by Judith Curry
The American Meteorological Society has issued a draft report on the results from a survey of the views of their membership on climate change.
Their report on the initial findings is found [here]. Excerpts from the Summary:
This report provides initial findings from the national survey of American Meteorological Society (AMS) member views on climate change conducted by George Mason University and AMS, with National Science Foundation funding.
Our survey was administered via email between January 6 and January 31, 2016. After making an initial request to participate, we sent up to five additional requests/reminders to participate to those people who had not yet completed a survey. A total of 4,092 AMS members participated, with participants coming from the United States and internationally. The participation rate in the survey was 53.3%.
Funding for this research was provided by NSF Award # DRL-1422431.
Views on climate change:
- Nearly all AMS members (96%) think climate change – as defined by AMS – is happening, with almost 9 out of 10 (89%) stating that they are either ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ sure it is happening. Only 1% think climate change is not happening, and 3% say they don’t know.
- A large majority of AMS members indicated that human activity is causing at least a portion of the changes in the climate over the past 50 years. Specifically: 29% think the change is largely or entirely due to human activity (i.e., 81 to 100%); 38% think most of the change is caused by human activity (i.e., 61 to 80%); 14% think the change is caused more or less equally by human activity and natural events; and 7% think the change is caused mostly by natural events. Conversely, 5% think the change is caused largely or entirely by natural events, 6% say they don’t know, and 1% think climate change isn’t happening.
- AMS members have diverse views on the extent to which additional climate change can be averted over the next 50 years, if mitigation measures are taken worldwide. Only 18% think a large amount or almost all additional climate change can be averted, while many more think a moderate (42%) or a small (25%) amount of additional climate change can be averted. Only 9% think almost no additional climate change can be averted, and 6% say they don’t know.
- AMS members also hold diverse views about the extent to which harm – to people’s health, agriculture, fresh water supplies, transportation systems, and homes and other buildings – can be prevented over the next 50 years. About one quarter to one third (22% to 37%) think a large amount or almost all of the harm to these things can be prevented, while approximately another one third (30% to 43%) think a moderate amount of harm can be prevented, and about one quarter (17% to 28%) think only a small amount or none of the harm can be prevented. About one in ten (7 to 10%) don’t know, and about one in twenty (3 to 5%) don’t think there will be any harm from climate change in the next 50 years.
- Nearly one in five AMS members (17%) say their opinion about climate change has changed in the past five years. Of those, the large majority (87%) say they now feel more convinced that climate change is happening, most commonly because of one or more of the following reasons: new peer-reviewed climate science (66%); the scientific community becoming more certain (48%); having personally seen evidence of climate change (46%); or one or more climate scientists who influenced them (30%).
Views on local impacts of climate change:
- Nearly three out of every four AMS members (74%) think the local climate in their area has changed in the past 50 years as a result of climate change, while one in ten (11%) think it hasn’t, and a nearly one in six say they don’t know (15%).
- Seven out of ten AMS members who think their local climate has changed say the impacts have been primarily harmful (36%) or approximately equally mixed between harmful and beneficial (36%). One out of five (21%) AMS members say they don’t know.
- Almost eight in ten AMS members (78%) think the local climate in their area will change over the next 50 years. About half (47%) of these respondents say the impacts will be primarily harmful, while 29% say the impacts will be equally mixed between beneficial and harmful. One in five are not sure how climate change will impact their local area.A diverse group of AMS members participated in the survey:
- Approximately eight in ten respondents are men (81%) and one in five are women (18%). Respondents range in age from 18 to 29 (6%) to 70+ (11%), with a modal age category of 50 to 59 (25%).
- Most respondents hold a BS (32%), MS (30%) or Ph.D (33%) in meteorology/atmospheric science. Other commonly reported degrees are BS (17%), MS (10%), or Ph.D (12%) degrees in another STEM field.
- More than one in three (37%) AMS members who participated in this survey consider themselves ‘expert’ in climate science.
JC reflections
The key issue is what % of AMS members agree with the IPCC conclusion on attribution (extremely likely that more than half . . .). According to these numbers, 67% think that humans are causing at least 61% of the warming. For comparison, the previous AMS survey found 52% thought the warming was ‘mostly’ attributed to humans. It is not clear from the survey how strong these convictions are, in terms of ‘extremely likely’, etc. We’ll see if their final report includes further insights.
While this is not one of the better constructed surveys on this issue, I regard the AMS membership as an extremely important one to survey on this issue. While Ph.D.s comprised only about a third of the respondents, I regard B.S. and M.S. meteorologists as more qualified to judge on the issue of attribution than are many ‘climate’ scientists included in such surveys that have Ph.D.s in ecology, economics, health impacts, etc.
One final comment. I did not respond to the survey, because I did not receive the email soliciting my response (some snafu over renewing my membership b/c of an expired credit card). Peter Webster did receive the survey and showed it to me. I have to say my first reaction to the survey would have been not to respond; the lead author on this is Edward Maibach, of the RICO 20 – second signatory after Shukla (I wonder if other AMS members reacted in this way). My concerns with the George Mason group being in charge of this is that they are on record as advocates on this issue. From my perspective, the selection of questions was not as meaningful as it could have been (e.g. better questions were asked in the Netherlands survey).
Science by survey, how baroque …
Pointman
That is the only way to measure how lock-step is the consensus of scientists seeking federal research funds.
The consensus will probably not disperse until the Wizard of Oz is led away.
I advocate forgiveness as the quickest and surest way to end seventy years of deceit of the public.
The decision by the editor of Nature to accept the paper on “Solar energy” for review (Nature’s tracking number NCLIM16030433) confirms the utility of this policy:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Solar_Energy.pdf
omanuel,
It demonstrates the extent to which climate science has been debauched.
It’s little more than speculation and opinion.
Climate science ranks right up there with economics and evolutionary biology when it comes to constructing towering skyscrapers of speculation and opinion upon paltry foundations of shabby, tenuous evidence.
Yes. If your subject is “What do people think” it’s far better to just make crap up.
Funnily over 60% of those questioned didnt think they were experts
Shhh, Mosher. There’s no agreement among scientists, and even if there was, there’s not a complete consensus, and even if there was, it doesn’t matter.
And even if it mattered — hey look! A squirrel!
It’s interesting that so many “skeptics” argue that focusing on whether there is a prevalence of shared opinion among climate change experts is antithetical to science even as they spend tons o’ their time filling thread after thread with comments speculating on the precise quantification of shared opinion among expert on climate change.
Science is science only when all scientists disagree with each other.
No, wait, that’s Republicans, not scientists.
Nobody wants to talk about it, but squirrels like climate scientists, have been the driving force behind innovation and small scale grass roots inventiveness by native folk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3Ya6z-NlDo
Pointman
So, if the 47% that didn’t respond do not accept the IPCC attribution statement but are reluctant to say so, then just 35% of AMS members support the IPCC attribution statement.
Even a child can see it’s 35% plus some proportion of the 47% who didn’t respond.
Providing the child isn’t an engineer.
Pointman,
“Oh look! A squirrel!”
“Wait one . . . ”
Sorry. Bit of military jargon.
Cheers.
@Mike – Don’t scoff, don’t be cynical. It’s small scale innovation like that which led to the invention of the flying squirrel, and where would we be without that nowadays?
Pointman
“having personally seen evidence of climate change”
Since climate is an abstraction, I wonder what the evidence they saw was.
Andrew
This is another one of those “a survery of people who believe in Global Warming think…”
Andrew
These are people who accept findings from research that has never been replicated despite knowing that most such research is wrong. Logic is clearly not among their strengths. They believe because they want to believe for emotionally satisfying reasons. Has nothing to do with real science.
Stanton Brown,
A survey of bystanding subjects agreed that the Emperor had some clothes on. lol
Andrew
Bad Andrew,
The only survey you could trust would be one of geologists who have been screened and are known to recognise that CAGW is cr@p. :)
Could you make your own survey?
I was happy with the questions from the netherlands survey, also bray and von storch have good questions in their surveys
George, you might be thinking what I’m thinking. It looks like most of the survey assumed that climate change was a significant issue that mankind could somehow address. If a respondent didn’t agree with this assumption then the options they had were to abandon the survey or provide some kind of answer even if it was in contradiction to what they’d already said.
It looks like most of the survey assumed that climate change was a significant issue that mankind could somehow address.
That doesn’t appear to be in the survey at all. Can you point it out? I must have missed it.
This survey is about whether climate change is happening, and if so, what the cause is. The survey asks the respondents what they think. It doesn’t assume much of anything.
jdmel,
Yep.
Climate scientists have made quite a science out of sticking their fingers in the wind to see which way the (political) winds are blowing.
Yes, that must be it, Glenn. Meteorologists lack integrity when they don’t agree with you. Next time you disagree with me, I will know to attribute it to your lack of integrity.
How Machiavellian.
A nice example of how to identify and punish those who do not support the consensus… ask them in a survey.
Oh boy, I wouldn’t want to be among the 47% who failed to respond, and are now on the Society’s sh*t list. It would be even worse to be among those who did respond but gave the wrong answers. The Society probably will start by just kicking those poor saps out of the organization. No telling what will happen next.
You mean like the RICO20 list, right?
“More than one in three (37%) AMS members who participated in this survey consider themselves ‘expert’ in climate science.”
Based on what criteria?
Andrew
True. maybe 100% were not experts. of course Roy Spencer answered that he was an expert. Ask him for his criteria.
“maybe 100% were not experts”
Maybe 100% were not even serious.
Andrew
maybe they were lizard people
Based on what criteria?
A particularly insightful question. Given the fascinating persistence of the 97%-Climate-Scientist meme, I asked myself, “Self, what the hell passes as a Climate Scientist these days?”
With that in mind I ran variations on the google search climate science degree program course catalog and proceeded to examine the math prerequisites and requirements for MS and PhD programs. [Considering the meme, I applied the rigorous methodology of sampling the results as I pleased thus insuring statistical significance by the Law of Conservation of Irony.]
The outcome was fascinating to say the least. The mean was heavily weighted toward at least two semesters of undergraduate calculus and an equal number of statistics classes. I am actively interviewing advisers to shape a PhD thesis proposal giving my findings. Once I have secured my bona fides in the climate sciences I will entertain inquiries from those who wish to replicate my results. I will welcome the opportunity to compare my data after you publish your findings.
Anything with Maibach’s name on it needs to be taken with several pinches of salt. He was a key player in the RICO20 letter, and signed it, though it said “as climate scientists”, when in fact his field is, from his own web page, “social marketing”.
In a recent paper he and others claimed that ‘consensus messaging’ works and increases public support for climate action, when in fact the effect found was tiny, 1.5 points on a hundred point scale. Dan Kahan has some good posts on this.
Anything with Dan Kahan’s name…
Anything with Paul matthew’s name
Anything with anyone’s name…
needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
taking things with a grain of salt differs from taking things with a shakerful of salt.
na.. just shoot the messenger. the lazy skeptics approach.
I get your point Steven, but I also think it reasonable to question any output from the people who signed that letter. My personal opinion is that any professional organization they might belong to should have kicked them out. That will stick around as a classic example of moral relatively and low integrity.
A tree is known by it’s fruit.
Respect is earned not given.
Their words betray them.
And many more similar.
I wonder if there is a non-respondent bias in this study. 47% didn’t reply. Why – did they not want their opinion recorded? How many wanted to be recognized as being on the “winning” side?
they didnt open the email.
The response rate is acceptable for a survey of this sort. Whatever problems there may be with the survey or analysis (I haven’t looked at it), that is not one of them.
If the invitation was sent to all AMS members you can accept the results as being broadly representative of the society’s views, with a slight caveat that people feeling strongly about this particular issue (on either side) can be expected to be more likely to respond. (Hence if there is sample bias it might be due to a loss of representation in the middle of the spectrum of opinions–but I would expect that to be slight and not to bias the results.)
There are standard checks for response bias if you have data on other characteristics of the respondents and non-respondents, e.g. age, political registration, type of employer, etc. Surveys of this sort are not like random polls of a population, where you can more easily take steps to get representativeness.
Thomas, I think you are right. But even if the response was 100%, some would claim the results were biased because of coercion, the wording of questions, and who knows what else. Never underestimate the power of denial.
One wonders whether the 46.7% that did not respond did not because of who was behind the survey, and how it was worded. Up to five additional requests to participate strongly suggests an active choice not to do so.
Rud
Yes, that is very interesting that it appears that nearly half did not want to participate in what I would have thought was an important survey.
What sort of response rate is usual I wonder for this sort of key survey?
tonyb
actually, this seems to be a pretty high response rate. reasons for not responding (probably in order of importance) would be missed the email or forgot to respond, not interested in climate change, or objections to the survey
“not interested in climate change”
I guess they saw some evidence that the climate is the same.
Andrew
Climate is as climate does.
How about these two additional reasons:
1. I’m occupied with something more important to me than completing the survey.
2. I spend time only on what I’m paid to spend time on.
So about half of those in the AMS, probably the half that believe in man-made climate change, answered the survey.
About half could not be intimidated into answering the survey even after 5 strongly worded attempts.
It certainly begs the question: did this other half not believe in man-made climate change, and they didn’t want to be identified in case there was backlash? I.E. Loss of jobs, favors, demotions, etc.?
Bottom line: the survey results are highly suspect if you want to claim that it is representative of the views of the ENTIRE AMS.
They didnt open the email and so HOW did they read a strongly worded attempt?
So about half of those in the AMS, probably the half that believe in man-made climate change, answered the survey.
Looks like motivated reasoning to me. There’s absolutely zero reason to expect any correlation between what beliefs you hold on this issue and your interest in completing a quick (anonymous!) survey.
