by Judith Curry
Bjorn Stevens has published two interesting and important papers in the last few weeks, which have placed him squarely in the cross-fire of both the scientific and public debates on climate change.
Paper #1
This paper was discussed in Nic Lewis recent post Implications of aerosol forcing for climate sensitivity. The paper:
Rethinking the lower bound on aerosol radiative forcing
Bjorn Stevens
Abstract. Based on research showing that in the case of a strong aerosol forcing, this forcing establishes itself early in the historical record, a simple model is constructed to explore the implications of a strongly negative aerosol forcing on the early (pre 1950) part of the instrumental record. This model, which contains terms representing both aerosol-radiation and aerosol-cloud interactions well represents the known time history of aerosol radiative forcing, as well as the effect of the natural state on the strength of aerosol forcing. Model parameters, randomly drawn to represent uncertainty in understanding, demonstrates that a forcing more negative than −1.0 W m−2 is implausible, as it implies that none of the approximately 0.3 K temperature rise between 1850 and 1950 can be attributed to northern-hemispheric forcing. The individual terms of the model are interpreted in light of comprehensive modeling, constraints from observations, and physical understanding, to provide further support for the less negative ( −1.0 W m−2 ) lower bound. These findings suggest that aerosol radiative forcing is less negative and more certain than is commonly believed.
The implications of Steven’s result, when combined with climate sensitivity estimates, was summarized in my recent testimony:
However, the reduced estimates of aerosol cooling lead inescapably to reductions in the estimated upper bound of climate sensitivity.
The alleged ‘denier’ wing of the media wrote articles typified by this Breitbart article: New climate paper gives global warming alarmists ‘one helluva beating.’
Bjorn Stevens responded with a letter posted on his website, entitled: No, My Study Is Not a “Death Blow” to Global Warming Hysteria
Paper #2
A new paper by Stevens was published yesterday:
Missing iris effect as possible cause of muted hydrological change and high sensitivity in climate models
Thorsten Mauritsen and Bjorn Stevens
Abstract. Equilibrium climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 falls between 2.0 and 4.6 K in current climate models, and they suggest a weak increase in global mean precipitation. Inferences from the observational record, however, place climate sensitivity near the lower end of this range and indicate that models underestimate some of the changes in the hydrological cycle. These discrepancies raise the possibility that important feedbacks are missing from the models. A controversial hypothesis suggests that the dry and clear regions of the tropical atmosphere expand in a warming climate and thereby allow more infrared radiation to escape to space. This so-called iris effect could constitute a negative feedback that is not included in climate models. We find that inclusion of such an effect in a climate model moves the simulated responses of both temperature and the hydrological cycle to rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations closer to observations. Alternative suggestions for shortcomings of models — such as aerosol cooling, volcanic eruptions or insufficient ocean heat uptake — may explain a slow observed transient warming relative to models, but not the observed enhancement of the hydrological cycle. We propose that, if precipitating convective clouds are more likely to cluster into larger clouds as temperatures rise, this process could constitute a plausible physical mechanism for an iris effect.
The media hasn’t had much of a chance to respond to this one yet, but for reference see this backstory on Lindzen’s adaptive iris effect in the Wikipedia (includes links to the relevant publications). NASA has a pretty good article (2002) explaining the iris effect.
The rejection of Lindzen’s iris hypothesis by ‘important’ scientists (see BishopHill for some quotes) has long been used to discredit anything Lindzen has to say on climate.
In the past year, I’ve encountered two other talks that supported the iris hypothesis (one that I can’t remember and another one by Kerry Emanuel). There’s also a paper by Sandrine Bony. I need to dig into this subject (it’s right up my scientific alley), and hope to do a technical post on this sometime soon.
Chronicle of Higher Education
But back to the cross-fire; how are the ‘consensus police’ taking this? Paul Voosen (one of my favorite science journalists) has a good article In Search of Limits, a Scientist Pushes Bounds. Excerpts:
Climate contrarians got hold of it, and conservative websites like the Daily Caller pumped up its results to argue that it was a “death blow” to global-warming “hysteria.” Mr. Stevens had been dragooned into the climate war.
It was a fight Mr. Stevens didn’t want, but he wasn’t afraid of it. It’s a truism today that scientists who study the slowest possible speed at which the planet will warm will have their work adopted and misused by contrarians. It’s the type of attention that leaves researchers wary, Mr. Stevens said.
“There is a certain hesitance to work on topics that could be used by others to call into question those things we think we know,” he said. “We would have a much more vigorous debate if we weren’t worried about our words being misused.”
Mr. Stevens’s willingness to enter the fray will come further into view on Monday, with the publication of a new paper, written with Thorsten Mauritsen, in Nature Geoscience that gives ever-so-slight credence to a favorite theory of climate contrarians called the “iris effect.”
It’s meant as a conversational stimulant, Mr. Stevens said. That’s not necessarily how it’s being taken, he added. “People are nervous about the result being misinterpreted.”
Some scientists, though they welcome Mr. Stevens’s contribution, wish the paper had been written in a different way. “This paper is designed to make a larger story out of a relatively small result,” said Chris Bretherton, a professor of atmospheric sciences and applied mathematics at the University of Washington.
“I thought this was not well written and quite misleading,” added Kevin E. Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. There was no need to sound the “iris” trumpet, given how far it was from Mr. Lindzen’s original ideas, he added. “They even put it in the damn title.”
Contrarians often paint climate science as a clubby community of conspirators. This is a fine example of how researchers will investigate any idea if it has merit, said Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, a geoscience professor at the University of Chicago.
“It’s a good thing that people take the ideas seriously and think hard about them,” he said, “because even wrong ideas can be stimulating.”
For Mr. Lindzen, the new paper serves as a bit of told-you-so in the twilight of his career. He’s unable to get his new work past peer review, he says. Other researchers would say that’s because he ignores appropriate criticisms of his ideas, but Mr. Lindzen compared it to being a Soviet scientist trying to publish about relativity during Stalinism.
“What Bjorn is doing is going as far as you can and still get published,” Mr. Lindzen said.
For all the headaches he’s caused other climate scientists, Mr. Lindzen did play a role in pointing out the need to understand high-cloud effects better. But then he became his own worst enemy, Mr. Pierrehumbert said, turning “iris so disreputable by making outrageous claims.”
Mr. Trenberth has spent a lot of time exposing flaws in Mr. Lindzen’s work; there’s other research he could have done. “You may learn some things in the process, but in some ways it’s a waste of time,” Mr. Trenberth said.
Sure, Mr. Pierrehumbert said, it’s a good idea to avoid sloppy phrasing that can be easily misquoted, but communicating the work to other scientists is most important. Distortion is “just the cost of doing business,” he said. “There’s really no way to actually keep any kind of work from being misused.”
“My job,” Mr. Stevens said, “isn’t to convince the public more” about the reality of climate change. “I have a naïve faith the truth will win out.”
As someone who had his correspondence leaked and his words used against his research, Mr. Trenberth is not so sure. The notion that climate scientists could be free again to speak, in public, in full candor?
“That’s a naïve hope,” he said.
JC comment: Bjorn Stevens hits the bullseye with the bolded statement above. The scientists griping about all this are advocates, trying to convince the public of the ‘reality’ of climate change so that they will support emissions reductions policies. As Stevens rightly points out, this is not the job of climate scientists.
Uncertainty monster
In the early noughties, Bjorn Stevens and I attended a lot of the same meetings, mostly related to the GEWEX Cloud Systems Study group. I hadn’t seen him in awhile, but we both attended the 2011 Santa Fe Conference on Global and Regional Climate (discussed in this previous blog post). Excerpt:
On Tuesday night, a conference dinner was held. I gave a keynote presentation entitled “The uncertainty monster at the climate science-policy interface.” The talk is on youtube. My talk was interrupted by an irate audience member (who is an AR5 author).
The ‘irate audience member’ was Bjorn Stevens. He STRENUOUSLY objected to the following two slides, which my words included ‘many scientists’:
I will rewatch this when I have time (just about to leave for the airport again). So Stevens is not an IPCC/UNFCCC ideologue, but he seems in denial that some of his colleagues are.
P.S. I am giving a new uncertainty monster presentation tomorrow (to a group of economists), this will be the subject of tomorrow’s post
JC reflections
Kudos to Bjorn Stevens for working on these important and challenging problems and for understanding that it is not his job to convince the public that they need to reduce fossil fuel emissions.
The ‘consensus’ disease, and the naive belief of too many scientists that we need to speak ‘consensus’ to power, is slowing down scientific progress. Lennart Benngtson’s recent saga is another case in point (see previous blog post).
JC warning to Bjorn Stevens: In my quest to objectively evaluate the IPCC’s attribution argument and stand up for research integrity post Climategate, I was not ‘pulled’ away from the establishment community by ‘deniers’; rather I was ‘pushed’ away by scientists who were IPCC ideologues and advocates. Watch out.
Bjorn Stevens came to Hamburg just as I was leaving, so I don’t know him that well. He always struck me as a straight scientist. Here’s a hypothesis, let’s test it. Let the results speak for themselves. Let the chips fall where they may.
==> “He always struck me as a straight scientist.”
Well now, that’s valuable: Richard’s objective evaluation of Bjorn’s objectivity.
Joshua: Do you have evidence to the contrary? Any reason to believe that Stevens is an ideologue or a hired-gun?
==> “Any reason to believe that Stevens is an ideologue or a hired-gun?”
What are you talking about?
http://i.imgur.com/mc1xaiR.jpg
good one :)
By the way, what’s up with Paul Voosen using “Mr.” as an honorific for Professor Lindzen? He quotes Trenberth as saying “Mr. Lindzen” as well. Did Trenberth really do that too?
======>the usual inane sniping
http://i.imgur.com/9iBVCm9.jpg
Judith,
Re: Joshua,
This is so tiresome. Most of us appreciate your liberal policies, but aren’t there limits? And if so, what are they?
aneipris | April 22, 2015 at 10:51 am |
Judith,
Re: Joshua,
This is so tiresome. Most of us appreciate your liberal policies, but aren’t there limits? And if so, what are they?
—————————————————————————-
+1
huh? Tol says the exact opposite.
he doesnt say : “he’s a straight [honest] scientist
he doesn’t offer anything other than his subjective opinion
he also qualifies it by saying he doesnt know him that well.
most importantly he argues that we should NOT trust his opinion, but rather should “let the RESULTS speak for themselves”
When I read Tol, I got the exact opposite impression of the impression Joshua got.
paraphrasing
” I dont know this guy very well, during this limited exposure he struck ME
as an honest guy, BUT dont listen to me, lets look at the results and stop focusing on the person”
of course others could read Tol’s words and use them as an opportunity to trash Tol. You know those images that sometime look like an old lady and sometimes look like a young beautiful woman? You ever read Bruner on perception? I don’t know, but sometimes it seems like people read the same text and find what they need to find. I could be wrong, Tol
could be saying “Trust my objective evaluation of Stevens” maybe he is speaking a secret code.
“I don’t know, but sometimes it seems like people read the same text and find what they need to find.”
Steven, It appears some people have a harder time correcting for their own personal bias/motivated reasoning than others. The irony of Joshua’s comment was, i’m sure, completely unintentional.
Joshua, What did you think the response of your comment to RSJ Tol was going to be after hitting the ‘post comment’ button? Just curious.
“You know those images that sometime look like an old lady and sometimes look like a young beautiful woman?”
I once dated a woman who was rather like that. Beautiful in one light, not so great in another. Just around the time I was debating breaking up with her, I happened to see a Seinfeld episode with that very theme.. As if I needed any reminding of how superficial I really am.
Steven –
I don’t care what Richard’s personal impression is of Stevens’ straightness – nonetheless because he doesn’t even know the guy.
==> ” but rather should “let the RESULTS speak for themselves”
If his advice is to let results speak for themselves, then why does he offer is impressions of Stevens’ straightness – all that much more odd
if he doesn’t even know him well?
Why would he preface that advocacy on his part with irrelevant information? To not influence us in some way?
Let’s compare Richards comment with the following possible alternative:
No preface about Richard’s personal impressions based on not knowing him well is needed or useful.
But let me try out Richard’s rhetorical style and see if it works better for me:
You certainly seem to me to have some reflexive need to defend Judith because of an admirable sense of loyalty, but I don’t know you well, so
let’s let the results of your comments where you defend her speak for themselves.
The larger context here is that I have read Richard, on more than one occasion, reverse engineer from his personal assessment of what he considers to be someone’s activism to assess their work – quite different from advice to meet the results decide.
Again, why is Richard’s personal assessment of someone he didn’t know relevant enough that he shares that insight with us?
Hey John Carpenter –
==> Joshua, What did you think the response of your comment to RSJ Tol was going to be after hitting the ‘post comment’ button? Just curious.”
I expected sameolsameol: lame excuses and attacks. Why would I expect anything different?
======>It’s not true what my beloved “skeptics” say about me. I do have a sense of self-awareness. I am always disgusting myself. I recover quickly.
And once again, in no uncertain terms, the difference between someone who I don’t agree with, but who I respect: Mosher vs. someone I disagree with and don’t respect: Joshua.
And in this case – as well as others – Joshua attacks a scientist (Dr. Tol) who actually agrees that the Earth is warming, that humans have an impact, but doesn’t agree that it is all bad and we’re all going to die, etc.
The beauty of this particular individual is that he pushes even the adherents into heresy – irregardless if said adherents even want to be heretics.
Joshua:
I gave a positive character reference for Stevens. You used that as an opportunity to attack both him and me. Please go away.
Richard
==> ” You used that as an opportunity to attack both him and me.”
You misunderstand. I haven’t Stevens in any way at all.
But yes, I don’t know why your personalizing and politicizing science adds value.
Joshua
‘If his advice is to let results speak for themselves, then why does he offer is impressions of Stevens’ straightness – all that much more odd
if he doesn’t even know him well?”
you want to continue to delve into Dr. Tol’s motivations fine.
Here is what I think.
He is basically clearing his throat. He is narrating a story leading to a punch line. It’s throw away fluff. It’s not connected to who he is as a person. In short, you are over reading.
People do this all the time. Some times they do it to name drop,
sometimes they just want to clear their throat before they get to their main point. Sometimes they want to add color. The more important question is why make it about Dr. Tol, when Dr.Tol wants to make it it about the results.
Let’s face it. You could have said
Dr. Tol, I agree we should look at the results
you could have found a place to agree and just left the other shit for the playground.
You should practice that for one week. read a comment by someone you disagree with and either
A) remain silent
B) find a point of agreement.
Just as a test.
Joshua,
I rarely engage with you directly these days because there’s absolutely no point. I honestly don’t have any animosity toward you. I just find your nit picking, nasty, tonally identical comments tiresome. Also the tedious and largely pointless discussions they engender. I’m not advocating you be banned…though it wouldn’t break my heart if you were….but what about a little self-restraint? Or better yet, try commenting from the other side for a week. You might learn something. Actually, that’s not a terrible idea for most of us…
======>You misunderstand. I don’t really care about what you say, or whether or not you are justified in saying it. I am just here to get attention and cause disruption. If you are expecting me to engage in honest discourse, well you are judging me by the wrong standard. Beside, Judith let’s me do it. Must be OK.
aneipris, Your asking Joshua not to be Joshua? Are you trying to make a silk purse out of a cows ear. Good luck with that.
Joshua
‘Why would he preface that advocacy on his part with irrelevant information? To not influence us in some way?”
ah this is a common mistake that many people make. why would the author draw attention to the cigar unless he wanted to make a sexual reference? It’s called over reading. It stems from an assumption that every linguistic choice
A) is under the author’s control
B) reflects or represents something meaningful.
I had a friend gone virtually insane trying to understand Joyce this way.
Imagine you were doing science and somebody asked you to explain every wiggle in a curve. You might say, well some of those wiggles arent showing me anything. Or you might say, “the interesting stuff” is in the big moves up and down. Somebody might show you a strand of DNA and you might say– some of that stuff is just junk DNA… the important bits are over here. We choose to focus on things.
So first check your assumptions. You are assuming that everything he writes is deliberate and that it all has to have meaning or relevance.
In my mind dr. Tol is actually being guided by a very familiar style of introduction. you say how you know a person and then you call people to focus. It’s highly generic, almost perfunctory, contains no information about Tol or the subject that we should consider.. So
A) it;s not really under his control, he is just reciting a pattern, clearing his throat, making pleasantries, introducing a speaker, being an MC
B) its not relevant one we understand his call to focus
sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Again, you could have said
“I agree Dr. Tol, let’s focus on the results and not our impressions of him”
And I would have thought… hehe Joshua is getting sly with his implied criticism of Dr. Tol’s personal endorsement.
And ya, people get to ask why you said X as opposed to Y.
Steven –
I commend you on your generous reading of Richard.
Can’t join you, though. The context here is important. Richard has a long history of personalizing and politicizing the science. He’s completely embedded in that approach. That isn’t judging his motivations – just his approach.
As further evidence of how embedded he is in the tribalism, notice that he amusingly doesn’t even get that I’m not criticizing him for complementing Stevens, but for stating his personal judgement of Stevens integrity before, ironically, saying we should let Stevens’ science stand or fall on its own merits.
My suggestion to Richard is that he stop trying to judge scientists’ integrity – particularly that he doesn’t know well- and stick to the science.
==========>I don’t know why she let’s me get away with this incessant foolishness. But hey, I am going to take advantage. A troll’s life is pretty good here.
Joshua, “My suggestion to Richard is that he stop trying to judge scientists’ integrity – particularly that he doesn’t know well- and stick to the science.”
And the answer is..
” Here’s a hypothesis, let’s test it. Let the results speak for themselves. Let the chips fall where they may.”
then in the form of a question, How would a straight scientist act?
Since you crystal ball is working over time tell me, am I thinking impure thoughts?
Joshua you speak of context as if it were a fact independent of your bias. You come to Dr tol expecting certain behavior like some white cop stopping a kid in the hood. Here is a clue. On your reading he is being unintentionally ironic. That is a clue that you are over reading.. Taking your prejudice in where it’s not warranted. If you find that he consistently personalizes then a different approach would be to ignore it and distill the real position out.
For example if I said 2+2=4 you dummy, you can simply say yes 2+2=4. Focusing on the substance is always a choice you have.
WordPress needs a feature that let’s a person collapse a joshua thread.
Having to scroll passed this nonsense is brutally tedious. Not only does his drivel waste space, he get’s otherwise decent people to pile on more drivel.
Well yes that is the problem. Not replying to pointless comments would help a lot
==> “Joshua you speak of context as if it were a fact independent of your bias.”
My bad. I should have been clear to express that it was my opinion about the context.
==> “You come to Dr tol expecting certain behavior like some white cop stopping a kid in the hood. ”
Yeah. We use heuristics that reflect probabilities. Sometimes we’re wrong.
But none of that changes what Richard did: (1) offer his irrelevant judgement on the integrity of someone he doesn’t even know well and, (2) after offering such a judgement, say we should judge Stevens’ science on it’s won merits.
==> “Here is a clue. On your reading he is being unintentionally ironic. That is a clue that you are over reading.”
Hmmm. Could be. But I think isn’t. I see someone with a history of tribal behavior offering a judgement of someone’s integrity based on a poor treatment of evidence and then saying we should judge a scientists work on it’s own merits. Sorry, but IMO that is unintentionally ironic. You are certainly entitled to disagree.
==> “Taking your prejudice in where it’s not warranted.”
In your opinion. I think it was warranted.
==> “If you find that he consistently personalizes then a different approach would be to ignore it and distill the real position out.”
Yes, that approach would be different. It might even be more constructive. Then again, it might make absolutely no difference whatsoever – and my guess is that the latter is more probable.
I have no illusion that pointing out the unintentional irony of Richard first judging Stevens’ integrity (with only flimsy and completely anecdotal evidence) and then saying that Stevens’ science should be judged on its own merits will change anything for the better. John Carpenter asked me what kind of responses I expected and I told him I would expect exactly what happened.
==> “For example if I said 2+2=4 you dummy, you can simply say yes 2+2=4. Focusing on the substance is always a choice you have.”
Yes, That is absolutely true. I wouldn’t argue one bit with that.
Anyway, we seem to be repeating and I think we’ve reached dead horse territory.
“John Carpenter asked me what kind of responses I expected and I told him I would expect exactly what happened.”
And yet, Joshua, you did it anyway…. Same ol same ol.
The proper question is “What are you talking about Josh?” But we can pretty much conclude that little real thought went into it.
ordvic,
I believe it is another part of the cow that Josh springs from.
=======>Fun is fun guys, but those cow remarks are hurtful, mean, and cruel etc. If I had any big boy pants, I’d be putting them about now. I hope nobody notices the unintended irony here.
You’re WAY over-interpreting this Josh – certainly looks to me like a conversational, off the cuff remark. The way I interpret it is:
“He seems like the kind of guy who would say ‘Here’s a hypothesis, let’s test it. Let the results speak for themselves. Let the chips fall where they may'”
You seem to be seeing this as Tol’s opinion of Stevens, rather than as his opinion of how Stevens normally would react.
Cap’n –
I suggest that Richard stop trying to make up “tests” for scientists integrity (which are subjective, self-serving, and mostly only used to confirm biases), and instead stick to the science and the quality of the arguments that people make.
All this integrity-judging is sameosameo. I would say the same to the many climate combatants who are constantly judging Richard’s integrity. That stuff is all manifestations of identity-oriented personality politics and motivated reasoning and cultural cognition in particularly when the judge-ers don’t even know the judge-ees.
joshua, “I suggest that Richard stop trying to make up “tests” for scientists integrity (which are subjective, self-serving, and mostly only used to confirm biases), and instead stick to the science and the quality of the arguments that people make.”
Joshua, the test he “made up” is basically the scientific method. construct your hypothesis, then test it. It is kinda part of the job description.
========>That’s very heuristic. And foolishness is part of the job description of a troll. And I will keep this up as long as you all give me some food and a tiny bit of legitimacy by replying with anything other than disdain and dismissal.
joshua is the only one who is allowed to use heuristics.
Apologies to all for derailing the discussion.
You didn’t derail the discussion, Dr. Tol. Bjorn Stevens was pretty much the topic of the discussion. You made a legitimate comment in good faith. It was one of the trolls that Judith let’s run wild around here that derailed the discussion.
Richard, I appreciate your comments here. you did not derail this discussion.
Don, “You made a legitimate comment in good faith. It was one of the trolls that Judith let’s run wild around here that derailed the discussion.”
Ah, but we have another wonderful example of post-normal critical thinking.
Dr Tol, no apologies needed. The readers get the game. The usual suspect is the one owing an apology and should be rounded up.
Don’t let the juvenile clown who is in love with his own perceived wit and brilliance discourage you Dr Tol. Josh has trouble amounting to a pimple on a buffalo’s butt.
On further thought, perhaps boil would be more suitable.
“Ah, but we have another wonderful example of post-normal critical thinking.’
If you are talking about me, there wasn’t any kind of critical thinking in that comment. Just a platitude to set up a whack at the troll. I can teach you how to do it:)
As others have said here, RIchard Tol should in no way take the blame for the blatherings of a troll, “responding” to a useful comment made in good faith. I don’t think I’ve ever commented here before, but believe that Dr Curry’s site is the best one dealing with AGW issues by a considerable margin, and read it frequently. Unfortunately, the level of tolerance to trolls like Joshua, and those silly enough to feed and enable him, really wrecks some threads. Is there not some software solution which would just collapse all comments (and nested replies) from those who add nothing, selectable by individual readers? I mean something where, for example, I just tick a box on one of Joshua’s comments, after which all his comments and responses there under just get reduced to a little node, which I could then click on to re-expand if I ever became curious about what he said? This would greatly enhance readability, and hopefully demotivate thread hijackers.
curryja | April 22, 2015 at 8:23 pm |
Well yes that is the problem. Not replying to pointless comments would help a lot
I concur that not responding to pointless comments would do more than our hostess could ever do. I have quit reading certain commenters who have a habit of pointless comment and suggest others do the same.
Yup. The best way to keep conversations on a blog productive is not to moderate commenters, but for other commenters to ignore problematic comments/posters.
The link ‘Bjorn Stevens responded with a letter posted on his website, entitled: No, My Study Is Not a “Death Blow” to Global Warming Hysteria’
leads to the Delingpole Breitbart article :)
fixed, thx
“This paper is designed to make a larger story out of a relatively small result,” said Chris Bretherton, a professor of atmospheric sciences and applied mathematics at the University of Washington.”
What paper doesn’t do that?
CaptDallas,
It all depends on what the definition of “relatively small” is.
Sea level rise of hundredths of mm/year and “Global Average Temperature” trends of a tenth of a degree/year, are both huge results. 18+ years of statistically insignificant ‘warming’, is miniscule.
In other words, what determines whether a result is “relatively small” is whether that result supports a positive trend in reported GAT.
fiftieth of a degree?
Sigh – “The ‘consensus’ disease, and the naive belief of too many scientists that we need to speak ‘consensus’ to power, is slowing down scientific progress.” It’s worse than that. It’s destroying the ability of the general public to trust and accept that science is not just one more religion out there to choose from.
fulltimetumbleweed/tumbleweedstumbling | April 22, 2015 at 8:59 am | Reply
Sigh – “The ‘consensus’ disease, and the naive belief of too many scientists that we need to speak ‘consensus’ to power, is slowing down scientific progress.” It’s worse than that. It’s destroying the ability of the general public to trust and accept that science is not just one more religion out there to choose from.
It is worse than that. Advocates tend not to be honest or accurate. If scientists become advocates, their views should be regarded as advocacy not science.
I don’t expect Greenpeace or the WWF to deliver honest or accurate information about climate change.and they don’t.
Frankly I am annoyed and irritated by advocacy. At the core of advocacy is a basic assumption that the public is too stupid to understand and make good choices on their own. Therefore the information and solutions must be pureed and spoon fed to them.
Judith –
==> “The ‘consensus’ disease, and the naive belief of too many scientists that we need to speak ‘consensus’ to power, is slowing down scientific progress.
This is interesting given that Stevens has responded on more than on occasion, publicly, to clarify how “skeptics” have misconstrued his work.
Also note:
Means that his job is not singularly defined as such.
