The Blackboard

I gotta admit the pledge left me cold. I don’t begrudge folks for being put off by that or the other colorful Brin passages you cite.

I honestly saw his article as an opportunity to discuss the climate skeptic profile. I’ve argued at my site (much to the chagrin of the Michael Tobis’s) that there’s a great deal of nuance to skeptic positions, but that this isn’t reflected in the public dialogue.

So I thought Brin’s premise–distinguishing between “climate skeptics” and “climate deniers” was a worthy one. Too bad that he undermines it with his own litmus tests purple prose.

I think (a) I was right (comment #168 there) that Keith completely mischaracterized Brin’s article (Keith blustered no at first, but you seem to agree) and (b) “skeptics” in the “Skeptic magazine” sense of the word are a very different sort of person than climate blogs typically mean when they use the word.

You are certainly correct that “there is a range of beliefs and motivations among the huge class of people labeled “skeptic” by different people participating in debates over climate change.” To the extent motivations differ or are even a factor, that’s one major distinction from what “skeptic” means to “Skeptic magazine” folks. To the extent people hold unexamined “beliefs” at all, that’s another major distinction from the “Skeptic magazine” “skeptic”.

There are objective truths about the world that can be, at least provisionally, learned through the processes of science: basic physical theory, inductive and deductive reasoning, modeling, and observation. Some of those conclusions will be subject to a level of real uncertainty to the extent observations and theory are inconclusive as yet.

For any individual person who hasn’t looked carefully at the evidence themselves, rational skeptical thinking requires retaining considerable uncertainty about their personal “beliefs”. For those who do look carefully at the evidence, the constraints of reality should force a general consensus that all rational “skeptics” can agree with on the general level of certainty of various conclusions – although detailed levels of uncertainty will vary from person to person given their prior experiences etc.

The point of calling rational skeptics “skeptics” is not a matter of what they currently believe (whether none, parts, or all of “AGW”), it is a question of how they challenge their own beliefs and those of others, how they increase their level of knowledge and understanding of a subject. People who are talking about and appear interested in but are not progressing in understanding of the basic general consensus on climate are not “skeptics”, whatever their current “beliefs” may be.

I’ve been following this for years now, and I really do wonder how you haven’t noticed the relentless, personal abuse heaped on scientists, and rampant ignorance, that is encouraged on most of the ‘skeptic’ blogs.

It’s been like that from day one. Crazy conspiracy theories, crazy scientific theories. Yet these don’t appear to figure in the debate at all. The focus is always aimed directly at the scientists, and trying to jackhammer a way in to any errors that have occurred, while the endless stream of ignorance and abuse from the ‘skeptics’ is ignored.

I would like to see McInytre ‘audit’ the garbage out there. He won’t, because if he did, it would be quickly apparent to his fans that there are far more errors and mistakes made by the ‘skeptics’. Exhibit ‘A’, WUWT. The guy who runs McIntyres web site for him gets off without a second glance and without a word of criticism, while continually putting up topics that are patent nonsense.

If you want to hold scientists to a standard, then how about we hold the ‘skeptics’ to a standard? That doesn’t happen. You wouldn’t be writing a book about the errors of the ‘skeptics’, you would have to write a hundred.

When Jones said, “Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it” is correct. If that is all they are doing, and it is, then the only impression you will get of the science is that it is wrong. There is no attempt to find out what is right, there is no attempt to say that this is wrong, but if you do this, then it is right. CCC and Zeke go over the science, and their work advances what we know, it doesn’t destroy it. Because that is effectively what the ‘skeptics’ are doing, destroying science.

The amazing thing about the IPCC reports and AGW science is how fundamentally correct it is, and how consistent it is. The scientific basis of AGW hasn’t changed since day one. During that time countless ‘skeptical’ theories have appeared, and they don’t disappear, people believe them, and will never be convinced that something totally wrong is wrong. A prime example is “G&T” and their ‘falsification’. Have a look around the blogs, that won’t ever disappear, people still believe it and refer to it. And it won’t ever be ‘audited’.