No, the response rate to a survey recruited by email invitation is actually quite good.
Or, some of the non-respondents think it is silly people are still wondering if members have any doubts at all about human beings causing the bloody obvious.
“. It is important
to note that 3,364 people (43.8% of our total sample) did not open any email associated with this survey.
We are therefore unable to determine if these people choose not to participate, or if our emails were
captured by a spam filter, denying them the opportunity to participate. Of those who participated (4,092),
96.6% competed the entire survey. The median time to complete the survey was 5 minutes.”
If a respondent thought that climate change was happening but the human contribution was negligible, it would be difficult for them to answer any questions that assumed otherwise.
By the way, I’m amused by the claim “3,364 people (43.8% of our total sample) did not open any email associated with this survey.” Has AMS got software that can determine if a user has opened an email? I doubt that very much; not if the recipient is using the email software I use. My email software asks me to respond if the sender has requested a receipt but it only asks for that response after I’ve opened the email. To me this from the AMS looks like a bogus claim to try to squash the possibility that people did read the emails and decided not to take part.
Yes, many email sausage grinders (commercial applications that send large volumes of email) track receipt, opens and clickthroughs.
“Has AMS got software that can determine if a user has opened an email? I doubt that very much; not if the recipient is using the email software I use”
They used Qualtrics survey software. If this package is like ANY of the mass mailing/survey tools I have used, you can get a real time dashboard showing if the mail is opened.
Crap you can mass mail with gmail if you know what you are doing and get a update on opened mail..
and no the person opening the mail isnt made aware that his opening
sends a signal back to the mailer
Yes, Qualtrics has that capability.
If they can track who opened the e-mail, it’s because they have it retrieve something from a website on the Internet and they track that.
If they do that, it’s equally easy to track who it is that opened the message. hardly anonymous.
Just demonstrate that the sample is representative of the population and I’ll have more confidence in the results. A good response rate is only half way home.
Anyone who accepts the findings of peer-reviewed climate research despite the obvious failure of quality control is clearly not intelligent enough to have any credibility.
Yes. Judith and Nic Lewis wrote a great paper on a Low ECS.
dont trust peer review
I think we have to begin considering whether in climate science peer review is the last refuge of scoundrels.
I think we have to wonder why Mosher is trying to prop up the results of a survey that no one cares about.
Andrew
Huh?
I think it’s far too early to say anything positive or negative about the survey.
you dont even have the frickin cross tabs
but I do enjoy making fun of knee jerk silly criticisms.
I will list them
1. Response rate criticisms
2. Who asked the questions (motivations) criticisms
I have a systematic adversion to stupid arguments, whether they are mann’s hockeysticks or skeptics stupid pet tricks
“I think it’s far too early to say anything positive or negative about the survey.”
Yes, let wait 48 hrs and see if we start caring about it.
Andrew
I think we have to wonder why Mosher is trying to prop up the results of a survey that no one cares about.
No one cares about it… but they posted about why they think it’s wrong, anyway? O.o
“No one cares about it… but they posted about why they think it’s wrong, anyway?”
OK… I’ll qualify… statistically, no one in the general population cares about it.
Andrew
“I think it’s far too early to say anything positive or negative about the survey.”
And, of course, by the time you ARE ready, the media consider it old news and the consensus has “moved on”.
That’s not to say your approach is wrong Steve – I tend to agree – but rather noting that such a measured response is abused by those with an agenda.
If you don’t care about this, why are you commenting on it?
Bad Andrew | March 24, 2016 at 5:45 pm |
“OK… I’ll qualify… statistically, no one in the general population cares about it.”
______
Based on Bad Andrew’s jiffy survey of the general population.
Actually Andrew Steven is simply poking a stick at all the otherwise intelligent people here who are arguing about who participated, who didn’t and why. It’s dumb. It’s a waste of effort. And it makes idi0t trolls look reasonable by comparison
no evidence that warming is related to fossil fuel emissions
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2725743
There are several fallacies of these type of surveys / polls, particularly write-in postcard types. First of all they are opinion polls. They depend to some extent on which way the winds are blowing and the push by interested groups / parties to influence opinion. Opinion’s depend on many factors including the way questions are presented; the nature / extent of background provided with the question; the qualifications of the poll takers (ranges widely in many polls); what vested interest do poll takers have. Often times polls are created with false intentions, to illicit a desired answer.
In my experience political polls often reflect what’s recently appeared in the mainstream media. Are you saying the same could be true here?
Mr.Wolfe, there are problems with opinion polls. None of them are perfect and there are a number of associated biases that have to be looked out for.
Nonetheless, opinion polls quite frequently are accurate reflections of the opinions of large groups of people. They accurately (not always) predict the outcome of elections, the success of movies, TV shows, songs, the success of advertisements, products and services introduced into the market and broad movements of opinion as it changes over time.
It’s better than having a bunch of friends evaluate abstracts, at least.
Surveys on the consensus and climate change have consistently shown the more active scientists are in publishing climate related studies the more likely they are to support the consensus position.
Joseph,
You wrote –
“Surveys on the consensus and climate change have consistently shown the more active scientists are in publishing climate related studies the more likely they are to support the consensus position.”
Surely they would be expected to do that, wouldn’t they?
Did you leave something out? You seem to have stated the obvious, but maybe I’ve missed something.
Cheers.
Interesting comment Joseph.
Do you realize it can be taken to mean more than one thing?
I’ll bet you read it as saying the people most expert or with the most experience in the field all support the consensus.
Adjust what is meant by active and the statement says activist scientists are the ones most likely to support the consensus.
In addition to the lead author being one of the slimeballs of the RICO20, the first question is a farce. Here’s what the abstract reports:
Sounds like firm support for the claimed “97% consensus” … but … um … so … just how does the AMS define climate change?
From the paper …
So, according to the study, using that definition 96% of the AMS membership think “climate change is happening” … how on earth is this useful information, other than to show that 4% of the membership doesn’t have a clue?
This question is in the survey for one simple reason—to reinforce the bogus “97% consensus” so the alarmists will have another club to bash skeptics with. It is disgraceful to see the name of the AMS associated with this perfidy.
Anyone who thinks that this is something other than a publicity exercise to try to prop up a moribund theory is not following the story …
w.
You must have missed the specifics, Mr. Willis:
“29% think the change is largely or entirely due to human activity (i.e., 81 to 100%);
38% think most of the change is caused by human activity (i.e., 61 to 80%);
14% think the change is caused more or less equally by human activity and natural events; and
7% think the change is caused mostly by natural events. Conversely,
5% think the change is caused largely or entirely by natural events,
6% say they don’t know, and 1% think climate change isn’t happening.”
Characterizing this survey as being equivalent to the bogus “97% consensus” crap would be bogus crap. You don’t intend to disseminate bogus crap, do you Mr. Willis? We have enough of that around here.
Montfort Math
“29% think the change is largely or entirely due to human activity (i.e., 81 to 100%);
Don Monfort | March 24, 2016 at 2:08 pm |
Thanks, Don, but you must have missed the part where I specified that I was talking about the FIRST QUESTION being a farce and politically motivated. I said nothing about the other questions, that’s all you arguing with yourself. You say, for example,
You need to start reading more closely. I choose my words carefully in part because I like clarity, and in part because I know I have stalkers like you. I said the FIRST QUESTION was just more bogus 97% consensus crap. I said nothing about the rest of the survey, that’s all your “bogus crap”, not mine.
Once again, Don, your obsession with showing that I’m wrong about something, anything, has led you into foolish errors. Someday I hope you’ll realize that your knee-jerk denial of anything I say only costs you, not me, and that you’ll apply your obvious abilities and talents to something more productive than reflexively trying to drag another person down …
In friendship,
w.
I am curious as to how we get from “ANY systematic change in the long-term statistics of climate elements” in the definition, to “THE change” attributed in the percentages? (emphasis added)
“Any” here implies many while “the” implies only one. Is there only one element and one change? Or are different respondents attributing human causation to different elements? Is the urban heat island effect an element? Pretty much everyone agrees that this is human caused. Or does the definition limit elements and changes to global statistics?
This survey is hopelessly confused. The attribution percentages accordingly make no sense.
Even more funny is they missed that 67% of the respondents are not
self proclaimed experts
You are correct, Mr. Willis. A more careful reading and parsing of your comment reveals that I have made a mistake. My apologies and fervent hope for your eventual redemption on that other stuff we have discussed.
Come around more often. Most of the rest of these characters are way too easy.
By the way, you were wrong on that thread where you criticized the BEST story on China pollution fatalities. Their so-called research is not out of line with data reported in other so-called research. All depend ultimately on bogus data from the Red Chinese thugocracy. But what can mere so-called researchers do about that? You might consider going back there, reading my comment (I believe I left a reference to 1.6 million deaths reported by other researchers) and deciding if you should apologize to your pal Mosher. If you haven’t done so already.
Don Monfort | March 24, 2016 at 3:23 pm |
Thanks, Don, appreciated.
As you point out, it’s in line with “other so-called research”, and I agree completely about the numbers from the thugocracy. You gotta assume they have their thumb on the scales. My main issue is the ascription of imaginary deaths based on various mortality models emulating the effects of very small doses.The main issue I have with such studies is that the relative risk RR is rarely examined, so we end up making billion-dollar expenditures to provide unmeasurably small improvements.
Finally, regarding Mosher, Mosh and I are friends, and if he feels I owe him an apology, I’m more than happy to offer him one. On my planet, Mosh is one of the good guys. His dang Haiku-style of drive-by posting drives me spare sometimes, but his ideas are usually worth listening to even when I disagree with him.
Regards,
w.
We agree on a lot of things, including Mosher. I think if you refresh your memory on your rather nasty comment on the China thing, you will realize that you do owe him an apology. I don’t think he is going to ask for one. Similarly, if you reflect and do some introspection on your comments on that other matter we have discussed, you might decide that disparaging the honor of others was not necessary to offer a plausible defense of your own honor.
“So, according to the study, using that definition 96% of the AMS membership think “climate change is happening” … how on earth is this useful information, other than to show that 4% of the membership doesn’t have a clue?”
1. It is very useful to refine the follow-on questions.
2…it doesnt show that 4% don’t have a clue, unless you are in the 96%
“This question is in the survey for one simple reason—to reinforce the bogus “97% consensus” so the alarmists will have another club to bash skeptics with. It is disgraceful to see the name of the AMS associated with this perfidy.”
The mind reading here and conspiratorial ideation is awesome !
I can’t imagine doing a survey about climate science beliefs WITHOUT asking this question and then following up to ask more detailed
oh Wait Perfidy? for asking a question about climate change?
“29% think the change is largely or entirely due to human activity (i.e., 81 to 100%); ”
If the respondents think the change is ENTIRELY due to human activity then they are saying that there’s NO natural climate change. That kind of statement from any AMS member is a worry.
If the respondents think the change is ENTIRELY due to human activity then they are saying that there’s NO natural climate change.
Or that natural climate change would have cooled the Earth, if we hadn’t been doing anything.
Which is consistent with the general global cooling trend of the last 5,000 years, up until the last century.
“My main issue is the ascription of imaginary deaths based on various mortality models emulating the effects of very small doses.”
1. These are not Small doses.
2. they are not imaginary deaths.. we are talking “shortened” life
The problem is we have a “natural” experiment of sorts.
Where folks north of the river got free coal to burn
and folks south of the river did not
. http://www.pnas.org/content/110/32/12936.full.pdf
Now of course these types of studies always come with uncertainties.
If could be unicorns that shorted life. I am reminded that my grandfather died from breathing in fine dust at his workplace.
In any case, the simple fact is the best evidence we have says this.
1. Pm25 is small enough to get stuck in your lungs
2. Heavy metals in the pm25 leech into you blood.
3. Heavy metals in your blood is not a good thing generally
4. On really bad pollution days emergency rooms fill up
with cardio and respiratory complaints
5. In a “natural” experiment folks exposed to pm25 died sooner
The final details of the math.. 1 year? 2 years? 1 million lives,
2 million? 50K? ya, ya that’s some fun science. But seriously
you would not choose to breathe air in china,
Max,
Don’s math is fine. Your reading comprehension is what needs work.
How is that my math, maxie? Are you on the same page we are, maxie? Why do you insist on being irrelevant?
Sorry, Don, I didn’t see you were just quoting JC.
“29% think the change is largely or entirely due to human activity (i.e., 81 to 100%);
max10k,
You quoted –
“29% think the change is largely or entirely due to human activity (i.e., 81 to 100%);”
I assume “i.e.” stands for “that is”.
Is 81 to 100 really 29? Is this climatological mathematics, or have I missed something? I presume you check before you quote something.
Cheers.
No, I know 100% – 81% doesn’t equal 29%. I quoted Don Motford quoting Judith Curry. Apparently, Don bought it, not realizing Judith did it just to see if readers were paying attention.
max10k,
You wrote –
“No, I know 100% – 81% doesn’t equal 29%.”
And yet, in the usual misleading Warmist fashion, (Warmists being oh-so-interested in truth, education, and all that good stuff), you knowingly pass on a falsehood in a misguided attempt to make some total stranger look foolish, or stupid, or both.
Climatologists are generally fools or frauds. The fraud knowingly allows a falsehood to be perpetrated – often trying to excuse themselves later by saying they were only helping somebody out. For the finest of motives, of course!
Well done! Keep this up, and you well be admitted as an acolyte to the Warmist Cult of Latter Day Scientism.
Cheers.
What a couple of idi0ts. Go back and read harder.