But as made apparent by his actions, he does consider it part of his job to clarify to the public how his work should be correctly interpreted (and more specifically, when it has been inappropriately used by “skeptics” to peruse their agenda).
The first paper I read by Stevens highlighted multiple mistakes by Kiehl and Trenberth in their Earth Energy Budgets. His co-author that time was Steven Schwartz. I considered Bjorn Stevens to be a bit more rational than K&T with their 0.9 Wm-2 +/- 0.18 Wm-2 fair tale confidence interval based on a Hansen climate model that even Hansen found a bit odd. I think Bjorn Stevens is mistaking his “rational” pigeonhole for something derogatory.
Joshua, Ray Pierrehumbert says this also….
“it’s a good idea to avoid sloppy phrasing that can be easily misquoted, but communicating the work to other scientists is most important. Distortion is “just the cost of doing business,” he said. “There’s really no way to actually keep any kind of work from being misused.”
With the idea that ‘any kind of work’ can be misused, surely conclusions of some ‘realists’ get distorted by those seeking ‘consensus to power’ results as well?
Hey John carpenter –
==> “With the idea that ‘any kind of work’ can be misused, surely conclusions of some ‘realists’ get distorted by those seeking ‘consensus to power’ results as well?”
Indubitably. We’ve seen it many times. It’s called sameolsameol, or perhaps samosamo.
Yes for an example here see how Dr Tols simple introduction gets twisted.
Yeah. I twisted his statement about Stevens’ “straightness,” based on flimsy evidence, into a statement about Stevens’ “straightness” based on flimsy evidence.
you twisted it into unintended irony.
unintended irony REQUIRES that you read in a motivation.
this is exegesis 101
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Judith–Still not quite the direct link to Stevens’ statement. This should work.
http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/grafik/presse/News/AerosolForcing-Statement-BjornStevens.pdf
Reblogged this on The Global 'Climate'.
Judith –
==> “In my quest to objectively evaluate the IPCC’s attribution argument and stand up for research integrity post Climategate,”
Too bad that others don’t have your objectivity in evaluating your own objectivity and your integrity in evaluating your own integrity.
operative words
‘ my quest”
note that the author never claims to have achieved the holy grail of objectivity.
Joshua:
Too bad that others don’t have your objectivity in evaluating your own objectivity and your integrity in evaluating your own integrity.
Do you really think you are not being blatantly insulting to our host with this? This kind of gratuitous snark, which adds exactly zero to the discussion, is completely inappropriate.
That you have not been banned says a great deal about Dr. Curry’s character.
Pingback: Bjorn Stevens in the cross-fire | Enjeux énergies et environnement
the youtube video with Bjorn Stevens objecting to my presentation is a must see. The fireworks don’t start too far in.
It would have been interesting to follow a blood pressure monitor on him during your presentation. Probably the cumulative effect of each subsequent slide. Blast off!
Got a kick outta this flow:
“squarely in the cross-fire of both the scientific and public debates on climate change”
Then: “But back to the cross-fire; how are the ‘consensus police’ taking this?”
To: “My job,” Mr. Stevens said, “isn’t to convince the public more” about the reality of climate change. “I have a naïve faith the truth will win out.”
And: “It was a fight Mr. Stevens didn’t want, but he wasn’t afraid of it.”
Then: ““There is a certain hesitance to work on topics that could be used by others to call into question those things we think we know,” (Self ‘consensus policing’?)
Ending with: “My talk was interrupted by an irate audience member (who is an AR5 author). The ‘irate audience member’ was Bjorn Stevens. He STRENUOUSLY objected to ……….many scientists”
Kinda had a giggle at all that.
note that you say “many of our LEADING scientists”
“The rejection of Lindzen’s iris hypothesis by ‘important’ scientists (see BishopHill for some quotes) has long been used to discredit anything Lindzen has to say on climate.”
No, it is the other things Lindzen says that is used to discredit him.
perhaps a list? I mean something other than smoking.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Sh1B-rV60&w=640&h=390%5D
I could probably make a list from this video.
Climate-gate email on Lindzen:
“Reading your letter in the EDP today makes me wonder who your source inside the Tyndall Centre was supplying you with such exaggerated evidence? Surely it wasn’t me, was it? Treating Dick Lindzen with the esteem of flat-earthers; could this claim have been inserted by politicians seeking to make a dramatic point to their audience? Or was it really what the experts in the Tyndall Centre think? Perhaps we need an enquiry.
Don’t worry – I’m not thinking of committing suicide should I be exposed as the source of this story; but then again, it couldn’t have been me, could it?
I didn’t say that after all; all I said was that we are well aware of Dick Lindzen and his arguments (in fact, Dick Lindzen is a pretty smart meteorologist who just takes a more cautious view of the scientific evidence for human causes of global warming; similar in caution in some ways to David Kelly even).”
Ideologues vs contrarians, I like it. Neither term has an unfortunate history, yet both are sufficiently descriptive.
However, they are not excluded from advocacy simply because they are climate scientists, even if it is an area that must be tread carefully. If a scientist is purporting to be giving the scientific ‘facts’ in support of his advocated policy this is one area in which caveats and disclosure of weaknesses is absolutely demanded, though not all agree how far this needs to be taken and enforcing it in practice is daunting.
For guidelines on responsible advocacy, see this previous post:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/06/irresponsible-advocacy-by-scientists/
One thing that amused me in reading the climategate mails was the number of discussions about wording.
the issue was never “what was scientifically accurate” the issue was typically how will people (skeptics) misuse this or attack this.
The paper itself is interesting. the two reactions are predictable
A) trivializing
B) hyperbole
Did you come away from this more sympathetic to one side?
sympathy is a useless emotion
Maybe, maybe not. It exists nonetheless (if one is not a sociopath).
In other words sympathy is the Berkeley Earth of emotions.
Mosher is a Vulcan wannabe.
Once again, Mosher’s philosophising from the high weeds is profoundly instructive. I was well on my way towards subjugating the masses and taking over the world, when sympathy stopped me.
“Maybe, maybe not. It [sympathy] exists nonetheless (if one is not a sociopath).”
Rage also exists .
fear exists
worry exists
paranoia exists
asking me about which side I pity more is a useless question.
in general I’d ditch the feeling of sympathy and suggest that both sides try something different.. big boy pants and all.
In general, I’d tell both sides to cut the crap cause they are both pitiful and getting sympathy is like getting a booby prize.
Basically, my question was for your reaction to the emails as to the extent to which you believe that the actions and beliefs shown by the writers of the emails were justifiable or understandable, given the onslaught to which they had been subjected.
“Mosher is a Vulcan wannabe.”
No a vulcan would not feel the emotion.
my point was different. my point is that sympathy is a useless emotion.
Of course I feel it and then I realize that sympathy is just pride hidden under a pretty word.
Empathy, in contrast, is not a useless emotion.
A different viewpoint:
A booby prize can be very satisfying.
Sympathy is derided by elitists, because it does not involve them in the suffering of the victim. It does nothing for them.
Empathy, however, allows the elitist to engage in a Clinton-like “I feel your pain.” They can be victims by proxy. In a progressive world where being a victim is the ultimate form of privilege, empathy allows the well off elitist to claim solidarity with those who suffer without having to, you know, actually do anything about it.
It’s compassion vs, projection.
Sympathy leads people to give their own money and time to help those with whom they sympathize. Empathy allows the elitist to feel better about himself, without doing a damned thing.
(There is nothing wrong with empathy, by the way, if you are personally involved in trying to help the person/people for whom you feel it. As an adjunct to sympathy, it can be quite useful.)
Though some may feel that neither sympathy nor empathy implies anything about what one is going to do, but of the two sympathy is the more remote in that the person is merely recognizing that the other person is suffering whereas empathy does that and also makes the other’s suffering one’s own, implying a greater concern about the other.
swood1000,
“whereas empathy does that and also makes the other’s suffering one’s own, implying a greater concern about the other.”
No, it really doesn’t. At worst, empathy is just a form of projection. A statement about one’s own nobility, ala Bill Clinton. A facile excuse for doing what the empathizer wants, not what the sufferer needs.
At best it is an approximation, a guess. I feel sympathy for a family member who has lost a child. I can try to empathize, but it is not possible because I have never suffered such a loss,
All this nonsense about the weakness of ‘sympathy’, is a direct example of the intense need to personalize everything. To make the entire world about ‘me’. It is not enough now to understand sympathy and empathy as complementary.
Sympathy is useless.
Tell that to the billions around the world who have received food, medicine and military support. Tell that to the prisoners liberated from the death camps in WW II.
So GaryM’s view is that empathy implies that one has done all he is going to do about the other person’s suffering – feel it himself, whereas sympathy to a greater extent suggests that the person will take some action. Steven Mosher’s view is that sympathy involves maintaining one’s distance, with the implication that one does not care enough to participate in what the other person is feeling. I can see both viewpoints. My personal view is closer to that of Steven Mosher, although the character supposedly showing sympathy in the piece appeared to not really care and to be simply experiencing relief that he himself was not suffering. This goes to Steven Mosher’s statement that “sympathy is just pride hidden under a pretty word…” I think that true sympathy is not self-centered but involves a sorrow for the other persons suffering.
GaryM
“Tell that to the billions around the world who have received food, medicine and military support. Tell that to the prisoners liberated from the death camps in WW II.”
ok. hey you people, sympathy is a useless emotion. When someone tells you they feel sorry for you, that’s just words. Ignore that shit. It’s typically a useless progressive feeling.
When they have a feeling of responsibility and obligation and act on those feelings, then that’s way better than sympathy.
and gary,
thanks for reminding me that we got into WWII because of sympathy.
That’s beautiful, Steven. The empathist climbs down in the black hole and connects. I never knew that. Seems kind of passive, but the person down in the black hole seems happy with that, then so am I. It’s appropriate that the Oprah video rolls next.
Until now, I thought of the empathetic type as the kind who stands around a burning house with kids yelling from a window and says I feel the heat. The sympathetic breed runs in the house to try to save the kids. From now on I am going with empathy. Seems a lot cheaper.
Don Monfort
What is meant by “high weeds”? Tall weeds or weeds growing on high ground?
Richard :-)
That’s a good question, richard. I will have to do a few days of navelgazing and get back to you. We could ask Steven, but it might be a secret.
Swood, I always thought of sympathy as a likely precursor to some action. For example, during the Revolutionary War, you had royalist sympathizers and rebel sympathizer. Same thing is relevant to all wars. So you are are a rebel and you are sorting people out at a roadblock. You question folks coming by. Those who admit to being royalist sympathizers go in the cart. Somebody says they empathize with the royalists, just get’s slapped around a little bit and turned loose.
Don Monfort –
This is actually the way in which I had originally used the word – “inclination to think or feel alike : emotional or intellectual accord “
I think you are getting close, swood. Think of it this way:
Have you ever seen any empathy cards in the stores? When you see a commercial soliciting funds for starving kids, are they playing on your empathy or your sympathy? Guy begging in the street, does he want you to pretend to know how he feels, or give him a dollar?
Don Monfort –
Of course, words have different usages. I was using “sympathize with” to mean the same as “which side do you think is in the right”?
Actually, yes. “I remember how I felt when the same thing happened to me” for example, or “I became so excited and happy when I learned your good news.”
In this context it seems that sympathy comes before empathy. One has to appreciate how the other person is feeling before he can feel it himself. All the commercial solicitation needs to evoke is the sympathy since that is what will bring the response they are looking for.
what swood meant to ask
Did you come away from this thinking more like one side than the other?
I started reading the mails with the expectation of finding a smoking gun.
in the end tom and I agreed that there was no smoking gun, nothing that changed the science. At that point a light bulb went on: “why did I think that mails could change the science, when only science can change science’ So my first reaction was to be critical of my own flawed expectations.
Then for the next 10 days I watch the press from both sides botch the story. either trivializing the behavior or playing the alarmist card. And then Tom asked me again if I wanted to write a book and I said yes. The biggest struggle was how to position our view which was rather middle of the road. The title was a interesting struggle
Climategate: Nobel cause corruption was pretty close, but we rejected that because we didnt think it was corruption. We settled on crutape letters because of the analogy I wanted to draw with briffas tale.
Sitting there I knew there was no way ( from a marketing perspective) to sell nuance. We talked about that quite a few times. and the final result is somewhat uneven cause there are times where we oversell the scandal ( like blurbs on the cover) and then when you get into the weeds, there is no dead body. I hate when that happens.
In some ways I tried to tell a detective story (some reviewers picked this up ), but with no dead body it could easily become a shaggy dog tale.. haha I love those too.
It would have been easier to just pick sides and write it like journalists were doing. or it would have been easier to write something totally dry and more of a pure chronology ( I toyed with that as well)
in the end.. it failed as a chronology cause there was too much editorializing and mind reading. it failed as a detective story cause there was no dead body. it failed as “screwtape” type story because I didnt have enough detail on briffa jones. Lets face it nuance is hard .
back to your question, I find your question simplistic. you wanna discuss nuance. cool, otherwise.. miss me with simplistic questions
Steven Mosher –
Is there a reference here to The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, the satire about a demon writing letters to his assistant on Earth explaining how to most effectively tempt somebody in the service of “Our Father Below”?
Well, let me put it to you this way. My entire experience with these emails has been from the perspective either (a) that the actions of the participants were shameful, or (b) that taken in proper context the actions perhaps show an excess of zeal but nothing worse and it was the purloining of the emails that was shameful. I think Judith is in category (a) and has cited these emails as the watershed moment in her view of the climate change movement. I have not read all the emails. My experience has mostly been through accounts such as this one, which paints a dismal picture. I am cynical and believe that there are few unbiased sources of information in this area, so my only recourse is to compare what opponents and proponents say. I know that you are a warmist, which in this situation would usually mean a tendency to downplay the malevolence of those involved. And often that sort of thing will carry into a book. On the other hand I think there is a good chance that you had some literary pride and tried to tell the story honestly as you saw it. I am already aware of in how bad a light these activities can be shown. I am more interested in hearing what there is to be said on the other side, or in hearing an evaluation by an expert who will tell it as he truly sees it.
I’d buy the book but if you could see the stack of books on my to-read list that I’ve already purchased you would understand the trouble I have convincing myself that I actually would be getting to this one except in the far distant future.
By ‘no smoking gun’ do you mean that no overt and substantive wrongdoing or fraud was uncovered?
Swood, Mosher’s video is just some New Age babble. Whoever is in charge of New Age babble has apparently decided that empathy is better than sympathy and they needed a contrived cartoon video to promote that BS.
Empathy is an empty word. Philosophical jargon. How does someone driving a Porsche from watering hole to watering hole in the fanciest parts of Silicon Valley, who has never gone hungry for more than an hour, empathize with starving kids in Ethiopia? your friend gets brain cancer. You can’t empathize with that, unless you got it too.
for Don
How about:
Climategate: A Revealing Look Behind the Facade of Climate Science Respectability: pretty close to noble cause corruption, the art of confirmation bias, stifling debate, redefining peer review, retribution for dissenters, breaking public disclosure laws, and just plain nastiness
No smoking gun, but plenty of stench.
Don Monfort –
What is this? A book? An article?
I don’t think I will watch another video on empathy for the rest of my life. Unless you got one with the K-pop girls.
Steven Mosher,
“When they have a feeling of responsibility and obligation and act on those feelings, then that’s way better than sympathy.”
A “feeling of responsibility and obligation”? Where do responsibility and obligation come in with respect to empathy? You should really stop trying to redefine words every time you get caught saying something dumb. Alinskyites are taught to empathize with the targets of their organizing, because understanding your opponent is key to defeating him.
Empathy, if you are any good at it, can help tell you what needs to be done to help someone where possible. Sympathy is what provides the impetus to actually act.
Empathy, like propaganda, is a value free term (which is of course why you prefer it). It depends on what you do with it. But it is the values of human beings that leads them to act.
I try to empathize with my clients so I can help them deal with the trauma of what they are going through. I try to empathize with my opponents so I can anticipate what they are going to do to defeat them. In both cases, empathy is a tool to be used no matter where your sympathies lie. Sympathy tells me who to take as clients. Empathy tells me how to help them.
And as for war, I wouldn’t expect you to understand, but countries go to war for multiple reasons. And yes, compassion and sympathy for the victims of the aggressors were a factor in the US entry into, and prosecution of, WW II. Just as it was a significant part of the motivation for the North fighting the Civil War.
You can try to re-write human history to conform to your pseudo-nihilist, secular humanist philosophy, but don’t expect everyone to agree.
Claiming empathy for anuther’s situation is presumptuous,
though as humans we may sometimes relate with fellow
feeling ter others’ predicaments. But however imaginatively
we may relate to each uther, ultimately the ‘uther’ begins at
the skin.
I thought that empathy is recognizing and understanding the emotions of a person and having compassion from intuition, sympathy was having had the same experience and therefor understanding.
Aaron –
The dictionary definition of sympathy is “the feeling that you care about and are sorry about someone else’s trouble, grief, misfortune, etc.”
The dictionary definition of empathy is “the feeling that you understand and share another person’s experiences and emotions : the ability to share someone else’s feelings”
So I think the main difference is that the empathizer shares the feeling, as if the person is able to feel what the other person feels, whereas the sympathizer cares about or is sorry about how the other person feels, but does not himself experience the same feeling.
swood1000, for what it’s worth, dictionary definitions can be tricky to rely upon (not in the least, because of differences across dictionaries). The most effective way to look at a word means is by examining how it is commonly used. It just takes a lot more work. In that vein:
My understanding is a bit different. I haven’t done the research to be sure I’m correct, but as I understand it, sympathy and empathy are much more related than you suggest. Empathy, as you say, is feeling what the other person feels. Sympathy is feeling what the other person feels and feeling bad for them. In other words, if I empathize with you, I understand how you feel. If I sympathize with you, I understand how you feel and I feel bad for you.
I also think pity is feeling bad for a person without feeling empathy for them. In other words, pity is feeling bad for a person, empathy is understanding how a person feels, and sympathy is a combination of the two (sympathy = empathy + pity).
I could be wrong though.
Brandon S –
I think that one key difference is that with empathy one feels what the other person feels. With sympathy the person is not feeling what the other person feels but has his own possibly different feeling (of sorrow, etc.) in reaction to how he perceives the other person to be feeling. “I am sorry that you have had all that trouble” is sympathy. There is no suggestion that he experiences or has experienced or understands the exact sensation that is generated by all that trouble, which is empathy. So sympathy is “I feel sorrow for you.” Empathy is “I feel your sorrow.” Pity I think refers exclusively to an unhappy situation, where empathy does not at all and sympathy does to a lesser degree. It also seems to imply “I’m sure happy I am not you.”
But of course different people use these words in different ways. I’m just happy that we don’t have the grammar police here like they do in France.
swood1000 | April 23, 2015 at 10:36 am |
Aaron –
The dictionary definition of sympathy is “the feeling that you care about and are sorry about someone else’s trouble, grief, misfortune, etc.”
The dictionary definition of empathy is “the feeling that you understand and share another person’s experiences and emotions : the ability to share someone else’s feelings”
So I think the main difference is that the empathizer shares the feeling, as if the person is able to feel what the other person feels, whereas the sympathizer cares about or is sorry about how the other person feels, but does not himself experience the same feeling.
My pennysworth,
empathy is being able to understand how and why the other person feels and thinks but you have none of the emotion yourself, you just “get it”.
Consequently you can understand [empathise with] them but you do not have to agree with, feel or be sympathetic with their point of view.
I have to agree with Mosher that sympathy has no place in science.
I think we should get back to the discussion of the science
angech2014 –
Hear, hear!
Thanks angech, now that you have sorted this out for us we will heed your admonishment and get back to the science.
“So I think the main difference is that the empathizer shares the feeling, as if the person is able to feel what the other person feels,…”
The operative part of that is “as if”. That’s what makes “empathy” a BS concept. Unless you have walked in that other person’s shoes, you really don’t know much about how it feels. And you certainly don’t feel it.
What “empathy” really means is, “I think I kind of sort of think I know how you feel, but not really.”
Don Monfort –
Of course none of us can absolutely know how another person feels. But if you lose a child and I tell you that I previously lost a child and know how you feel (empathy), you have reason to believe me and might be more attentive to my explanation of what I did to get over it.
This is really getting silly:
“But if you lose a child and I tell you that I previously lost a child and know how you feel (empathy)…”
Then you have walked in the other person’s shoes and you know how you felt, so you have some strong insight on how the other person feels. Didn’t you just see me cover that?
“Unless you have walked in that other person’s shoes, you really don’t know much about how it feels.”
Now let’s get back to the usual each side talking past the other discussion/rehashing of the science, which is usually just as unproductive as discussing the meanings of words.
What causes this mostly? Is it (a) an unwillingness to engage, (b) an inability to see the other’s position accurately, (c) a contempt for the other’s position leading one not to take it seriously, (d) a contempt for the other person in that one considers him as dishonest and/or as a troll whose motivation is destructive so that to take anything he says seriously would both open one to the charge of gullibility and be a waste of time, or (e) other?
Swood,
“What causes this mostly?” Probably a lack of empathy! :-)
Or is it sympathy?
See, this is what I mean about Steven Mosher. He constantly misrepresents things:
This isn’t true at all. What actually happened is I tried to read some of BEST’s data files into R and failed. I wasn’t sure if I had made a mistake somewhere, if the data files were corrupted or if there was a bug in the software I was using. I knew Mosher often talked about R, sometimes giving people advice about it, and I knew he was associated with the BEST project. Given that, I decided to ask him if he had ever read those data files into R.
That’s it. That’s all I did. I asked Mosher if he had read some data files into R. I figured if he said yes, I’d be able to find out how he did it and what I was doing wrong. If he said no, then I’d talk to the guy responsible for the code I was using and see if he knew why the code wasn’t working for me. It turns out Mosher hadn’t read the data into R, so I contacted the guy responsible for the code I was using. As it turns out, there was a bug in that code which caused the problems I was facing.
I never once asked Mosher to debug any code. I never asked him to figure out what my problem was. I never asked him to “support that software.” All I asked was, “Hey, you work with BEST, you help people with R, have you read the BEST data into R?” It was a simple question. It would have taken Mosher all of 30 seconds to say, “Nope, sorry, I haven’t tried to do that.” That should have been the end of it.
Instead, Mosher keeps going around saying things about me which are completely untrue, things anyone who read the exchange between us would know are untrue. And he uses that to dismiss my efforts to examine BEST. Why? I don’t know. All I know is Mosher apparently feels comfortable saying things which have no basis in reality to paint me in a negative light.
And he does that again and again. That was all about one paragraph of his latest comment. I could write as much about each and every paragraph of that comment. It won’t do any good. The simple reality is Mosher makes things up to criticize people he disagrees with, things nobody could believe if they actually tried to verify them.
Mosher paints himself as the victim, but he can only do so by constantly making things up about what has actually happened. In a weird twist, there are a lot of parallels with the behavior he criticized people like Michael Mann and Phil Jones for engaging in.
I wouldn’t mind all that, but at this point, if Mosher had any interest in truth or reality, he’d know what he says about me is untrue. That means he’s pretty much intentionally lying about me to make me look bad. That bugs me.
Er, sorry about my last comment. It was supposed to appear downthread. I lost track of which comment thread I was responding to.
Anyway, I don’t think you’re right swood1000. I think what I described is correct. I’m not going to argue the point though because I don’t think it matters.* I’d rather not create some lengthy discussion of the meaning of words if it has no bearing on anything anyone is saying. I think we can all understand what you meant in your comment which started this fork, and that’s what matters.
*If people do want to hash this out, I’d be happy to create a post at my site where we can do so. I’d be interested in such. I just don’t want to divert the discussion here into a subject people don’t care about.
Well, Curry is pushing the hyperbole hard as heck.
This is nonsense:
JC warning to Bjorn Stevens: In my quest to objectively evaluate the IPCC’s attribution argument and stand up for research integrity post Climategate, I was not ‘pulled’ away from the establishment community by ‘deniers’; rather I was ‘pushed’ away by scientists who were IPCC ideologues and advocates. Watch out.
Unfortunately this is not nonsense. Have you read the 2010 Scientific American article Climate Heretic turns on her colleagues http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-heretic/
and my response http://judithcurry.com/2010/10/25/heresy-and-the-creation-of-monsters/
2010 was the ‘transition’ period for me. By 2011 I was pretty much ‘anti-science’, ‘denier’, etc.
You did not do what Bjorn Stevens is doing.
I’m still trying to figure out what Judith was going for there. Is she warning Stevens because she thinks that he’s going to become a “skeptic” as she has? Is she acting as his protector against the “consensus police?”
==> “You did not do what Bjorn Stevens is doing.”
And the reaction to Stevens’ work is completely different than the reaction to Judith’s advocacy. Note – that isn’t to justify the reaction to Judith’s advocacy, but to underline the facile nature of Judith’s comparison.
Fascinating that JCH knows the reasons why JC moved to a more sceptical position better than she does herself!
FYI, being pushed towards scepticism by climate scientists behaving like activists is a common scenario. Read the Denizens thread or read my published paper on climate scepticism.
Paul –
==> “Fascinating that JCH knows the reasons why JC moved to a more sceptical position better than she does hers”
Where did JCH state that? Where did he make any comments as to Judith’s “reasons” for moving to a more “skeptical” position.
I’d say that it’s fascinating that you see JCH commenting on Judith’s reasons even though he didn’t comment on that.
Joshua, JCH quoted what she said about her reasons and said it was nonsense.
Paul –
==> “Joshua, JCH quoted what she said about her reasons and said it was nonsense.”
My impression was that he was commenting on Judith’s warning to Stevens – because the situation isn’t parallel: that Judith did and Stevens’ situation are different.
I didn’t see him comment on Judith’s reasons for trending towards “skepticism.”
I suspect this could be a hammer/nail situation on your part.
Perhaps he’ll clarify.
=======> lookie at me, I am spamming another thread, so proud of my clever self I could burst
hmm what part is nonsense??
there are two things going on in Judiths comment.
1. A statement of fact as she see’s it. She believes she was pushed away,
not pulled away. It’s hard to argue with her personal account of her
personal experience. One can, of course, I would argue that it was
a combination of both, or rather, that she was pushed away and skeptics
tend to be rather accepting ( not pulling per se ) of marginal figures.