Brin is also correct on the ‘left/right’ division on attacking AGW. It is not a hard and fast rule, but if you were to divide the community along belief/’skepticism’, the definite trend is towards that division. Inhofe is a Republican, Morano is, the same pattern is repeated around the world, the conservatives don’t like AGW.

Wow, that’s uselessly florid language. Unreadable, regardless of the content.

Brin suggests (as I have on repeated occasion), that “sincere and enlightened climate skeptics” should put some distance between themselves and climate “deniers.”

You know I’m strongly in favor of that.

I like the pledge, myself. I think Brin blogs in haste and (hopefully) repents at leisure.

But I am willing to forgive much from him because of The Uplift Wars.

OTOH, yeah, his prose was purplish and over the top. But I’ve seen similar types of language from others new to the scene who do not know the actors, the prior history and the lay of the land. If he sticks around, I’ll bet he sorts it out.

Keith

So I thought Brin’s premise–distinguishing between “climate skeptics” and “climate deniers” was a worthy one. Too bad that he undermines it with his own litmus tests purple prose.

I agree with you and I think your post was valuable. It’s also the case that Brin includes the occasional worthwhile sentence that expresses a thought that is worth discussing.

But I think based on his responses to my question that Brin has little to no interest in actually defining what he considers a skeptic, what he consider to be the denialist movement or anything else. He doesn’t want clarity on this. As far as I can tell, he wants someone “out there” to make a pledge, but then he wants to leave all terms ambiguous and is irritated that people might want to pin down precisely what he means when he makes his extremely broadbrush statements about groups of people.

Well, you asked my opinion.

I think that insults are very entertaining for the choir of the speakers, and a… hummm…. insulting to all of the others, logically. These people want to close ranks and call it a day. Brin is part of the “the science is settled” crowd, “so all the people still debating it are just pathetic Rupperites”. Well sure. To these kind of people I say farewell, “if that kind of shit rocks your boat…”. If you feel entertained by the style, well then that’s the good thing about it. If you do not, just ignore it.

Shouting it up is good for the venting, I guess, and people vent a lot in their blogs… just see PZ Myers or Lubos Motl for that matter, who even goes to the point of stating that certain people should be shot, not metaphorically.

Summing it up, I think that Brin is just a lame shouting inglorious basterd. Speaking of which, that reminds me of a movie that I have yet to see the final half…

Re: Arthur Smith (Jul 6 15:44),

Keith completely mischaracterized Brin’s article (Keith blustered no at first, but you seem to agree)

Keith read it both more kindly and generously than seems to have been warranted.

(b) “skeptics” in the “Skeptic magazine” sense of the word are a very different sort of person than climate blogs typically mean when they use the word.

I tried to make that point at Brin’s blog, but if I understand Brin correctly, making such a point is “perverse”.

In any case, not withstanding your later paragraphs, the duel definitions of the word skeptic both exist in the dictionary. Since both uses occur in climate debates and both appear in the dictionary, I think a careful writer publishing an article in a dead tree version of a magazine called “Skeptic” writing about “climate skeptics” should have done something to convey which definition he intendds to convey. Of course, I may be perverse to think so.

Re: Luis Dias (Jul 6 16:00),

I have to rent that!

Otherwise, yes, I agree with you that ordinarily, one can just ignore the sort of silliness at Brin’s. I might have left it alone, but a reader actually asked me to post. Also, the discussion at Keith’s blog is interesting despite having originated in a reaction to Brin’s article.

My favorite invective, “Osamabamarama”, may have finally met its match in “Rupertian Denialist Cult”