Mike Flynn accuses me of wrong doing:
“you knowingly pass on a falsehood in a misguided attempt to make some total stranger look foolish, or stupid, or both”
_____
1. Don Montfort is anything but a total stranger here at ClimateEtc. He is a well known pest.
2. Don Montford more than just looks like what you said.
Two tries at spelling Don’s name, I misspell it both times, and even the misspellings aren’t consistent.
Max,
29% represents a percentage of respondents.
81 – 100% represents the percentage climate change that is driven by human activity.
That you can’t understand that illustrates why you are so out of your depth here.
I agree Willis. The abstract is using the ambiguous meaning of the term “climate change” to shape readers’ perceptions.
AMS members might have read one meaning into the words – any variation in climate – or they might have read another, the one that should always be stated “manmade climate change”.
Willis writes
“Anyone who thinks that this is something other than a publicity exercise to try to prop up a moribund theory is not following the story …”
________
Hi Willis,
Have you looked into making a FOIA requests?
If no Federal funds were used, you could ask Lamar Smith to go after ’em.
If all else fails, hire a private eye.
You may have a good nose If the survey had any Federal
Sorry for the sentence fragment. I was going to say Willis has a good nose for smelling motives, but changed my mind.
Another comprehension fail.
Go back and the part about NSF funding.
You really want that title of clown prince of tards, don’t you max.
Thanks, Willis. I read as far as the statement:
Apparently 74% think “climate in their area has changed in the past 50 years as a result of climate change”
Who writes this nonsense?
I get it. If you don’t like a survey’s result’s, there may something wrong with the survey. On the other hand, if you like the results, the survey is a good one.
max,
You’ve hit the nail on the head as to why surveys don’t really tell us anything scientific.
Andrew
Meh. Surveys are actually the most-scientific way we have of measuring people’s beliefs and opinions.
“Surveys are actually the most-scientific way we have of measuring people’s beliefs and opinions.”
You’ve measured a belief Benjamin Winchester? What calibrated instrument did you use?
Andrew
Even More funny is the refusal to answer questions because of the person who asked them.
It was just some simple questions about what it was that Phil Jones ‘dumped’. He had a very important role to play in the AGW story. Why not let the people know what the original data consisted of how much was there and how was it all disposed of at the time? Scientists like PJ, must have a list or a link somewhere. Or it is not science anymore.
Arch. there is no MISSING DATA
Jones got his data from NWS
When we asked him for his COPIES of NWS he refused
in the mail he explained that he had probably lost his orginal copies.
If that is the simple truth, he did not save any ‘space’ at all. Strange.
Ya. Arch. unless you have actually work with the data, read all the mails, and participated in the FOIA, it’s best to just be quiet.
I spent quite a bit of time with the emails that Thanksgiving. It is not necessary to have worked with the data to answer this important question. The reason I ask you and others is because you have worked with the players and FOIA. Are you sure what it was Phil Jones ‘dumped”? I think you are unsure of the facts. Probably…
Steven,
Sorry but your take on Phil Jones is wrong. I was one of the first people to be “refused” his data in the sense that he never sent any and said he had lost it.
However, “data” was not defined as what was held in the US or what Phil did with his copy of it.
The “data” was about what Phil selected from the data base to write his papers. I was objecting to his non use of material that conflicted his deductions. As was my mate Warwick Hughes who received that famous email in short “Why send you my data when all you want to do is find errors?”
The errors were not about absolute values in data, they were about selection bias aka cherry picking.
Phil was instrumental in giving CIi Sci a bad name. We from hard science had not seen blatant cherry picking before and were aghast. Still are.
Geoff.
The riddle now becomes, how many baskets of cherries does it take to save space? My take on PJ’s email was he saved many cubic feet of space. Reading between the lines…
“I spent quite a bit of time with the emails that Thanksgiving. ”
Sorry. here is a test I ask people to take.
Explain the significance of the phrase “squeaky clean” describe
the mail. Who wrote it and why. what is unique about the phrase.
Do the same for the term “megaphone”
Anyone who has read the mails in detail should be able to answer these questions. If you can’t go back and read harder.
“It is not necessary to have worked with the data to answer this important question. ”
Ah yes it is. The first thing you would do is compare all the hadcrut3
records with the extant GHCN data. you would note the overlaps
and the data that was not in GHCN. For the data not in GHCN
you would then ask who was the source of this. And then go
looking for that source.
Again: Jones got data from NWS in SOME cases. in over 95%
of the cases he got data from GHCN. Now he takes almost all his data from NWS and doesnt do any appreciable work on it
The reason I ask you and others is because you have worked with the players and FOIA. Are you sure what it was Phil Jones ‘dumped”? I think you are unsure of the facts. Probably…
Start here
‘> If we have lost any data it is the following:
>
> 1. Station series for sites that in the 1980s we deemed then to be
> affected by either urban biases or by numerous site moves, that were
> either not correctable or not worth doing as there were other series
> in the region.
>
> 2. The original data for sites that we adjusted the temperature data
> [Phil: for known inhomogeneities, or what?] in the 1980s. We still
> have our adjusted data, of course, and these along with all other
> sites that didn’t need adjusting.
>
> 3. Since the 1980s as colleagues and NMSs [National Meteorological
> Services] have produced adjusted series for regions and or countries,
> then we replaced the data we had with the better series.
> http://www.wmo.int/pages/members/index_en.html
The bottom line is this: hadcrut is a SUBSET of all the available data.
second.
personally I have done experiments removing ALL stations used by Jones.
The answer I get from the remaining stations is the same.
The ONLY issue that has any merit had to do with the loss of Chinese METADATA.
Sorry Geoff.
You are missing the point.
There are two questions about the loss of data.
1. Pat Micheals and others accused Jones of Losing the data used in
Hadcrut.
2. Keenan ( as I recall) accused him of fraud WRT the data about
station moves in his 1990 study.
you want to talk selection bias?
Well. we covered that extensively.
The biggest source of selection bias is refusing to infill.
Thank you, Mr. Geoff Sherrington. I learned something more about this and now have more questions. I will say again that there is a great story for someone who is able to get the facts about the event and just what it was that Phil Jones, meant when he gave the quote. I don’t think dumping the data was a misstep he had his reasons why.
Steven I am sorry, you lost your Chinese METADATA. You aren’t alone. You know what they say though, no ticket…
Steven Mosher,
You wrote –
“Sorry. here is a test I ask people to take.” I am curious. Can you actually name anyone who expressed a desire for you to administer a test to them?
Or do you just wander about aimlessly, asking people to take a test?
Do you get many takers? Do you offer them money? How much? I might be interested, if you pay me enough.
Cheers.
Steven,
I still have my emails and a lucid mind.
There is no need for you to reinterpret what happened.
I have not mentioned PJ dumping data, only never sending any in response to requests and writing that some was lost.
The cherry picking was astounding then as now.
You should visit it again, now that more climate workers are doing it as if it is valid, honourable science.
I’m just so sick of the lies, the spin, the meta analysis after the event, the duck shoving of inconveniences and deceit – so sick of it that I am not commenting further to respond to anybody here.
All should remember that this shoddy climate work is an assault on real science and its proud traditions. It now appears sometimes to be deliberate, to debase good science so poor science seems relatively better.
I walk around those who spit on proper science and I pity them.
Steven,
I disagree. Why participate in something from someone you have good reason to suspect their motives and integrity?
If it is just “I don’t like this person.” or I disagree with them, then yes. But there are valid reasons to avoid participating based on the source or author.
I’m interested in the specific experience of those who responded “yes” to the question “…has the climate in your area changed over the past 50 years?” Having actual descriptions of how they have arrived at their conclusions would be interesting. Also, it appears 68% of the respondents were not born or were under the age of 10 for that entire 50 period. It would be interesting to see if the 60 years and older group answered differently than the entire group of respondents.
Having experienced the entire 50 years as an adult, I could not say anything is different.
Other than that, I can’t find much at fault with the survey. On the surface it doesn’t appear to be the disaster others with the 97% moniker have been found to be.
As usual, the kid is a rare voice of informed reason. This is another silly thread. Knee-jerk reactions dominate.
The Cisco Kid writes
“It would be interesting to see if the 60 years and older group answered differently than the entire group of respondents.”
________
I believe the elderly in general are more likely to be climate contrarians than the rest of the population, and I don’t know why the Society’s membership would be any different.
Max,
You must realize that ‘we’ were required to walk uphill both ways to school, in the snow.
I think you’ll find that many older people have benefited from a proper scientific education. Something that seems to be lacking in many of today’s institutions…. just a thought…. from the generations that brought you space flight, relativity, quantum mechanics, computers, nuclear power etc etc… A little humility might be appropriate
I would prefer to have an Oxford style debate – winner take all – by qualified contenders on all sides; on all of the key debatable issues – data, but no models allowed, until the finish, to be held in the Roman Colosseum. The judging audience should be prequalified by degree or practice in physics, chemistry, thermodynamics, mathematics, statistics, engineering, no social sciences, journalism, theology backgrounds allowed; to pass an exam of the pre-qualifying criteria, relevant to climate science and shall: a) never have received grants or b) published climate papers in any of the notable journals incl. the families of Nature and Science etc.; and, c) have never received any grants related to climate science.
It’s usually hard to be qualified in a scientific field if you’re not working or publishing in it.
It’s sorta like looking for the most qualified football players, but you exclude all football players, people who’ve worked in the football industry, etc.
The people who spend the most time learning how climate science works, who spend time actually *increasing* our knowledge of climate science.. these are the people who work in the field. The further astray you get from the field, the more the knowledge level drops. Because learning about and researching in a field is really a full-time job.
Winchester,
Not entirely the domain of the self styled climate scientists. As for example Steve McIntyre, Judy Curry, Robert Brown, Edward Wegman, Matt Briggs, Jeff Condon, Nick Stokes and NIC Lewis are demonstrating, climate statistics can be analysed by those both within and outside the climate scientist label. (Often with devastating conclusions).
Geoff.
Benjamin Winchester,
You wrote –
“Because learning about and researching in a field is really a full-time job.”
And only a self proclaimed climatologist could turn taking averages of historical temperatures, and pretending to foresee the future, into a full time job.
Supposedly, the science is settled. What the heck are they all doing now? What have they achieved of use to humanity? Why, nothing at all! What a grand scientific endeavour! Thousands of Witless Warmists all beavering away predicting the future at great expense, and to no avail whatsoever!
Scientists work at science. Climatologists work at endlessly promoting themselves. Maybe you disagree.
Cheers.
Well Geoff, I’m not aware of any statistically “devastating conclusions”
that have changed the ball game in climate science. The American Statistical Association hasn’t changed it’s statement on climate change.
Max,
Then read the Wegman reports.
Then think how McIntyre & McKittrick changed the course of the hockey stick future by using better statistics and wrote themselves into science history through pathfinding use of the blog medium.
I cannot make excuses for your youthful ignorance. Buzz off.
Geoff
Geoff, I’m not sure you understood the studies you mentioned. None of the authors said Mann’s hockey stick was wrong. They just criticized the way he got it. Remember Wegman said right answer, wrong method = bad science. Then you have the NRC report which supported Mann.
You say “wrote themselves into science history.” Well, maybe as footnotes, although Wegman may be better remembered for his plagiarism.
You seem to place a lot of stock in statistics, yet you had no comment on the American Statistical Association’s statement on climate science.
“29% think the change is largely or entirely due to human activity”
What change?
Which human activities?
What is the average surface temperature of the planet supposed to be?
How large should the Arctic ice cap be?
Is our mere existence the threat?
As tonyb might say, which historical weather decade is the one we should aspire to recreate and perpetuate?
What is the norm?
It is pointless to compare something to nothing.
Ok, we have a thoughtful, legitimate criticism. Thank you. These results are interesting:
“Seven out of ten AMS members who think their local climate has changed say the impacts have been primarily harmful (36%) or approximately equally mixed between harmful and beneficial (36%). One out of five (21%) AMS members say they don’t know.”
So almost nobody thinks their climate has improved over the last 50 years. Astounding!
I grew up in the Dakotas. They had wonderful winters that kept the Southerners out, and they grew astounding amounts of food. Now up there you actually see Confederate flags in pickup windows. The cultural decline is horrible, and climate change is obviously to blame.
Yeah JCH, it had nothing to do with an oil boom that brought in laborers from all over the country.
JCH
Or it could be getting cooler and the low brow DixieCanucks could be migrating to lower latitudes.
The big warming took place in the 1980-1990s, long before the oil boom. And most of the oil boomers are unemployed and hauling their trailers back to their homes. Nobody stays in Dickinson unless their steers make them stay. We were in the banana belt and felt sorry for the poor people who had to live in Western North Dakota.
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Regional/TAVG/Figures/south-dakota-TAVG-Trend.pdf
“which historical weather decade is the one we should aspire to recreate and perpetuate?”
I’d say that since a squiggly line is how this would be represented, it wouldn’t take much time to pick a decade and draw the ideal one.
Andrew
What’s interesting is that the Chicken Littles say that climate change is killing us, but only 36% in the survey say the alleged changes they have allegedly observed have been net harmful.
Good point. If promiscuity hasn’t hurt me so far, it never will. Thanks, Don.
max10k,
From the Wandering Words of Warmism – pointless and irrelevant responses.
426 – promiscuity.
Cheers.
The point is, little irrelevant maxie, the Chicken Littles are hollering that the sky is falling and only 36% of the people, who are watching the sky with great interest and trepidation , have claimed to notice. What’s with the crap about promiscuity? Why don’t you read the post this time. You will be less likely to make a complete fool of yourself, as is your habit.