They are not entirely accepting of marginal figures. I don’t think you can argue that her opinion of her own experience is “nonsense” it makes
sense to her. it makes sense to others. It might not be totally accurate,
but it’s not nonsense.
2. A warning.
She is warning him to watch out. Is this nonsense? Not to her and others– the warning makes perfect sense. Is the warning hyperbolic?
That’s harder to say. If she said.. ” watch out they will destroy your career” then, I’d probably agree.
Is the warning a bit dramatic? ya. it’s a bit dramatic.
What can we say to Stevens that is not dramatic.
” Continue to speak your mind. ”
He has already shown “courage” by using the Iris word.
He has already shown courage by examining lower sensitivities
in his modelling work.
He doesnt need to be warned. He has already got an earful.
He is not shy about speaking his mind ( witness his prior behavior)
Encouragement is more in order than a warning.
Using the “Iris” word is not courage. Why does he use it?
JCH | April 22, 2015 at 10:10 am | Reply
Well, Curry is pushing the hyperbole hard as heck.
This is nonsense:
You are pushing nonsense.
To many in the climate community anything less than support of the IPCC or a neutral (no statement) stance is a denier since only the extreme (activist) end of IPCC predictions requires urgent action.
Climategate (and I actually downloaded the emails and read through many) tend to turn your stomach occasionally.
There is no doubt that some in the climate community were on a witch hunt for skeptics and were aiming to hit them in the career.
As if we needed a gentle reminder of the problem, Rep. Raul Grijalva obliges us.
JCH,
“Using the ‘Iris’ word is not courage. Why does he use it?”
metaphor
noun met·a·phor \ˈme-tə-ˌfȯr also -fər\
1: a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them
JCH
courage versus “courage”
here is what Trenberth wrote
‘“I thought this was not well written and quite misleading,” added Kevin E. Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. There was no need to sound the “iris” trumpet, given how far it was from Mr. Lindzen’s original ideas, he added. “They even put it in the damn title.””
iris TRUMPET in the DAMN title.
it would appear that Trenberth had a cow.
I put the word “courage” in scare quotes for a reason. There will be some who view it as actual courage. And there are some who view it as an “outrage” how dare he sound the trumpet.. nice milateristic metaphor or is it a religious trumpet?
I’ll just end with my main point which you avoided.
Stevens should continue to speak his mind . when you decide to challenge that, drop me a line. Otherwise, miss me with your quibbling.
re courage : a highly respected scientist – top of his tree – once told me that science is a brutal game. Knowing the intense and incredibly dishonest campaign that had been waged to prevent his latest paper from being published, I had some inkling of just how brutal it is. Any scientist whose research can be portrayed as any sort of challenge to the orthodoxy needs courage.
I would imagine Bjorn Stevens is writing another memo to kill off the skeptic’s twisting of his words.
He had the courage to do it last time; probably will have to sum up the courage to do it again.
Yeah, somebody might sick DM or DS on him. Such is the life of a scientist hero.
JCH | April 22, 2015 at 5:47 pm |
I would imagine Bjorn Stevens is writing another memo to kill off the skeptic’s twisting of his words.
They are his words, he is perfectly entitled to clarify what he meant as well as “revise and extend his remarks”.
JCH,
Are you becoming jealous of the attention our resident clown is getting and have decided to act like him?
Apparently you don’t put much value in being credible.
Steven Mosher | April 22, 2015 at 9:48 am | Reply
…
the issue was never “what was scientifically accurate” the issue was typically how will people (skeptics) misuse this or attack this.
…
Do you have any suggestions on how to make “scientifically accurate” presentation a higher priority?
yes
Steven Mosher on APS April 21, 2015:
“The only people who have standing to ask people to disavow behavior are folks who already believe in the science.. Other folks are using the ethical issues as a cover for their disbelief ”
Steven, you feel it is ethical to create a subjective elevation of standing based on what you assume they believe? Really?
Steven Mosher on APS April 20, 2015:
“Brandon,
Now that you’ve found the password that was always there for you, do your level best. You can’t. you won’t. You lack the focus and the commitment. You also lack the sense of what matters. Further, you don’t even get that I would love for you to find a problem.. that would only lead to improvement.
Doing something and being wrong is a part of the business. Doing nothing is your gig. I got no time for that.”
I evaluate Brandon a lot differently. I admit I am biased, but I do not see Brandon as a couch potato.
Ron
“Steven, you feel it is ethical to create a subjective elevation of standing based on what you assume they believe? Really?”
1. there’s nothing subjective about it.
2. It’s clear you don’t get the argument.
3. It’s not based on an assumption of what they believe, but rather what they themselves say they believe.
WRT to Brandon.
I don’t see him as a couch potato. He just lacks focus. I have no doubt that if he focused he could find ALL the problems and issues that I am aware of and maybe some that I’m not aware of. None of those problems will get you something that is very interesting except in a very narrow technical sense. For comparison have a look at peter Oneils work with GISS. he has been methodically documenting issues with GISS and they make the changes accordingly ( in most cases). All very professional.
To date there is one guy way ahead of brandon in finding mistakes. His observation resulted in a bug fix for 400 stations or so ( out of 40K)
The issue is always a fun one to debate– what matters? in that case it mattered enough to make the change. If he disagrees and thinks his stuff really really matters, he can prove that. He can take the code, make his changes and publish BE brandons earth. I’m all for improving products
the issue of relavance and materiality is fun to debate. I use a pragmatic definition. If a change or a problem could result in a new paper.. then it is material, otherwise it doesnt matter. The only real way to tell is to write up your findings and get it published.. Even blog publishing would be ok.
Guys send me their manuscripts all the time. when they do that I take the time to review it, especially if they are aiming at publication in a journal.
So brandon is invited to do all the work he can, improve the code, do his own tests, find more issues. That’s the whole point of open source.
As soon as he sends me stuff that looks interesting I’ll look at it.
Ron Graf, one thing to remember about Steven Mosher is he’ll insist he wants people to do various things at the same time he sabotages their efforts to do so. This pattern of behavior was demonstrated even when Mosher and I were supposed to collaborate on a project. At the same time we were talking about working together on a project, he was going around publicly insulting me. I don’t care to guess why he behaves that way, but it’s something worth keeping in mind when you read his comments.
It’s a part of why I haven’t put as much effort into examining BEST’s work as I would have. I’ve tried to examine issues with BEST’s work in the past. I talked to Zeke about one, and he had no idea, saying he’d ask another person on the BEST team for me. He never got back to me. I was told to e-mail Robert Rhode about concerns. I never got a response. So forth and so on. Ultimately, the only person from BEST who has made any effort to respond to me has been Steven Mosher.
And even if we leave aside the ridiculous attitude issues I’ve had to put up with from Mosher, he has constantly given me false information, often while insulting me for not knowing that false information. In one case, I was confused because BEST changed its methodology for handling seasonality in its data. It wouldn’t have been an issue, but BEST didn’t offer any sort of notice of the change. They didn’t even update their site to reflect the change. For months and months after changing their methodology, BEST had their website describe the old methodology.
Mosher repeatedly insulted me for not understanding the new methodology while pointing me to descriptions of the old methodology. I eventually sorted the problem out on my own, explained what the problem was and pointed out what parts of the site needed to be updated. Mosher responded by continuing to insult me then eventually leaving the conversation.
Then later, BEST changed their website to fix the problems I had pointed out without anyone ever acknowledging the problem had existed or that I had been repeatedly and publicly insulted because of their mistake.
Mosher tells everybody he wants people to examine their work, but the reality is all I’ve gotten for pointing out problems, problems they’ve corrected because of me pointing them out, is rudeness, hostility and insults.
Brandon, Steven, I am in a delicate position in that would like to attempt to remain impartial in this, and in doing so perhaps bring you guys back to what appears was a potentially productive relationship. I might end up offending you both but here goes.
Brandon, one must remember Steven’s heart and soul went into BE. Nobody likes a stranger to point out their baby needs a nose wipe. In addition, I think Steven, like you and me, deals with two inner minds; on one hand wanting to engage other’s productively, and on the other wanting to further his beliefs and goals.
Steven, I thank you for responding to me as a newcomer in a very friendly manner despite your seeing I was coming from the skeptical view. I was frankly surprised to see your comment the other day and you defending it again that people of opposing view points have less moral standing, less right to criticize…, essentially because you know their hearts are not as good as yours.
Steven Mosher | April 22, 2015 at 9:48 am | Reply
“the issue was never “what was scientifically accurate” the issue was typically how will people (skeptics) misuse this or attack this”
Steven, I submit that misuse can be and needs to be illuminated by debate. I cannot be used as a prior. Neither can you use as a prior what you believe someone’s ulterior intention is. If Brandon finds a flaw in BE is just as relevant and valuable as if your team finds it. Contributions should be respected and acknowledged whether they come from insiders or outsiders, experts or amateurs.
By the way, I have seen Brandon fight long and hard on issues that were pro-consensus, against skeptics, when he believed their criticism was biased. I have Steven do the same. I think you are both exceptional and would like to see be leaders on this.
Ron Graf:
For what it’s worth, you’re not going to offend me. The only reason I’m even commenting is if people are going to discuss me as a person, I feel I should offer some background information so they can be somewhat informed.
Did it really? Steven Mosher wasn’t involved with BEST when it began. BEST had pretty much done all its work before Mosher got involved. I can’t think of what would be different if Mosher had never gotten involved with BEST at all, other than BEST not having a hostile mouthpiece to go around giving it bad PR.
I don’t really care about people’s attitudes so I wouldn’t be bothered by Mosher’s actions save one thing – he’s repeatedly given false information about BEST’s work (and me). My policy is simple: don’t say things which are untrue, and if you do, go back and correct them. Both Mosher and BEST have repeatedly failed to meet that standard.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been getting a bit of flak recently because I’ve been criticizing the book Climate Change: The Facts for saying stupid things to support the “skeptic” view. My last post even addresses the issue head-on, calling for skeptics to stop making stupid arguments.
And on a humorous note, a few months back I got both Dana Nuccitelli and Anthony Watts to promote a post of mine. Think about that. I got Dana Nuccitelli and Anthony Watts to agree on something. That’s kind of like getting Michael Mann and Anthony Watts to agree with one another. How many people have managed it?
You are getting more famouser by the day, junior. Your petulance is known far and wide. Lose the attitude and you will get a lot less flack and more positive recognition for the good work that you do.
Ron,
I will tell you everything you need to know about brandon.
From the beginning we made the source code available for both download and via SVN.
Brandon downloaded the code and then began pestering me with questions about a R package that some guy wrote to read matlab files.
As if I was supposed to support that software. never mind that the maintainer of that software had his email right there for everyone to use,
Brandon was asking me to figure out why he couldnt make some other guys software work. really dumb.
Next, he started whining that he couldnt get access to SVN and made his typical accusations. Well the password was there for him from day one in the set up files. He never wanted to own that.
Next he kept misinterpreting the data we had posted so I re wrote the web site to make it clear enough for even the most dense person.
apparently he still has issues.
he had an issue with seasonality but he could never describe it in a clear manner or send me any information that I could use. When I finally made sense of his rambling it was clear that he was babbling about an issue we had changed long ago.
Of course that led him to be more demanding. each time I have made the simple request that he EMAIL ME so that I can put his concerns into my tracking and so that he can get the attention he deserves. He knows that I have to track the concerns that come into support. I’ve explained that repeatedly And he knows that I have to report on that. Instead of emailing me so I can put his concerns into tracking, he posts on the internet.
It’s my job to answer emails and report on issues raised, get them fixed and get the acknowledgements done. He knows that as well. So its a fun little game he plays. he refuses to log a problem the way everyone else does. which means his concerns never get put in the que.
Instead we get brandon posting crap on WUWT and when we point out his error he claims he cant retract it.
I will continue to make him the same offer. If he finds a problem he can email me. If he would agree, I will write a paper with him criticizing the BE approach. However, he will refuse to email his problems, and refuse to work together on a paper critical of BE. go figure.
How’s that?
I’ll do you one better, I will recommend that we Add brandon to the team
He’s got the code. he knows how to run it. If he wants to find problems I will present them at every weekly meeting.
See, this is what I mean about Steven Mosher. He constantly misrepresents things:
This isn’t true at all. What actually happened is I tried to read some of BEST’s data files into R and failed. I wasn’t sure if I had made a mistake somewhere, if the data files were corrupted or if there was a bug in the software I was using. I knew Mosher often talked about R, sometimes giving people advice about it, and I knew he was associated with the BEST project. Given that, I decided to ask him if he had ever read those data files into R.
That’s it. That’s all I did. I asked Mosher if he had read some data files into R. I figured if he said yes, I’d be able to find out how he did it and what I was doing wrong. If he said no, then I’d talk to the guy responsible for the code I was using and see if he knew why the code wasn’t working for me. It turns out Mosher hadn’t read the data into R, so I contacted the guy responsible for the code I was using. As it turns out, there was a bug in that code which caused the problems I was facing.
I never once asked Mosher to debug any code. I never asked him to figure out what my problem was. I never asked him to “support that software.” All I asked was, “Hey, you work with BEST, you help people with R, have you read the BEST data into R?” It was a simple question. It would have taken Mosher all of 30 seconds to say, “Nope, sorry, I haven’t tried to do that.” That should have been the end of it.
Instead, Mosher keeps going around saying things about me which are completely untrue, things anyone who read the exchange between us would know are untrue. And he uses that to dismiss my efforts to examine BEST. Why? I don’t know. All I know is Mosher apparently feels comfortable saying things which have no basis in reality to paint me in a negative light.
And he does that again and again. That was all about one paragraph of his latest comment. I could write as much about each and every paragraph of that comment. It won’t do any good. The simple reality is Mosher makes things up to criticize people he disagrees with, things nobody could believe if they actually tried to verify them.
Mosher paints himself as the victim, but he can only do so by constantly making things up about what has actually happened. In a weird twist, there are a lot of parallels with the behavior he criticized people like Michael Mann and Phil Jones for engaging in.
Did you see Mosher’s offer to work with you, junior?
I am glad to have provided an opportunity for you both to air this out. And, I am hoping that dedication to scientific cooperation will outweigh the dedication to righteousness. Nowhere have I seen this conflict more intractable than it seems to be in climate science. Bjorn Stevens thinks he can remain above it. I think Dr. Curry’s biggest challenge is remaining above it. And I think both can be looked as examples of good leadership.
I have seen the same good in both of you, Brandon and Steven. It, however is not ironic that you currently have a bit of a rift based on pre-conceived assumptions of some ill-intents. It perhaps was not ironic that Bjorn Stevens irately interrupted Dr. Curry at her talk on the issue.
If Steven is saying he is willing not only reset but to invite you to the team, Brandon, I think you could give each other a reset perhaps.
I fell in love with the ideals of America’s founding in kindergarten. I fell in love with science in 1st grade. Both years we all had to recite a pledge that ended: “…indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Indivisible…
Ron Graf:
I’d be fine with that. However, you should know Steven Mosher and I were supposed to collaborate on a project together before. At the time we were discussing the collaboration, he came to this site and insulted me, basically saying I am incompetent. The collaboration then fell apart when Mosher kept misrepresenting what I said we ought to do to examine the matter we were supposed to look at (UHI) and outright refusing to try to resolve our disagreements. (And all of this is verifiable as I posted the communications online for people to examine.)
I hope you’ll understand why I am skeptical of any offer Mosher might make. Sure, he may claim to be willing to work with me, but the last time he said that, he went around publicly insulting me while we were supposed to be working together. It kind of sends mixed messages. And not that it really matters, but:
I don’t assume ill-intent. Quite frankly, I can’t think of any explanation for Mosher’s behavior that’d make sense to me. As such, I wouldn’t care to guess at the reason for his behavior. I don’t know I’d even care to find out what the reason is. All I know is when a person repeatedly makes things up to insult me, offers to collaborate with me only to turn around and publicly insult me while we’re supposed to be working together, then claims he’d be willing to work with me… I’m skeptical.
That said, I’d be happy to help BEST meet the simple standards it ought to be meeting right now. I’d be happy to do all the grunt work documenting its data versions, methodology changes, etc. so its data, code and results are available in a verifiable manner. I’d especially be happy to provide a resource for people to check what effect BEST’s methodological steps have on its results. I’d even be happy to provide an independent check of some of the various methodological choices BEST makes.
All I’d need is answers to some simple questions and an indication the effort would not be ignored.
“That said, I’d be happy to help BEST meet the simple standards it ought to be meeting right now.”
That’s a kind and generous offer, junior. They should jump on that.
I don’t see why Mosher has issues with you, junior. You get along so well with everyone else. Hey, how about you and Willis getting together to solve the climate puzzle?
“Hey, how about you and Willis getting together to solve the climate puzzle?”
Don’t bite off too much.
Brandon, you’ve got some impressive skills. If the world was fair we would all get our due appreciation for our skills, efforts and intentions… Some believe we get justice after we die. (Now isn’t that a paradox?) Never lose faith though.
If your still interested and willing to commit the time Mosher’s offer sounds attractive. Assume it’s genuine. Prophecy self-fulfills.
Of course, all I wrote is easier said than done.
Ron Graf:
Thanks. I’m too pessimistic to think we get justice after we die. There are too many historical figures who are considered national heroes when they ought to be villified. Christopher Columbus has a holiday in the United States, and Thomas Edison is promoted as someone children should aspire to. I’m not worried about my legacy, but if I were, I’d be depressed about my chances.
I am interested and willing. However, keep in mind Steven Mosher is flat-out making things up about a time I e-mailed him about BEST. I’ve also e-mailed Robert Rhode a couple times because Mosher told me to and got ignored. And just yesterday, Mosher was insisting I needed to publish a paper before he’d look at anything I had to say. He’s been saying the same thing for months now.
The idea me e-mailing Mosher in the past would have changed anything is a joke. Mosher has never suggested I e-mail him about my concerns in the past (save one time, where he fixed the problem I pointed out less than half an hour later so I never had an opportunity to e-mail him). He’s even said he wouldn’t talk to me.
If he wants to reestablish communication, fine. I can e-mail him about problems with the BEST methodology. The one I’m most interested in at the moment is the “empirical breakpoint” process BEST uses which fails to find obvious brekapoints and finds tons of non-existent ones. I think it’d be worth examining whether or not BEST’s “empirical breakpoints” have any relation to actual data problems or if they’re arbitrary fudge factors that just let BEST tweak its results.
In fact, since we’re talking about it, I’ll go ahead and do it. It’ll take me a bit to write it up, and I’m going to be busy this weekend, so I’ll e-mail him Monday evening. We’ll see what happens.
Don’t worry about your legacy, junior. According to you, you are already way ahead of Christopher Columbus and Thomas Edison. You didn’t mention Abe Lincoln. Shouldn’t he be vilified for suspending the writ of habeus corpus? FDR put those Japanese-Americans in concentration camps. Ghandi wore a bedsheet and sandals, fer chrissake. You could go about exposing all the revered historical figures who ought to be vilified instead, until you are on top. We will all just have to learn to like you.
Don makes a good point: there are always compromises in truth and justice even by heros. It’s as complex and climate science. People also oscillate a bit. They make corrections. I think Mosher knows he maybe misjudged you. We all make mistakes. I love it when my children point out mine. :)
Harrison Ford on sympathy in “42” the story of Jackie Robinson
You can always count on our keeper of true bedrock conservatism to throw a death camp into the discussion.
Stevens is also an author of this recent paper Clouds, circulation and climate sensitivity.
Abstract
Fundamental puzzles of climate science remain unsolved because of our limited understanding of how clouds, circulation and climate interact. One example is our inability to provide robust assessments of future global and regional climate changes. However, ongoing advances in our capacity to observe, simulate and conceptualize the climate system now make it possible to fill gaps in our knowledge. We argue that progress can be accelerated by focusing research on a handful of important scientific questions that have become tractable as a result of recent advances. We propose four such questions below; they involve understanding the role of cloud feedbacks and convective organization in climate, and the factors that control the position, the strength and the variability of the tropical rain belts and the extratropical storm tracks.
Free registration gets you the compete paper.
Interesting that on a water planet efforts to gain deeper understanding of the systems leads to water.
Trollin’,
Trollin’
Trollin on the Internet
Do, do do do do, do
Andrew
The alarmists/ideologues can’t afford to pursue a better understanding of sensitivity, clouds, the sun, aerosols at this point in time. Paris is looming and their next best opportunity to ban burning of fossil fuels and wreck the world economy depends on continuing to scare the masses and perpetuate a self serving UN bureaucracy.
It seems that Dr Stevens is more detached about his scientific work than many of his colleagues in the climate science field and his disagreement with Judith;s portrayal of the IPCC as ideological seems to hinge on his conviction that not all scientists working with the IPCC were that way inclined.
This may well be true, but IMO their silence in the face of the type of advocacy that has emitted from this organisation (which Pachauri has shamelessly admitted) has been most unhelpful for the progress of the new field of climate science to maturity as a profession.
I had a look at the video. It is interesting but a bit hard to follow because it was a ‘during dinner’ talk so there is much clinking of knives and forks.
The interruption comes around 14-15 minutes, when Judith puts up a slide quoting Trenberth’s opinion about ‘climate deniers’ and their ‘disinformation campaign’, just after the slides posted here.
JC: “Many of our leading climate scientists are talking like this”
BS: “What do you mean many?”
Then there’s a bit of talking over each other and then the host intervenes. I think he is trying to say that only a small minority of climate scientists fume about ‘deniers’ in the way that Mann and Trenberth et al do. He may be right, but the problem is that this small minority get all the publicity – these are the ones sought out by the left-wing media to promote their agenda. We never hear from the silent majority who are just getting on with their research.
==> “I think he is trying to say that only a small minority of climate scientists fume about ‘deniers’ in the way that Mann and Trenberth et al do.
I think that his objection was that Judith was being very unscientific in her accusations about “‘many.” My guess is that he thought that someone talking to a collection of scientists should be less hyperbolic and more precise.
=======>I better be careful. I am already in moderation territory. I hope she’s not counting.
Ya – my though was one is too many.
But even though the presentation only really called out Trenberth for dropping ‘denier’ at a supposedly professional event, the climate-gate emails expose a great number of ideologues and a great number of others who are concerned about the growing ideology.
Not that I accept your characterization, but how many, approximately?
As we all know, your guesses are as valuable as a piss hole in a snow bank Josh.
Trenberth never learns.
The notion that climate scientists could be free again to speak, in public, in full candor?
“That’s a naïve hope,” he said.
He obviously still subscribes to the Stephen Schneider strategy: “That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.”
Even worse, he deludes himself into believing that ideological truculence is good for climate science.
Aside from the fact that global warmers are dishonest and have the deluded view the models triumph real world data, the fact that they claim that they are mistreated while giving skeptics the Piranha tank treatment is troubling.
The inability to correctly assess their behavior and the behavior of others is a sign of mental illness or defect.
This blindness impedes free speech and the free and open exchange of ideas. I’m not sure there is any solution other than firing all global warmers and people with environmentalist ties at the top of the climate center food chains and working in the science grant areas of NSF and EPA and replacing them with neutral parties.
“There is a certain hesitance to work on topics that could be used by others to call into question those things we think we know,”
Did he really say that?
I would like to get inside the head of Stevens and any other scientists who are either doing papers that slightly move away from orthodoxy or are perceived to be moving away, to see what they are really thinking. To steal slightly from Freud, how is what they don’t want to admit to themselves different from what they think but are afraid to share and how are both of those possibilities different from their public statements. It is a dribble now. But my sense is that the level of angst about some of these contradictory papers is starting to have an effect on their psyches.
Exactly. The field of climate science is far from robust if every new paper has to keep paying lip service to the ideology of global warming alarmism.
The field of climate science is far from robust if every new data point gets more and more different from all the model outputs.
That is all I need. I worked for NASA from 1963 to 2007.
Model output must match real data or you don’t use the output to make important decisions.
If it matches, it still might be wrong. If it does not match, it is wrong for sure.
The clear, dry areas of the (sub)tropics tend to be marked by subsidence ( the inversion being marked by stratus layers over the oceans ). The inversion would seem to me to reflect a lapse rate feedback ( emitting at a higher rate due to the inversion base with clear dry air above, but also a reflective stratus layer beneath the inversion ). Conservation of mass means subsiding and ascending air must balance. Does an increase in the rate of convection mean an increase in emission to space?
As I recall, much of the IRIS dealt with precipitation efficiency based on SST correlation. But precipitation efficiency would seem also to be a function of the convergence strength of the ITCZ. Do changes in the general circulation modulate emission to space?
http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/comp/wv/LATEST_WV.gif
“Does an increase in the rate of convection mean an increase in emission to space?”
Strong convection, you bet. Heat from the ocean surface is carried insensibly aloft to the tropopause where upon condensation the heat is released. At the surface the same heat would otherwise have to escape through restrictive passage through greenhouse gases. Insensibly carried aloft as latent heat of vaporization by strong convection like upon an express elevator, it bypasses the restrictive layer of greenhouse gases and reaches emission altitude where there is little resistance left because the greenhouse gases are spread too thin for effective absorption.
Strong convection begins when sea surface temperature reaches 28C. SST is effectively capped at 30C at all times in all places with only very rare exceptions.
This is probably the best case to made for diminishing “climate sensitivity” with increasing temperature as an increasing fraction of the global ocean surface reaches the ceiling temperature where strong convection limits any further increase.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/histogram_of_argo_temperatures.jpg
TE and DS, you are both right IMO. Lindzen’s 2001 adaptive iris paper suggested less warming cirrus because increased precipitation from cumulonimbus left less residual moisture to ‘detrain’ into cirrus. Ironically, he did not discuss the negative consequences for upper troposphere humidity, the key altitude for the positive water vapor feedback. Nor did he discuss the increased efficiency with which latent heat is lifted above much of the GHG. IMO, both of those effects are as important as delta cirrus.
It is not clear whether the IRIS modification to ECHAM6 fully account for the latter two iris sequela in the new Mauritsen and Stevens paper, or focuses mainly on cirrus cloud formation.
I think it unlikely there’s a single large flaw in global warming science but instead a multiplicity of slightly wrong parameterizations where each in and of itself is too slight to pin down by observation but collectively, especially to the researcher looking for enough deleterious effects, enough to justify growing fame and fortune pouring into the the otherwise moribund science. The tell is that there’s been no refinement of so-called climate sensitivity despite 50 years of trying to narrow it down. You’ve heard of yellow journalism. Call this yellow science.