Great! Now for a few things.
.
Firstly, Brin’s site is blogspot-based. A real pain for commenting.
And then, I read the comments section where he was asking Lucia to ‘chill’. Clearly, this was a situation with a person ill-informed and ill-equipped to be discussing these matters. Writing about them and expressing his thoughts, fine, but talking about it?
.
The main thing that struck me was the undercurrent of constriction and moral bracketing, that ran throughout the article. It actually becomes literal at the end. Brin develops his ideas which he says any reasonable person of any persuasion should have no problem accepting. By the end, it has become that only if you accept to those ideas, you can be considered reasonable. This Tobis’ian flip enamored the Tobis so much and the two fall in love ! Hilarity!
.
(By the way, I rather prefer Tobis, because he does listen.)
.
The other thing I’ve always wondered about is the TWODA and all the variants. What the ‘twoda’ist usually forgets to tell you is that, inspired by the ozone-Montreal process, the idea of regulating other peoples’ behaviour through reference to the ‘global atmospheric commons’ gradually and imperceptibly gained policy credibility and took root in AGW during the early to mid 80s. This was indeed well before any real landmark scientific breakthrough that high-impact global warming was occuring.
.
An arena where well-heeled bureaucrats/technocrats operated free from their political overlords was created as a result. It had the ear of masters who bobbed their heads like brainless parrots (stupefied by all the radiative physics flying over their heads no doubt), but salivating at the prospect of applying taxes or earning CDMs in the face of all that dangerous uncertainty. It is these people who propose the measures we see proposed. Without them, there is no meaning for the ‘ought to’. If there is no ‘ought to’, there is no ‘ought to anyway’.

Zeke– I agree. We may need to have a poll to decide which is the #1 invective in the climate blog wars.

Re: Shub Niggurath (Jul 6 16:21),
Also, presumably, one can make a case that we ought to do “things we ought to do anyway” (TWODA) with out all this invective?

That is, assuming that people agree what these things are. I know I’m for nukes whether or not AGW is true and I also think it would be especially beneficial owing to the reduced burden of CO2 added to the atmosphere.

But I’m under the impression some people think building nukes are not TWODA. I wouldn’t accuse them of blocking this think I considre “TWODA” because they have fallen prey to a Russian Rupertian Oligarch Cultist .

that Brin has little to no interest in actually defining what he considers a skeptic, what he consider to be the denialist movement or anything else.

Maybe he doesn’t know in detail, due to lack of close familiarity with the subject? In which case, I don’t know why he’s yapping. Then again, lack of knowledge doesn’t stop most anybody else in this topic. ahem, Mr. Fuller.

In any case, not withstanding your later paragraphs, the duel definitions of the word skeptic both exist in the dictionary. Since both uses occur in climate debates and both appear in the dictionary

In a scientific sense, you generally use the meaning used by the magazine. Hence, it pains people to use the word ‘sceptic’ to refer to people who ignore good science and then pick up any old thing, no matter how implausible or contradictory to their last thing, that would seem to contradict the science. hence, you see ‘sceptic’ or ‘septic’.

Lucia,

I read over your exchanges with Brin, and also most of the thread at Keith Kloor’s blog about Brin’ article. My considered opinion is that Mr. Brin can be most charitably characterized as a bufoon.

He says outrageous things, then complains that you are ‘nitpicking’ and ‘ignoring the intended meaning’ when you point out that what he says is outrageous. He and Michael Tobis could comfortably inhabit the same body, and neither could likely perceive when the other was in control. I wonder, are Brin and Tobis the same person?

When Jones said, “Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it” is correct.

No — it’s dreadful.

Sometimes I think we need a whole new vocabulary.

Everybody engaged in discussing science should be a “skeptic”, whether one’s beliefs map to the AGW Consensus or not. Or at least, recognize the value of skepticism to science. Michael Tobis, for all that he gets wrong, has noted that.

And all parties should honor the value system of science, as expressed so elegantly and colloquially by Richard Feynman, and others.

The aberration of climate-science as a field seems to me to be that so many on the science-as-profession track do not hold themselves to that standard. Jones’ pronouncement about his personal property, ” “Why should I make the data available to you” is Exhibit A.

There’s an article by Serge Lang from 1993 called Questions of Scientific Responsibility: The Baltimore Case that raises issues from one of experimental biology’s biggest scandals. Scanning it, there are parallels with the current issues. The article is very long, but one thing to note is the repeated failures of eminence grises of the field to act honorably and responsibly, when prestige, reputation, funding, publications, and the like were at stake. And the similar failure of inquiries, the science press, and institutions. None of this was clear at the time (I recall reading the mainstream science-press accounts and shrugging). In retrospect, an ugly picture.