Don and Mike, apparently you two know nothing about promiscuity. That figures. Women are very selective. Need I say more?
Apparently, you two undesirables don’t know the meaning of relevance either.
max10k,
You wrote –
“Don and Mike, apparently you two know nothing about promiscuity. That figures. Women are very selective. Need I say more?
Apparently, you two undesirables don’t know the meaning of relevance either.”
You might care to be less repetitive, when using the responses from the Wandering Words of Warmism.
You already used 426 – promiscuity, before.
However, using
673 Women,
856 Undesirables, and
67 Relevance,
might definitely serve to confuse and divert those of reduced intellect, such as Witless Wayward Wamists. Not quite as effective on people of average to above average intelligence.
I’m really worried about what you think of me. Only joking. I thought I’d best say that. Warmists often confuse fantasy with fact.
Cheers.
Max,
If it hasn’t hurt you it is most likely because the goats can’t testify.
I wanna see the crosstabs
Just stop it, Steven. Judith is trying to keep this thread clean, until Springer shows up. I think he is on his way to Detroit. Hopefully, he is wearing his brown pants.
The crosstabs will really cause a ruckus
here is the hilarious thing. These guys style themselves as Galileo, as heretics..as the trumps of climate science
And then when you point out…”hey you guys are outside the mainstream” they have a cow. At least the Donald owns his outsidership
“Outside the mainstream” may be an understatement, but if JC is ever considering a new name for ClimateEtc , she could do worse than Outside the Mainstream.
max10k,
Maybe you have confused climatology with science. Apart from a handful of blundering, bearded, balding buffoons, and their hysterical acolytes, no real scientist places any faith in the ability of the self proclaimed seers to accurately foresee the future in any useful sense.
I guess you can produce some facts in rebuttal. No? Why am I less than totally surprised?
Cheers.
Mike Flynn said:
Ah, but shifting the focus to the future has its benefits.
As Hannah Arendt noted in The Origins of Totalitarianism:
http://i.imgur.com/ZtimeuS.png
http://i.imgur.com/B8VXxc1.png
Just look what happened in the AMS poll (see the two graphs above) when the gaze was shifted from the past to the future.
“And then when you point out…”hey you guys are outside the mainstream” they have a cow.”
It’s nice to be able to redefine “mainstream” periodically. It’s been almost 25 years since the Rio climate summit, during which time:
the world has done a whole lot of “nothing” about the most important issue evah and show’s little sign of starting.
fewer people than ever are concerned about it
the projections for the amount of warming are getting smaller, not bigger. The science is closer to what Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen were saying in the 90s than James Hansen. The solutions are closer to what Bjorn Lomborg was saying than Bill McKibben and Barack Obama followed George W Bush’s path rather than Angela Merkel’s. Paul Ehrlich is still just as stupendously wrong as he always was.
Today’s “mainstream” would have been considered “skeptic” (if not a monster) in 1992. Frankly, the climate concerned are just waiting on environmentalists to accept nuclear power and natural gas. Neither seem to think global warming is serious enough to warrant nuclear power. Makes a nice political wedge issue though.
Excellent Jeff.
This was part of a three-year, $3 million NSF grant. Saving the planet is, apparently, quite lucrative.
http://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1422431
The Donald will make them give back the NSF money, when he takes over in January.
Maibach’s education campaign seems to be entirely funded by your tax dollars.
2010-2013: $1,251,345.00
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1043235
Good catch.
I find that project appalling from a scientific point of view.
The project has nothing to do with science – it is about indoctrination.
“what characterizes the empirical method is its manner of exposing to falsification, in every conceivable way, the system to be tested. Its aim is not to save the lives of untenable systems but … exposing them all to the fiercest struggle for survival.”
Karl Popper – The logic of scientific discovery
Bear in mind that the true test in these grants is whether climate education works over time. The surveys are not one-offs. They are intended to track increases in consensus climate beliefs .
Maibach was particularly focused on connecting “unusual” local weather events with AGW in the minds of weather analysts and, ultimately, the public.
It would have been interesting and important to ask whether they regard the consequences of the warming as potentially catastrophic, or beneficial, or beneficial in some ways and negative in others. There is an assumption in the media and among advocates for activism that the consequences will be entirely bad for the planet and humanity.
The beneficial/harmful question was asked 2 times.
Which of the following best describes the impact(s) of the local climate change in your area over the past 50 years?
Entirely Beneficial 0%
Primarily Beneficial 4%
Mixed 36%
Primarily Harmful 36%
Exclusively Harmful 2%
Don’t Know 21%
“Which of the following best describes the impact(s) of the local climate change in your area over the next 50 years?”
Entirely Beneficial 0%
Primarily Beneficial 2%
Mixed 29%
Primarily Harmful 47%
Exclusively Harmful 3%
Don’t Know 19%
They were careful to ask the following “well poisoning” question first:
“Over the next 50 years, in the United States, to what extent can the following be protected from harmful impacts of climate change if adaptation measures (i.e., actions to reduce vulnerability) are taken?”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-talks-daily-destruction/
80,000 acres per day of rainforest lost, 80,000 acres degraded. That’s 118249 km2/Y just for the destroyed part not including the degraded part.
http://www.rainforestconservation.org/rainforest-primer/3-rainforests-in-peril-deforestation/a-current-state-of-tropical-rainforests/
Originally tropical rainforests covered 15-18 million km2 of land surface
The oft quoted CSIRO satellite study of plant growth indicated a 11% increase in vegetation between 1982 and 2010, and to my knowledge, did not compensate for loss of vegetation (such as rainforest destruction) during the study period
So plant growth in the last 50 years increased 20% to 30% depending on whether you only count the non-destroyed parts.
Yet the 36% of AMS members believe past 50 years have been “primary harmful” and 2% believe they were “exclusively harmful”.
Sadly, it seems the AMS members are either horribly misinformed about the benefits of more CO2 or believe feeding humanity is harmful.
Perhaps some scientists are using the wrong approach. Perhaps the many people trying to solve the problem have the wrong skill set. A mechanical engineer’s approach has identified the two main climate change drivers and even quantified the tiny effect of CO2, all with better than 97% match to reported average global temperatures since before 1900. The analysis is at http://globalclimatedrivers.blogspot.com
Thanks for the link Dan. Sunspot activity has certainly hindcasted global temperature anomalies over the past century very well indeed. The ocean cycle appears to have served to dampen the effects of sunspot activity over the past 10 thousand years and resulting in global climate cycles maintaining remarkably narrow bounds. More complex models which allow for the cumulative effects of various other drivers of climate change seems a long wy off at this stage.
There surely is unanimous agreement that climate change has been occurring without interruption for more than a million years and based on that alone, I would be skeptical of beliefs that climate has ever stopped changing. As for what may be the cause of climate change, a belief that humans are the cause of it is inherently political, typically involving self-serving half-truths, intentionally deceptive pseudoscience (e.g., phony statistics), faked expertise and exaggerated concerns to take advantage of the superstition and ignorance of others to achieve a hidden agenda.
“I did not respond to the survey, because I did not receive the email soliciting my response (some snafu over renewing my membership b/c of an expired credit card)”
_______
Sounds fishy to me.
Reblogged this on Climate Collections and commented:
Final content from JC:
I did not respond to the survey, because I did not receive the email soliciting my response (some snafu over renewing my membership b/c of an expired credit card). Peter Webster did receive the survey and showed it to me. I have to say my first reaction to the survey would have been not to respond; the lead author on this is Edward Maibach, of the RICO 20 – second signatory after Shukla (I wonder if other AMS members reacted in this way). My concerns with the George Mason group being in charge of this is that they are on record as advocates on this issue. From my perspective, the selection of questions was not as meaningful as it could have been (e.g. better questions were asked in the Netherlands survey).
Reminds me of when I asked a classmate to accompany me to the high school prom, and the skank turned me down. That told me I didn’t want a date with her anyway.
Spoken like a true 14 year old.
And not a particularly mature one at that.
There was a 53% participation rate after 5 emails. Hmmm. Who were the other 47% who declined to respond? people who didnt like the intrusion? If I thought that all climate change was natural, would I share my email with an organization and/or group who may be in the business of harassment of skeptics?
I have personally avoided some surveys as the results were either sold or my email address was sold and I ended up getting SPAM, advertising, or an angry letter from some dude.
Answering internet surveys sometimes has a way of coming back at you, biting you in the derrière. Just like bad behavior on Facebook.
Judith’s admonition to be “civil” is applicable for non-anonymous surveys.
Was this survey done in the past and what were the results?
Uh-oh:
“…we sent up to five additional requests/reminders to participate to those people who had not yet completed a survey…The participation rate in the survey was 53.3%.”
Now I wonder what the 46.7% could be thinking, after six reminders to, er, participate…
Never mind, because at a certain point the 46.7% cease to exist:
“Nearly all AMS members (96%) think climate change – as defined by AMS – is happening…”
Disappeared! Desparecidos! As well as the disappeared there are the dead ‘uns. Los muertos. Cartas de credito expiradas!
So 53.3% of the undead have become the 100%. Of whom 96% know to watch their backs. And we can be sure they’ve had vast experience of true/false and tick-box-a,b,c,d in the course of their thoroughly modern education.
You know, before embarking on a life of white-collar crime, all bright young shifty types should consider the academic survey business. Same skill set, fewer risks.
Thinking of disagreeing with me? Everything I say is “as defined by me and my buds” – including the words “a” and “the” – so you won’t stand even a 1% chance. That’s 1% plus or minus the number I first thought of. And only 53.3% of me feels like talking anyway.
mosomoso asks
“Now I wonder what the 46.7% could be thinking, after six reminders to, er, participate…”
____
Who knows? What you are thinking, however, obviously is “oh no, not more evidence I, mosomoso, am a member of a dumb-ass group of nincompoops.”
Citizen Max! That’s no way to talk about us hapless convict dregs. Surely years of reading the HuffPo have taught you some phony compassion.
mosomoso said:
Well in Texas, we rig the game a little bit differently than the climatariat does.
Heck, in Texas not only do the dead get to vote, but sometimes they get to vote more than once:
Glenn Stehle,
But surely the principle of “one man (or woman, of course. I’m nothing if not PC.) – one vote” has been applied.
Would you debar the disabled from voting? How much more disabled can you be, than dead? Is not death the ultimate disability? Deaf, blind, mute, unable to move – even losing the ability to think rationally and coherently. Warmists are not debarred from voting, are they?
Is not a person suffering from a disability entitled to assistance, in order to vote? To anyone who claims that a spark of intelligence is necessary, I refer you to various candidates standing for office from time to time, (and Warmists!)
The dead, the halt, the unaware – all should be treated equally and sympathetically. No discrimination, I say! (Even Warmists – how much more even-handed can I be?)
Cheers.
When a poll is used to answer a question, it’s not sound science.
You are absolutely right, it’s just the opinions of sciency people. What sick person would trust the opinions of a bunch of doctors?
mac10k,
Who cares about whether people trust doctors? Another pointless and irrelevant Warmist attempt to divert and confuse?
I agree with john123s. The results of a poll answered by a few sciencey people who believe they can divine the future by working out averages, are about as useful as a poll of witch doctors about the efficacy of fish slapping in curing Warmist delusions, where 89% of witch doctors agree that Warmist delusions are incurable by fish slapping.
Rationality, logic, and presentation of facts conflicting with the sufferer’s delusion cannot cure delusional psychosis. Some flavour of the vagaries of the mind can be gathered by reading “The man who mistook his wife for a hat”, by neurologist Oliver Sacks.
As bizarre as Warmist beliefs and behaviour appear at times, they are not the only group to have ever suffered from collective delusional or hysterical aberrant behaviour.
Luckily, at least 97% of the general population are realising the depth of pointless climatological obsession. A slow process, to be sure, but one which will no doubt prevail in the end.
In the meantime, keep those pointless analogies and bizarre comments coming! Nothing wrong with laughter, and it’s keeping you off the streets.
Cheers.
Mike Flynn |March 24, 2016 at 7:30 pm |
mac10k,
Who cares about whether people trust doctors? Another pointless and irrelevant Warmist attempt to divert and confuse?
______
What would be the point of attempting to divert the diverted, confuse the confused?
max10k,
You wrote –
“What would be the point of attempting to divert the diverted, confuse the confused?” I’m sure I don’t know. That’s why I asked if that’s what you were attempting.
If you found my question too confusing, let me know. I can but try to rephrase it in such a way that you might be able to understand it.
To be honest, I find that Warmist deniers often claim inability to comprehend, from time to time. They often resort to made up gibberish, where English is distorted by continuously redefinition – a couple of examples include the “greenhouse effect” and “control knob”.
In the Warmist gibberish, it seems that carbon dioxide, pollution, carbon, poison, and so on, are used interchangeably, due to the Warmists’ inability to comprehend English.
So yes, indeed! What is your point in trying to divert the diverted, as you say? Do you know how to determine which is which? If you continuously change the definition, how would you know if you are right – or not?
Cheers.
Mike Flynn asks
What is your point in trying to divert the diverted, as you say?
_____
My point was I’m not trying. If we are talking here about climate deniers, trying to persuade them to change would be no fun.
“… Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E = mc². Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.” ~Michael Crichton
Yeah, like when doctors say you can get the clap from sex, but you have done it and don’t have the clap.
Well, not yet.
max10k,
Sorry. I referred to you as mac10k before.
Cheers.
Thanks, but no apology is necessary. Call me anything you like.
“Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.” ~Michael Crichton
And here is another one by Michael Crichton:
“I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.”
– Michael Crichton
Crichton never got a license to practice medicine. Maybe he did’n’t want to be a part of the consensus that germs can cause disease.
