainty regarding the proposed initial additional cost to implement a CO2 mitigation action.
2. There is certainty that nation states operate on budgets and can’t indefinitely spend more than they generate in revenue.
3. There is certainty that if a nation state spends its revenues on a CO2 mitigation action then there is less available for other things (like improving infrastructure)
4. There is uncertainty whether a CO2 mitigation action will reduce or increase adverse weather
Jeffn-
Here ya’ go, bud.
Typically more nonsense in reply.
Rob –
Until further notice, consider the following to be my stock answer to you, the next time you respond to my pointing out that some “skeptics” don’t acknowledge uncertainty, by failing to note uncertainty:
http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/documents/rapport_anglais.pdf
All of Rob’s points go directly to fake mitigation that alarmists push. Your “stock” answer doesn’t address why opposition to fake mitigation is a bad thing.
Let’s take a recent victory for the alarmists – or we can call them the fake warm if you prefer: the veto of the authorization of the Keystone Pipeline.
Science says this veto will have no beneficial impact on emissions or the environment in general, in fact the pipeline would be safer for the environment than trains and trucks and have fewer emissions. Nobody believes the tar sands will be “left in the ground.”
Economics says there is a definite cost to the policy of continuing to delay the pipeline project.
So we have the fake warm celebrating fake mitigation for maximum partisan purposes and calling other people “deniers.” Or another way of putting it- if you’re goal was to come up with a strategy to ensure nothing at all was ever done about global warming, this veto would be an absolutely pitch-perfect part of that strategy.
GOOD NEWS IPCC6 will have plenty of new solid-science to talk about.
———–
BUSINESS INSIDER:
This Video Of
The Largest Breakage Of Ice
From A Glacier Ever Filmed
Is Absolutely Frightening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC3VTgIPoGU
Observation Sea-level rise from thermal expansion of warming ocean waters, sustained through many decades without pause or decadal oscillation, is on-track to accelerate from ice-sheet sliding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfsCmEP94pU
Conclusion Radiation-balance physics and thermodynamic analysis, as the sole explanations of the observed sustained sea-level rise and ice-mass loss, are greviously weakening — possibly even extirpating? — the climate-change “uncertainty monster.”
Can the “uncertainty monster” survive the combined onslaught of affirmed thermodynamical theory, ever-better observational data, the ending of the surface-temperature pause, and the ever-plainer visibility of climate-change to ordinary citizen-scientists?
The world wonders … IPCC6 will provide answers.
Fan – “…IPCC…solid-science…”
Don’t you mean calcified science?
Fan
A lot more primitive than your video but it was taken nearly 100 years ago. It is a British pahe news reel Film showing the arctic ice patrol set up in 1922 to warn vessels of icebergs brought down by the great heat in Greenland and prevent a repetition of the Titanic.
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/ice-patrol-aka-to-prevent-repetition-titanic-disas
The 1930’s and 1940’s remain the two warmest consecutive decades in Greenland according to Phil jones.
We shall have to wait 2021 to see if the current period beats it.
Tonyb
Willard and Joshua appear to be having a meltdown. What’s the matter?
It’s quite interesting how, for some “skeptics,” things always “appear” in exactly the way that will confirm their biases.
It is the mark of every truly great leader that, each morning, even before he takes a sip of coffee, he abolishes another QANGO.
No IPCC. Let them all return to Almora.
A fan of *MORE* discourse | March 4, 2015 at 6:16 pm | Reply
“GOOD NEWS IPCC6 will have plenty of new solid-science to talk about”
Solid as in frozen solid perhaps. It’s gonna snow tonight in south central Texas. In the subtropics. In March. Global warming my ass.
Lol … David in Tx, please keep in mind that, scientifically speaking, “the plural of anecdote is not data”.
http://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/201411-State-of-Texas-birds-759×684.jpg
David in Tx, your fellow Texan citizen-scientists will be pleased to enlighten you further!
Get TonyB on the case.
Yes, tonyb might be able to point the strugglers to this:
http://www.npr.org/2012/07/07/155995881/how-one-drought-changed-texas-agriculture-forever
But the question is, why is it needful to point out these things to the presumably educated and presumably concerned? How is it possible they don’t know? I have never been to Texas or the USA, but I find it hard NOT to know of the conditions there 1950-1957. We are talking about a major climate event here, on a par regionally with the tragic conditions of the 1930s.