I am heartened to see the public at large losing faith in climate-science, as I think this is mostly a consequence of (parts of) climate science having lost touch with principles of proper scientific conduct. Of course, this says nothing about whether the climate-science Consensus is correct or not: I suspect that large parts of it are (it would be nice for humanity if it wasn’t true, but Nature doesn’t do “nice”). If and when the luminaries of climate science reform their attitudes, I expect that we’ll see some surprising re-alignments in the citizen-scientist and advocacy communities. The AGW Consensus may pick up some unexpected support.

Time will tell.

carrot eater (Comment#48056) July 6th, 2010 at 4:48 pm

people who ignore good science and then pick up any old thing, no matter how implausible or contradictory to their last thing, that would seem to contradict the science.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Ah, the ABC types. (anything but CO2).

Lucia,

Seems I have been demoted to the ‘moderation queue’.

What did I do wrong?

Re: carrot eater (Jul 6 16:48),
> hence, you see ‘sceptic’ or ‘septic’.

I find casual use of terms like ‘septic’ to be as revealing of the writer’s state of mind as the casual use of similar insults.

When virtual communities assemble online, they seem vulnerable to self-righeousness. Members then seem drawn to such phrasings.

This presents a real obstacle to communication with others, I think.

Re: carrot eater (Jul 6 16:48),

In a scientific sense, you generally use the meaning used by the magazine. Hence, it pains people to use the word ‘sceptic’ to refer to people who ignore good science and then pick up any old thing,

Yet Brin is clearly not using it in this sense either– because he clearly only applies it to people who have some not precisely defined disagreement with the IPCC or the consensus or whatever group of 90% – 99% or scientists Brin considers to express the consensus.
If he uses it two ways, then he may be guilty of the logical fallacy called “equivocation”. Not that I would dare suggest that his prose might be riddled with poor logic.

AMac (Comment#48058) July 6th, 2010 at 4:50 pm

This is the sort of self-righteous comment that makes me roll my eyes. People lecturing as if they know what good science is like, and pontificating that climate science falls short of that.

I’m sorry, but this is just bull. You put this much scrutiny (often politically motivated and not in good faith) to scientists and publications in any field, and you’ll end up with just this.

At this point, I’d say climate science is more transparent than the norm for the physical sciences. I don’t think putting computer scripts online without prompting is the norm, for example. Putting tons of data online is also I think unusual, but perhaps more common in fields where a lot of good work can come of having all the data generally available. In more experimental fields where the experiments are relatively easy to do, you just do your own experiment; at most you’ll ask for somebody’s raw data in case you want to overlay it with your data in a published graph.

As AMac said to bugs – simply dreadful.
Jones’ “Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it” is behaviour very unseemly for a scientist. And if bugs doesn’t understand this, there’s no point in further discussion.
Of course, nobody likes being corrected by others, especially based on his/her own data.
But this is a part of a scientist’s life – if someone doesn’t like it, them maybe a job of part-time librarian in the local library should have ben their career choice. The data must be open when the paper is published – how can then be the work scrutinized?

Re: carrot eater (Jul 6 17:00),

> This is the sort of self-righteous comment that makes me roll my eyes. People lecturing as if they know what good science is like, and pontificating that climate science falls short of that.

Yeah, I do know what good science is like.

(Parts of) climate science fall short of that. The part I’m speaking about is paleoclimate reconstruction. Because that’s the part I “fell into.” The rest of climate science may be in much better shape. Let’s hope so.

Maybe this is “self-righteous” to say so. I’ll think about that.

On the other hand, we have the historical record to show that various specialties at various times have run off the track to various extents. Alchemy, astrology, phrenology, eugenics, scientific Marxism, Lysenkoism, as extremes. The O’Toole/Baltimore black mark to modern immunology that I referenced upthread. So while I started with the assumption that climate science (paleoclimatology) was deservedly up on a pedestal with the other physical sciences, that was a revokable assumption.

Revoked. The reasons are contained in Feynman’s essay “Cargo Cult Science.”

Amac,

I find casual use of terms like ‘septic’ to be as revealing of the writer’s state of mind as the casual use of similar insults.