Max10k,
From the Wandering Words of Warmism – pointless and irrelevant responses –
1026 – medicine
855 – germs
429 – disease
Cheers.
Yes, a pointless and irrelevant response (yours) to a pointless and irrelevant response(mine) to a pointless and irrelevant post (waggie’s). Blame waggie for starting it.
max10k,
I remember from early school days – “it’s not my fault, miss. He started it.”
Nothing seems to have changed.
Cheers.
” Nearly three out of every four AMS members (74%) think the local climate in their area has changed in the past 50 years as a result of climate change, while one in ten (11%) think it hasn’t, and a nearly one in six say they don’t know (15%).”
So 74% of AMS members think that the climate has changed as a result of climate change. Or should they have said the climate changed because the climate changed? Or even that the climate changed because it did?
Maybe the “experts”, (and in this case the usage is very loose indeed), might choose to say something like “the climate has changed due to the changing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.” This might bring home to them the scientific silliness and pointlessness of their nonsensical truism that “the climate is changing.”
Of course it is! It always has; and unless the atmosphere is to disappear, it always will.
Typical Warmist persiflage. Define something in terms of itself, and then trumpet the fact that it exists! Maybe the herd mentality and mass delusion have supplanted science based on fact, where weather averages are concerned.
Quelle surprise!
Cheers.
Now Flynn is a meteorologists. A few days ago he was an economist, an agronomist, or some other kind of expert. Flynn may be spreading himself too thin.
max10k,
You wrote –
“Now Flynn is a meteorologists.” Your mind reading powers are improving, but still have a way to go. Close, as I once worked for the Bureau of Meteorology, averaging weather, amongst other things.
Crikey! That would make me a climatologist, so you would have to believe any specious nonsense I might sprout. Or do some climatologists disagree with others? Wouldn’t science based on facts be a reasonable method of determine what is true?
Of course, climatologists are only self appointed experts, with no particular educational qualifications. A mathematician, for example, could claim to be a climatologist, and be believed.
A meteorologist, (in Australia, anyway), used to have basic qualifications in science. You know, physics, mathematics, chemistry and so on. Further specialised training was required before the newly minted meteorologist could proclaim that rain was likely on the morrow, to the general public.
Most real scientists admit the complexity of fluid dynamics and such things. Climatologist worship the pointless and irrelevant history of weather parameters.
The gullible worship the climatologists. Fitting, don’t you think? (Pardon the pun!)
Cheers.
True, true the predictions of Climatologists should be given the degree of seriousness associated with earthquake predictions, which is why scientists outside Western academia associate climatology with the ancient science of astrology.
Flynn boasts
I once worked for the Bureau of Meteorology, averaging weather, amongst other things
_________
That’s nothing. I once worked for an aerospace company making aircraft that could go faster than the speed of sound.
I once managed an aircraft factory. We made an aircraft that could of used the Climate Etc. comments section as a fuel: hot-air balloons
“Typical Warmist persiflage. Define something in terms of itself, and then trumpet the fact that it exists!
They don’t ask honest questions because they don’t want honest answers.
This isn’t rocket science. or even climate science – it is surveyology 101. Ask relevant unambiguous questions.
The claim is that:
A. It is getting warmer
B. It is due to GHG.
We don’t care if it is due to paved roads or snow shoveling, etc. (“human activity”). Reducing CO2 (the claimed cure) won’t fix that.
Regardless of the cause, do you think climate change is happening?
This is an asinine question. The IPCC and global warmers don’t claim that more CO2 will cool the planet. The question should have been:
“Regardless of the cause, do you think high temperatures have increased a statistically significant amount over the past 50 years?”
The attribution question is problematic as well.
Do you think that the climate change that has occurred over the past 50 years has been caused by human activity?
With answer choices:[largely/mostly/comme ci, comme ça/mostly natural/largely natural/don’t know/not warming].
The claim by global warmers is specifically that more CO2 from manmade sources will make the planet warmer. “Human Activity” is brushing your teeth, shopping at the mall, getting a hair cut, etc.
The question should have been:
“Do you think that there has been warming the last 50 years and if so was the cause manmade GHG emissions or something else?”
With answers [largely/mostly/comme ci, comme ça/mostly something else/largely something else/don’t know/not warming].
Interesting study.
Why don’t these surveys ever ask about GHG induced warming? The AMS membership thinks the warming is due to “human activity” IE building roads, clearing land, building buildings, mowing your lawn, playing softball, trading stocks, shoveling snow, etc., or natural causes, which would leave virtually none of the warming left to be due to GHG.
The membership really seem to be concerned about UHI.
1. 66% were convinced by papers and 48% by consensus (two highest reasons)
Obviously funding all the pseudo-science and demagoguery on the issue has been effective.
2. 3% that believe the warming will be entirely harmful and the only 2% that believe it will be primarily beneficial in the next 50 years.
Which again points to concerns about UHI since UHI will increase air conditioning cost.
Clearly the global warmers have demagogued and pseudo-scienced the issue far more effectively then the saner perspectives who don’t have a financial or ideological interest..
Even the IPCC wouldn’t claim the less than 2°C in the next 50 years will be harmful, at least to agriculture, and admits to the benefits of some warming and some additional CO2.
The 3% that claim that it will be entirely harmful don’t keep up with the literature.
PA,
On the lighter side, I hope.
You wrote –
“Which again points to concerns about UHI since UHI will increase air conditioning cost.” As air conditioning is less than 100% efficient, the heat generated by the cooling process is less than the heat taken away.
Paradoxically, using air conditioning to combat UHI creates more heat than it removes, and the dreaded climatological feedback occurs. Luckily for us, the Sun goes down, and light (all EMR frequencies – for the slightly retarded climatologists), flees to outer space. Temperatures drop, so the surface loses all the heat it gained during the day, plus a little bit from the Earth’s interior which makes its way to the surface, continuously.
Luckily for me, clever chaps like Fourier, Tyndall, and Feynmann agree.
Of course, your average bumbling, bearded, balding buffoon might still be living in denial, and claim that the Earth can be heated up with CO2, H2O, Government grant applications, or other Warmist fantasies. Alas, an application of laughing gas will bring forth the appropriate response!
I like my air conditioning inefficiencies and all. I like my mains electricity. I like my fossil fueled motor car. And all the rest. Pollution, not so much, but the last time I looked, neither CO2 nor H2O were anything other than essential plant foods. More would appear to be preferable to less!
Cheers.
Judith Curry said:
In Coming to Public Judgment, the veteran pollster Daniel Yankelovich notes that there are two basic types of opinion polls.
The first type, which is the category the AMS poll fits into, are “the polls the public sees.” They are the low-cost “quickie” polls “favored and supported by the media,” and are characterized by:
The second type of polls, Yankelovich says, are “mostly hidden from public view.” These are the polls “done by business in market research and by political candidates and officials who hold public office.” And those who sponsor these polls “have much to lose if the polls are wrong.”
These polls are “subtle and complex” and are “trend-tracking, probing, complex, thorough explorations of consumer or citizen thinking.”
Yankelovich gives three examples of the techniques used in these polls:
• Ask questions in several slightly different ways that do not change the essential meaning of the question. If people change their answers in response to slight shifts in question wording, this is a sure sign that their opinions are volatile.
• Plant questions that pobe for inconsistencies and contradictions.
• Confront respondents with difficult trade-offs that directly challenge wishful thinking.
When the responses to these three types of questions are blended together, Yankelovich explains, “the results reveal an accurate measure of quality.”
The AMS poll did none of this. It is what Yankelovich calls an “oversimplified, cheap, crude public opinion poll.”
The sad truth, Glenn, is the scientific community betrayed the taxpayers who fund their research, supplying answers that will get more research funds for the scientist rather than answers that will benefit the public.
omanuel,
And to add insult to injury they believe that the public is so stupid, and they are so smart, that the public can’t figure out their dirty tricks.
Their hubris, and treachery, may eventually be their undoing.
When the primary argument skeptics had for years against AGW was that global warming stopped in 1998, of course there’s going to be blowback against skepticism when it continues rising.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
http://meteomodel.pl/BLOG/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/gissmonth.png
nebakhet,
I rather think that “global warming” is yet another meaningless Warmist phrase.
Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that Warmists look at historical temperature readings, (which of course reflect the temperature of the thermometer at best), and then attempt to divine the future based on the magic numbers so recorded.
To which, of course, I say piffle,
Demented lunacy at best, self serving fraud at worst.
If you can manage to significantly warm anything at all by surrounding it with CO2, the world will be your oyster. A grateful humanity will prostrate itself at your feet! I will be the first to grovel in mortification at your brilliance!
Alas, it is unlikely I will have the opportunity of accepting the intellectual superiority of the Warmist position supported by an actual fact!
It’s OK. I used to believe ulcers resulted from stress and spicy food.
Warmists still believe in the magical heat generating powers of CO2.
Cheers.
nebakhet,
Your rejoinder employs the type of polemic that has become the hallmark of warmist argumentation.
Since the warmists are fundamentalists at heart, and since fundamentalists generally try to stigmatize their opponents by depicting them as apostates from the one true way, may I state for the record that I do not deny either the existence and central importance of climate change, or the production of climate chage by the greenhouse effect.
But there are other scientific mechanisms besides the greenhouse effect with the proven power to cause climate change.
Furthermore, do the rest of the warmists’ beliefs — the prediction of global warming into future centuries and millenia, the apocalyptic consequences of global warming, and the conviction that all that is necessary to stop global warming is the will to power to do so —flow by simple extrapolation from the greenhouse effect’s power to cause warming?
“Straight is the gate, and narrow is the way.” Fundamentalists of all stripes live by this venerable motto, and must therefore wield their unsleeping swords in constant mental fight against contrary opinions of apostates and opponents (who usually make up a sizable majority—for, as Jesus also noted, “Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction”).
The favored fate for the nonelect varies, according to the temperament and power of true believers, from the kindness of simple pity to the refiner’s fire of extirpation. But the basic ideological weapon of fundamentalism rarely departs much from the tried and true techniques of anathematization.
Unfortunately, at least for the ideals of intellectual discourse, anathematization rarely follows the dictates of logic or evidence, and nearly always scores distressingly high in heat/light ratio. Anathema also requires an anathemee—and I seem to have been elected at this particular moment.
I, along with a host of others, routinely stand convicted, I suggest, primarily for our efforts to bring the full scope of technical debate, with all its complexities and messiness, but without loss of substance, to the readers of this blog.
But there are other scientific mechanisms besides the greenhouse effect with the proven power to cause climate change.
There are no natural mechanism in the current climate state that can stop the continued upward march of the enhanced greenhouse effect. Nothing. Zippo.
“There are no natural mechanism in the current climate state that can stop the continued upward march of the enhanced greenhouse effect. Nothing. Zippo.”
Yes there is. The squiggly line sometimes goes down.
Andrew
Bad Andrew,
True believers don’t do facts.
They only do their glorious or apocalyptic future, whichever one fits into their secular stealth religion.
you were the guys who were telling us global warming had stopped, that it was all some cycle.
Climate scientists were the ones saying it would continue.
Well it’s continued.
That’s probably why more meteorologists are siding with the scientists now.
And the trend never stops going way up.
What facts, Glenn? Lol.
“And the trend never stops going way up.”
JCH,
What you don’t seem to get is that you shifted the goalposts from your prev comment.
Looks like nothing can prevent you from being a Troll. Nothing. Zippo.
Andrew
nebakhet | March 25, 2016 at 10:15 am |
…
Climate scientists were the ones saying it would continue.
Well it’s continued.
It takes 131 W/Y (watt-years) of energy to warm the top 2000 meters of ocean 1°C assuming a inverted triangle distribution (100% at the top and 0% at the bottom).
At 0.3 W/m2 over the past 70 years, more or less, the original first half 20th century warming is still working its way through the system, let alone the UHI effect on land.
So it is reasonable to expect some warming for some time in the future.
However the “catastrophic warming is continuing” claims in a record El Nino year would be premature.
In two years this “continuing” claim will get revisited.
no-one knows the future, but the past so far confirms predictions of warming which almost all came from climate scientists.
http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/files/2016/02/WGI_AR5_Fig1-4_UPDATE.jpg
Skeptics for the most part had been predicting global cooling based off a new maunder minimum.
1964 to present: slope = 0.0174177 per year
1974 to present – slope = 0.0180579 per year
1984 to present – slope = 0.0183815 per year
30-year trend to present – slope = 0.0174177 per year
How on earth can you possibly think the next two years, one of which is now likely to be a record warmest year, can provide your sad little loser position any help when none of the 2-year periods in the 52-year period did a darn thing?
Sorry, 30-year trend to present is: slope = 0.0174922 per year.
JCH | March 25, 2016 at 12:21 pm |
How on earth can you possibly think the next two years, one of which is now likely to be a record warmest year, can provide your sad little loser position any help when none of the 2-year periods in the 52-year period did a darn thing?
I don’t have a sad little loser position. I want it to be 2°C warmer. I want the nicer Williamsburg temperatures without having to move there. I want my plants to grow faster. I believe fossil fuels should to subsidized to maintain the current emissions level. I simply am not part of the “starve people for style points” crowd and proud of it.
The claims of greater harm than benefit from more warmth and more CO2 appear to be outright baldfaced lies.
As to the “warmest year”:
Since February 2009 (right after the current president got moved in) global temperature anomalies have gotten a “wind assisted” (a track term). increase. This hadn’t happened since the last year of the Clinton administration.
Next year anomalies will unwind some amount – losing some of their ill-gotten 50% gain during the current administration.