Whatever the case, it’s a reminder that circulation change within the atmosphere can alter the net balance of radiance to space.
That’s not to deny radiative forcing or warming response.
But it would explain the reduced extent of warming which we observe.
DS, I have spent the years since ‘awakening’ in mid 2011 trying to understand this. Found four big ‘goofs’ that set off a cascade of other problems. 1. Attribution. Only the politicized IPCC charter explains why the ~1975-2000 warming attribution is ‘all’ anthropogenic, when the data on the previous ~1920-1945 phase could not have been. 2. Overstated water vapor feedback, best typified by AR4 Box 8.1. Pure selection bias to support the erroneous ‘roughly constant UTrH’ model result. See the climate chapter of Arts of Truth and essay Humidity is still Wet. 3. Overstated positive cloud feedback. There was accumulating evidence by AR4, and overwhelming evidence by AR5, that cloud geedback was zero ormnegative, all inexplicably not incorporated. Dessler’s 2010 paper is a particularly egregious example,of bad science in this regard. Essay Cloudy Clouds has details. 4. Since model grid scales are computationally
Iimited to largemsizes incapable of modeling convection cells, they have to be parameterized. The adaptive iris was not part of that until this paper.
This adaptive iris paper might fix points 2 and 3 by brute forcing 4.
Interestingly, IRIS takes ECHAM6 about halfway (2.8 to 2.2) back to the Lewis/Curry observational ECS of ~1.7. The other half could just be missing natural variability. And that would support Judith’s earlier guesstimate of ‘half and half’ on attribution #1. The big picture all starts to fit together shapewise.
If the circulation is a direct result of temperature gradient exceeding the lapse rate then by logic it is going to move heat higher. The bigger player though is the latent heat of vapor it might be carrying, which gets to condense and then fuse to ice, giving off heat twice. In the case of hail it gets to cycle in a conveyor fashion. This certainly is transporting heat toward the TOA. The question is how much is it costing in blocked upward long wave radiation. It’s seems to always come down to numbers on the parameters and I agree with Springer, there are a lot of little places to add imperceptible biases.
A lot of the precipitation efficiency due to changes in general circulation also?
The ideas LeRoux were not described in great detail by physical formulation but they were important for unifying the conceptual modal of global circulation. Here’s a capture from 23 April which exhibits an ‘Iris’. How these things might change from warming would seem to be speculative since circulation is not necessarily predictable. But it does point out that changes in circulation can change the energy balance:
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/Iris.png
http://re.ssec.wisc.edu/
Next day, April 24, the polar air mass above proceeded further.
Nothing novel about this but it is a good example of
1. the area of enhanced emission to space which is determined by circulation.
and
2. how polar fronts create the ITCZ
and also
3. How there is no such thing as the ‘Hadley Cell’ or any of the idealized cells. Polar air masses continually flow and the statistics indicate circulations that don’t exist in terms of actual phenomena.
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/Iris2.png
Ironic timing. The Bjorn Stevens argument (in the video interruption) has taken rather a blow as today the realclimate team of climate scientists is promoting in their latest blog post an online course on “climate denial” run by activists Cook and Nuccitelli and featuring several other climate scientists.
I’ve found the SS crowd quite instructive in denial, though not in the ways they imagine.
from realclimate
Interesting. Instead of communicating distorted science and explaining how it’s not distorted they’re taking a page from skeptics by presenting the science and explaining how it can be distorted.
This doesn’t bode well for the hockey team. It means they’ve acknowledged they can’t win by explaining the science but must instead try to explain the “denier”.
Climategate and the pause killed the cause. Nothing left of it but the twitching of the corpse as exemplified by pop-psychology crap promulgated by desperate alarmists such as Nookeetelly and Kook.
I put a comment at realclimate. Just in case they don’t post it:
“If anyone is genuinely interested in the reasons why people are sceptical about climate change they could read my recently published paper on the subject.”
Great comment. Double ouch. And, yours was a good paper.
It is a great comment Paul. It appears they censored it however. I am surprised that Real Climate gives Cook a forum for this nonsense. I wonder if this is due to Mann still being on the RC team.
Thank you for the NASA link on the Iris effect. The criticism by Lin et al was covered very well, but I saw no rebuttal by Lindzen to Lin. That would have been an interesting addition to their article. I hope more research is being done by others to sort out the difference in their findings.
Judith,
Your presentation stands the test of time. Let’s compare that with the historical (hysterical) record of the Team.
Unfortunately, Barack Obama chose to listen to Dr. John Holdren, famous for his failed predictions. In Paris the whole group will celebrate.
> So Stevens is not an IPCC/UNFCCC ideologue, but he seems in denial that some of his colleagues are.
A desire to convince otters of the ideological truth.
Also some kind of punishment, if we accept that the “D hunt” is:
http://judithcurry.com/2015/03/24/the-stupid-party/
Wow – I watched the Santa Fe video – very informative.
I hadn’t realized Trenberth was so easy with ‘denier’ even at AMS!
Certainly paved the way for politicians to use the term.
Stevens objects to those who misinterpret his work, but one doesn’t get to control what people learn from work one does. “Implications” are not fixed in stone. There seem to me to be serious implications from the fact that estimates of sensitivity from data are lower than those based on models, but IPCC types deny this implication. As another example, a very tiny risk from some chemical or vaccine is viewed by some as sufficient to ban it because they don’t consider the benefit of it (don’t compare use to non-use)–that is the implication they draw.
After reading his letter poated from MPI Hamburg just a week after Ringberg, he might also be suffering a little cognitive dissonance. See my comment below.
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/34748
The way to prove AGW theory is real is to debunk all of the data that keeps mounting against it. So far none of the data mounting against it has been proven to be incorrect.
Claims and talk are not going to work only data supporting or not supporting this theory is what matters.
This matter of AGW theory has strayed away from the data which keeps saying this theory is not correct. This is why there are so many skeptic web-sites , because of the doubt of this theory being correct.
I can assure you if all the atmospheric processes and temperature trends as called for by AGW were panning out and if past climate changes were much less in comparison then today that AGW theory would be accepted and the skeptic web-sites would not exist. The reality is the opposite.
Well, there are a couple of problems:
1. Since 1985 emissions increased 80%
2. Since 1985 environmental absorption increased 180%.
3. Absorption is over 50% of emissions.
4. Emissions can’t increase another 80% without running out of fuel in 40 years.
5. Unless CO2 can get over 500 PPM you can’t construct a CAGW scenario.
6. You can’t get the CO2 over 500 PPM.
7. You can’t keep the CO2 level near 500 PPM for long (it will decline at 7 PPM/Year when you run out of fuel).
With only 100 PPM of additional forcing (500 PPM) it almost doesn’t matter what the ECS is. An ECS of 3 gives you about 1°C more warming but the CO2 level won’t be at 500 PPM long enough for the ECS to come into play.
So now if I have got this straight the “consensus enforcement” blob has been infected with the insidious ” ‘consensus’ disease” and is now roaming the world spreading it to other hapless climate scientists. And the only way to cure this “disease” is for the community to somehow unleash the “uncertainty monster” which is being held in an undisclosed location by “consensus enforcement” blob. Am I starting to get it?
No. You need to start over from the beginning and not make unwarranted assumptions.
That seems like good advice for Dr. Curry.
Joseph, the Democrats get slightly over 50% of popular vote, but over 95% of academia vote.
Well, the consensus disease appears to be infectious and spreading to other areas. Lewandowski isn’t a scientist and at best has only a drinking buddy relationship with science – and he has caught the disease.
The only solution to save mankind from this virulent bug is to quarantine all global warmers at an isolated (and very remote) facility indefinitely.
Joseph,
I doubt you will ever get it. Confused appears to be your natural state.
“As someone who had his correspondence leaked and his words used against his research, Mr. Trenberth is not so sure. The notion that climate scientists could be free again to speak, in public, in full candor?
‘That’s a naïve hope,’ he said.”
Who precisely are the poor progressive consensus advocates huddling in fear, afraid to “speak, in public, in full candor?” What the hell is Trenberth even talking about?
The banning of consensus advocate scientists from the BBC?
Here’s a suggestion for an experiment in the risks of advocacy for Kevin Trenberth, Go to Wisconsin, and pretend to favor Scott Walker or the rationalization of public union pensions.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417155/wisconsins-shame-i-thought-it-was-home-invasion-david-french
Oh, the burdens on the poor dears like Trenberth, speaking propaganda to the powerless.
Dr Curry said she liked the journalist. I thought the journalist was as unbalanced as Andrew Rivkin.
Nic Lewis showed that Steven’s new aerosol estimate further lowered and tightened the energy budget TCR and ECS estimates. There is another consequence of perhaps equal or greater significance. It seems generally accepted that aerosol parameterization was one of main ways hindcasts were tuned not to run hot. If there is smaller aerosol forcing, then hindcast oversensitivity becomes apparent indicating some deeper model problem(s).
The newer IRIS paper suggests (but not conclusively) that one of those deeper problems is a missing adaptive iris negative feedback.
Both attack the foundations of ‘the science is settled’. On which basis this kerfuffle is likely to grow.
It is all getting clearer now. You are saying the models had a built in mute of F CO2 by having a -F aerosol. They stay in lock-step in estimated emissions until the late 1970s. But then the Clean Air Act kicks in and the problem becomes apparent that models, losing the aerosols, get too hot. Another clue of this is that CMIP5 hugely over-reacts to the three major volcanoes in the late 20th century.
But even without the aerosols the 1980s and 1990s worked fine until 1998. Then the “true expert” climate science really had to get to work to find out why. That’s easy, they say, the PDO or (PMO?) and ENSO both switched to cooling mode after 1998. It’s “natural variability” from ocean’s uptake being unusually high. Now, after 16 years though they are expecting the natural variability to end, hoping it will end — staking it will end, Trenberth in particular says a “jump is imminent.”
“It is all getting clearer now. You are saying the models had a built in mute of F CO2 by having a -F aerosol.”
Yes, exactly.
I am not a climate scientist, but I am enough of a data scientist to notice when looking at the ‘model vs data’ problem wrt IPCC models and temperatures, that it was a classic case of ‘overfitting’. That is, with enough knobs to fiddle to make the curve fit, you can ‘replicate’ a hindcast series well, but still be quite wrong on the functional variables. In data science, you need a validation suite to check for overfitting, but in earth science we only have one earth to compare against.
So the question, when the IPCC models started overestimating warming, we had multiple reasons / explanations:
– they over estimated warming sensitivity
– natural variability
– warming was replaced by ocean heat uptake
It seems that all 3 are factors. The overestimated warming sensitivity has to do with aerosols, but also they also muted natural variability and accounted for some natural AMO/PDO cycle in the 80s and 90s as part of the CO2 signal. I read recently also that Hansen in his model had *increasing RH* in his model (relative humidity), in fact RH is flat and in some cases down; lower RH means lower water vapor feedback. cloud feedback in models is positive, despite fact that cloud’s net overall feedback on climate is -20W/m2 or so, the studies on data have shown either small cloud response or negative response.
The ocean heat content uptake plays a role / counterpart with the natural variability, both explaining how warming is moderated, and how the forcing gets translated via ‘natural variability’ in a response that may run ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ over decadal timescales, but also how TCR < ECS < longer range response. So the models are wrong per se(*), but the IPCC argument would be that its 'in the pipeline'. Trenberth says jump now, but Curry's wheel-of-natural-variability says its due in 2030 or so.
(*) do models even incorporate ocean heat content?
Mt Stevens himself stated in his Ringberg talk titled "2 < ECS 2.0C is based on standard 1.1C / doubling of CO2 basic physical effect, plus the water vapor feedback. It gets higher due to clouds and other factors.
The ocean uptake in particular, which is adding heat at a rate that equates to 0.03C over 20 years. if that is in response to a 0.5W/m2 gap, and its a 0.5C delta, then it will take 160 years to fill half that gap. So the response time is quite large. This though may help reconcile the lower instrumental record sensitivity results to the paleo-reconstructions. It could be that the paleo-reconstructions are higher for the simple reason that they are looking at unconstrained timeframe responses that are not in the instrumental record. The term ESS has been used. I can see how we might get to TCR = 1.4C, ECS/ESS = 2.8C(**) if its defined as a longterm, 1000 year response.
(**) What is precise definition of ECS? There are two definitions: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/345.htm
Because running the long coupled ocean simulations is too hard they made an ‘effective’ ECS,
First, any temperatures we hit before 2100 are driven by TCR and not ECS. Even the IPCC results show 75% level of final at year 150.
So it would be better to break it out like this: TCR = 1.4C, ECS = 2.1C(150 year response), ESS = (1000 year response) = 2.8C. This not only fits the Lewis&Curry/Otto type instrumental results, but reconciles somewhat the paleo-reconstructions with their higher climate response numbers.
Either way it turns out, these factors – fixing aerosols, cutting down cloud feedback, incorporating natural variability, incorporating ocean heat uptake and its implications for moderating temperature rise over the short term while extending the full response timeframe – all put together point to a closer-to-lukewarmer view of climate.
Final point: The instrumental is giving the 150 year response, and ESS the 1000 year response. Morever, it is TCR which should drive policy for the next 30 years, and ECS should drive our view of what 2100 and 2150 would look like … not ESS.
The PDO did not truly go negative until after 2005, when there were 5 La Nina events and 2 El Nino events – not counting the current EL Nino as it’s probably first in a El Nino dominate period – a new regime.
The PDO has progressively done less and less to cause warming since ~1983. It’s currently a factor in warming, and it’s kicking butt.
Pingback: “Deniers” And Ideologues | Transterrestrial Musings
Hmmmm…
googling the paper comes up with this blog, which posts this image:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Z8FQUmfPycs/VTWNBo3wmiI/AAAAAAAAAHk/izmNsU7j9AY/s1600/____iris2Capture.PNG
It’s not in the Nature ‘at a glance’ images, but seems to depict how a strong ‘Iris’ effect would account for the absence of the ‘Hot Spot’.
Its from the SI which is well worth downloading and studying. Unlike the paper, the SI is not paywalled. And see my comment to you and David Springer upthread. I think you are right.
ristvan: Its from the SI which is well worth downloading and studying. Unlike the paper, the SI is not paywalled.
Thank you for the hint. I had not noticed that the supplemental information was available for download.
Compare sea surface temps with UAH lower trop. They appear to correlate somewhat until the end. Then SST spikes up, but LT goes sideways. Assuming both datasets are reasonably accurate, why is this? Is this evidence of a feedback effect? Is the current SST pattern having a different effect than before? Any other ideas?
http://i59.tinypic.com/2zrjdc9.png
Jim2, my understanding is that all ‘fast’ feedback effects are atmospheric, and most ‘slow’ ones are terrestrial (like land albedo). Looking at your figure, there are at three other places where these two indicators diverged for a bit. Don’t know that it means much.
It’s because UAH requires an El Nino and La Nina balance before it gets the surface temperature right. Since the 2010 El Nino, there have been 2 La Nina events and an extensive period negative ONI, so UAH is wandering in the dark as a surface temperature series. It’s waiting for directions.
thermometers work
The spike in SSTs was August of 2014.
Most of the anomalies were in the North Polar region ( poleward of 60N ):
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2014/anomnight.8.4.2014.gif
Could be that the stability of the Arctic kept the anomalies from propagating vertically, though that’s just speculation on my part.
The latest SSTs do show the ‘blob’ of high anomaly off the California coast which would make sense if there’s a persistent storm blocking ridge there.
Also, more than an innuendo of El Nino:
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2015/anomnight.4.20.2015.gif
Also, UAH has not updated on WfTs since the last month of 2014.
I think you guys are onto something. IIRC, UAH misses the poles, but RSS compensates for the lack of coverage there, although I don’t remember how off the top of my head. If RSS is used instead of UAH, the LT tracks SST.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1980/plot/rss/from:1980
jim2, “I think you guys are onto something. IIRC, UAH misses the poles, but RSS compensates for the lack of coverage there, although I don’t remember how off the top of my head. If RSS is used instead of UAH, the LT tracks SST.”
John Christy said that averaging RSS and UAH would be the way to go until both are adjusted.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/factsheets/Aerosols.html
I personally don’t believe that that words or phrases used by scientists are divorced from the science itself from the standpoint of communicating with other scientists. I agree that Stevens has to choose his words carefully so as not to be misconstrued and even if he did the risk would still be there. I have read many papers concerning solar and it’s influence on climate near term and over the millennium. Most of them end with the caveat that CO2 is important in understanding late 20th century warming. Now if they hadn’t included that would it get past the concensus police? If it did slip through would they then be treated as another Willie Soon?
Frankly I’m a little surprised the consensus folks are worried about their wording being used by the skeptic denier nuts. They apparently don’t heed the advice of some to just ignore and tivialize the heathen psuedo-science wack jobs.
I wonder what the atmosphere would be like if just the science was presented as hypothesis and let the ‘chips fall where they may’. It would be a refreshing change. If the consensus was as sure about its science as they claim why would they worry about a few skeptical taunts?
Iris hypothesis
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The iris hypothesis is a hypothesis proposed by Richard Lindzen et al. in 2001 that suggested increased sea surface temperature in the tropics would result in reduced cirrus clouds and thus more infrared radiation leakage from Earth’s atmosphere. His study of observed changes in cloud coverage and modeled effects on infrared radiation released to space as a result supported the hypothesis.[1] This suggested infrared radiation leakage was hypothesized to be a negative feedback in which an initial warming would result in an overall cooling of the surface. The consensus view is that increased sea surface temperature would result in increased cirrus clouds and reduced infrared radiation leakage and therefore a positive feedback.
Other scientists have since tested the hypothesis. Some concluded that there was no evidence supporting the hypothesis.[2] Others found evidence suggesting that increased sea surface temperature in the tropics did indeed reduce cirrus clouds but found that the effect was nonetheless a positive feedback rather than the negative feedback that Lindzen had hypothesized.[3][4] A later 2007 study conducted by Roy Spencer et al. using updated satellite data potentially supported the iris hypothesis.[5] In 2011, Lindzen published a rebuttal to the main criticisms.[6]
See also[edit]
Don’t trust Wikipedia beyond a starter orientation. The original BAMS paper is easy to get free on line via Google. Well worth a read, as are some of the ‘instant’ refutations that got hastily published.
“increased sea surface temperature in the tropics would result in reduced cirrus clouds and thus more infrared radiation leakage from Earth’s atmosphere”.
The heat in equals the heat out with different areas of the reflective matrix varying in temperature. The iris is the result of the heat having to get out from a warmer area hence the cirrus clouds were not reduced in response to the increased SST but were unable to develop in the first place.
“This suggested infrared radiation leakage was hypothesized to be a negative feedback in which an initial warming would result in an overall cooling of the surface”
Don’t tell Lucia. she is absolute on the fact that feedbacks to a positive forcing cannot be negative.
From one who has regressed to reading thoroughly this blog only so often.
I find the following
1) The majority of the first part of this thread are from the same people saying the same things, somehow, even though the initial subject matter is different than in other threads
2) Toward the end, there is more concrete and valuable statements that deal with science and not about opinions which are about opinions of others opinions. It would be fun to splice parts of some threads into other threads and try to figure out to which threads comments were made.
Darryl, what sort of comments do you expect when you have unscientific questions and statements made by the host like these?
Joseph | April 22, 2015 at 2:28 pm | Reply
Darryl, what sort of comments do you expect when you have unscientific questions and statements made by the host like these?
But back to the cross-fire; how are the ‘consensus police’ taking this?
The ‘consensus’ disease, and the naive belief of too many scientists that we need to speak ‘consensus’ to power, is slowing down scientific progress. Lennart Benngtson’s recent saga is another case in point (see previous blog post).
The real problem is that people who “speak consensus to power” or “speak truth to power” are generally lying through their teeth and should be quiet instead.
Joseph, we would expect the same comments from you no matter what the hostess said. Primarily in the range from nasty to hate speak.
Your own make good examples. A race to the bottom with Joshua?
Joseph,
Create your perfect world and tell us what it is you’d prefer to see posted here, please.
Joseph,
Like Joshua, you never address the science.
Timg56,
Joseph, unlike me, is concerned about making a fool of himself in a public forum. I personally find out quite quickly when posting a misunderstanding of the science. And I know I can count of you folks to straighten me out. It helps me learn. So maybe we should give Joseph a break for this approach and someday he’ll get his feet wet.
Some scientists, though they welcome Mr. Stevens’s contribution, wish the paper had been written in a different way. “This paper is designed to make a larger story out of a relatively small result,” said Chris Bretherton, a professor of atmospheric sciences and applied mathematics at the University of Washington.
Making a larger story out of a relatively small result is hardly an innovation of this particular paper. All of “alarmism” (Hansen, Ehrlich, Schneider, Holdren, Gore and others), but not all informed alertness, is based on the process. And it isn’t uncommon in the other sciences.
Equally important, the entire hypothesized effect of CO2 is a “relatively small result” on the absolute value scale. A “relatively” small increase in summertime daytime cloud cover could blot it out entirely. As could a “relatively small” increase in precipitation.
> on the absolute value scale
I’d like to see that scale, pretty please with some sugar on it.
Inverting Steffan-Boltzman for 3.7W/m^2 gives 1C
1C << 146C [ Range of human recorded surface temperatures ]
1C << 48C [ Contiguous US high and low temperature for April 21, 2015 ]
1C << 43C [ Average annual range of temperatures where I live ]
1C << 27C [ Occasional daytime range where I live ]
1C << 10C [ Warming in my backyard between coffee and breakfast ]
1C << 3.5C [ Global average temperature annual range ]
1 C <> -240 C [The south pole of the Moon]
Willard: I’d like to see that scale
I meant absolute temperature scale. The scientist whom I quoted supplied no scale or comparisons for the phrase “relatively small”. A 3C increase in mean global temp is about 1% change from the baseline of about 288K. The “relatively small” (so-called) result of this paper may be “large enough” to prevent the 1% hypothesized increase in global mean temp resulting from CO2 increase; in that case, the result could be called “relatively large”.
We have seen this before. A paper is published that diminishes the estimated link between CO2 increase and mean global temperature increase, and immediately a new standard of disparagement is introduced (in this case a “relatively small” effect turned into a “larger story” is complained of), that had it been the standard all along would have nipped the CO2 hysteria in the bud decades ago. Perhaps the scientist has complained of this sort of thing on multiple occasions; but if this is the first time, he is awfully naive.
> A 3C increase in mean global temp is about 1% change from the baseline of about 288K.
Looks like the small argument all over again:
I have no idea why one would like to have an absolute scale to make such a silly argument, but I like it.
1C << 10C [ Warming between coffee and breakfast ]
1 C < 15,000,000 C [Temperature at the Sun's core]
Willard: Looks like the small argument all over again:
Yes. In response to a “small” argument I wrote a “small” argument. I put in a scale. I also showed where a “small” effect might cancel another “small” effect, but only one had been disparaged as “small”.
> In response to a “small” argument I wrote a “small” argument.
Using the same wording as Koonin’s too boot, give or take a few expressions like “entire hypothesized effect of CO2” and “alarmism” (unless he used them too, will have to check) and modulating it on an absolute scale using counterfactual clouds and rains.
Willard, I gather that you are happy with Prof Bretherton’s remark, even though he specifies no scale at all: Some scientists, though they welcome Mr. Stevens’s contribution, wish the paper had been written in a different way. “This paper is designed to make a larger story out of a relatively small result,” said Chris Bretherton, a professor of atmospheric sciences and applied mathematics at the University of Washington.
about this: using counterfactual clouds and rains.
Why do you call them counterfactual? Cloud cover changes are the most widely discussed and elaborated unknowns — here they are merely conjectural; the evidence on rainfall almost all supports the idea that increased temperature will bring increased rainfall: 2%-7% per C increase.
> I gather that you are happy with Prof Bretherton’s remark [..]
Because I have not commented on them? I am happy to have recognized the small argument all over again. I am even happier to witness how a scale can help push the limits of justified disingeniousness.
***
> Why do you call them counterfactual?
Because the formulation make them so:
Minimizing a signal by using an absolute scale and then using possibilias to drown it into noise is a pure thing of beauty.
Please, do continue.
Willard: possibilias
Can possibilias be counterfactual? I wrote of what is not known, not what is known to be false.
> Can possibilias be counterfactual?
All counterfactual are, I believe. Possibilias can fail to be factual, or plausible, or entertained as being real. That a counterfactual needs to be contrary to fact is a matter of debate.
For instance, I believe you are entertaining a counterfactual, since your argument would otherwise have no bite. If it is indeed the case that a 3C increase obtains, the fact that Mr. T can drown this increase in noise is quite irrelevant to its realness, and therefore its impact.
Come to think of it, it might be possible to infer from this that the more counterfactual Mr. T gets regarding AGW in general, the more he may need to invest into epistemic gambits like detection & attribution.
Willard: That a counterfactual needs to be contrary to fact is a matter of debate.
For instance, I believe you are entertaining a counterfactual, since your argument would otherwise have no bite.
That’s a good couplet! Into the “debate” about whether counterfactuals have to be counter to fact, you introduce your unsubstantiated belief that I have “entertained” a counterfactual.
Meanwhile, the “small effect” that Bretherton says has been made into a “larger story” is possibly “large” enough to nullify much of the hypothesized surface warming said to be due to CO2 increase.
> Into the “debate” about whether counterfactuals have to be counter to fact, you introduce your unsubstantiated belief that I have “entertained” a counterfactual.
You’re quite right that I believe you entertain a counterfactual, Matt. You’re also quite wrong that it’s unsubstantiated. To simplify what I said so far, here’s your version of Koonin’s small argument:
[Matt’s counterfactual] Even if we get a 3C increase in mean global temp, it is only about 1% change from the baseline of about 288K, a small increase that “relatively” small increase in summertime daytime cloud cover could blot it out entirely.
Compare and contrast:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgias#On_the_Non-Existent
You’ll note that “even if something exists” strengthens the counterfactual if Gorgias surmises that nothing does indeed exist.
It’s as if Gorgias anticipated the Contrarian matrix:
https://contrarianmatrix.wordpress.com/
If I have the time, I’ll add Koonin’s small argument, right next to CO2 is a trace gas.