When virtual communities assemble online, they seem vulnerable to self-righeousness. Members then seem drawn to such phrasings.

This presents a real obstacle to communication with others, I think.

Blather. I’m again sorry, but some shorthand is needed for those types who’ll just accept and spread nonsense, no matter how little sense it makes. The types who took an undergrad class in something once, and decide that the greenhouse effect violates the laws of thermodynamics, and can’t be disabused. The types who aren’t even able to say anything remotely technical, but rant about some conspiracy theory. The types who go around screaming about conspiracies in NCDC adjustments, when there plainly is no such thing. The types who note that the forcing due to CO2 is logarithmic (which it is), and decide that means that it must therefore be negligible going forwards. The types who can’t figure out the difference between the residence time of an individual molecule, and the persistence time of a perturbation in atmospheric composition, and thus declare that the rise in atmospheric CO2 can’t be due to man. The types who think the lack of a 100% correlation between CO2 and temperature means that CO2 has a minimal impact, and therefore it’s (the sun, the oceans, whatever is the flavor of the moment). The types who think that climate models predict a monotonic linear increase in temperature, and therefore the wiggles due to El Nino falsify the models. The types who average together a bunch of absolute temperatures, and think they’ve done something. The types who think the fact that CO2 was not the initial impetus behind ice age cycles means that CO2 is always an effect, not a cause. The types who see a plot of temperature, see a warming trend, and immediately declare it to be UHI without doing any analysis whatsoever.

And so on.

Don’t pretend these types of people aren’t common. They appear to me to be the majority of people who leave comments on many of the webpages out there. And nothing you can say will dissuade them.

That isn’t scepticism. Whatever it is, it needs some sort of shorthand.

“what good science is like”

Good science is like when my alarm clock goes off or when my potted pepper plants produce. You know, something tangible.

A collection of meaningless numbers and a rendering of tangled colored lines = not so much.

Andrew

Great, because Amac doesn’t like that Mann tried to use a certain proxy (nevermind that Mann initially acknowledged the difficulty there, and also calculated a result without that proxy), we’ve got comparisons to Lysenko. Get a sense of proportion, man. That’s not much better than Godwin.

For all the whingeing about paleo – how about somebody sit down and make their own reconstruction. See what methodology and data choices you might make. Contribute a better example. Contribute to progress. That’s what happens in real science.

There are tons of proxy data now in the public domain. Nothing is stopping anybody from trying it for themselves.

Lucia: “Keith read it both more kindly and generously than seems to have been warranted.”

I’ll cop to that.

“……Summing it up, I think that Brin is just a lame shouting inglorious basterd.”

Brin, meet Bugs and Sod

“….it needs some sort of shorthand”

How about “carrot eaters”, or is that too long?

Lucia

Yet Brin is clearly not using it in this sense either–

I didn’t read his entire piece, and after your excerpts, I have zero interest in doing so. But in general, that’s what one means by sceptic. This Brin may have jumped the shark in his language and descriptions, but that doesn’t change the usual usage.

Everybody is supposed to be a sceptic. You critically assess the new information that comes your way. You examine it in context with first principles, and what is already known.

If you read a freshly published paper in an academic journal, and you can’t pick out about 3 things the authors could have possibly done better, or could do for future work, then you aren’t a good scientist and/or you are reading something in a field you don’t know very well. But at the same time, you must maintain self-awareness and the limits of your own expertise – if it isn’t your field, then you probably don’t have the basis and background for just casually reading a paper and dismissing it entirely. Except for those few papers which are just that bad, like G&T.

Carrot eater, one Tobis is more than enough. Really.

bugs said:

I would like to see McInytre ‘audit’ the garbage out there. He won’t, because if he did, it would be quickly apparent to his fans that there are far more errors and mistakes made by the ‘skeptics’. Exhibit ‘A’, WUWT. The guy who runs McIntyres web site for him gets off without a second glance and without a word of criticism, while continually putting up topics that are patent nonsense.

McIntyre’s partnership with Watts does reveal his bias. It’s hard for anyone to take him seriously about Mann and Jones being awful and unscientific and bad at stats when he partners with a guy who is more unscientific and statistically illiterate than Mann and Jones are even alleged to be.