After the last record El Nino there was considerable retrenchment. History has a tendency to repeat itself.
In January we will revisit your “2016 as warmest year” prediction.
JCH,
Actually there are, starting with a large volcanic eruption.
Then there is a subduction zone earthquake. Won’t stop warming, but the impacts would be far, far worse than anything our warming climate will bring over the next 100 years.
Another survey:
http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.de/2016/02/fifth-bray-von-storch-international_17.html
http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.de/2016/02/climate-science-for-and-by-people.html
nebakhet
Can you clarify how we have a global average temperature for the oceans back to 1880 when the vast majority of the oceans had not even been traversed by that time, let alone scientifically measured? The first ship that did this was The Challenger and that was a very minor examination of a fraction of the globes oceans that was nor replicated for decades
tonyb
climatereason,
It is well known that reason and logic, supported by fact and physics, cannot prevail against climatological magic.
Silly fellow!
Cheers.
Simple. Same way you can have a measurement for a big patch of England going back centuries.
You could also repeat after me: adjustments, homogenization, calibration, precision, infilling… breathe.
“Same way you can have a measurement”
You mean an estimate.
Andrew
Andrew all measurements are estimates
“You could also repeat after me: adjustments, homogenization, calibration, precision, infilling… breathe.”
Yes Arch. standard science.
The world is getting warmer.
The climate does change
We know this because we make measurements.
They are all imperfect.
We are no longer in the epistemic garden of eden
We are having a wet Spring, we needed it bad too.
“Andrew all measurements are estimates”
You told me already. Just use the word estimate instead of measurement from now on, so you don’t confuse everyone, since they are equivalent..
Andrew
“The climate does change”
And please tell everyone there is no definition for climate, so they can derive whatever meaning they want from the word.
Andrew
Steven Mosher | March 25, 2016 at 12:48 pm |
The climate does change
We know this because we make measurements.
———————————————————————-
In real sciences we collect measurements. In faux sciences we make
measurements à la ” adjustments, homogenization, calibration, precision, infilling”.
Freudian slip?
Bad Andrew | March 25, 2016 at 12:41 pm |
“Same way you can have a measurement”
You mean an estimate.
Andrew
Steven Mosher | March 25, 2016 at 12:45 pm |
Andrew all measurements are estimates
——————————————————————
Turtles all the way down in cosmology. Estimates all the way down in climatology
From the book “Fun with Infinite Regressions for Dummies” 2nd Ed.
Bad Andrew | March 25, 2016 at 1:02 pm |
“Andrew all measurements are estimates”
You told me already. Just use the word estimate instead of measurement from now on, so you don’t confuse everyone, since they are equivalent..
Andrew
———————————————————————
All estimates are not measurements. Therefore the terms are not equivalent. Eg; In nearly all estimations Mosher is confused about measurements.
What Mosher means to say is that all measurements are approximations. Undergraduate degrees in English are, evidently, of limited utility. Perhaps Steven should pursue a graduate degree in English to cure his communicative deficiencies?
.
Dry hole… nothing down here.
Do you live in Death Valley?
I live on a hill in Fort Worth, Texas. The valley below me is the Fort Worth Zoo.
I feel the same way.
That’s nice. Do your parents take you to the zoo pretty often given how close to home it is?
Here tony
http://max.nwstatic.co.uk/images/ukmapcet.gif
You see this region?
That is a lot of land! over 99.999% of it is UNMEASURED !
yes we have sampled it at a handful of locations over a long period
but the methods have changed drastically. And there is no way to
go back in time to double check any of the measurements.
Still, we talk about the CET measurement (estimate) and despite
all the problems with the series it can still function as fairly good
proxy of the whole world. True, we cannot push too hard on this
proxy relationship so I reliance on it must be circumspect and measured.
It’s not necessarily ALWAYS the best proxy for the globe. Still, it gives
us insight, limited insight, but insight nonetheless. In short, we should not worship it nor ignore it. It’s but one piece of evidence.
Now how can we use just one large patch of land to estimate ALL other patches of land? Simple. Its exactly the same method we use to say the unmeasured locations WITHIN this patch can be represented by those “points” at which we do have measures within the patch. We are Always and forever extrapolating. Within the patch this method will give smaller errors than outside the patch. But that is a difference of degree not of kind.
Within the patch where the points are close together the error will be smallest. The greater the distance, the greater the error ( in general ).
Still the error at the greatest distances is constrained.
We can even test this: Like so: You tell me it is 4C in CET and then I can use that to predict the temperature in Boston. That prediction will have error. Just like all measurements. Or I can take a look at other features
of the series. Like the trend.
The situation is no different with SST. Multiple methods over many years.
Only small patches sampled for much of the past. Nevertheless, like CET these small patches give us insight. With SST its actually easier to see how
a small patch can cover an extensive area.
Then Again, You could deny that we have any insight. Deny that we have any knowledge of climate change and say all we know is CET, but if you follow that skeptical trick and apply it to CET you surely can see what it does.. think about all those points Within the patch that were never measured. In short. The construction of the CET patch Relies on a method and assumptions about averaging over areas of land. Every x,y,z in that patch was not measured. Only a handful of locations were sampled.
Still, we make assumptions, apply a method, and call it CET. It’s kinda silly to object to people take similar data and using the same methods to come up with bigger patches.. and yes global patches.
Mosh
I am not sure what argument you are pursuing, I agree with virtually everything you say about CET and land.
If your main reference is to SST’s that is another kettle of fish as the ocean was a very unmeasured entity in the past, temperatures vary greatly at surface and at depth and at location. They vary according to how much sun you have and the cloud situation. The SSTs were often measured by those with little knowledge of how to take them nor with any consistency in as much buckets could often be left in the sun or the shade as could the bucket thermometers.
Land thermometers are rather more scientific and consistent and I don’t think I have ever said I disagreed with BEST land other than that the precision is not as great as is portrayed. The temperature seems to have been rising generally in CET and BEST for many hundreds of years. Before that it fell.
In the MWP it rose and there are numerous decades in between then and now when it was around as warm as today. Those observations can be confirmed by glacial movements and tree lines.
tonyb
Mosher’s entire line of reasoning about the global projectability of temperature measurements from a small, highly localized sample is the product of abject scientific ignorance.
Within the CET zone there is high cross-spectral coherence between station records, which diminishes quite rapidly at all frequencies as distance from the zone increases. Within a few thousand kilometers, that coherence becomes statistically insignificant. In other words, temperature variations within the CET provide no scientifically useful estimates of their counterparts at distant locations.
Likewise, SSTs, which are subject to much greater measurement errors than station temperatures, cannot be meaningfully extrapolated over great distances. It is only in the mind that conflates measurements with estimates and never scientifically examines the accuracy of results that universal extrapolation makes sense.
climatereason | March 25, 2016 at 6:04 am | Reply
“Can you clarify how we have a global average temperature for the oceans back to 1880 when the vast majority of the oceans had not even been traversed by that time, let alone
scientificallymeasured?”Fixed that for ya! The oceans had not been unscientifically measured either therefore the qualification was unnecessary.
Concisely Yours,
Dave
What does it mean to be “extremely sure” of something? How is this different from “very sure”?
Would someone who is extremely sure go to extremes to ensure they remained sure? Would someone who was extremely sure go to extremes to convince other people?
Is it possible for a scientist to be extremely sure of anything and remain a scientist?
Was this response included in the survey to weed out fanatic non-scientists and then they forgot to do the weeding?
God, said a long time ago that the first thing mankind would want to do is buy a pair of smarty-pants,…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/what-believing-in-god-does-to-your-brain-a6950956.html
today AGW fills the bill.
Hmmm… it’s the day after the OP and I still don’t care about this meaningless survey. How much time should I give it?
Andrew
Bad Andrew,
A climatologist might advise you to devote the amount of time created by averaging +1 and -1. This is extremely sciencey, but might give you a clue. Not Mosher’s lost clue, it’s still missing, I believe.
Should you still be in the dark, I can do no better than refer you to the noted Nobel Prize winner’s BFF, Gavin. He’s obviously an averager extraordinaire, and would be able to write an extremely technical and academic paper to prove that the average of +1 and -1 is 0, which is both the amount of time, and the importance which you may feel this survey deserves.
I trust this is of assistance to your endeavour.
Cheers.
“Not Mosher’s lost clue, it’s still missing, I believe.”
It’s hiding in the oceans.
Andrew
Is it, though?
It seems to be coming out of the oceans pretty clearly now. =D
I am interested in hearing about the evidence the 46% claim to have seen or experience.
Were you to build a legal case to prove global warming was dangerous, most of the evidence presented to date would be inadmissible, being little more than speculation.
Jeepers, what a lot of crazy comments. Skeptics, up your game.
1) A survey is a good thing. Otherwise, please stop complaining about people who quote the 97% consensus based on idiotic analysis of published papers. It’s better to ask the scientists themselves what they think, lots better.
2) 53% response rate is outstanding. Hardly any survey does that well. People don’t like taking surveys. Please stop talking about the secretive 47%; that’s paranoia.
3) Though Dr. Curry doesn’t seem to have liked the questions much, I am pretty interested in the answers. For each answer, the AMS included the middle responses in their summary as if they support the “consensus”. Generally they do not. For instance, if you rephrase the summary to include middle answers together with anti-AGW answers, here’s what you get: Around 30% thought that climate change is less than half caused by humans. That’s a solid percentage; I didn’t expect it to be that high. Same for the others: 40% think that mitigation can’t help with more than a “small percentage” of the changes. About the same percent think that mitigation cannot prevent more than a “small amount” of the harm. :O 40% essentially think mitigation is a waste! 57% think that there has been _no harm yet_ from climate change. About _half_ think that their local area _will not_ experience unbalanced net harm in the next fifty years.
4) Note that this survey has less than 20 questions. Bray and von Storch has like 70. Plus Bray and von Storch includes a bunch of (pardon me) really annoying questions, like, what’s your definition of the difference between projection and prediction. It’s no wonder it has a much much poorer response rate.
5) Though science is not determined by consensus, I for one think it’s important what’s taken for granted in the field, and what’s still an active open question. This survey makes it clear that pretty much every important issue in climate science is still open, aside from whether climate change is happening at all. Knee-jerk skeptics, wouldn’t it make sense to see whether something agrees with your point of view before you flip out criticizing it?
Michael Aarrh | March 25, 2016 at 1:10 pm | Reply
“Jeepers, what a lot of crazy comments. Skeptics, up your game.”
“Knee-jerk skeptics, wouldn’t it make sense to see whether something agrees with your point of view before you flip out criticizing it?”
Perhaps if lemming-like consensus tools moderated their childish attachment to unflattering rhetorical descriptions of those who disagree with them then more constructive outcomes would be possible.
But that wouldn’t be much fun and games are for fun, right?
“lemming-like consensus tools” certainly seems to be a yet more unflattering rhetorical description than anything I said, so it seems you don’t mind doing it.
The difference is that your description of me is completely unconnected with reality; all four words of it don’t describe me at all. my description was based on what the skeptics were actually doing in these comments. As you have just shown: You reacted in a knee-jerk fashion without actually thinking about my comment, and you flipped out in response, saying something crazy.
Does the AMS have an official definition of “climate”?
Andrew
I found it.
“The slowly varying aspects of the atmosphere–hydrosphere–land surface system.”
http://glossary.ametsoc.org/wiki/Climate
Change is part of the definition of climate.
Climate “change” is redundant phraseology.
Andrew
I imagine AMS had in mind “slowly varying” only as an upper bound on the rate of change, to distinguish it from more rapid changes. That would not preclude a stationary climate. Much has been written about the climates of various regions without any reference to past or possible future changes in climate.
Climate change is a legitimate subject in its own right distinct from other aspects of climate such as the extent of its variation by region. It concerns things like how much and how fast the climate is changing, what causes those changes, possible impacts of those changes, ways of decelerating or accelerating the changes, possibility and feasibility of mitigating their impacts, and so on.
I’d add that I would try to add these results to the wikipedia page on Scientific Views on Climate Change, since the results are so unmistakably lukewarmer. But Connelley and co have prevented me there before, so I know the drill. They will quote wikipedia rules that my calculations are original research, and we would do better to restrict ourselves to the summary made by the survey scientists themselves. No matter how poorly they summarized, at least they did it to support the consensus.
@MA: we would do better to restrict ourselves to the summary made by the survey scientists themselves.
You certainly would. Why would you think otherwise?
There were over four thousand responses. Restricting yourself to your own view of what the results should have been would suggest that you believe you’re four thousand times more insightful than all those who took the survey, despite the fact that you didn’t take the survey yourself for whatever reason.
Perhaps you didn’t read what I wrote above. The summary does a poor job, because it attempts to group opinions that disagree with the consensus along with those that agree. A better job can be done – as I did above – by simply calculating the sums for all non-consensus responses. I used their numbers. Both sets of sums are accurate, but theirs is an attempt to inflate the numbers for the consensus, whereas mine is an attempt to get them right.
Michael, since the judgment that the summary is flawed is being made by you, with no source to back up that judgment, Wikipedia editors would be entirely justified in objecting that your judgment of the official summary, and your proposed alternative summary, would each constitute Original Research.
You and I could be in perfect agreement that your summary is better than theirs, but that would not be a substitute for a Reliable Source.
Ten years ago it was relatively easy to bend or break those rules, but these days editors patrol Wikipedia more vigilantly than the Belgian keuf patrol Brussels..