Will the present Texas drought one day be forgotten to suit some future agenda? What gives with all this New Climate stuff? A pocket of extreme heat in Central Queensland and an unseasonably warm winter in parts of Alaska are supposed to stop us noticing what is happening in most of the whole bloody Northern Hemisphere?
Sorry guys, it’s called snow, ice and cold and none of it is more exotic than the snow, ice and cold of severe winters past. And when you consider that the 1899 blizzard reached across the Caribbean waters around the time Cyclone Mahina in Queensland was making the biggest known storm surge…things may actually be less exotic right now.
Yeah moso …
Context’s the thing whereby
we may unearth the problem
situation of the king (and troops.)
Situational analysis is able ter
transcend the myopia of
point of view and opacity
of time and space.
Fer ‘king’ think ‘IPCC.’
Fer ‘situational analysis’
think regional weather
variability analysis.
Present/recent drought in Texas is probably worse all up than that of the 1910s and almost certainly worse than that of the 1930s. It may be on a par with the ruinous drought of the mid-1880s, depending on just where you are in a very large state, I suppose. But the 1950s Big Dry is something else again.
There are very clear reports of severe drought in Texas from the 1700s. Surely an adult will just draw the conclusion that Texas, like most of Australia and California, is lethally drought-prone – and act accordingly.
Ah, but the catch is that word “adult”.
Now switch-sign on the arrow of time:
Hmmm … ‘adult’ … what does that mean in practice?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/02_ARR_Katharine_Hayhoe.jpg
Conclusion Good on `yah for ADULT climate-change cognition, Katharine Hayhoe and your Texas climate-science colleagues.
And thank you mosomoso, for your illuminating remarks!
When * Adults* look three centuries into the future …
Oh now I get it, ‘adult’ means omnipotent predictor.
That excludes yr Socrates, Montaigne modest types
don’t it. So immachure.
The problem with Katherine Hayhoe is that she is presuming that climate is changing faster than in the past when it managed it on its own. But there is just no evidence for that at all. Her presumption is based a priori on an assumption that emissions are having a dramatic impact on world temperatures, therefore any weather that is deemed unusual or extreme can be linked to that effect.
But this is typical confirmation bias. The reason you have to look in the past, and a long way into the past is that in order to judge whether or not what you are seeing is significant you need a large sample of natural variability to compare it against.
Here is a test for whether or not bias is at work; Katherine Hayhoe should be looking for evidence that rules OUT human influence on the climate, and not evidence that is “consistent” with it. Her argument is that the extreme weather events (such as drought) are more ‘likely’ going into the future because the dice is loaded in favour of them. She points to events “that we have seen” to make it easier to make the connection to recent events we have experienced and fresh in our mind to what at first blush appears to be a reasonable theory.
But there is no evidence that there is a change in the number and nature of extreme events, which even the IPCC stated in the most recent report.
The way intelligent people can fool themselves in this way is described in great detail in Daniel Kanhemanns book “Thinking Fast and Slow”. It’s particularly relevant for the climate debate where people are looking for significance in from absurdly (from the point of view of statics and objectivity) small samples.
I suppose FOMBS will receive a communique from God as to the climate over the next 3 centuries. Or since he appears to be enamored with the Pope of late, maybe the Pope will get the message from God and pass it on to FOMBS. Other than that, hubris much?
Science is easy when your initial assumption assumes the form of your conclusion.
Pachauri’s resignation is not only a case of sexual harassment. It provides the biggest clue for the general ethical behavior of climatic experts.
“IPCC is about politics, money and dogma, rather than science”. And I will add: IPCC is about corruption. A corruption now extended to: Nobel prize institutions, TERI (a research institute that e.g. studied the imaginary melting of the Himalayas), European-Union fellows (that payed public money for that imaginary study) and, of course, to IPCC.
If you believe in Santa Claus: all what happens is that Pachauri is a victim of a hacker; otherwise, now we understand that all this corruption is used to create new jobs in New Delhi’s TERI, and from all new nubiles in the office the “Landlord” selects one for his harem.
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Pachauri: IPCC should take official role in assessing country pledges to curb climate change
09 Feb 2015, 15:45
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/02/pachauri-ipcc-should-take-official-role-in-assessing-country-pledges-to-curb-climate-change/
The creeping (sometimes leaping) encroachment by
authorities, guvuhmints, UN agencies, to usurp more
and yet more power unto themselves. Like the IPCC,
from mission science assessment to political intention,
– that’s how it goes.
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Just found this one: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/12/un-climate-science-panel-ipcc-chair-succeed-rajendra-pachauri