I heard a rumor that Anthony Watt’s mustache was going to start blogging. Stay tuned…

> Blather
Read more carefully, CE.

> Don’t pretend these types of people aren’t common.
You’re addressing your remark to me, not to the-great-out-there. So, reference to that, please.

> Great, because Amac doesn’t like that Mann tried to use a certain proxy (nevermind that…
You miss the point.

Amac

Read more carefully, CE.

You objected to the ‘self-righteous’ using labels. I laid out my case for using such labels. Have you something direct to say to my reasoning?

I repeat, all the things I reference are common – you can find them on comments pretty easily, and many of them you’ll find from the authors of WUWT themselves. And the people who easily accept these notions and spread them are just not worthy of the name sceptic.

You miss the point.

The point being that you get to make grand pronouncements about the state of some field of science, and make comparisons to Lysenko and eugenics and other horrors, because you don’t like one choice made in one paper?

Fuller

Carrot eater, one Tobis is more than enough. Really.

I actually don’t read Tobis, so I won’t understand any references to him.

but some shorthand is needed for those types who’ll just accept and spread nonsense, no matter how little sense it makes.

“Conspiracy theorists”? “Lunatic fringe”?

Re: carrot eater (Jul 6 18:18),

Have you something direct to say to my reasoning?

Your reasoning is that “I’m again sorry, but some shorthand is needed for those types who’ll just accept and spread nonsense, no matter how little sense it makes.” This reasoning is justification for your use of the term “septic.”

Can you link to where you guide the potential objects of your scorn, as far as “septic’s” suitability for mocking this worse-variety-of-skeptic, but not that not-quite-as-bad-type-of-skeptic?

Whether you can or whether you can’t — I suggest you present your reasoned case over at The Science of Doom. That blogger deals with quite a large number of scientifically-illiterate skeptics. So I’m sure he’ll appreciate your tip.

The point being that you get to make grand pronouncements about the state of some field of science, and make comparisons to Lysenko and eugenics and other horrors, because you don’t like one choice made in one paper?

Again, you miss the point. Actually, this time you got one part right:

you get to make grand pronouncements about the state of some field of science

Yeah, I do. If you can’t accept that… well, you know Lucia’s expression, and this is her blog.

If you want to offer a reasoned response, we can discuss it. Or, you can vent. Either way is ok with me.

“Conspiracy theorists”? “Lunatic fringe”?

Whatever you want to call them, I’m not worried one bit about “a real obstacle to communication with others” (AMac) or hindering a “two way communication between climate scientists and the public” (Lucia) by coming up with some label for these sorts of people. Because no communication is possible with the types of people who uncritically accept or spread the types of elementary or paranoid nonsense I listed. They would have to decide to change their intellectual approach for themselves; no kumbaya communication is going to change their approach.

What mystifies me is that this

Brin suggests (as I have on repeated occasion), that “sincere and enlightened climate skeptics” should put some distance between themselves and climate “deniers.”

almost never seems to happen. Instead, we seem to see a reflexive kinship. Beats me why. I’ll happily throw the lunatics on my “side” under the bus. Who needs them? They’re also spreading confusion. I have no time for blabbering preaching celebrities, for example, or street activists who appear to have a vastly exaggerated view of possible future adverse impacts. And I hate it when journalists and laymen dabble in attribution of individual weather events; I will call that out if it comes my way. Romm stays barely on the correct side of that particular line. And if there were a ‘warmist’ analogue to WUWT (happily I don’t think there is, or if there is, it’s very low traffic), I’d disown it in a second, in no uncertain terms.

Amac,

Or, you can vent.

You comparing any field of modern science to eugenics or Lysenko is you venting irrationally and without any sense of proportion. That’s as bad as the florid language used by Brin. There is nothing to discuss in that.

Re: carrot eater (Jul 6 20:09),

You comparing any field of modern science to eugenics or Lysenko is you venting irrationally and without any sense of proportion.