Vaughan, I quite understand that Connelley and his minions there are expert at gaming the wikipedia rules. That doesn’t change the fact that they are being intentionally misleading, as were the authors of the summary. They are trying to push a certain narrative, don’t care much if the facts fit, and (for the wikipedia group) are happy that they found a rule that allows them to get away with it.
If they were more interested in presenting the actual results of the various surveys, they would have found other approaches that also comply with wikipedia rules and that section would look very different than it does.
I have had this experience there a number of times, on several climate change pages. No matter how obvious it was that a certain fact should be mentioned, they would quote some rule that they used to justify leaving out anything that didn’t fit the story they were presenting. They outnumbered me, they were willing to take all the time necessary to completely disappear whatever had been done and replace it with what they wanted to say and explain why the rules absolutely required it, and that was that. And of course there are always others who agree with their narrative and therefore think that they aren’t doing something wrong.
As regards the first question of this January 2016 AMS survey (which I took myself simply because I felt very strongly about the topic, as obviously do many commenters here), I fully agree with Judy about its choice of questions, most especially about the first and only question that the mainstream media is likely to focus on. Namely:
Regardless of the cause, do you think climate change is happening?
Results: 96% yes, 1% no, 3% don’t know. (So does that mean that the old 97% figure has now changed to 96%, 99%, or the middle, 97.5%?)
If this seems an implausibly high figure for the yes response, consider the following.
Marco Rubio (Miami debate, March 10): “Well, sure the climate is changing, And one of the reasons why the climate is changing is because the climate has always been changing. There has never been a time when the climate has not changed.”
Ted Cruz (New Hampshire, Jan.19): “Climate change is the perfect pseudoscientific theory because it can never, ever, ever be disproven. If it gets hotter or colder, wetter or drier — the climate has always changed since the beginning of time. It will continue to change till the end of time.”
I don’t know about you but it seems to me that their answers put Rubio and Cruz squarely in the 96%.
So what does that tell you about the meaningfulness of this first question of the survey?
Personally I prefer what the data tell us to what people tell us. This is why my AGU presentations over the past five years (see the top left of my home page) have always focused on the data and not at all about the opinions of people (myself included) regardless of their ideology or their position along the political spectrum.
And no I’m not registered with any political party. The only time scientists should engage in politics is when politicians attack scientists. If scientists don’t fight fire with fire they allow science to be destroyed by politics. This is not new, it has been going on for hundreds if not thousands of years.
“Regardless of the cause, do you think climate change is happening?”
Define “climate change” with enough precision to construct a meaningful answer. I’d tend to answer no on a thousand year timescale taking the whole globe into consideration.
1) The earth is still well within the normal bounds of an interglacial period with regard to temperature.
2) Sea level is some 6-9 meters below the peak attained in the previous (Eemian) interglacial period.
Beyond a thousand years we can probably expect a major climate shift from interglacial to glacial epic.
On shorter timescales, regional climates, and micro changes in average temperature and precipitation I’d tend to agree with Rubio and others that the climate is always changing – it’s a noisy system on restricted domains.
Thanks for asking.
@DS: I’d tend to answer no [to whether climate is changing] on a thousand year timescale taking the whole globe into consideration.
That statement to climate science is like 2+2=3 to second grade arithmetic.
Any of the last eight or so deglaciations of the Late Quaternary if packed into the next hundred years would be like driving a Ferrari into a brick wall.
That link should have been
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/03_3.shtml
Oh no! They want to leave it open and vague.
The whole purpose of such questions is so they can pull a semantic bait-and-switch (as Willis said above): they take answers based on any sort of climate change from any sort of “cause”, and create snippets with the implied human caused climate change.
And when somebody tries to add detail to the discussion, their target audience yawns: tl:dr.
The world is going to deglaciate in the next 100 years?
It deglaciated 12,000 years ago, Vaughan. Do try to keep up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_period
It is all relative, David. Look around you, mon ami. We are still in the Quaternary Ice Age, which is the most recent of the five known ice ages in the Earth’s history, n’est-ce pas?.
I didn’t mean to claim that it was physically possible to exit the Quaternary and return to a greenhouse Earth in a mere 100 years, only that if it were… and it actually happened … Well, it would be a particularly spectacular event, to say the least.
(Sorry about the frog in my throat, just back from an evening Poirot binge.)
Though now that I think of it, transplanting say 1% of Venus’s atmosphere to Earth, or however much it takes to raise the tropopause 5 km, conceivably might do that even faster. It would take the equipment of Ming the Merciless of Mars, but no law of physics would make that transplant impossible.
Conservatively taking the lapse rate to be 6 °C/km, that should increase the surface temperature around the globe by around 30 °C in about a year or two.
That fast? Where would the necessary heat come from in such a short time?
Now the atmosphere’s mass is around 5000 teratonnes, aka exagrams. The bit from Venus might bring it up to around 10,000 exagrams.
It takes about 1 joule to heat 1 g of air by 1 K, hence 30 J to raise that gram 30 °C. That’s a total of 300,000 exajoules, EJ, for the whole atmosphere. Conservatively allowing 7/8 of that to escape into the land and ocean, we would need 2.4 million exajoules.
The Earth absorbs 0.12 exawatts from the Sun. It would therefore take 2,400,000/0.12 = 20 million seconds or around 8 months for the Sun to provide the necessary heat.
But wouldn’t Earth have radiated it all back out to space? No, because the lapse rate would ensure that the Effective Radiation Level had been raised by an amount that cooled it from 240 K to 210 K. That would roughly halve the OLR, leaving the other half to heat the atmosphere, land, and top of the ocean. This halving would require doubling the wait time from 8 months to 16 months.
So as I said: a year or two to raise the temperature 30 K.
And then you have the rest of the century for that extra 30 K of temperature to melt the bottom of the world’s glaciers and watch them all slide into the ocean.
Or two centuries. Or whatever it takes. That’s still fast for a deglaciation.
Vaughan Pratt,
You wrote –
“So as I said: a year or two to raise the temperature 30 K.”
You could have just as easily written “a year or two to find a cure for cancer”, or “a year or two to create world peace, put a chicken in every pot, and let harmony reign.”
Can I have some of your magic pixie dust, or Venusian secret sauce? I’ve got some water I’ve heated to 80 C. Another 30 C, and it will boil, allowing me to run a steam engine. I can then use the power to generate electricity to heat more water, and even more electricity, past the tipping point.
Maybe my lapse rate has lapsed. I have tried putting water in the Sun, and I can heat it up more than 30 C. Unfortunately, it seems to cool down at night. I must be doing something wrong. How do you get your water to heat up by 30 C and stay there overnight? Or do you have to keep trying for a year or two before it works?
Or is this all a figment of your febrile imagination? Please let me know. I’m sure I’m just this far from cracking the secret of using CO2 to generate endless free power! Why will you not release your secret ingredient?
Cheers.
@MS: You could have just as easily written “a year or two to find a cure for cancer”, or “a year or two to create world peace, put a chicken in every pot, and let harmony reign.”
Sure, Mike, and I could just as easily have written “2+2=3” or “2+2=5”, and let harmony reign.
The difference is that I gave reasons for what I wrote but you didn’t.
Climate skeptics aren’t interested in reasons, they just say stuff and whatever they say, however illogical, their fans burst into applause.
You might find that heart-warming but scientists don’t.
Vaughan Pratt,
You wrote –
“But wouldn’t Earth have radiated it all back out to space? No, because the lapse rate would ensure that the Effective Radiation Level had been raised by an amount that cooled it from 240 K to 210 K. That would roughly halve the OLR, leaving the other half to heat the atmosphere, land, and top of the ocean. This halving would require doubling the wait time from 8 months to 16 months.”
You are dreaming, aren’t you? Or do you really believe the nonsense you sprout?
Cheers.
Vaughan
A happy Easter to you.
.’Climate skeptics aren’t interested in reasons, they just say stuff and whatever they say, however illogical, their fans burst into applause.’
Don’t you think that’s a bit of a sweeping statement?
tonyb
“The only time scientists should engage in politics is when politicians attack scientists.”
Would you agree that taking polls and counting votes qualifies as “engaging in politics”?
“And no I’m not registered with any political party.”
Neither am I. I guess that makes us both independents by definition.
Broad spectrum of political leanings then among independents, eh?
@DS: Would you agree that taking polls and counting votes qualifies as “engaging in politics”?
Yes, of course, to the same extent that peace-lovers who are obliged to take up arms to defend themselves against invaders seeking to occupy their territory qualify as “engaging in war”.
Are you trying to argue that they’re not really peace-lovers but hypocrites?
If you know of some other way for peoples with conflicting ideologies to resolve their differences peacefully I’m sure you’ll find a hugely receptive audience. Lots of luck with that.
My ideology btw is adherence to what can be reliably inferred from the data. In that respect I count myself as neither liberal nor conservative nor libertarian but simply as a scientist trying to do what scientists have always tried to do over thousands of years.
Calling me a “liberal” like you do, for no apparent reason other than that you disagree with me, makes me a liberal (whatever that means) only in your eyes and those of your fans.
If there are any. Wait, wait, I forgot Peter Lang.
@DS: Broad spectrum of political leanings then among independents, eh?
Who cares? A broad spectrum of scientific leanings, now that would be interesting.
would that be an ensemble of modern major generals like VP?
@maksimovich1: would that be an ensemble of modern major generals like VP?
As the Pirate King in the 1966 performance of Pirates at Sydney U., maksimovich, I have to confess I never fully understood the “modern major general’s” outlook on things in general. I was after all an orphan boy, often, as needed. Nor for that matter could I hope to duplicate the MMG’s patter, my Gregorian chant with Ruth about February 29 was more my style.
(The two Pope Gregorys thus implicated were about a millennium apart, respectively 500 AD and 1500 AD or thereabouts.)
There doesn’t appear to be any definitive distinction between political and scientific leanings when it comes to climate science. Six of one, half dozen of the other.
Bravo. Spoken like a true politician.
I have one year experience as an elected official.
In that time I trimmed the city budget by 25% then lowered property taxes by 25%. A lasting legacy in Texas due to rollback tax rate restrictions. It requires a special election with 51% majority in Texas to increase taxes by more than a small amount. Taxes can be lowered by any amount without an election.
So out of the blue at a council meeting last year to adopt a budget my arch conservative partner in small government made a motion to cut the tax rate by 50% taking even me by surprise. Everyone was suitably shocked and started laughing. Everyone except me. I began to orate “Now hold on minute. Let’s let my esteemed colleague outline where he’d trim the budget.” The following bargaining session that went on for an hour was a beautiful thing to behold. The liberal mayor’s pet programs were eliminated entirely along with something near and dear to a couple other council members. After identifying the areas and amounts to be cut I started making motions adopt a tax rate marginally higher than 50% reduction. As each of them was voted down we added back into the budget money for projects a NAY voter wanted and then motioned for another vote. In the end we gave back half of the initially proposed 50% reduction in order to buy enough votes to make a majority. The mayor, who doesn’t vote, was left holding an empty bag. Every jaw in the audience was lying on the floor in stunned amazement at what had just happened.
It was, by far, the best hour I spent as an elected official.
As always, thanks for asking.
“the first and only question that the mainstream media is likely to focus on.”
“If this seems an implausibly high figure for the yes response, consider the following.”
Uh, no, it doesn’t. It seems implausible that the mainstream media would only focus on that, as AGW depends on a lot of other important pieces. However, the mainstream media will have no choice but to focus on that relatively trivial piece, since there is very little consensus on any other piece.
So what would you really like to know, Michael? What the science consensus says or what the data says?
“What the science consensus says or what the data says?” Not being a climate scientist, I don’t have a better way of judging the data than by hearing what scientists in the field think. If essentially all of them in a field take something for granted, then it is probably true. It is “settled science”. If a solid fraction (say, a tenth) of them still think otherwise, then we have a very different name for it. We call it an “open question”. That’s how science works.
In climate science, most of the important issues seem to be open questions.
Even in LIA, tres hot summers, gasp!
Plus ca change plus meme chose.
https://judithcurry.com/2015/02/19/the-intermittent-little-ice-age/
Sure there is conflict with having Maibach conduct questions. There’s just no logical/legal reasoning for this. Seems there should be an independent author of the study.
Wonderful 9/2/15 article on American Thinker, “the Tyranny Of Consensus”. Here is a relevant excerpt:
“Therefore, when an authentic scientist hears the amorphous, antithetical, oxymoronic term “scientific consensus,” it is immediately clear to anyone having a most elementary understanding of science that the discussion has drifted out of the scientific arena and into realm of social politics and religion. The term scientific consensus is thus a conscious, premeditated tyranny mounted against the very bedrock philosophy of science itself. For scientists to actually join in this mantra immediately and explicitly exposes their lack of fundamental knowledge of the process of the philosophy of science. In so doing, they have exposed themselves as card-carrying members of the government’s cult.”
” 67% think that humans are causing at least 61% of the warming”
Put another way, most know that to keep their political funding they must toe the political line.
Tony, Dennis Chamberland’s attempt to channel Michael Crichton founders on the former’s inability to stay calm when presenting his case. If I’d been accused of murder and I had the choice of Chamberland and Crichton as my mouthpiece I’d pick Crichton in a heartbeat. Especially if I’d actually committed the murder: Crichton was famously able to turn a pro-Gavin Schmidt audience around in a single debate.
According to Chamberland the AGW theory was designed “so that billions of dollars in global taxes may be levied at the point of a gun against the specter of anthropogenic climate change”. He calls it “a full-frontal attack against science itself that has been mounted in [the name of climate science]”.
Is that a scientific assessment based on a thorough review of the relevant data, complete with supporting analysis and MATLAB, R, or Excel code, carefully compared with competing analyses, or merely a rant at the top of his voice? Your call.