***
Furthermore, I also believe that you imply something by your counterfactual, Matt. However, this has not been made explicit yet. Suppose we accept that even if we get a 3C increase in mean global temp, it is only about 1% change from the baseline of about 288K, a small increase that “relatively” small increase in summertime daytime cloud cover could blot it out entirely, what should we infer from that?
Many thanks!
Willard: Suppose we accept that even if we get a 3C increase in mean global temp, it is only about 1% change from the baseline of about 288K, a small increase that “relatively” small increase in summertime daytime cloud cover could blot it out entirely, what should we infer from that?
Bretherton: “This paper is designed to make a larger story out of a relatively small result,”.
Marler: Making a larger story out of a relatively small result is hardly an innovation of this particular paper. All of “alarmism” (Hansen, Ehrlich, Schneider, Holdren, Gore and others), but not all informed alertness, is based on the process. And it isn’t uncommon in the other sciences.
Equally important, the entire hypothesized effect of CO2 is a “relatively small result” on the absolute value scale. A “relatively” small increase in summertime daytime cloud cover could blot it out entirely. As could a “relatively small” increase in precipitation.
Inference: Making a larger story out of a “relatively small result” is both common and proper, as can be shown by some relevant examples with information on the scale by which the “relatively small” effect has been disparaged. .
Wow. Just wow.
The inability to see irony or suffer from cognitive dissonance for Trenberth and Pierrehumbert is breath-taking. The Voosen piece was quite entertaining.
i.e. “Mainstream publicity draws attention from ideological colleagues and gatekeepers and puts pressure on scientist to avoid important areas of research.”
https://twitter.com/aaronshem/status/590946668331270144
@josswhedon @ClimateOfGavin I believe global warming will prevent catastrophe and benefit humanity, but only if we adapt appropriately.
#happyearthday
Trenberth and his missing heat.
The only difference between climate science, astrophysics, and accounting is that in accounting they fire you when stuff turns up missing.
http://www.randombio.com/co2.pdf
Understand the existing data.
This can:
Prove Al Gore and the consensus are wrong.
Prove AGW is a mistake.
Prove the ‘war on coal’ is misguided.
Prove CO2 has no significant effect on climate.
Prove climate sensitivity (the increase in AGT due to doubling of CO2) is not significantly different from zero
Right here. Right now.
Only existing temperature and CO2 data are used. Fundamental understanding of math and its relation to the physical world are assumed.
The CO2 level (or some math function thereof) has been suspected of being a forcing. The fundamental math is that temperature changes with the time-integral of a net forcing (not the instantaneous value of the net forcing itself). For example, a bloc of metal over a burner heats up slowly, responding to the time-integral of the net forcing (heat from the burner minus the heat loss from convection and radiation). Add a blanket over the block (a ‘step change’ to the loss) and the block temperature increases to a new steady state temperature but the temperature increases slowly (in response to the time-integral).
Existing data includes temperature and CO2 determined from Vostok, Antarctica (or any other) ice cores for at least a full glacial or inter-glacial period. If CO2 is a forcing, the temperature should change as a transient following the start of CO2 level change instead of temperature and CO2 level going up and down in ‘lock step’ as has been determined from measurements and is widely reported.
Existing temperature and CO2 (Berner, 2001) assessments for the entire Phanerozoic eon (about 542 million years) are graphed at http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html
Pick any two points separated in time that have the same average global temperature (AGT) anomaly. The cumulative forcing is the time-integral of the forcing (or a function thereof) times a scale factor. Because the AGT at the beginning and end of the time period are the same and the time-integral of the forcing is not zero, the scale factor must be zero. As a consequence, the effect of the forcing is zero.
Granted that if the math function consists of an anomaly with respect to a ‘break-even’ CO2 level, a ‘break-even’ level could be determined to make the beginning and ending temperatures equal. Pick another time period with equal beginning and ending temperatures, but different from the first pick, and a different ‘break-even’ level might be calculated. Since the possibility of many different ‘break-even’ levels is ludicrous, the conclusion that CO2 has no significant effect on AGT prevails and something else is causing the temperature change.
A somewhat different approach to the proof showing that CO2 has no significant effect on climate and also identification of the two main factors that do (95% correlation since before 1900) are disclosed at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com
Identification of the two main factors that do cause climate change are also disclosed in a peer reviewed paper published in Energy and Environment, vol. 25, No. 8, 1455-1471
A somewhat different approach to the proof showing that CO2 has no significant effect on climate and also identification of the two main factors that do (95% correlation since before 1900) are disclosed at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com
I am somewhat skeptical. CO2 should increase atmospheric energy latency. More energy buffered in the atmosphere should make it warmer.
The recent study said 0.2 W for 22 PPM of CO2.
https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/tssts-6-4-2.html
The TCR is basically 2X CO2 forcing.
F = 2 * 5.35 ln (395/373) = 0.6132 or 0.61. This is roughly 3 times 0.2W.
So you are 2/3 right and the IPCC is 1/3 right.
The IPCC also claims: ,i>”It [TCR] is very likely larger than 1°C and very unlikely greater than 3°C.”
The TCR is “very likely” to be less than 1 and there “isn’t a chance in hell” it is close to 3.
The proof that CO2 has no significant effect on climate results from the computational mandate that temperature change is in response to the time-integral of a net forcing and not the instantaneous value of the net forcing itself.
Suspected explanations for this include that there are so many more ‘opportunities’ (absorption lines per molecule times number of molecules) for absorption by water vapor molecules that the added CO2 ‘opportunities’ have an insignificant effect and/or added TOA CO2 molecules emitting to space compensate for the added molecules absorbering at low altitude.
How in the world did the “consensus police” let these papers through?? They must have been asleep on the job. Damn you Bjorn Stevenson, aaaargh!
Comment received via email:
Judith, here is the comment I tried to make, but I’m not doing it through Facebook, where I am not anonymous:
“Maybe the issue is that the people who write the IPCC summaries are more the ideologues that Judith points to, while the scientists who do the underlying work are less ideological. Stevens may be thinking of the scientists he works with, Judith of the people who write the summaries.
One example: When the IPCC came out with its conclusion circa 2007 that all Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, the glaciologists who worked with the IPCC were taken aback. They put together a huge email chain — I was on it — trying to figure out how to correct the mistake and prevent such a mistake from happening again. It wasn’t the glaciologists who made the mistake in the first place, it came from elsewhere.
And when an Indian scientist went public with his research saying that Himalayan glaciers would be largely intact in 2035, the head of the IPCC accused him of “voodoo science.”
This example suggests to me that Stevens thinks that many of the actual scientists that he works with are not ideological, but that Judith correctly sees the final IPCC products, after they have been “summarized” by a small group at the top, as being more ideological than the work produced by the scientists themselves.”
“John”
AR4 as I read the bibliography had a couple of WWF sources for WG2.
“Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other
part of the world (see Table 10.9) and, if the present rate
continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035
and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at
the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present
500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005).”
Apparently the WWF doesn’t do quality research.
The summary for policy makers often appears to be a different beast to the ipcc report it is intended to summarise. Policy makers, primarily politicians do not have the time to read the full text of the reports and probably would not understand most of it.
It would be interesting to have a thread whereby the report and it’s summary were examined to determine if one is a fair representation of the other
Tonyb
Tony, in the AR4 glaciers case it was much worse. Pronouncement came from a single grey literature source, citing a single MSM news report, that misquoted a single glaciologist. The appropriate AR4 lead authors were warned in writing six months before publication, by more than one glaciologist, that this finding was just wrong by orders of magnitude. Those written warnings were ignored by the IPCC. Essay Himalayan Glaciers. Worthy of a modern Sherlock Holmes story.
Tonyb,
The politicians either have the time or they have the staff that has the time to read the full text of the reports (i.e.. perform due diligence).
They just don’t want to because it might not comport with their agendas.
That is an interesting insight. Not sure is more than directionally correct given Richard Tol’s experience with AR5. As I understand it, he was a WG2 senior insider who quit before the SPM was finalized because of its politicization. Since he commented upthread, perhaps we can get the benefit of his own personal perspective.
My understanding is somewhat different; that others grew tired of Richard pushing things, without much evidence, in a certain direction, they pushed back leading to Richard throwing his toys out of the pram…..
Both AR4 and AR5 are 100% in agreement with the central point of their respective Summaries for Policy Makers, the coming thermageddon that justifies massive government intrusion in the energy economy. WG2’s sections in both ARs in particular are chock full of impending doom. They put the C in CAGW.
FWIW, based on my experience, at Ringberg 2015 and at the Royal Society residential workshop last December, and from studying his papers, I consider Bjorn Stevens to be a first rate scientist, with a healthy attitude – open, questioning, not afraid to stand out from the crowd.
It’s worth a lot and says a lot.
Looks like joshie is going to give you a pass, nic. He jumped right up and attacked Richard Tol for saying the same thing. I think little joshie is getting tired because willy and some other of his crew mateys seem to have taken the day off and left joshie on his own.
Congratulations, Bjorn! You give courage to others.
Today, WUWT and the WeatherAction News blog posted information from a paper to be published in Physical Review Letters on 24 April 2015 that claims cosmic rays induce lightening bolts:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/22/using-cosmic-rays-to-reveal-earths-thunderstorm-processes/
https://weatheraction.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/using-cosmic-rays-to-reveal-earths-thunderstorm-processes
Thunder bolts may be signals from the Sun’s pulsar core if that is the source of cosmic rays.
There are also encouraging indications NASA may start releasing important information on the Sun: Today (April 22, 2015) Holly Zoll updated NASA’s page on Solar Irradiance, . . .
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/science/solar-irradiance.html
and acknowledged that changes in Earth’s climate may be better explained by SSI (solar spectral irradiance) than by TSI (total spectral irradiance).
This was also the conclusion of a recent paper, “Cycle Length Dependence of Stellar Magnetic Activity and Solar Cycle 23,” The Astrophysics Journal 820
http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/802/1/67/pdf/0004-637X_802_1_67.pdf
Thanks for pointing this out. I’ve been bringing it up for years that the power spectrum changes rather drastically in solar high energy regions over the course of sunspot cycles. While TSI changes only 0.1% narrow UV and higher bands can change power up to 50%. Those high energy photons above the visible light region have strong effects on chemistry in the stratosphere. On an 11-year sunspot cycle where the waxing and waning high energy regions averages out there appears to be little discernible effect. Where I become interested is what happens when the wax or wane lasts for many decades or centuries in longer solar cycles that produce grand maximums and minimums. Does that cause a cumulative change in chemistry with a more discernible effect on surface climate?
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/09/five-reasons-why-water-vapor-feedback-might-not-be-positive/
This is where this theory will meet it’s demise. It is going to be a negative water vapor /CO2 feedback process rather then a positive one. Hence more OLR to space. CO2 concentration changes within themselves will not matter.
I further think that a positive feedback is going to be found between prolonged minimum solar activity events and water vapor for all levels of the atmosphere.
Certainly in the lowest levels of the atmosphere but perhaps in the upper levels of the atmosphere despite convection considerations which could be thought to be counter intuitive.
Ice Ages characterized by increasing aridity which obviously is tied into lesser amounts of water vapor.
In addition the ozone/water vapor give and take aspect in all of this plays a role in a way which will promote more OLR to escape to space.
I will admit the devil is in the details but it is going to revolve around this issue to one degree to another as it apparently already is as is evidenced by the article Dr. Spencer wrote some 4 years ago.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/interesting-correlation-sunspots-vs-specific-humidity/
Good correlation is only at 30 millibars. Solar activity changing the height of transition zones is a well known phenomenon since we started putting satellites in low earth orbit. Orbital decay rate changes with solar activity as the atmosphere expands and contracts in response. Nothing new here.
It looks like Bjorn Stevens has the wisdom to disdain all efforts to stereotype him and label his research as belonging to pro / con camps on climate change.
I’d like to talk with him on the subject of the philosophy of science versus the APS science administration processes and the IPCC assessment processes.
John
“It looks like Bjorn Stevens has the wisdom to disdain all efforts to stereotype him and label his research as belonging to pro / con camps on climate change.” – JW
Could the same be said of you?
Earth rider, fft!
Michael | April 22, 2015 at 8:45 pm
– – – – – – –
Michael,
It is a pertinent question, and it should also be asked of yourself and asked of all participates in the discourse.
John
If a scientist’s research consistently points in one direction or the other is it a sign that the research is flawed or that he is biased? (I suppose it could show that he fails to report his inconclusive results.)
Michael on April 22, 2015 at 10:33 pm
– – – – – – –
Michael,
I certainly should wisely disdain
attempts to stereotype and put in a camp. N’est ce pas?
Whether I do so or not might show procession of wisdom on my part.
John
Bjorn Stevens is a man of courage. Got nuggets made of brass. Walks into burning buildings and saves women and children. Beats up neighborhood bullies. Dives into black water and saves drowning teenagers. Helps little-old ladies across the street.
If he’s a member of the APS, there’s a special thread on Climate Etc. made just for him.
JCH | April 23, 2015 at 8:20 am |
– – – – – – –
JCH,
I would like to discuss the philosophy of science with Bjorn Stevens. When I see a scientist show some seemingly independent and critical thinking within an environment that often says ‘no debate’, it is of interest to me what such a person’s premises and fundamental concepts on epistemology and metaphysics are.
Two of the discussion topics would be related to the philosophy of science versus thoughts on the APS situation (I do not care if he is a member or not) and the IPCC’s assessment processes.
John
swood1000 | April 22, 2015 at 9:13 pm |
– – – – – – –
swood1000,
I think we are addressing, not what anyone thinks concerning whether the work of a scientist like Bjorn Stevens is in the pro or con climate change camp, but instead that there wisely should the disdain by such a scientist toward those who stereotype him and label his research as in one camp or another.
Yes, we see a significant number of unwise scientists not disdaining being stereotyped and also not disdaining that their work is being encamped. They are free agents to disdain or not.
John
John Whitman –
But what is meant by ‘one camp or another’? Suppose a scientist in the 1920s believed that General Relativity was true and so set about devising experiments to test it, all of which turned out positive. Should he have objected to being thought of as in the General Relativity ‘camp’? Or are you using ‘camp’ to refer to a political position?
So should we disdain efforts by John Whitman to portray scientists in ‘pro’ stereotypes?
swood1000 | April 22, 2015 at 9:58 pm |,
– – – – – – – –
swood1000,
The answer is simple. A scientist can just laugh at the stereotypes and encampments that the various sub-communities of scientist aspire to. It takes just that. Bjorn Stevens appears to have some of that ability.
John
Michael | April 22, 2015 at 6:45 pm |
– – – – – –
Michael,
I responded to the above referenced comment of yours last night at John Whitman | April 22, 2015 at 10:54 pm |
John
John Whitman –
Is that better? Is there something wrong with the scientist in the 1920s considering himself in alliance with the other scientists who have embraced General Relativity, and joined with them to try to persuade those who continue to reject it?
“I will rewatch this when I have time (just about to leave for the airport again). So Stevens is not an IPCC/UNFCCC ideologue, but he seems in denial that some of his colleagues are.” – JC
Another denier? They’re everywhere!
Re empathy: I took issue with Tim Soutphommasane’s take on empathy on ABC Online. He claimed, inter alia, that empathy “is deeply political. Little wonder then that it is so frequently resisted and so difficult to realise.” I replied on 16/11/2014 as follows:
“The Concise Oxford Dictionary (2001) defines empathize as “to understand and share the feelings of another,” with empathy being the ability to empathize. The Shorter OED (1959) defines empathy as “the power of projecting one’s personality into, and so fully understanding, the object of contemplation.” It is nonsense to claim that empathy is “deeply political.” Having empathy requires the capacity to understand and respond to the experiences and emotions of another. It is a quality dependent on being open to others, giving attention to them rather than oneself, being able to avoid or put aside judgement of the person and their situation. It is a quality which is enhanced by developing one’s own self-awareness, humility, compassion and powers of observation. One might consider this a spiritual process, but it is not a political one.
“Of course, the “true test of empathy” is not whether you say the right thing, it must be a genuine concern with and for the object of your empathy. Again, this is not political; and to say that it is about “acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see” is bizarre (even if he actually said perceptually), it adds no value or understanding.
“Jamison’s claims that empathy is made of exertion, something we do because we should or because it is asked for also suggest that he is not empathetic, he does not understand the quality and has no basis for pontificating on it. Empathy is spontaneous and unselfish, it is a quality almost all have and which we can develop further, and it is likely that it developed in humans living in groups long before politics existed.”
I also responded to a post supportive of TS by someone calling himself Professor:
“Professor, I think that you are falsely dismissing those who do not share your views as not having empathy. People may have empathy for someone in a particular situation, but differ from you on how best to address that situation, particularly if there are ramifications which go beyond the case of that person. For example, it is possible to empathise with people using people-smuggling boats to seek a better life in Australia, while believing that overall it is better to deter that form of immigration.”
Faustino
“Distortion is “just the cost of doing business,” he said (Pierrehumbert). “There’s really no way to actually keep any kind of work from being misused.”
An example of community organizing strategy: first declare you are right, not just right but inarguably correct, then say, prove me wrong!
A warmist position, formulated by a deliberate mischaracterization of a scientific article, performed with a forethought to steer an agenda along a course you want to see taken, can only be viewed in the context of: The Big Lie”. Say the lie often enough and with great authority,(Joseph Goebbels) soon the lie has the weight of fact and all who disagree are viewed as enemies of the State.
“Adolf Hitler: “The great masses will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one”
And so the Cataclysm of CO2 is born, nurtured, and repeated until all who say “No” are now labeled “deniers.”
Does this sound evil? or what? Characterizing non-believers as heretics who should be dealt with vigorously as some current Congressional members advocate. Sounds to me to be so 1934.
Scientists making hypotheses with scant regard to dogma! Do they think we’re back in the 18th century or something?
O/T but a second large volcano eruption in Chile has just happened (adding to the other big one in March). http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-32425370
Is it scientifically accurate to say that:
volcanoes and volcanic eruptions are entirely natural earth phenomenon,
lots of CO2 is emitted whenever a volcano erupts,
but much more sulphur aerosol particulates are emitted than CO2,
and those aerosols act to dampen the warming effect that would otherwise have occurred from the both the CO2 that was just emitted in the eruption and all our man-made CO2 emissions as well?
I gather Gavin Schmidt believes something like this. Is he right?
Complicated. Ratios of SO2 to CO2 depend on whether a basaltic (spreading or hot spot) or subduction zone volcano.Chile is subduction zone, so more CO2. Kilueha Hawaii is hot spot, so more SO2. Whether any of those aerosols matter for climate depends on the VEI. Unless mostly greater than 4, no chance to reach the stratosphere where they can persist and transiently affect climate.
My understanding is that the initial aresols cause cooling and when they clear up CO2 can then warm.
Thanks for the volcano news. It looks like Chile got two big ones in short order.
Nic Lewis on Iris Effect
curryja
Nic Lewis comments on Stevens and the Iris effect in slide 23 at
Pitfalls in climate sensitivity estimation: Part 3
Models and mechanistic simplifications aside, it’s a pretty good bet that the planet is able to blink and make all sorts of adjustments we don’t know much about. Natural iron seeding from glacial melt and El Nino-borne dust would be among the many balancing tricks. Iris effect? I wouldn’t be surprised. Why not play with such notions?
Right now we’re like the High Victorian prudes who avoided references to sex by covering even table legs. We don’t want to be confused or aroused too much in this staid era of Publish-or-Perish.
An analogy to Lysenko under Stalin is more apt than to the Victorian era under Victoria. Many more people are at risk. And the ‘science’ is much more perverted.
“JC warning to Bjorn Stevens: In my quest to objectively evaluate the IPCC’s attribution argument and stand up for research integrity post Climategate, I was not ‘pulled’ away from the establishment community by ‘deniers’; rather I was ‘pushed’ away by scientists who were IPCC ideologues and advocates. Watch out.” – JC
For something new, let’s play the victim card…again.
Yawn.
“For something new, let’s play the victim card…again.”
Yes, lets whine some more about how we are all victims of the big oil deniers out there preventing meaningful climate action.
Too funny
Judith regularly groups all the consensus scientists into a set of bullet-point thoughts that she attributes to them as though they think the same things down the line. She does not seem to grasp that independent thinking scientists can reach the same conclusions about sensitivity, don’t all have solid opinions of deniers and the fossil fuel industry, etc., and they do not like to be grouped like that. It doesn’t win her any points in climate-science audiences to group them that way, yet she persists mainly because it helps her own argument to knock against a majority if she can package them together rather than on their individual views. With scientists it really is like herding cats to try to group them into bullet-point thoughts especially as pertains to their opinions, if any, on policy paths and the mechanics of denialism. Many just do the science and don’t care about details of policy or what deniers think.
Well this is incorrect. My concern is the scientists that are UNFCCC/IPCC ideologues. There are many of them. But not all scientists who think humans have caused most or all of the recent warming are ideologues.
Possibly hardly any of the scientists who agree with the IPCC consensus opinion are ideologues. They are just scientists doing their jobs at their labs or universities, writing scientific papers, not interacting with the press or Congress, not taking any notice of denialists, etc.
Well here is an anecdote for you. A leading scientist served on the IPCC AR5 as a lead author, for the first time. His reaction was that there were two groups (roughly 50-50): the first group are the first timers, who care just about the science. The second group are the ‘old hands’ who worry mainly about the ‘deniers’ and the policy response to what they are saying. Sounds about right to me. Then voices of the ‘old hands’ are amplified in the media, and these are the people that are in positions of influence in the professional societies etc. and in a position to ‘enforce’ the consensus through journal editors and policy statements made by the professional societies.
I think there is a distinction between those engaged in the mudslinging and the majority of scientists who are just there for the science. Some sling the mud back, for sure, but you could probably make a very short list of those compared to the 1000 or so that took part in AR5 WG1. Others are probably aware of the mudslinging without participating, and have an idea of that side of the “debate” and who is taking part in it.
I might have to go with jimmy, on this one. He surely knows what an IPCC ideologue looks like. And his estimate of the number of ideologues is so freaking vague, how can we lose:
========>Possibly hardly any….
Jimmy, do you work with any of the possibly hardly any scientists at a lab or university? How would you know the number is possibly hardly any? Willy or joshie could say the same thing and we would laugh and wonder aloud, how they could possibly know. We trust you a lot more than those two, but please explain how you make your estimate of ideologuery.
I am just saying, if you are in front of an audience of climate scientists and are going to say they are mostly ideologues and attribute a list of views to them, you need to be sure of what you are saying if you want to maintain any credibility, because it could go seriously wrong and reveal your own ideology instead.
And Don, how do you know Jim is wrong?
How many is Judith’s many??
3?
However, having seen the video now, I see that this was not a mainstream climate scientist audience. I saw Monckton in the front and probably Fred Singer. This was Judith’s kind of audience where she can freely make claims like that. Unluckily for her Bjorn Stevens was there to call her out on generalizations, but the chairperson was more sympathetic to Judith’s view and quashed Bjorn’s interruption asking for no more such interruptions.
Jim D,
Generalizations? How many is “many”? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming
In discussion about APS may we not add Koonin? Roger Cohen? Robert Knox? et al as included in “many”?
Who’s generalization is a generalization? Hers, or yours?
When many means a few, it is not quite right as a characterization. In the APS we hear many object, but so far it is something like 12 angry men in an organization of thousands, so I would call that a few, just to be accurate. If only a few object, their statement stands.
Jim D,
Definitions, please. Many means a few? There are 50 plus in the wiki alone that are some variation of disagreement with the “consensus”. I added a couple from the APS. That, in my book is more than “a few”.
So what was our gracious host’s statement once again?
Stevens objected to “many” in the context of how many scientists would agree with all her listed Trenberth quotes about deniers, which were rather extreme. On the flip side I could list things Monckton has said about conspiracies on talk radio, and say that “many” probably listen to those shows and nod along to those ideas. I am sure I would meet objection if I used “many” in that context, but it is equivalent.
You are changing the story, jimmy disingenuous:
“I am just saying, if you are in front of an audience of climate scientists and are going to say they are mostly ideologues and attribute a list of views to them,…”
Judith actually said:
” My concern is the scientists that are UNFCCC/IPCC ideologues. There are many of them.”
We can read, jimmy.
“There are many of them.”
She never said they are mostly ideologues. You made that up. You and your partner mikey are shooting yourselves in the foot. What do you hope to accomplish with this foolishness? You can’t fool us.
It’s like this jimmy, if you got a a thousand scientists and 12 of them are ideologues, that’s too many. If they are also loudmouths and politically influential, it gets worse. When the alleged leader of the free world listens to these bozos, it’s a big problem.
Don Don,
Thankyou for backing up Judith’s handwaving.
How many is many?
4?
Michael,
I’ll share with you this too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming
and leave it to you to look at the APS members only post to add a few others.
How many is many?
David,
Thankyou for that list.
Very impressive.
You have no idea what an impact it made on me to read the first name on that list;
David Bellamy, Botanist.
The definition of ‘many’ becomes clearer.
OMG – what nerve including scientists qualified to evaluate hyperbolic claims of deleterious consequences climate change will wreak on the primary producers in the food change. A botanist of all people. How much more irrelevant can anything possibly be with regard to climate change.
Thanks for pointing this out Michael. The depth of your knowledge never ceases to amaze me.
Sorry, that should be – Danny.
Michael,
Interesting. Because there is one botanist in a group of some 55 multi disciplinary “sciences” you rule out the list? So this leads me to ask exactly what are your “qualifications” for one to be considered a “scientist”? Then, what is considered a “climate scientist” in your view? Finally, of those who are considered “scientist” and are publishing using “botany” (maybe a certain tree ring study as a subgroup of “botany”) are they equally rejected?
I’d like to remind you, what was Dr. Curry’s statement?
Springer,
What are you babbling about??
Danny
David Bellamy-who Michael sees to be deriding-was a fervent green activist and eco campaigner. About 10 or 15 years ago he expressed the view that Man made global warming was exaggerated and was shunned by many of the same groups he had previously been close to
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/6598056/Eco-hero-David-Bellamy-botanist-and-campaigner.html
I would have thought a renowned botanist well placed to discern man made climate change, especially as his green credentials are so good.
tonyb
TonyB,
Thank you for that link.