The context explains why I’m speaking rationally and with proportion. I said at #48058,

And all parties should honor the value system of science, as expressed so elegantly and colloquially by Richard Feynman, and others.

The aberration of climate-science as a field seems to me to be that so many on the science-as-profession track do not hold themselves to that standard… There’s an article by Serge Lang from 1993 called “Questions of Scientific Responsibility: The Baltimore Case” that raises issues from one of experimental biology’s biggest scandals. Scanning it, there are parallels with the current issues. The article is very long, but one thing to note is the repeated failures of eminence grises of the field to act honorably and responsibly, when prestige, reputation, funding, publications, and the like were at stake. And the similar failure of inquiries, the science press, and institutions.

I commented on your use of “septic” at #48061.

You responded in #48064with

This is the sort of self-righteous comment that makes me roll my eyes. People lecturing as if they know what good science is like, and pontificating that climate science falls short of that.

I’m sorry, but this is just bull. You put this much scrutiny (often politically motivated and not in good faith) to scientists and publications in any field, and you’ll end up with just this…

I replied in #48066. I’ve added bolds and brackets for clarity.

[General Statement #1] Yeah, I do know what good science is like.

[General Statement #2] (Parts of) climate science fall short of that. The part I’m speaking about is paleoclimate reconstruction. [Supporting Text] Because that’s the part I “fell into.” The rest of climate science may be in much better shape. Let’s hope so.

Maybe this is “self-righteous” to say so. I’ll think about that.

[General Statement #3] On the other hand, we have the historical record to show that various specialties at various times have run off the track to various extents. [Supporting Examples] Alchemy, astrology, phrenology, eugenics, scientific Marxism, Lysenkoism, as extremes. The O’Toole/Baltimore black mark to modern immunology that I referenced upthread. [Summary] So while I started with the assumption that climate science (paleoclimatology) was deservedly up on a pedestal with the other physical sciences, that was a revokable assumption.

Revoked. [Supporting Text] The reasons are contained in Feynman’s essay “Cargo Cult Science.”

I’ll repeat the part that so offends you, so you notice the relevant qualifier.

Alchemy, astrology, phrenology, eugenics, scientific Marxism, Lysenkoism, as extremes.

You claim in #48084,

What mystifies me is that …[“sincere and enlightened climate skeptics” [putting] some distance between themselves and climate “deniers.”] almost never seems to happen. Instead, we seem to see a reflexive kinship.

CE, how about if you identify those “sincere and enlightened climate skeptics” who demonstrate “reflexive kinship” with climate “deniers”. Keep in mind that many of your allies bridle at submitting to Loyalty Oaths–so it’s a fair guess that your adversaries will, too. For context, here’s me at C-a-s distancing myself from anti-vaccine activists and Creationists. Do you think that will do a lot of good, in the way Kloor hopes?

Eek, the guy obviously has some real hate in him, mostly it looks like not for people who are “anti-science” or even “deniers”, but, in reality, anyone who is a Republican or deviates from the “progressive” line.

The funny thing about the “Rupertian Cult” is that I seem to recall that Rupert Murdoch believes in AGW. Maybe not Roger Ailes, but Murdoch I’m almost positive he does. But check one: He hates Fox News.
He uses the phrase “neocon” derisively. Let’s suppose that this isn’t a code word for Jew, like it used to be, and is code for the previous administration-which is funny because they weren’t neocons at all, quite apart from the fact that they weren’t Jewish Democrats, their views did not match so exactly, either, being more skeptical of “social democracy”, although rejecting it like they should have. Strike two.

Derisively refers to “creationists”. Such an accusation is based on…the fact that he is not mature enough to see that people can have views that mix things he agrees with, like evolution, with things he obviously disagrees with like…(oh and before I get to this next point Strike Three!)

“voodoo supply side economics” Funny that the alternative is Economic Creationism, or Government Design-but enough of my self amusement. He derides something he does not understand, because the ideas that he really objects to are the elementary laws of economics. Talk about denial of reality. Strike Four!

War on Science…DNC talking point and from Chris Mooney and his fight to get John F Kerry into the White House, teamed up with James Hansen, also campaigning for JFK 2. Strike Cinco Amigo!