I’d call him a ranter. And moreover a plagiarist. He plagiarizes Crichton without a word of acknowledgement when he writes “One of the many tools used to manage the true believers and keep them from drifting into certain skeptical apostasy is called consensus — the numbering of the faithful.” That was Crichton’s complaint, less the shrill ranting tone.
Chamberland continues, “The term itself belies the failure of the most basic tenet of the philosophy of science, which argues forcefully against consensus seeking.”
That last one is totally absurd. For thousands of years science has progressed via consensus seeking. There is no other mechanism for evaluating competing scientific hypotheses, and Chamberland himself does not propose one. (Neither did Crichton.)
Chamberland uses the “100 scientists against Einstein” episode as proof that consensus doesn’t work. Quite apart from the fact that those scientists’ main motive at the time (or at least their bosses) was to discredit “Jewish science”, as a proof it’s ridiculous anyway because there are at least 100,000 scientists for Einstein. That’s consensus for you.
Why does Chamberland believe those 100 scientists were wrong? Because Chamberland is channeling God or some other supernatural authority, or that he Chamberland is a higher authority than everyone else, or because of the scientific consensus that favors Einstein today?
The counterpart of the “100 scientists against Einstein” today is the handful of climate scientists who argue against anthropogenic global warming.
Finding himself incapable of mounting any reasoned or quantitative criticism of climate science, what choice does Chamberland have but to resort to his shrill and illogical rhetoric about gunpoint and religion?
What I found most surprising however is that Chamberland is not known to the public as a rabid AGW denier, or even that he has any position at all on climate change. Judging by various accounts, including the Wikipedia article on him, he’s just another ordinary NASA scientist specializing in bioengineering, with a detailed understanding of the carbon cycle and its relevance to climate.
I have no idea what’s going on here. Perhaps he’s just undergone some life-changing trauma like divorce, or being fired, or rejection of a paper. Maybe he’ll see things differently later, maybe it’s permanent.
Only time will tell.
Vaughan Pratt,
Like you, I also have no idea what’s going on here.
Do you have a point, or do you just not like this chap Chamberland? Has he done something to upset you?
Cheers.
That sound you hear is Michael Crichton spinning in his grave after hearing a Stanford liberal talking about him.
“Perhaps he’s just undergone some life-changing trauma like divorce, or being fired, or rejection of a paper.”
A quadruple bypass would effect a change of heart in the manner you suggest. Present company excepted of course.
Does the AMS have any concern with our government adjusting temperature data that results in the past getting cooler and the present getting warmer?
It’s called science. They checked it. It checks out okay. Using politics, you can keep it alive.
“They checked it”
How sciency. Against what?
Andrew
in your case, against abject irrationality.
“in your case, against abject irrationality”
Good comeback.
What about in the case of climate?
Andrew
Apparently, NOAA has changed the original database so that it is not possible to compare the original data to the changed data using their database facilities. I read somewhere that the historical data does exist elsewhere if you know how to get it. When asked for the algorithms and rationale NOAA used to make the adjustments, they have been stonewalling ( that’s a big surprise). If you wanted an example of how scientists have perverted both science and the scientific method, the global warming cabal is the most complete example. Of course, it is clearly politics and not science. Most recently a UN official proclaimed that “Without climate change, we cannot re-distribute the wealth” ( as reported by Rush Limbaugh).
“Does the AMS have any concern with our government adjusting temperature data that results in the past getting cooler and the present getting warmer?”
No, because the adjustments GO THE OTHER WAY!
Overall, over the WHOLE GLOBE over ALL THE DATA, the adjustments
go the other way. Raw data shows MORE WARMING than adjusted data.
There is a notable exception to this.
In the US LAND RECORDS, the past is cooled.
WHY? well in the US we didnt trust to government to record temperatures we relied on a bunch of volunteers. And then we changed the times at which they were asked to observe.
What is the scientific justification for adjusting the temperature data?
They used the Dr. Mann High-Stick Method. He won a Nobel Price for coming up with a technique. I can almost remember him making it onto the Dinah Shore Show, once. That is how long they have been working it.
Accuracy. You folks have had the same shot. Zippo. Nothing sticks. The only sound is stuff hitting a wall, and silence as it all slides down to the gutter.
I heard the ‘Marx Bros’ were no longer going to work on Broadway but I had no idea things had gotten so bad. Reject the lie someone said once. Food for thought.
JCH,
You’re in Baghdad Bob territory.
Jus tryn a help a brotha out.
Andrew
No, you’re Baghdad territory. B. Bob would have denied this:
http://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/fileadmin/images/data/Products/indic/msl/MSL_Serie_MERGED_Global_IB_RWT_GIA_Adjust_TPJ1J2.png
B. Bob would have denied this:
https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000m.png
What would that look like when you use your 150,000 year, timescale?
B. Bob would have tried to divert with the 150,000-year timescale. Throw that up on the wall. See if it sticks.
B. Bob wold have denied this:
https://robertscribbler.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/nature-global-ocean-heat-accumulation.jpg
B. Bob would have denied this:
http://greatwhitecon.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Global-Extent-2016-02-18.png
JCH, it is all very cute but you still don’t get it. Why? They are only patterns after all.
“What is the scientific justification for adjusting the temperature data?”
Just some background. If you DONT adjust the data the trends are actually HIGHER.
Now, to your question.
First an example:
To create a time series of measurement data that is reliable you have to
make sure that your METHOD OF OBSERVATION doesnt change
between measurments. For example. If you measure temperature for 30 years with an LIG device and then SWITCH devices, you have to account for differences in devices.
Actually skeptics have demanded adjustments
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2015/02/09/guest-post-skeptics-demand-adjustments/
Let’s go through some examples.
1. You change the measurement device. You may have to adjust
2. You change your observation practice ( you change the time or the
place or the place changes)
A simple example would be this.
For 30 years you measure the temperature at 1000m ASL
Then you move the station to sea level
The change in location will produce a warming due to the Lapse rate.
Higher altitude is cooler.
If you dont correct for this, the record will show Spurious Warming.
Adjusting data is require to get a more accurate answer.
That why we slow down the frequency of atomic clocks in GPS satellites so they actually “appear” to run at the correct rate when compared to reference atomic clocks at ground based GPS stations.
“Adjusting data is require to get a more accurate answer.”
Its also required to get the answer you want.
Andrew
You must know in your heart that you really don’t have a clear scientific understanding for the answers to these questions that AGW touts. Your graphs do not cover the timescales required to come to any firm conclusion. How could any sane person that has looked at past ice ages and their cycles? End of story.
SM:
It seems that you have to explain these things over and over again. Perhaps you should type louder.
The only way to even attempt to take the subjectivity out is to agree on measurement methods and then let the device measurement data be what it is.
You just come off as storytelling if you post facto change the numbers.
Andrew
Ice cores all the way down. It’s all you got?
“The only way to even attempt to take the subjectivity out is to agree on measurement methods and then let the device measurement data be what it is.”
Problem: The US did not do this. They allowed people to take measurments at their time of choosing.
Problem: You define taking subjectivity “out” as a subjective process.
If everyone agrees that the “method” will be to randomly write
crap down, then you have increased subjectivity.
Problem: If everyone agrees to the wrong method
Problem: If everyone agrees to wrong method and then fights change.
But if you like raw data, then we have a warmer record.
“Problem: The US did not do this. They allowed people to take measurments at their time of choosing.”
Yes. This is a problem. You wanna “fix” it with storytelling.
Andrew
Life is full of ups and downs…
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/Five_Myr_Climate_Change.svg/600px-Five_Myr_Climate_Change.svg.png
What do we see hiding in the long grass, a pattern.
Your graphs do not cover the timescales required to come to any firm conclusion.,
You can say this until the glaciers come back, and it will still be just as wrong. Nobody who matters is going to listen to this rubbish.
What is your best guess as to when they will come back?
While we are at it, most everybody I know who has lived here all their life, understands we don’t matter. So just relax.
Mosh
Do you have any papers on the accuracy of the lapse rate? I did a modest informal study for several weeks in Britain and in Austria as I was easily able to reference places at 1000 feet and 1000 metres respectively and measure by the car thermomemeter. The lapse rate rarely did what it was supposed to do other than perhaps 20 percent of the time.
Consequently I wondered on what scientific basis the lase rate and any adjustments are made. Thanks
Tonyb
tonyb
“Do you have any papers on the accuracy of the lapse rate? I did a modest informal study for several weeks in Britain and in Austria as I was easily able to reference places at 1000 feet and 1000 metres respectively and measure by the car thermomemeter. The lapse rate rarely did what it was supposed to do other than perhaps 20 percent of the time.
Consequently I wondered on what scientific basis the lase rate and any adjustments are made. Thanks
Tonyb
###############
1. the phrase “accuracy of the lapse rate” doesn’t make sense.
2. Your anecdotal memory of a supposed observation you made is
not evidence. It’s not even a fairy tale.
3. measuring by car thermometer will not give you repeatable results.
4. The Lapse rate is SEASONALLY dependent and location dependent.
5. In general, the higher you go, the cooler it will be.
6. There are exceptions in special locations dependent upon the season
and geomorphology. Even these can be corrected for ( see PRISM)
7. Even a back of the envelop adjustment gives you an answer closer to the truth than not adjusting.
8. When you adjust There are some cases where the final answer moves
away from the truth, while the average answer is improved dramatically.
That is why we talk about REDUCING error. Error can never be eliminated.
9. if you used the Notional lapse rate ( 6.5C per 1km ) you did it the worst way possible. Better to use empirical methods. There are many.
Some resources:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07055900.2011.649035
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009JD013493/full
http://blogs.ubc.ca/ianmckendry/files/2015/01/Comparison-of-approaches-for-spatial-interpolation-of-daily-air-temperature-in-a-large-region-with-complex-topography-and-highly-variable-station-density.pdf
But, if you dont like Adjusting for lapse rate, you can do what BEST does. We create new stations.
“Yes. This is a problem. You wanna “fix” it with storytelling.”
Actually you fix it with a tested validated scientific process.
Steven Mosher,
You wrote –
“But if you like raw data, then we have a warmer record.”
Yes please. And of course, any real scientist would agree. As an example, the magnetic dipole moment was measured to an accuracy equivalent to measuring the distance between Los Angeles and New York to within the width of a human hair.
I believe it’s more accurate now, by quite a bit. And you are madly adjusting already sloppy measurements to keep people happy?
I’d assume you’re joking, but I don’t think you are.
Cheers.
Steven Mosher,
You wrote –
“But, if you dont like Adjusting for lapse rate, you can do what BEST does. We create new stations.”
It’s fairly obvious you believe in the concept of an average theoretical lapse rate, maybe calculated on the back of an envelope. Meteorologists actually do their best to measure the environmental lapse rate. Like the wind, or temperature, the ELR is constantly changing.
The atmosphere doesn’t take a great deal of notice of averages. It is a chaotic system (even according to the IPCC), and arbitrarily small changes to inputs at any time can have unknown effects at future times.
BEST creates new stations. BEST adjusts temperatures. BEST adjusts for theoretical lapse rate. Indeed.
I wouldn’t be surprised if BEST accord themselves more credence than independent physicists. Playing with historical temperatures explains nothing, and predicts nothing. You have the worst of both worlds! Trends are useless for peering into the future, as many of the supposedly best and brightest have discovered while trying to make profits in the financial area.
Cheers.
Mosher still trying to sell that story about Tavg being higher without adjustments? Here’s the truth.
https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/slide14.jpg
“Actually you fix it with a tested validated scientific process.”
When is that going to happen?
Andrew
It is a chaotic system (even according to the IPCC), and arbitrarily small changes to inputs at any time can have unknown effects at future times.
Climate Models are chaotic systems.
Temperature history more resembles well planned evolution with first organized cooling and then bigger and bigger cycles to place ice on land on the Antarctic, Greenland and mountain glaciers to get the ice volume just right so modern cycles can be adjusted with small changes.
B. Bob would have denied this:
http://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/fileadmin/images/data/Products/indic/msl/MSL_Map_J2_Global_IB_RWT_NoGIA_Adjust.png
Boo trippin?
B. Bob would have denied this:
http://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/fileadmin/images/data/Products/indic/msl/MSL_Map_MERGED_Global_IB_RWT_NoGIA_Adjust.png
JCH,
Did B. Bob not like cartoon drawings?
Andrew
For anyone who is silly enough to believe in the power of the trend –
“Hedge Fund Momentum Trade Blows Up With Losses Worst Since 2009”
These are the best and brightest, playing for keeps with, admittedly, other peoples’ money. The problem is knowing when the trend will stop, before it does.
In other words, peering into the future. It can’t be done. Guesses or assumptions must be used. Models don’t help where trends are used as input.
Climatologists and their supporters love trends. Silly fellows?
Cheers.
I’m not comfortable with government scientists making adjustments to raw data due to concerns with bias. Simply speaking, I don’t trust them.
Frank Burns,
You shouldn’t even be in a position where your trust is required. Science speaks through evidence. It’s either there or it isn’t.
Warmer Pushers like Mosher rely on claims to persuade. They keep claiming and claiming. Once you get past those with some scientific scrutiny,
the entire Warmer narrative goes POOF.
Andrew
the lead author on this is Edward Maibach, of the RICO 20 – second signatory after Shukla (I wonder if other AMS members reacted in this way).
The real purpose of the survey is most likely to gather evidence for the RICO prosecutions. The members who did not respond are the ones who might be prosecuted.
Excellent article “The Tyranny Of Consensus” here:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/09/the_tyranny_of_consensus_.html