I have a feeling Michael is as much a scientist as I. In the wiki to which I linked David Bellamy was listed under the heading of :”Scientists questioning the accuracy of IPCC climate projections”. From my view, there is good scientific evidence to “question” that accuracy considering there is still discussion of “the pause” (or non pause) as a single example, by those whom could be considered scientists in the broadest or tightest sense of the word. Much effort seems to be in play trying to explain something that some seem to perceive doesn’t even exist. Michael hand waved away a reasonable list due that one entry so I have to presume any connection to Botany in the climate discussion is invalid from his view. Helps to reduce a wicked problem when one eliminates tree rings, food sources, biofuels, and other flora. Good news is we’re down to what, only a few dozen other interconnected topics? Michael may be on to something! Fauna must be next which means anthro can’t be considered and look where we are! :-)
Let’s see, do we go with Jim D, who must certaintly have is finger on the pulse of climate science and most probably has dinner with them several times a month, or with Judith, who runs a blog?
Ok, I don’t really think the pulse is where Jim D has his finger.
Springer
“How much more irrelevant can anything possibly be with regard to climate change”
I’ll suggest Lewandowski, Cook, Glick, and lets not forget “Scooter”.
Odd, not a climate scientist among them. For that matter I see only one with any claim to “scientist” atall.
Danny and Tony,
Thankyou for your concerns.
Though you seem to have both followed Springer off into the weeds.
Admittedly, Danny started it with his irrelevant, but interesting, list.
Just a reminder – how many is Judith’s many?
5?
Michael,
You are quite welcome. And in turn, my thanks for the nice breeze blowing thru here from all the arm waving and not addressing any of the questions posted here: http://judithcurry.com/2015/04/22/bjorn-stevens-in-the-cross-fire/#comment-696563
How many is “many”? 3? 5? 54 (was 55, but I removed the botanist just to suit). What number would be of an acceptable nature? (presuming you won’t answer this questions either)
Danny,
You seem confused.
Michael what appears to you as high weeds appears to clear thinkers as as an ankle height lawn. In other words you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him think.
This is much of the problem that Judith, in her preferred victim-hood narrative, creates for herself – it’s her approach that is offensive, and offends, far more so than any actual substantial idea or specific scientific critique that she has.
The IPCC slide that she has in her post that Bjorn Stevens objected too (“‘irate audience member’ was Bjorn Stevens. He STRENUOUSLY objected” – JC) , is an excellent case-in-point.
Could anything have been more pointedly stupid, crude and broad-brushed?
No wonder he was “irate”.
Judith wants to be seen as some kind of maverick, but given the complete lack of maverick science she has produced, has to settle for painting everyone else as some part of some monolithic ideology persecuting others who fail to march in lock-stop with the alleged dogma.
Michael asks:
“Could anything have been more pointedly stupid, crude and broad-brushed?”
Yes – calling people deniers.
You really should go elsewhere. Everything you assert is objectively false. There is the Youtube video she, not you provided. There is Sci Am 2010. Again a lonk she, not you, provided. There is Lewis and Curry 2014. There is the Wyatt and Curry stadium wave prediction.
Michael, one of the problems with religious fanatics is that they disconnect from reality. Thanks for the vivid demonstration of same.
You really should apply for a PR internship at POTUS.
Richard,
Like when Judith called Bjorn Stevens a denier in this very post?
Rud,
I might be mildly concerned over your allegations…..if I hadn’t suffered through checking your hopelessly wrong ‘critiques’ of various papers last year. Confabulation, mis-understanding, mis-contrual and a general inability to read carefully makes your ‘objectively false’ good for a giggle.
But please, keep blowing smoke.
Michael
As I am just about to read Rud’s book ‘Blowing smoke’ I would be grateful if you could provide three specific examples of where he is ‘hopelessly wrong’ so I can ensure I don’t waste my time reading these. Thank you.
tonyb
tony,
I’d have to go back and read them, but one was so spectacularly stupid that I still clearly remember it.
Rud was wailing and gnashing his teeth about a study on past sea-levels looking at the WA coast (awesome camping BTW, if you ever get a chance to go there). Rud had his knickers in a knot over a particular diagram, telling us terribly terrible it was that the location info on the data points wasn’t specified. Rub regaled us (at great length) with the mighty labours he undertook to locate this vital information.
So, being sceptical (mightily so, after several previous encounters with Rud’s ‘critiques’) I went and read the study.
The problem was immediately obvious – Rud hadn’t read the study.
He’d taken a quick peek at the journal on-line where there was just the abstract. How can i be sure? – the on-line abstract included one diagram from the study, the one Rud was so exercised about. No caption.
In the journal, the diagram came with a detailed caption, giving all the necessary location information.
Michael, whoever you are, I have seen nothing in your anonymous writing here which would indicate you’re remotely able to credibly critique Istvan’s book. If you believe otherwise may I ask what leads you to that belief?
“[Judith] has to settle for painting everyone else as some part of some monolithic ideology persecuting others who fail to march in lock-stop with the alleged dogma.”
That picture was a self-portrait painted by the groupthink climate consensus. Judith merely displays and comments on it.
I don’t know what Michael was referring to, but for what it’s worth, I found it very difficult to read Blowing Smoke because of a number of issues. For instance, in the section “When Data Isn’t,” there’s a figure which shows three temperature charts labeled as being taken from 1980, 1987 and 2007. The purpose of the charts is to say data has been adjusted over time to exaggerate global warming. Only, the charts don’t all represent the same things. The entire thing is taken from Steven Goddard who compared land+ocean results to land-only results to claim there were nefarious changes. The reality is land-only results are different from land+ocean results because they measure different things.
Problems like that are exacerbated by the references in the book being a mess. The reference for that figure says, “Forensics from ‘Steven Goddard’, posted at Real Climate on 1/13/13.” Anyone who is familiar with the climate blogosphere will immediately realize that’s an absurd reference. There is no way Steven Goddard would have posted an analysis at Real Climate, a site renowned for its defense of the “consensus” position.
There were a bunch of problems like that. I had considered making a list of them, but I got bored and quit. Doing the job of an editor without compensation or any hope anything would get fixed seemed unappealing.
Michael: This is much of the problem that Judith, in her preferred victim-hood narrative, creates for herself – it’s her approach that is offensive, and offends, far more so than any actual substantial idea or specific scientific critique that she has.
Judith wants to be seen as some kind of maverick, but given the complete lack of maverick science she has produced, has to settle for painting everyone else as some part of some monolithic ideology persecuting others who fail to march in lock-stop with the alleged dogma.
And yet she has been unjustly vilified (“serial disinformer” and such), and her critiques are solidly based on peer-reviewed research, some of which is hers. Never has she painted “everyone else” as part of a monolithic ideology. Are you maintaining that she has not been unfairly attacked, or has not produced solid critiques? Of course not! You have envisioned a fantasy character.
The closest Judith comes to victimhood is having to put up with a juvenile clown and a talking donkey crapping in her parlor.
In relative terms there doesn’t seem to be that “many.”.
Joseph,
For you “many” is any number greater than the fingers on your hand.
The “establishment community” is not, IMO, a place for free thinkers and other heretics and its inhabitants are, frankly, boring and repetitive in their pronouncements. Nothing new here folks, time to move on. Judith is keeping much better company these days and the discipline of climate science will be better off as a result.
Isn’t this:”“My job,” Mr. Stevens said, “isn’t to convince the public more” about the reality of climate change. “I have a naïve faith the truth will win out.” what a scientist (or any unbiased party) should state vs. “Some scientists, though they welcome Mr. Stevens’s contribution, wish the paper had been written in a different way. “This paper is designed to make a larger story out of a relatively small result,” said Chris Bretherton, a professor of atmospheric sciences and applied mathematics at the University of Washington”
or this: ““I thought this was not well written and quite misleading,” added Kevin E. Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. There was no need to sound the “iris” trumpet, given how far it was from Mr. Lindzen’s original ideas, he added. “They even put it in the damn title.”
Respect for Stevens is growing with this observer.
+1 Danny. Letting the science speak for itself and disengaging from personalities or generalisations is a worthwhile goal for us all.
at best tangentially related. At Real Climate there is a description of an on line course by Lewandowsky and Cook describing the psychological mechanisms of “climate science denial”. A couple of my remarks were put up, but these follow-ups were consigned to the bore hole.
17, John Cook: As Naomi Oreskes describes it in Merchants of Doubt, there is an “unholy alliance” between vested interests and ideological think-tanks.
Two obvious questions.
1. Will you explore the psychological processes by which people glide over the liabilities in her book?
2. Will you explore ALL vested interests, such as the vested interests shared by government scientists and government-funded scientists?
You can guess my bet: people who agree with you will be judged not in need of explanation, but people who disagree with you will be found to suffer from diverse cognitive impairments.
As I wrote to Steve Fish: Likewise, the student will be instructed that the well-understood concepts of equilibrium lead to the derivation of really accurate consequences of CO2 increase; but to point out that high dimensional non-linear dissipative dynamic systems, like the Earth climate, do not have equilibria will be presented as a “motivated” septic (i.e. repeated) denialist trope, or perhaps bought by a rich energy company.
But equilibrium chasms are among the leaps of faith required in between the well-grounded science of CO2 absorption/radiation and the unreliable forecasts (models, etc) of future effects of future CO2 increases. Why would you want to avoid the psychological processes that support the leaps of faith, if your goal is understanding? Maybe I am wrong and you’ll explore those leaps of faith in detail.
Comment by Matthew R Marler — 22 Apr 2015 @ 10:47 PM
20 Marcel Kincaid: This isn’t the place to debate climate science. Leading off with that is clearly trolling. The subject here is the science of climate science denial. – See more at: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/an-online-university-course-on-the-science-of-climate-science-denial/comment-page-1/#comment-628853
Consider the equilibrium/nonequilibrium contrast I wrote about. “Denial” (more properly skepticism) of which claims should be included as “climate science denial”? Assertions of “equilibrium” are empty in high dimensional nonlinear dissipative systems, so which “denialist” scientist suffer the cognitive deficits — those who deny chaos or those who deny equilibrium?
Comment by Matthew R Marler — 22 Apr 2015 @ 10:57 PM
Matthew, how many meters of this can be called deep?
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/1/22/1421940615189/c63d7596-d8f3-482d-88ad-68cc501116d7-bestSizeAvailable.png
JCH
With an average ocean depth of 4000 metres I guess everything below that could be termed ‘shallow.’
http://www.mbgnet.net/salt/oceans/data.htm
The arctic ocean is by far the shallowest. As Thomas Stocker remarked, we do not have the technology to ,measure the deep oceans
tonyb
JCH: Matthew, how many meters of this can be called deep?
Does that relate to anything that I wrote?
To IR radiation anything beyond a millimeter or two is deep.
No. Sorry, it was something you wrote over at RC.
MM, I think not OT. These might be precisely the ideologues mentioned below?
Richard Tol (@RichardTol) | April 22, 2015 at 2:11 pm |
Joshua:
I gave a positive character reference for Stevens. You used that as an opportunity to attack both him and me. Please go away.
=======================================================
I SO agree with Professor Tol. Judith PLEASE get rid of the troll Joshua.
How many people here have to beg you to do it before it gets done?
David Springer: Judith PLEASE get rid of the troll Joshua.
Why? Lots of people seem to like exchanges with him.
I wouldn’t approve of banning Joshua since his behavior isn’t particularly bad (and really, David Springer is as bad), but I would like for some sort of measure to be taken so Joshua doesn’t divert discussions as much as he does. I think a social one would work. People could just not respond to Joshua so much, and he’d probably wind up polluting threads far less.
That said, I actually started writing a plugin which puts a limit on comments that might help. It’s a modification of the common plugin used to prevent people from commenting too frequently. Instead of setting a fixed time per comment, I want to limit people based on the number of comments they’ve posted. Right now, I’m thinking about increasing the timer by one minute per comment in the last 24 hours.
It won’t work on this site since our host isn’t self-hosted (which I think is a shame), but I think it would improve things. At the very least, it’d make it so you don’t see the same person commenting 50+ times in a single day. The first 15 or so comments a day wouldn’t be a problem, but when you have to wait half an hour to comment, trolling will be kind of difficult.
With Josh one either ignores him or makes fun of the clown. Those who engage with him are either new or are masochists.
Judith can’t add plugins.
Moderation as Judith practices it is fine and the reader simply chooses whether to read what a particular person writes. If sometimes a particular person starts to repeat the same messages (say for example, conspiracy ideation) then it would be preferable if Judith could delete the comment altogether.
Brandon S?: I would like for some sort of measure to be taken so Joshua doesn’t divert discussions as much as he does.
I skip almost everything he writes, although I sparred with him a few times in the past. Thus I am almost never “diverted”; being diverted from discussions is largely a self-selection. I have seen that from time to time Prof Curry will engage with him. If he is interesting enough for her, I see no problem with his posting here.
David Springer, I know, hence why I said it wouldn’t work for this site.
matthewrmarler, as I said, my preferred solution isn’t moderation. It’s just a simple social thing – people should ignore Joshua when he’s being unproductive.
It’s too coomplicated for science in the first place. Effects will be found, then more effects, and more effects.
That doesn’t make it science.
The problem on the warmist side is easy enought to spot, but it’s also on the “we are investigating the problems” side.
The sociology of not seeing this is interesting.
It’s not an uncertainty monster, it’s a no science monster. No procedure is available.
All you’d have is curiosity, and there’s none of that in evidence on either side.
Is Bjorn Stevens the Sharon Stone of the ’95 western, The Quick and the Dead?
Scientific American has an article on all this: How to misinterpret climate research. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-misinterpret-climate-change-research/
JC snip. Re the topic you mentioned, i’ve deleted that from my previous comment, that was personal communication from NL, which I thought was mentioned in the CA article. More on this soon, but premature for me to have said that without permission from NL
Interesting comment from Stevens:
And indeed, perhaps more interesting, is the response of some “skeptics”:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/4/3/a-declaration-of-orthodoxy.html
So, on the one hand we have some “skeptics” saying that we should let Stevens’ results speak on their own merits, and on the other hand we have some “skeptics” saying that Stevens’ work is a product of “absolute…faith.”
Yes, there should be no expectation of monolithicness? among “skeptics” a group, but there should be a consistent recognition of how a given “skeptic” addresses uncertainty within different contexts and in ways that have implications to the overall context of tribalism.
And indeed, also interesting is how often we find comments like the following are a part of some “skeptics” narrative:
Do, indeed, check some more of the comments in that thread. Quite fascinating although ultimately only sameosameo.
Joshua,
Frankly, it would be refreshing to see the standard you apply to so called “skeptics” being applied on the other side:”And indeed, also interesting is how often we find comments like the following are a part of some “skeptics” narrative:” http://judithcurry.com/2015/04/22/bjorn-stevens-in-the-cross-fire/#comment-696456
http://judithcurry.com/2015/04/22/bjorn-stevens-in-the-cross-fire/#comment-696401 “Another denier? They’re everywhere!”
Finally an entertaining “denial” proving the immediately above quotation that “they’re everywhere): (follow this thru at least 6 comments that follow, especially Tonyb’s) http://judithcurry.com/2015/04/22/bjorn-stevens-in-the-cross-fire/#comment-696501
Narratives! They’re everywhere!
========>Yes, what I do is just incessantly yammer on about the sameosameo. But I never get tired of myself. lol! Nobody can stop me!
Hi Joshua,
You have been doing well at “stirring the pot” lately without the frequent usage of LOLs, so I thought I should commend you for upping your game. And while I’m at it, since you put a question mark after “monolithicness,” I should mention that “monolithicity” is preferable, though “monolithic” already describes the state you are referring to without any more suffixes.
Lastly, I was unable to understand the beginning of your last sentence: “Yes, there should be no expectation of monolithicness? among “skeptics” a group,… ” (is there a “b” group of skeptics, a missing comma or is this a misplaced modifier?) To add so many words and concepts to this sentence after its murky beginning left me wondering what you were trying to say. While, unlike some commenters here, I don’t think throttling the frequency of your comments is worth the effort for Dr. Curry, I would read more of them if you’d spend some time proofreading them. More periods and the shorter sentences they create would also be helpful for me in trying to understand what you are trying to write. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that will also increase the number of your comments I disagree with.
Joshua
There is a difference in:
1. “Yesterday, however, Stevens went futher and issued a declaration of his absolute global warming faith.”. And,
2. “Stevens’ work is a product of “absolute…faith.”
It appears that he is both a true believer and a person loyal to the scientific method; the two are not related.
Richard
JohnV –
==> “You have been doing well at “stirring the pot” lately without the frequent usage of LOLs, so I thought I should commend you for upping your game.”
Yeah. I got some criticism from someone else I also respect w/r/t “lol.” I have mixed feelings about it as I think that despite the juvenile association, it does express something that’s hard to express otherwise. “Heh” comes close, but isn’t quite as rich in connotation, IMO. (Reminds me a bit of when I’d run into teachers who would ban students’ use of “sucks” or “cool” because, they said, more descriptive words are available but that was, IMO, largely because they didn’t fully understand the nauances of how students used those terms to express rather precise meanings).
==> ” And while I’m at it, since you put a question mark after “monolithicness,” I should mention that “monolithicity” is preferable, ”
I tried Googling for “monolicity” but didn’t get any hits.
==> “Lastly, I was unable to understand the beginning of your last sentence: “Yes, there should be no expectation of monolithicness? among “skeptics” a group,… ” (is there a “b” group of skeptics, a missing comma or is this a misplaced modifier?)”
I meant “skeptics” when viewed as a whole.
==> “To add so many words and concepts to this sentence after its murky beginning left me wondering what you were trying to say. While, unlike some commenters here, I don’t think throttling the frequency of your comments is worth the effort for Dr. Curry, I would read more of them if you’d spend some time proofreading them. More periods and the shorter sentences they create would also be helpful for me in trying to understand what you are trying to write.”
Yeah. Conciseness and proofreading aren’t exactly my forte (not that I know what is my forte).
==> ” Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that will also increase the number of your comments I disagree with.”
Be careful what you ask for.
Anyway, as always, thanks for the feedback.
lolheh – speaking of proofreading: monolithicity not monolicity.richards –
Maybe, but surely you’d agree that saying that a scientist has “absolute faith” in global warming (why else would they issue such a “delcaration”) then there is an implication that they aren’t true to the scientific method when they are researching global warming. My point is that it is counterproductive if “skeptics” lable scientists whose work directly address uncertainties as having “abolute faith.”
Richard
Just guessing, but have to assume Bjorn Stevens is busy today:”But the agency also says the volcano was known to be active roughly every 34 years.”
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/04/23/401682275/video-of-volcano-erupting-in-chile-is-amazing-in-time-lapse
From the Scientific American article.
“When scientists use temperature records from the 20th century to constrain sensitivity, they get low values. When they use records stretching many millenia, painstakingly assembled from trees and other proxies that contain imprints of past climates, they get values toward the higher end of the IPCC range of 1.5 to 4.5 C.”
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-OvQHzJy8gFU/VLF3XHImAqI/AAAAAAAAMGM/X1vv5Tx0kiI/w689-h411-no/oppo%2Bover%2Bmann.png
thar’s a climate storm a brewin’ still.
Capt. D,
No storm coming. Nothing to do with Botany is of value in the climate discussion as I learned just today from Michael.
Dr Stevens, given his stated reasons for moving to Germany and his recent defense of CAGW, is a true believer. And he is obviously loyal to the scientific method; his recent papers and comments demonstrate this. He is now getting criticism from some believers and praise from some skeptics, but is not concerned. The next year will be interesting. My hope is with his hope, that he and the truth will prevail.
I found Stevens comment interesting
“In my new paper I did not speculate as to the implications of my findings for estimates of Earth’s
Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity, which is perhaps the simplest measure of the response of the Earth
System to a change in concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. However others have used my
findings to suggest that Earth’s surface temperatures are rather insensitive to the concentration of
atmospheric CO2. I do not believe that my work supports these suggestions, or inferences. ”
I suppose many data analysts here can share that experience. you are working on X. Your head is deep in X. you are curious about X. X has your full attention. you are not working on X to prove some grander point, you just find X to be interesting.
Then someone takes your result and challenges another view you hold.
Holy crap, you just undid your world view.
Now world views are things we like to keep intact. But we also cherish our little X. So we can’t say we are wrong about X, the fault must reside in the Other guys work.
How do you go about attacking the other guys work.
1. Misrepresent it: “However others have used my
findings to suggest that Earth’s surface temperatures are rather insensitive”
That is NOT what Nic suggested. Nic didnt suggest it was INsensitive.
he did something rather simple. he took a method. A published method.
A method vetted by the IPCC. A method nobody had a cow about years ago.
he took that method and used Steven data. Thats WHY we share data,
And he got a result. The result said that TCR and ECS change to lower values. The earth is LESS SENSITIVE not INSENSITIVE. So in his complaint about misrepresenting science, Stevens misrepresents science.
or maybe the “others” he doesnt name was fox news.. But scientific america assumes it was Nic. Its is HILARIOUS that before stevens complained about Judiths “generalization” of “many scientists” and here Stevens complains about a generalized “Others”
Finally you preserve your world view by assertion:
” I do not believe that my work supports these suggestions, or inferences.”
Yup its raining but I dont believe it. It doesnt matter WHAT Stevens believes it matters what he can show. Nic has shown his work. To win in science you have to show how it is wrong or biased. Not just state that you believe,
Speaking of unintended irony:
==> “Then someone takes your result and challenges another view you hold.”
World view? Whose “world view” is being challenged here? Tell me, what is Steven’s “world view?”
Looks to me like Stevens’ position may be challenging to your “world view” – which engenders an instinctive defensive response due to loyalties.
Is Stevens making a scientific critique of specific suggestions and inferences, and as a scientist – that the “…Earth’s surface temperatures are rather insensitive to the concentration of atmospheric CO2.”
==> “1. Misrepresent it: “However others have used my
findings to suggest that Earth’s surface temperatures are rather insensitive”
That is NOT what Nic suggested. ”
Hmmm.
I looked at Stevens’ statement:
http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/grafik/presse/News/AerosolForcing-Statement-BjornStevens.pdf
I searched by “Lewis.” I didn’t get any hits. Was there somewhere else that Stevens specifically referred to Lewis as misrepresenting his work? I did see this in the article that Judith linked (where the author of the article did single out Lewis in a way that may be questionable):
No quotations, but it says that Stevens’ criticism of Lewis’ work was based on something other than what you stated.
Perhaps I’m wrong about that? Could it be that my “worldview” has led me astray?
Kind of ironically, I meant to type:
Tell me, what is
Steven’sStevens’ “world view?”Where has he made is “world view” public?
That’s an interesting statement.
Almost like a confessional –
I may have strayed, but ‘even a warming of 2C poses considerable risks for society’.
Really? What evidence?
How would that compare to the risks that are part of natural variability that occur regardless of global average temperature?
Why do we have to believe assertions?
That’s one thing about AGW that continues to bother me – the religious aspect.
‘I believe…’ is along the lines of
‘I believe in god the father..’ or ‘There is no…’
Evidence stands or falls on its own without proclamations of belief.
yes Joshua you view has lead you astray.
When Judith said in her video “many leading scientists” Stevens Objected to the generalization. rightly so. It’s too vague and not very easy to confirm or deny.
Now we switch to Stevens
he says “Others”
Well WHO?
Scientific American says
“The misinterpretation of Stevens’ paper began with Nic Lewis, an independent climate scientist. In a blog post for Climate Audit, a prominent climate skeptic blog, he used Stevens’ study to suggest that as CO2 levels double in the atmosphere, global temperatures would rise by only 1.2 to 1.8 degrees Celsius. The measure is called “climate sensitivity.”
That’s less than the assumed 2 C threshold for catastrophic climatic change in parts of the world. It’s also lower than an IPCC estimate that a doubling of CO2 will raise global temperatures by 1.5 to 4.5 C.
Lewis’ blog post prompted conservative publications to crow that global warming is not a major threat. Stevens was inundated with email.”
Nic didnt misinterpret Stevens work. he used his data. he applied his method
NOW, we can argue with his method. BUT taking Lewis data and putting in a method that the IPCC has no issues with, is NOT misrepresenting the science.
Steven –
==> “When Judith said in her video “many leading scientists” Stevens Objected to the generalization. rightly so. It’s too vague and not very easy to confirm or deny.”
Criticizing Stevens for the generalization seems fair to me, just as it was with Judith.
But you’re trying to hold Stevens accountable for what the author wrote. Stevens may have been referring to Nic’s analysis when he talked about analyses that show Earth’s surface temperatures as “rather insensitive” or he may have not been.
We have some relevant information, however, related to what Stevens may have said specifically about Nic’s work:
The criticism is different than the one that you focused on.
I’ll also point out that whereas Stevens’ quote was “rather insensitive,” in your criticism you left out the “rather”…
…as if Stevens was mischaracterizing the analyses he was criticizing as showing that the Earth’s surface temperatures were “insensitive” it an absolute sense whereas Nic’s analyses indicated an insensitivity in a relative sense.
IMO, the “rather” that you left out provides a connotation or relative-ness, not absolute-ness.
And steven –
I’ll assume that you meant “…taking Stevens’ data…” – and as such, no disagreement there from me. If that was, in fact, Stevens’ argument then it absolutely can be fairly criticized.
=======>OMG! I just realized that Stevens is using the British meaning of “rather”:exclamationBritishdated
exclamation: rather
1. used to express emphatic affirmation, agreement, or acceptance.
““You are glad to be home, aren’t you?” “Rather!””
So, Steven’s says it’s emphatically and affirmatively damned skippy insensitive. Please don’t let Mosher find out about this. Shhhhhh!
Sorry JohnV –
But I think this one justifies an lol:
=======>lol! too much! I find myself so freaking funny. My own unintended irony has got me rolling on the floor. lol! I’m cracking myself up. The only thing that’s saving me from going over the edge is my complete lack of self-awareness. It’s supposed to not be good for humans to be totally devoid of self-aware, but for me it’s a blessing. Am I smiling like a clam? Rather!
Steven,
I think that’s an unfortunate way to frame this. All the Bjorn Stevens did was to show that the aerosol forcing was probably constrained to be between -0.3 and -1.0 W/m^2. It’s true that if you then implement this change in Nic’s analysis you reduce the ECS range and the median drops, but there are many assumptions in the energy balance method that may not turn out to be correct. Also, there are many other methods for estimating the ECS. Paleo and climate models being two examples. Both suggest an ECS that is probably above 2K. So, you don’t just suddenly change your perception of what is likely just because you happen to publish one paper that doesn’t even directly address this.
Of course, global SO2 has declined for more than two decades,
so the change in aerosol forcing has probably been positive since 1990.
https://suyts.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/image307.png
Possibly, but the Stevens paper was not determining it relative to 1990.
…and Then There’s Physics: so the change in aerosol forcing has probably been positive since 1990.
Possibly, but the Stevens paper was not determining it relative to 1990.
The first line you quoted from Turbulent Eddie, and the second is your comment upon it. Do you agree with Turbulent Eddie that the change in aerosol forcing has probably been positive since 1990?
Off the top of my head, I don’t know.
“I think that’s an unfortunate way to frame this. All the Bjorn Stevens did was to show that the aerosol forcing was probably constrained to be between -0.3 and -1.0 W/m^2. It’s true that if you then implement this change in Nic’s analysis you reduce the ECS range and the median drops,”
Agreed.
” but there are many assumptions in the energy balance method that may not turn out to be correct. Also, there are many other methods for estimating the ECS. Paleo and climate models being two examples. Both suggest an ECS that is probably above 2K. So, you don’t just suddenly change your perception of what is likely just because you happen to publish one paper that doesn’t even directly address this.”
Agreed then he should have said.
The MEDIA has misrepresented what I did in this fashion.
If he had specific complaints about Nic he should have spelled it out.
Nic Lewis has taken my results and showed the following. This is subject to a lot of assumptions.
Steven,
Okay, but all that I can see that he said is
which sounds okay. I’ve also gone back and read the letter, and – again – it seems okay. He didn’t seem to accuse Nic Lewis of anything nefarious. Others might have (such as the SciAm article) but I can’t see anywhere where Bjorn Stevens has done so directly.
‘However others have used my findings to suggest that Earth’s surface temperatures are rather insensitive to the concentration of atmospheric CO2. I do not believe that my work supports these suggestions, or inferences.”
Except nobody used his finding to show that. Nic used the data to show that estimates for ECS would drop. Not that the temperatures are rather insensitive to C02. And further Nic’s work is only one paper and there are other approaches that show higher numbers. people always make the argument that Nics approach is only one approach. YES.. but that observation cuts TWO WAYS. just because skeptics run around all triumphant is no reason to misrepresent what Nic did. He estimated a lower ECS, not an insensitive climate.
here is what SciAm thought
“The misinterpretation of Stevens’ paper began with Nic Lewis, an independent climate scientist. In a blog post for Climate Audit, a prominent climate skeptic blog, he used Stevens’ study to suggest that as CO2 levels double in the atmosphere, global temperatures would rise by only 1.2 to 1.8 degrees Celsius. The measure is called “climate sensitivity.”
Really?
Steven,
I don’t want to go in circles about this, but I don’t think we can know that Bjorn Stevens meant Nic Lewis, since there were plenty of other sites crowing about the supposed significance of his paper. Oh, and I’m not trying to defend the SciAm article. In fact, I was really just surprised that you seemed to have framed this as Bjorn Stevens being unwilling to accept the significance of his paper, but maybe I misunderstood you, since we’re now discussing whether or not he was referring to Nic Lewis.
It seems rather obvious that Stevens accused Nic Lewis of something, kenny. The Sci Am article was written around an interview with Stevens. Did you read the article, kenny?:
“You’ve got mail!
The misinterpretation of Stevens’ paper began with Nic Lewis, an independent climate scientist. In a blog post for Climate Audit, a prominent climate skeptic blog, he used Stevens’ study to suggest that as CO2 levels double in the atmosphere, global temperatures would rise by only 1.2 to 1.8 degrees Celsius. The measure is called “climate sensitivity.”
That’s less than the assumed 2 C threshold for catastrophic climatic change in parts of the world. It’s also lower than an IPCC estimate that a doubling of CO2 will raise global temperatures by 1.5 to 4.5 C.
Lewis’ blog post prompted conservative publications to crow that global warming is not a major threat. Stevens was inundated with email.
“All sorts of schoolteachers were contacting me, and they were all worried that everything they’d learned was wrong,” he said.
Soon after, he took the unusual step, for a climate scientist, of issuing a press release to correct the misconceptions. Lewis had used an extremely rudimentary, some would even say flawed, climate model to derive his estimates, Stevens said.
Narrowing climate sensitivity is challenging since the measure includes, and therefore compounds, the uncertainty inherent in aerosols, clouds and other phenomena. Different methods can give different results.
When scientists use temperature records from the 20th century to constrain sensitivity, they get low values. When they use records stretching many millenia, painstakingly assembled from trees and other proxies that contain imprints of past climates, they get values toward the higher end of the IPCC range of 1.5 to 4.5 C.
Overall, Stevens’ study skews sensitivity toward the lower end of the IPCC range, Dessler said. Other studies have found higher sensitivities, creating an urgent need to resolve these disagreements and hammer down sensitivity, he added.
Stevens said his study is something to be mulled over, but it does not call into question man-made global warming.
That’s what he said in his press release, as well.
“I continue to believe that warming of Earth’s surface temperatures from rising concentrations of greenhouse gases carries risks that society must take seriously,” he wrote, “even if we are lucky and (as my work seems to suggest) the most catastrophic warming scenarios are a bit less likely.”
Stevens is complaining about all sorts of schoolteachers contacting him after Nic Lewis’s misinterpretation of his paper. And then Steven’s puts out a press release ” to correct the misconceptions. Lewis had used an extremely rudimentary, some would even say flawed, climate model to derive his estimates, Stevens said.”
There is nothing ambiguous there, kenny. Stevens called out Nic Lewis. You should get the basic facts right before you go any further, kenny.
Seems like some of the finest minds in the world cannot communicate worth diddly. I wonder how many other communications problems they have? That kinda reduces the amount of trust I would place in them to save the world, doncha know.
I’m rather struggling to see why this is incorrect
Blast, messed up my blockquote, but you get what I was saying. Anyway, I don’t really care. Have at it, if you wish.
You are shifting your argument, kenny. Is that the method in astrophysics these days?:
“I don’t want to go in circles about this, but I don’t think we can know that Bjorn Stevens meant Nic Lewis, since there were plenty of other sites crowing about the supposed significance of his paper.”
He said Nic Lewis started it. Now do we have that part straight?
I wonder if Stevens would have complained if some warmista had misinterpreted his paper to mean: OMG! It’s worse than we thought. Or, that it explained away the pause.
well, I have had some problems with previous articles written by this journalist (Gayathri sp?), so I don’t rule out an over imaginative interpretation of what she thought Stevens meant.
Which parts of the SciAm story that was based on an interview with Steven’s do you have doubts about, Judith?
I am finding Steven’s claim that he was prompted to refute the alleged misinterpretations by emails from a bunch of schoolteachers and laypeople. I would bet big money that he got word from the Climatariat Illuminati that he better clean up the mess he made by publishing research that could be used against the cause.
ATTP
Let’s see .
Prior to this Stevens complained when Judith made a rather broad generalization to a somewhat private audience about what “many leading climate scientists say” While she did quote Trenberth, she went on to say “many”. Stevens objected, from the floor. Broad generalizations dont really help matters. My tendency is to side with him on this.
However, next was Steven’s turn to show us how its done. He makes a very public statement after Nic’s Climate audit post. As far as I know Nic is the only person to take Steven’s study and explore its implications.
The press picked it up.
Steven’s had an opportunity to correct the press explicitly or to argue with Nic specifically. Instead, he said “Others”. Contrast that with Nic’s slides at rinberg where he details paper by paper what he thinks the issues are.
Well now we are left trying to figure out who he meant by “others”.
Much the same way he was angry about trying to figure out who judith meant by “many”. Surely folks can be as upset as he was.
Finally, Nic’s estimate of ECS is perhaps 30% too low if we believe gavin. That would not be inconsistent with what Stevens found in his second paper.
The bottom line for me is its kinda silly to get bent out of shape about a bunch of news stories written about a blog post. both sides get bent out of shape. Its just one paper, one post, one days of stupid stories in the press.. That’s like normal.
I can think of a hundred climate scientist/ideologues off the top of my head, this is without doing a survey (and only knowing a fraction of the conceivable population). TOO many, IMO; not just many
Maybe you need a post to define exactly what you mean by ideologue in the climate scientist context. I still don’t know where the dividing line is between saying the science they know drives a common-sense policy and being an ideologue. Many areas of science have led to mitigation policies, whether in the environment or food. Which of the advocates have been ideologues?
I did a whole series on this, see
http://judithcurry.com/2010/11/07/no-ideologues-part-iii/
By that definition, I could say that an ideologue is someone who doesn’t believe the IPCC could be right with its central estimates. You can go down your ideologue attribute list and it fits. Is anyone who takes the IPCC sensitivity range seriously an ideologue?
@ ATTP – “Paleo and climate models being two examples. Both suggest an ECS that is probably above 2K.”
I decided to make a wordpress account rather than just be a lurker of this blog because I didn’t want this claim to go unchallenged.
Can you please provide me with evidence that suggests that the 95% confidence interval for some subset of paleoclimate data excludes an ECS less than 2K? Or if this is not what you mean by ‘probably above 2K’, then could you please define precisely what you mean?
Would I be correct in assuming that your claim is based upon Hansen et al. 2013 (or earlier Hansen et al. papers)?
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/2001/20120294
Or do you have other references that you wish to use to back up your claim?
I look forward to your reply.
Welcome, iiequalsexpipi. Is that a Nahuatl name?
I forgot to warn you. Kenny is an astrophysicist specializing in making up names for planets and stars, or something like that. I hope he names the next star Huitzilopochtli, in honor of the hummingbird of the left. You know what I mean.
Jim D.
Be careful. I think if denizens were turned loose there might be a long list of quotes from leaders.
Fair is fair.
Ask Stevens who he meant by others
Ask Judith who she meant by many.
iiequals…, you can also check out a very entertaining Richard Alley AGU talk here for the paleoclimate connection to CO2.
“Jim D | April 23, 2015 at 11:55 pm |
By that definition, I could say that an ideologue is someone who doesn’t believe the IPCC could be right with its central estimates. You can go down your ideologue attribute list and it fits. Is anyone who takes the IPCC sensitivity range seriously an ideologue?”
Careful Jim,
I said basically the same thing and it got deleted.
Yes, but……you left out this part:”Fair is fair. Ask Stevens who he meant by others. Ask Judith who she meant by many.” (It helps if you ask, and don’t assume…………I find “many” who fit the “many” label)
And since the discussion has evolved: http://judithcurry.com/2015/04/22/bjorn-stevens-in-the-cross-fire/#comment-696829
The only worry is this time it’s states “too many”………….on noes…….. but I’m confused.
The word “ideologue” is just a dismissive term. That person is an ideologue, so we don’t have to actually answer their science argument. We can just namecall and move on. It is used exactly the way “denier” is, as a term for someone you don’t think you can persuade with your own view. Now, it may turn out the ideologues were right to be that way, but you can’t tell so far because we haven’t yet had enough record warm decades in succession for you.
no ideologue/dogma reflects that too many (including scientists) are treating this as ‘religion’ and not science.
Nothing wrong with ideology per se; the problem arises when this leads to absence of doubt, intolerance of debate , appeal to authority , a desire to convince others of the ideological truth, and a willingness to punish those that don’t concur.
Many scientists have seen enough evidence that there is an absence of doubt, especially about the human-caused effects on climate. They should be entitled to that opinion without being called ideologues. Are people ideologues about evolution or gravity? At some point it is fact and denial of fact.
JimD,
“Are people ideologues about evolution or gravity?” Are there similar questions about the effects of evolution or gravity? Are we discussing changing global economies due to evolution or gravity?
I am sure there would be similar types of skeptics if these were leading to a policy they didn’t like. The obviousness of the science is no object to them. They would call Galileo an ideologue if they had to.
JimD,
Maybe so, but after all you did compare climate science with “evolution and gravity” so all’s fair in love and war, eh?
@ Don Monfort –
It’s an equation. i^2 = e^ipi.
@ Jim D –
I appreciate your response and link.
However, it doesn’t demonstrate that a 95% confidence interval of climate sensitivity based upon paleo data excludes an ECS less than 2K.
The presentation that you provided makes the exact same arguments as in Hansen 2008 and actually references Hansen 2008 many times. No where in the presentation does it provide a confidence interval that excludes an ECS less than 2K.
It does present a confidence interval based upon Phanerozoic data that excludes a climate sensitivity less than 1.5K. However, that estimate has it’s own issues, particularly because it ignores the effects of changes in the positions of the continents, ignores other GHGs such as CH4 and N2O, and includes slow albedo feedbacks. So that Phanerozoic estimate is biased upwards, underestimates uncertainty and therefore does not provide a 95% confidence interval of ECS that excludes an ECS less than 1.5K.
I wasn’t meaning probably to be 95% confidence, just more likely that it was above 2K than below 2K. However, this paper seems to be suggesting that the 68% confidence interval is 2.2 – 4.8K.
Steven,
Well, yes, I broadly agree, although the same could be said about getting bent out of shape about a SciAm article pointing out what happened after Nic wrote his post. Nic must have had some sense of who would pick up on his post and could have chosen to at least add the kind of caveats that would have given him plausible deniability.
I realised that this has drifted from my first point which was simply that you seemed to be suggested that Bjorn Stevens was simply too locked into his current views to accept the implications of his new paper. Maybe that isn’t what you meant, though and I’m not sure I can be all that bothered going through this all again.
“too many (including scientists) are treating this as ‘religion’ and not science.” – JC
More labelling in place of reasoned argument.
@ ATTP – “I wasn’t meaning probably to be 95% confidence, just more likely that it was above 2K than below 2K.”
Maybe paleo data suggests that ECS is more likely above 2K than below 2K but then one could argue that instrumental data suggests that ECS is more likely below 2K than above 2K. In any case, such statements ignore the uncertainties of the estimates, which is why it makes more sense to look at the 95% confidence intervals when comparing different estimates.
“However, this paper seems to be suggesting that the 68% confidence interval is 2.2 – 4.8K.”
Does this mean that you agree that a climate sensitivity less than 2K is not excluded by a 95% confidence interval of paleo estimates?
With respect to the particular paper that you have provided a link to, I thank you for it. However, I am unsure if it even shows that paleo data suggests a 68% confidence interval of ECS that excludes climate sensitivities less than 2K. In particular, because it makes many of the same mistakes than Hansen et al. and others make when evaluating climate sensitivity from paleo data, and this causes the ECS estimates to be biased upwards significantly and to underestimate uncertainty. Would you like me to explain the reasons why I think these paleo estimates are biased upwards and underestimate their uncertainty?
-1,
Yes, of course. Not even the IPCC excludes values less than 2K with 95% confidence.
I have a feeling we’ve discussed this before, but you can always remind me of your reasons.
@ ATTP –
“I have a feeling we’ve discussed this before”
No, we really didn’t. I was trying to discuss some of my criticisms/concerns with BBD (who has a high regard of Hansen et al. 2013) in the comment section of your blog, but then some ‘Happiness Engineer’ without a science background came along and decided to delete my lengthy posts (as well as many others) because apparently I was committing libel/slander against scientists by questioning the methodology of their papers. Apparently questioning Hansen or suggesting that he has a tendency to round up (which he does) is committing great blasphemy.
This is of course completely ridiculous because the arguments I was making were primarily based on science. This is why I no longer post comments in your blog; it simply does not allow for much discussion beyond an echo chamber.
“but you can always remind me of your reasons.”
Before I do that, are you willing to change your mind if presented with new evidence or reasoning? Because I’m under the impression that you are at least somewhat emotionally invested in a certain conclusion.
I’m certainly willing to change my opinion when presented with new evidence. 2 months ago I held the belief that the best estimate for ECS was 3K and ECS was very likely above 2K based on the strength of the various feedbacks + paleoclimate estimates. But since then I’ve looked more into the question on my own time, I’ve done countless regressions on paleo and instrumental data, I’ve estimated Van Hateren impulse response functions to the instrumental + Holocene data, and I’ve tried to look for reasons which could explain the discrepancy between the different estimates. As a result, my perception of the magnitude of ECS has shifted downwards and I think I can confidently conclude that paleoclimate estimates of ECS appear to be larger than instrumental estimates of ECS primarily because of flaws in the evaluation of paleoclimate data. I might even go as far as to say that if evaluated properly, the paleoclimate data excludes an ECS greater than 3K at the 95% level.
iiequals,
That must have been Happiness Engineer 3rd Class willy the mendacious moderator.
ATTP
“I realised that this has drifted from my first point which was simply that you seemed to be suggested that Bjorn Stevens was simply too locked into his current views to accept the implications of his new paper. Maybe that isn’t what you meant, though and I’m not sure I can be all that bothered going through this all again.”
No that’s the argument I was trying to make. It didnt hold up very well.
At this point seeing Stevens note to Nic, the argument collapses entirely.
To some extent I empathize cause I know there a few things that I’ve said in papers that get twisted.. and when that happens.. well i get twisted.
Fair enough, that’s all I was really trying to comment on anyway.
@ ATTP –
I guess you are unwilling to state that you are willing to change your mind when presented with new evidence. That is unfortunate, although not completely unexpected.
In any case, I’ll explain why I think that there is no disagreement between the instrumental estimates and the paleo estimates and the perception that estimates from paleo data are higher than estimates from instrumental data is primarily due to a misevaluation of the paleo data (which bias estimates upwards and underestimate uncertainty). When evaluated properly, the instrumental and paleo data both suggest that ECS is in the lower half of the IPCC’s confidence interval (1.5 C – 3 C).
– – – – –
For climate sensitivity estimates that look at temperature changes prior to the Pleistocene, there are a number of issues with these estimates, including:
– Lack of a globally representative set of temperature reconstructions, large uncertainty in temperature reconstructions, and large uncertainty in atmospheric CO2 reconstructions result in estimates having so much uncertainty that not much confidence can be gained from these estimates. The estimates from Pleistocene + Holocene ice core data have far more confidence than the estimates of all the remaining Paleo data put together.
– Often these estimates do not properly take into account the effects of changes in the positions of the continents (which becomes significant at this timescale). Such changes can significantly affect the global distribution of albedo and the global pattern of heat transfer. Hansen et al. completely ignore the effect of changes in the position of continents, which means that they are overestimating climate sensitivity since the changes in the position of continents has led to a gradual cooling over the Cenozoic. The PALEOSENS 2012 paper does appear to try to address this issue by taking into account long term albedo changes though.
– When looking at temperature changes over large timescales such as the Cenozoic, it makes sense to take into account changes in solar irradiance. However, since solar irradiance and GHG forcing are negatively correlated in the Cenozoic, not taking into account the fact that solar irradiance is not distributed evenly across the surface of the planet can lead to an overestimation of the strength of changes in solar irradiance and therefore an overestimation in climate sensitivity estimates (I describe this effect in more detail further down).
– Most of these non-Pleistocene paleoclimate estimates are not taking into account changes in CH4 and N2O. Since CH4 and N2O are strongly correlated with temperature and were likely higher in the past when temperatures were higher, not taking CH4 and N2O into account results in an overestimation of climate sensitivity. Not only that, since radiative forcing is an approximately logarithmic function of CO2, but an approximately square root function of CH4 and N2O, as temperatures rise the relative importance of CH4 and N2O may rise relative to CO2.
In an attempt to quantify the magnitude of ignoring the effect of CH4 and N2O, look at Pleistocene ice core data. The 95% confidence interval for the change in global temperature from Holocene to LGM is 4.0 +/- 0.8 C (Annan and Hargreaves 2013). The difference in CH4 concentrations is approximately ~347 ppb and the difference in N2O concentrations is ~44 ppb. The early Eocene (55 mya) had global temperatures ~13C higher than current temperatures. If one were to treat N2O and CH4 concentrations as roughly linear functions of temperature, then this would suggest that there was ~1850 ppb of CH4 and ~413 ppb of N2O. If one uses the IPCC’s GHG radiative forcing formulas (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/aggi.html) then this suggests that the CH4 and N2O levels would have caused ~0.95 W/m^2 more radiative forcing than pre-industrial levels. Alternatively, if the early Eocene had approximately 4 times current levels of CO2 then by http://www.pnas.org/content/108/24/9770.full.pdf, there would be ~3614 ppb of CH4 and 323 ppb of N2O, which gives a change in radiative forcing of ~1.22 W/m^2 relative to pre-industrial levels. In comparison, a quadrupling of CO2 causes a change in radiative forcing of ~7.42 W/m^2, so excluding changes in CH4 and N2O mean that climate sensitivity is being overestimated by ~16% (obviously there is a lot of uncertainty here, but the point remains).
– – – – –
Paleoclimate estimates that use Pleistocene + Holocene ice core data are far more reliable and give better estimates than other Paleoclimate estimates. However, many of the studies that try to estimate climate sensitivity have flaws that cause an upward bias in estimates and an underestimation of uncertainty. These flaws include:
– Overestimation of temperature changes over the Pleistocene can cause overestimation of climate sensitivity and not taking into account uncertainty in temperatures changes over the Pleistocene can cause an underestimation of uncertainty of climate sensitivity. Some studies (such as those by Hansen et al.) use outdated estimates of temperature changes since the LGM (such as Shakun and Carlson 2010) to infer global temperature changes over the Pleistocene. My understanding is that the current best estimate for LGM-Holocene temperature difference is 4.0 +/- 0.8 C (Annan and Hargreaves 2013). This means that estimates that used higher LGM-Holocene temperature differences of ~5C are overestimating climate sensitivity by ~25%. The PALEOSENS 2012 paper you refer to though has a reasonable polar amplification factor + uncertainty, so avoids this issue.
– Milankovitch Cycles. This is my biggest gripe with Pleistocene estimates. What causes the ice ages? Milankovitch Cycles. What do most Pleistocene estimates ignore when estimating climate sensitivity? Milankovitch Cycles. It’s insanity!
The ‘argument’ that is consistently given to dismiss the effect of Milankovitch Cycles is something along the lines of “because changes in global annual solar irradiance are small due to Milankovitch Cycles, they can be neglected”.
This is complete nonsense. For one, global annual solar irradiance is proportional to 1/sqrt(1 – e^2), where e is the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit. So the above claim basically suggests that obliquity and precession do not matter as they don’t affect global annual solar irradiance. Perform a simple linear regression where global temperature over the Pleistocene is the dependant variable and eccentricity, obliquity and the precession index are the independent variables (add other explanatory factors if you want). You will find that obliquity is by far the most important Milankovitch Cycle, not eccentricity.
Obliquity has an effect on global temperatures beyond GHG or albedo feedbacks. This is due to the Stefan-Boltzman law. The earth’s surface does not have a uniform temperature; polar regions are colder than equatorial regions. Because of this, a change in the incoming radiation in a polar region will have a larger effect on global temperatures than a change in the incoming radiation in an equatorial region as the marginal change in emitted black body radiation due to a change in surface temperature is higher in the equator than in the poles. I’ll demonstrate the magnitude of this effect below:
– – – – –
Not taking into account the unevenness of changes in the distribution of solar insolation can cause significant bias and underestimation of uncertainty in estimates of climate sensitivity. For example, Van Hateren 2012 assumes that a change in solar irradiance will have approximately 0.7/4 (1 – albedo of earth divided by the ratio of the surface area of a sphere to the area of a circle of comparable radius) times the effect of an equivalent change in W/m^2 in GHG forcing. This arguably overestimates the strength of the sun relative to GHG forcing because it doesn’t take into account the fact that extra sunlight in the tropics has less affect on global temperatures than an equivalent amount of extra sunlight in the poles due to the Stefan-Boltzman law.
To illustrate the magnitude of this effect, consider a grey model of earth where in equilibrium:
(1-α)*S(φ) + B = G*σ*T4(φ) + k*(d2T(φ)/dφ2 – tan(φ)*dT(φ)/dφ)
Where α is the Albedo of Earth, S(φ) is the annual solar insolation at latitude φ, B = 0.087 W/m^2 is the heat flux due to the Earth’s internal energy, G is a factor due to greenhouse gasses, σ is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, k is the constant that determines the rate of heat transfer across the surface of the Earth and S(φ) is the temperature at latitude φ.
If I impose a restriction that the average temperature of this grey earth is 288 K and that the temperature at the equator is 300 K (which gives a temperature profile that is similar to that of Earth), then I get G = 0.1967 and k = -0.0452. If I use this model and vary solar irradiance by 1 W/m^2 then I get an equilibrium global average temperature change that is 5.44% the temperature change I get if I change greenhouse gas forcing by 1 W/m^2 (if you wish to see my matlab code that gives me this I am happy to share it).
Now if the assumption by Van Hateren were valid then the above value should be 0.7/4 = 17.5%, not 5.44%. So not taking the unevenness in the distribution of global insolation and temperature can cause one to overestimate the strength of the sun relative to GHG forcing by a factor of 3; which suggests that Van Hateren’s estimate is an underestimate of climate sensitivity. More realistically, one should take into account the unevenness of albedo distribution and the effect of cosmic rays; if I try to estimate a Van Hateren impulse response function from instrumental data and allow the effect of the sun to vary as a free parameter relative to the effect of GHG forcing, then I find that a change in solar irradiance has about 8% the effect of an equivalent change in W/m^2 in GHG forcing; so the assumption by Van Hateren overestimates the relative strength of Solar Irradiance to changes in GHG forcing by a factor of two.
– – – – –
So clearly, changes in the distribution of incoming solar radiation causes global temperature changes beyond those caused by GHG or albedo feedbacks due to the Stefan-Boltzman law. In addition, the precession index is very relevant because the albedo distribution of the Northern Hemisphere is different from the albedo distribution of the Southern Hemisphere. So to have a decent climate sensitivity estimate using Pleistocene data, Milankovitch Cycles need to be taken into account.
Let’s say I take Dome C data of dO18, CO2, CH4 and N2O. I use Annan and Hargreaves 2013 to convert the dO18 into a proxy for global average temperatures and I convert the CO2 + CH4 + N2O data into GHG forcing. For albedo forcing, let’s assume for the sake of argument that the claim by Hansen et al. 2013 that the radiative forcing due to albedo changes from Holocene to LGM is 3.4 W/m^2 +/- 20%. I can then use a sea level reconstruction/dataset (say de Boer’s ANICE output) and an assumption of linearity to get a proxy for the albedo forcing.
For the effect of Milankovitch cycles, let’s use 3 variables: the change in solar irradiance (which is proportional to 1/sqrt(1 – e^2)), the sine of the obliquity, and the precession index (e*sin(precession). I can then perform a linear regression to estimate the model T = β0 + β1*(GHG + Albedo + 0.05*Solar) + β2*sin(obliquity) + β3*precession_index + model error. If I take into account all my sources of error (model error, temperature error and albedo error) and propagate error correctly my 95% confidence interval for ECS is (2.48 +/- 0.49) C.
And this is an overestimate of ECS since I am using a low value (0.05) of the strength of the sun relative to GHGs (my regressions using the instrumental data suggest this should be closer to 0.08) and I’m not taking into account the fact that the albedo changes are not uniform. As the albedo changes are higher in polar regions than equatorial regions the strength of albedo changes relative to GHG changes should be stronger than what is assumed in the model (due to the Stefan-Boltzman law).
In any case, I think I can conclude that a proper evaluation of the Pleistocene + Holocene ice-core data yields a 95% confidence interval of climate sensitivity that excludes ECS greater than 3 C. So an ECS greater than 3C is excluded at the 2.5% confidence level by Paleoclimate data!
> [A]pparently I was committing libel/slander against scientists by questioning the methodology of their papers.
Methodology questioning in action:
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2015/02/05/atmospheric-heat-engine/#comment-46582
To play “yes, but basic physics” at AT’s was a thing of ClimateBall ™ beauty.
@ Willard –
Alarmists != Scientists, but I guess for true believers such as yourself it is difficult to tell the difference. That quote is completely unrelated to the comments that were deleted by the ‘Happiness Engineer’.
Now go run back to your echo chamber where you can add a bunch of r’s to the word ‘Growth’ and think that somehow dismisses all economic concerns about mitigation policy.
Btw, ‘since’ should be ‘single’.
Steven Mosher: he took that method and used Steven data. Thats WHY we share data,
And he got a result. The result said that TCR and ECS change to lower values. The earth is LESS SENSITIVE not INSENSITIVE. So in his complaint about misrepresenting science, Stevens misrepresents science.
Good comment.
> I found Stevens comment interesting.
Then parsing this paragraph may be missing:
http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/grafik/presse/News/AerosolForcing-Statement-BjornStevens.pdf
This paragraph seems to contain more than a world view. One might even argue that it contains arguments.
steven –
==> “How do you go about attacking the other guys work.”
Read Duarte’s post?
How about Nic’s over at Stevie-Mac’s?
Kind of amusing the number of ways that you screwed up on that comment, isn’t it?
You accuse someone of attacking someone else’s work without a careful reading of the evidence available and on top of that, you draw conclusions based on specifically omitting key parts of the evidence you referenced (“rather”).
Actually, “amusing” doesn’t quite capture it. Unintentionally ironic captures it better.
Fully intentional
Right. And you intentionally made assumptions about Stevens’ “world view” also?
“You accuse someone of attacking someone else’s work without a careful reading of the evidence available and on top of that, you draw conclusions based on specifically omitting key parts of the evidence you referenced (“rather”).”
Mosher, Just out of curiosity, why do you bother?
you miss the full intent again joshua.
“Mosher, Just out of curiosity, why do you bother?”
Its no bother. It’s practice.
Lots of people dont get this. I like to try arguments out.
So, starting from Judiths “many” and Stevens “other” what kind of argument can I make.
practice.
for some folks that looks like playing the devils advocate. For other folks it looks like being insincere, to others it looks like a dumb argument.
To me its practice.. and I’ll know what i believe when im done testing arguments out.
==========>Speaking of unintended irony, I play that card randomly and often. But I don’t know WTF irony is. I wouldn’t know irony from Shinola. So don’t expect me to actually call unintended irony correctly. I mean who really knows what’s ironic and what ain’t? Gimme a break. I am just having fun and causing disruption here.
> I am just having fun and causing disruption here.
Disruption from what, Don Joshua?
here Don
Deman on irony
http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/unintelgbledethbyflm/concepofirony.pdf
see the bits about parabasis– instructive WRT disruptions.
you could say that some denizens are master parabasisists
or start here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Concept_of_Irony_with_Continual_Reference_to_Socrates
Thanks, Steven. Like my little friend joshie, I always thought irony was like the same thing as funny, or like a joke. Nowamsayin? So when little joshie plays the unintended irony card, he means the jokes on them, but they don’t know it. At least, that what he think he mean. Completely a$$inine, but don’t tell little joshie.
But I don’t know WTF irony is. I wouldn’t know irony from Shinola
Grit your teeth for puns. Steel yourself for irony.
This response is to Michael at 4/23/15: 0045 and 0616 (military EDT), since the thread is broken. It illustrates that exceptions prove the rule, since my general rule is not to feed idiots and trolls. Only posted since I think the Bjorn Stevens iris paper is very important, have been checking this thread periodically to see what the denizens think, and noticed the following.
Michael made upthread several accusations against Dr. Curry (who wrote the foreword to my newest ebook) and myself. She can speak for herself. I will do likewise.
You said re me and my ebook Blowing Smoke (denizens, check timestamped upthread), “confabulations, misunderstandings, general inability to read carefully” and “so spectacularly stupid…hasn’t read the study”. The essay you reference is One if by Land, Two if by Sea, substantially unaltered in the ebook version from here previously guest posted. So all denizens can reread it here, review its linked references, and judge for themselves. Michael, you have not bought or read my ebook. You should. Would be educational.
I double checked. The subject matter Australian paper in its entirety and the SI are both still sitting on my hard drive. So your statement that ‘I have not read the study’ is libelous slander.
There are three figures in the posted guest essay, not one. Two come from the main paper, one from the SI. They are carefully labeled and annotated. More libelous slander.
My essay quoted both the paper abstract and the lead author’s (archived) PR to illustrate probable academic misconduct concerning main paper figure 3. The SI tabular data proves me correct and O’Leary deliberately misleading concerning evidence for alleged abrupt sea level rise.
I stand by my conclusions. Else would never have published them. Plus, now assert in writing that you are a libelous slanderer. Care to respond as Mann has to Steyn?. Please do. Cause in that event, given this fact recitation, I will rapidly tack your skinned hide to the nearest courthouse wall as a warmunist lesson to your type. OTH, I plan nothing other than to expose you via this comment for what you are. Now go away in shame.
If you want to disparage somebody, keep to innuendo. If you digress into alleged facts, you become potentially liable. Free advice from a Harvard Law grad, worth what you paid for it.
BishopHill has a good take on the SciAm article, which is mainly critical of the author http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/4/23/sciams-climate-sensitivity-car-crash.html
> which is mainly critical of the author
Indeed, our beloved Bishop scores an own goal right off the kickoff:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/4/23/sciams-climate-sensitivity-car-crash.html
You can’t make it up.
The thing about the ad hom is it’s amazing effectiveness..Just ask Hillary.
Both sides of climate issue surely use it. Difference is alarmists don’t have much without it.
> Difference is alarmists don’t have much without it.
Here you go:
http://ipcc.ch/
You’re welcome.
Joe Duarte has a very good post on the SciAm article
http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/how-not-to-report-science
http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/how-not-to-report-science
thx, fixed
Thank you!
=========>Don’t I deserve a cookie? I’ll settle for a Snausage.
The only cookie mentioned in this thread is Jose Duarte. Why would you deserve a cookie?
How about a pointy hat for getting it wrong?
That’s not me, doc. We all suspect that a certain troll is using ds tricks to get in comments that don’t go towards his total of incessant yammerings, so as to avoid getting his little self put in moderation, again. This is a clue as to identity of the perp: ========>
But you shouldn’t be concerned with such mundane things, doc. We are still waiting for the expose you promised on the phony positive water vapor feedback assumption.
Judith if you’re still cleaning up after J0SHUA’s messes the following comment was not written by me:
http://judithcurry.com/2015/04/22/bjorn-stevens-in-the-cross-fire/#comment-696736
Even though Bishop Hill is likely my long lost couzin, his critique is rather curt and superficial. Jose Duarte, who is one sharp cookie, has a much more meaty criticism that’s about right. I would somewhat question this part:
Jose “The SciAm article suggests that Stevens debunked Lewis: “Soon after, he took the unusual step, for a climate scientist, of issuing a press release to correct the misconceptions. Lewis had used an extremely rudimentary, some would even say flawed, climate model to derive his estimates, Stevens said.”
However, Stevens never mentions Lewis in his press release. Moreover, he never says anything about any models or methods. He just says he disagrees with some of the implications people are drawing, but he doesn’t specify who or what he’s talking about.
The above SciAm passage clearly implies that Stevens said these things in his press release. Unless Vaidyanathan based the above passage on an interview with Stevens, it’s a fabrication. And if he did get this from an interview, the passage needs to corrected so as not to imply that Stevens said these things in his press release.”
Sure enough Stevens never mentions Nic in his PR. However, we know that the PR is a response to Nic’s sensitivity estimation based on Stevens’ paper causing consternation among the alarmist crowd (aka schooltechers). So, did Stevens’ PR debunk Nic? That was obviously the purpose of the PR. The PR contained a link to realclimate, where all debunking is centralized, so I would say the PR attempted to debunk Nic. Alarmist “journalists” are free to say it did the job.
Stevens did not say in his press release “Lewis had used an extremely rudimentary, some would even say flawed, climate model to derive his estimates,…” My guess is that Stevens said this to the author, who did not put quotes around the words or explicitly attribute the non-quote to the PR. She may have been deliberately vague, but it’s not likely she made up the words attributed to Stevens hoping that no one would read the PR. I agree with Jose that the passage is sloppy and needs to be corrected. I won’t hold my breath.
Don Monfort:
She didn’t quote him directly, otherwise she’d have provided quote marks, so those are her words and characterizations of something he may or may not have said. If you don’t think they’ll deliberately misrepresent the people they interview (assuming she even interviewed him), you are too optimistic about the behavior of reporters.
In the mean time, Nic Lewis has responded .
It would be interesting if somebody were to ask Stevens about this paraphrase and see if he were willing to stand by it.
I agree with your assessment of Montfort. He’s gotten very shrill lately in his language, and this undermines his argument (as Willard demonstrated by cherry picking a quote from Montford’s post and using that to misrepresent what Montford was saying).
I am not at all optimistic about the behavior of reporters. But my guess is this one didn’t just make stuff out of thin air. Stevens has not denied he said that. My reply to you on CA:
She quoted him several times in the article, including:
“I was touched that they’d write me and double-check that my study was being interpreted correctly,” Stevens said, speaking on a train en route to the Netherlands.
I don’t see any reason to think she would be so bold as to write an article based largely on a non-existent interview. Maybe if she wants to get into a different line of work.
It seems to me that Stevens was deliberately vague in his email to Nic on exactly what he might have told the SciAm “journalist”. He seems to be walking a fine line, trying to stay out of trouble with the consensus goons, while avoiding disrespecting Nic. Poor guy.
> Jose Duarte, who is one sharp cookie […]
Sharp as a cookie cutter:
http://judithcurry.com/2014/07/27/the-97-feud/#comment-612495
For a cookie, being sharp may not be a virtue.
Don, speaking of making up stuff whole cloth, it’s had to get a better example than Brian Williams. So yeah, it’s very plausible that a bottom feeder like Vaidyanathan might have exaggerated or even fabricated a paraphrased quote.
I agree Stevens hasn’t confirmed or denied whether he said something that could accurately be paraphrased in the manner that Vaidyanathan paraphrased it.
If the original words were accurately recorded, she should have used those rather than paraphrase him. I’m suspicious that she paraphrased Stevens. That’s a red flag for me. There’s no reason to have paraphrased such an important comment.
The fact that Stevens himself has used the same “extremely rudimentary, some would even say flawed, climate model to derive his estimates” would not have been lost on Stevens. I find it unlikely that he would have said this, and meant it.
That means either Stevens was drunk, Vaidyanathan misrepresented his comments, or Vaidyanathan was deceptive about what Stevens said, or some combination of all four.
I think you give the bottom feeder too much credit, Carrick. I don’t think she made that up all by her lonesome. Nic communicated that wording to Stevens and Stevens took a pass on denying it. I am guessing that Stevens is no boyscout. Is it plausible that he was prompted to put out a PR because a bunch of confused school teachers contacted him? This is politics not science. I am guessing you are hoping that Stevens is behaving as you would want a fellow scientist to behave. You may be projecting your own qualities onto a guy who may not deserve the compliment.
Nic Lewis now has a post on this at Climate Audit:
http://climateaudit.org/2015/04/24/scientific-american-article-how-to-misinterpret-climate-change-research/
In all this conjecture and speculation and he said she said about this paper and what Lewis meant and what Stevens meant, etc etc, the principles, Lewis and Stevens, have handled themselves in an admirable and up front way. Kudos to them. I don’t know why there is a mystery here. based on a reading of their exchanges.
Andrew Dessler at RealClimate on the iris effect
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=18375
The most interesting part of the Dessler post was this:
“Lindzen and colleagues responded to these critiques, but few were convinced by their arguments. By 2006, when I submitted an analysis of tropospheric water vapor that investigated whether there was an iris in that, one of the reviewers pointedly questioned why anyone was still working on this issue. I subsequently withdrew the paper.”
Pointedly questioned? I subsequently withdrew the paper?
It seems just the other day some were suggesting no, no, not any peer pressure going on. And “prove anyone was fired”, along with some other challenges to what was being asserted.
I am not surprised by the Dessler admission. I am surprised that anyone would suggest this kind of thing does NOT go on. It doesn’t go on because it is climate science. It goes on because they are human beings and that is how all human interactions go on in such endeavors.
Lewis C. could not write stuff this good.
It would be great to here what Dr. Lindzen has to say about the discussion of his iris effect.
Why has it taken almost 15 years for someone to do the experiment with a model that addresses the question of what might the models say if the iris effect existed?
I’ve been emailing with Lindzen this a.m. He has sent me some material that I will use in a future post.
Yes that would be the kind of “what if” analysis one does. It’s one reason you build models.
Judith, I am really looking forward to your future post with Lindzen’s material.
Mosher, does it seem odd to you that it has taken this long to do this “what if” analysis that models are built for? I’m not denigrating the recent effort by Stevens and Mauritzen, but couldn’t/shouldn’t this have been done years ago?
I watched on youtube last night Dr. Curry’s presentation to the National Press Club at George Mason last year. The same point came up in the Q&A. The models should be used to see what if there is a spurt of volcanoes etc… We don’t know what might come our way.
Ron Graf,
“We don’t know what might come our way.” But we can be pretty “certain” something will.
Of course it’s odd. Then again what’s odder is that lindzen never tried it.
To be fair I was contacted a while back to investigate what kind of system he would need to do his own tests.
Skeptics need to articulate clearly the experiments they would like to run. A few years back von storch offered up cpu time but skeptics in the room didn’t have a clue about what to do.
What experiment would you run
Would you accept the results?
“Realists” never run any test that might contradict their religious faith.
Except when they do.
And when they do it, they don’t accept the results.
Except when they do..
And one thing that we all know for sure is that it wouldn’t matter anyway because our faith proves that they’re wrong and so by definition, anything that they find can’t be accepted.
Mother, hopefully we will find out a bit more about what Lindzen has and hasn’t done recently wrt the iris effect when Judith does her future post.
As to my designing model experiments…………..been there, done that but don’t do it no more. My experiments these days are confined to my golf swing.
On accepting the results of such experiments, I agree with what Dressler had to say:
“I view this as a what-if calculation of the impact of such a process. Future research may validate this, or it may not. This kind of calculation is one of the reasons why we like using models, of course.”
Sorry, Mother was supposed to be Mosher. The auto correct got me.
Mark,
May work either way!
=========>Uh, da knee bone connected to da ankle bone, da footbone connected to da hipbone, some people got eyes in the back of they head, the Pope is probably Catholic, and a partridge in a peach tree. Sorry, I am not making any sense at all today. Please disregard all my silly comments, as usual.
Steven Mosher :
Here is where an outsider would be worth gold to you. He would be a trusted auditor. The question is are trusted results worth letting in “non-believers?” If it is seen not to be that gets calculated too. It might not be too painful to have him. Maybe.
Seriously? Noone is an outsider when it comes to this topic. I don’t think you can reliably identify anyone who would be a trusted auditor. You might think you can. I doubt you could do so in a way that was reliable, though.
No one could.
Re: references to ClimateGate. Still available:
L’ Olivier, L’ Ombre de. “FOIA: The HARRY_READ_ME.txt File.” Blog. L’ Ombre de l’Olivier, December 1, 2009.
http://di2.nu/foia/HARRY_READ_ME-0.html
McIntyre, Steve. “The FOI Myth #1: USA.” Scientific Blog. Climate Audit, December 28, 2009.
http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/28/foi-myth-1-usa/
I don’t have an opinion on this, but if Dr. Curry or any of the other scientists could provide an estimate of the amount of time per month or year they expend dealing with FOIA requests that would be helpful.
If you count Grijalva’s request as FOIA, then the total amount of time I have personally spent on FOIA requests in the last 10 years has been about 10 minutes.
If one provides the public data when requested it doesn’t take too long. It is when one tries to fight release that it gets complicated.
Scott
Judith if you’re still cleaning up after J0SHUA’s messes the following comment was not written by me:
http://judithcurry.com/2015/04/22/bjorn-stevens-in-the-cross-fire/#comment-696736
Nic Lewis on CA says he is going to ask the SciAm to make clear that he hasn’t misinterpreted Stevens paper and he seems to have Stevens support in that. This is how I think it ends. From my CA comment:
Here’s what I expect from the author and the publications:
They simply say that they did not claim that Nic Lewis misinterpreted the paper. Nic’s ECS estimate based on the paper prompted others to misinterpret the paper:
“The misinterpretation of Stevens’ paper began with Nic Lewis, an independent climate scientist. In a blog post for Climate Audit…………………………………..
Lewis’ blog post prompted conservative publications to crow that global warming is not a major threat.”
That last part is the misinterpretation of the paper.
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You can be sure that there is some WV positive feedback at the surface boundary layer. It adds to the evaporation of water. Guess what, WV transport of latent heat to radiation altitude is the only cooling we’ve got. You can be damn sure that it works and is effective other wise you folks would be par broiled and I would not have to listen to your incessant bickering.
Yes Virginia, There is a Positive Feedback)
(but it augments the negative water vapor feedback in the earths climate)
Water vapor has been the primary atmospheric energy transfer and earth cooling agent since the earth first acquired a hydrosphere. It would stretch logic beyond credulity to think that it suddenly has become a warming factor in the climate energy balance equation.
There has been in the literature an assertion that although the CO2 alone greenhouse effect would only raise the earth temperature by ~1 C per century, that an additional positive feedback by thermally excited water vapor would increase this climate warming by a factor of between 1 and 6 to reach the catastrophic warming promoted in the UNIPCC Summary for Policy Makers. This letter addresses the absurdity of that assertion and hopes to refocus the point of view of the climate study community to further address quantitatively this area of atmospheric physics.
There is in the lower surface level of the boundary layer, a positive water vapor feedback which enhances the transfer of surface energy into the latent heat of vaporization of water. This enhances the cooling rate of the surface and enhances the primary heat energy transport to the level at which there can be radiation to space. It is not unusual in complex systems having outer loop negative feedback to find minor positive feedback loops within which augment the performance of important processes inside the system. These in no way detract from the overall system behavior. Water vaporization, vertical energy transport and radiation control the negative feedback response to any internal or external forcing that might drive climate temperature to change.
Stated simply; positive water vapor IR feedback exists and is limited by IR’s short, mean free path to the lowest strata of the boundary layer. Increased energy rate transfer in this strata is limited to the bulk surface energy transfer rate response but adds nothing to the total latent energy flow. Water vapor energy absorption and transport is the negative feedback factor driving the earth thermostat. Stated otherwise: Increased water vapor or carbon dioxide is not an additional radiation source since it has no internal source of energy but functions only as an incremental enhancement to energy transfer rate by reducing resistance above the surface-atmosphere boundary. The point of view that adding water vapor and CO2 to the atmosphere will increase downward radiation and heating is backwards. They have no source of energy to radiate. Instead, looking up from the surface we see that surface IR is totally captured and thermalized by these gasses in the bottom surface layer of the atmospheric boundary layer. The vaunted 3.7 watts/m2 increase CO2 radiation to space is not relevant to its effect in this strata of the atmosphere.
This discussion regarding water vaporization applies to the 90% of the earth covered by water in the form of open surface liquids and transpiring vegetation. The desert regions have their own less constrained radiation physics.
To tediously belabor the point in English:
Water vapor is of course the major ‘Greenhouse’ ie IR absorbing Gas’. By virtue of its broad spectral response as well as its dominating volumetric ratio it is dominant in the atmospheric boundary layer all the way through the troposphere to its final condensation and radiation escape altitudes. It captures IR from the surface radiation in the first several IR mean free path lengths in the first several meters above the surface. CO2 is also active in this region. By virtue of its volume density some 12 to 50 times smaller than water vapor in this region its mean free path is more than 10 times longer than water vapor. IR will thus encounter ~many attenuation lengths of water vapor absorption before encountering one absorption length of CO2. So we see that additional CO2 in the energy transfer equation will be minimum. Its effect could only serve to slightly lower the vertical level at which all IR is captured and thermalized in the boundary layer Any potential increment to the positive water vapor feedback loop slightly increases the rate but cannot increase the total of captured IR beyond that which water vapor has already done. Available IR absorption is complete in this bottom strata of the atmosphere. This short distance radiation inherent in any ‘greenhouse gas’ heat transfer thus serves only to improve the effective conductivity of air in this strata of the boundary layer. This conductivity is in series with and does not bypass the conductivity/convection resistance of the surface mass energy flow to the evaporating and radiating surface.
*ref. Complete thermalization
To recapitulate:
The total energy transfer rate is limited to the bulk surface mass conductivity/convectivity energy transfer rate supplying energy to the surface and is further limited by the cooling effect of surface water evaporating into the accumulating local relative humidity. This surface heat transfer process is thus rate enhanced by the positive water vapor feedback but self limited by these physical heat transfer rate limits. The water vapor positive feedback merely reduces the surface temperature required to effect the energy transfer from the surface. It cannot increase the energy transfer rate beyond that available through the surface mass.
Regardless of the balance of IR radiation capture resulting from these effects, CO2 influence on the energy transfer rate from surface to boundary layer is minimal to none. Relative to water vapor its share in capturing IR is not important but as we shall see any captured IR by any ‘greenhouse’ molecule is a desired benefit to increase the efficiency of energy transfer across the surface boundary and to the water vaporization process and thus to the ultimate water vapor energy convection transport to the radiation level in the troposphere.
Water being an IR absorption molecule it has always had its positive feedback influence on the boundary layer temperature by virtue of the complete thermalization of the captured IR., Due to spectral overlap in the 15 u band this is also true though to perhaps lesser degree than the CO2 contribution in the 2 u wide lower side band slice of unsaturated spectrum. However it plays out between conduction and radiation into the top 10 u film of surface liquid water, the end effect is still total thermalization of the IR in the lowest reaches of the boundary layer. To complete the positive feed back loop, any net thermalized air and any direct radiation of IR contributes to further vaporization of water from the surface and contributes to atmospheric convective lift of the water vapor entrained in the warm rising columns of air.
This local positive water vaporization loop through direct radiation and air thermalization does not add any energy to the system but merely lowers the resistance and thus enhances the rate at which the available energy from the surface converts its heat energy into thermalized air and latent heat of water vaporization. In other words and terms it increases the gain and therefore the rate in a surface-power limited positive feedback energy transfer loop from surface to air and water vaporization but cannot increase the total amount of energy transfer since the surface mass is the the only source of energy. This positive feedback water vapor loop is already essentially power limited (saturated) and thus can have no significant response to additional IR capture by additional CO2 gas. In feedback system terms; the loop is already driven by positive feedback to its power supply limit. If surface mass heat energy flow constraints allowed it to respond faster, it would already have evaporated more water to do so.
The surface transfer would take place without water vapor positive feedback albeit at a higher surface temperature, slower air conduction/convection limited rate. The positive feedback merely reduces the total resistance to energy transfer toward the surface energy rate limit, it generates no more total water vapor or energy but brings the surface energy transfer to its physical limit more efficiently at a lower surface temperature than would be required in a conduction-only limited heat transfer. In this respect a local delicately balanced positive feedback factor is not required to prevent runaway since the process is power limited to the rate at which the surface can transfer energy from its thermal mass to the water-air boundary. Thus positive feedback is not to be feared since it makes the surface cooling more efficient and promotes the normal hydrologic cooling cycle of the climate by enhancing latent heat capture in the water vapor at a lower surface temperature.
This provides a strong negative feedback to the surface temperature rising and to the overall climate response to either internal or external forcing, since the evaporated water with its latent heat of vaporization dominates the surface cooling effect by enhancing transfer of energy from the surface. Convection of this latent heat to the mid and upper level of the troposphere where water, both liquid and vapor dominates the total radiation spectrum to space is the major factor in the earth cooling energy balance.
Above the final condensation and freezing level the increased (doubling) CO2 content of the thin atmosphere would have a minor effect due to its low partial pressure and density and perhaps narrowing side band spectral lines. The final IR radiation temperature (~217K) of the TOA CO2 15 u band spectrum implies that its radiation to space takes place at the tropopause level where the vaunted colder temperature with altitude due to negative lapse rate is diminishing to zero. This further brings into serious question that there can be any significant CO2 ‘greenhouse effect’ anywhere in the earth climate system but that on balance additional CO2 may have at most a slight net cooling effect on the climate. Ref. IR radiation enhancement.
A note:
Perhaps this helps explain why the ocean thermal energy increase is on the order of ½ watt/m2 or less and does not reflect the predicted (1.6 watt) CO2 heating increase let alone any positive feedback energy increase effects.