“EVERY measure of national health declined under neocon rule” I’m sorry, all I hear when I see this is “The Jews ruined America!”-but okay, well, this is just completely inaccurate. And again, quite political. Strike Six baby!

“similar oligarchs and fired by similar populist resentment toward the future, by similar demographies to those embroiled in phases one and two.” Hating on the South. I love geographic guilt, I’m going to hold every bad thing that happened at my neighbor’s house against everyone who moves in there after them, since it makes so much sense. Damn Yankees are really nasty folks, actually. Strike Seven!

“a 40% *minority* of science-clueless politicians” A completely unveiled reference to every single Republican. That’s the kicker, so I say it counts as so much proof that this guy is a Democrat progressive hack, that it is Strikes 8, 9, and 10.

The Left Wing Hatefest really needs to stop, and people like this Brin guy are the problem. Screw them, I’m GOP baby.

Speaking of rants, there were lots of Godwins in the threatening emails sent to climate scientists:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/envi.....tics-abuse

(Warning: Foul language in that link. Imagine Joe Pesci reading the emails and it seems kinda fun.)

“you, sir, are a nazi…”

“Hey scumbag Nazi moron, Are you still drawing a paycheck?”

“SIEG HEIL PROF.SCHNEIDER! SIEG HEIL!”

Anybody have a list of threatening emails sent to climate skeptics? I’d like to get a few and compare the rhetoric. There might be a nice paper there.

> septic
That’s a defined term with a specific meaning:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/.....ed_off.php
http://groups.google.com/group.....6b806d3ee8

CE, while my response to you waits in the moderation queue (insufficient karma), I might also point to this recent C-a-s comment (#50) by “Xenophon,” as I am almost entirely in agreement with the position he outlines.

Andrew_FL
He uses the phrase “neocon” derisively. Let’s suppose that this isn’t a code word for Jew, like it used to be,
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
How gracious of you to publically state that you are not yet prepaired to accuse Brin of being an antisemite.

“EVERY measure of national health declined under neocon rule” I’m sorry, all I hear when I see this is “The Jews ruined America!”-but okay, well, this is just completely inaccurate. And again, quite political. Strike Six baby!
= = = = = = = = = = = =
Oh sorry that grace was short lived.

Most amusing.

Lucia, will do. I like the idea of the puppet, esp if it Pinocchio as well.

“I would like to see McInytre ‘audit’ the garbage out there.”

I await with no small amount of excitement the unveiling of ‘boris and bugs: auditions spectacular’ blog devoted to the auditing of sceptics and whatnot.

Go for it, gentlemen. There’s plenty of garbage out there.

Re: Boris (Jul 6 21:09),
Yeah… but godwin by the anonymous don’t trigger the rule requiring posting. If it did, I’d be posting one every time someone used it on a forum, email etc. ! (Someone gave a previous link and I think that has a Godwin on Shneider in response. I was busy doing other things– so I’ll go hunt that down. Obviously, if I post, I’ll include both, since the scientist Godwin reaction is to the Godwin letters.)

It is sort of weird if a letter accuses a Jewish guy of being a Nazi. The name Schneider sounds like there is a good chance he is– anyone know?

Re: dorlomin (Jul 7 02:52), Re: Andrew_FL (Jul 6 21:04),

I had to google–but the wikipedia discusses the use of neo-conservative as a euphemisms for jew. It’s in the section “Antisemitism Further information: New antisemitism”
Three reporters discuss it’s use as “jew”. The defense against the accusation it means Jew seems to be, “Time magazine’s Joe Klein has suggested it is legitimate to look at the religion of neoconservatives. He does not say there was a conspiracy but says there is a case to be made for disproportionate influence of Jewish neoconservative figures in US foreign policy, ”

It sounds an awful lot like the term very well may be used as a euphemism for “jew” by at least some people. I was unaware of this usage and I assume it’s also not used as a euphemisms by others particularly those who don’t know that some use it as a dog-whistle to mean “jew”.

Re: Josh (Jul 7 03:30), YES!!!

Carrot eater,
“What mystifies me is that this

Brin suggests (as I have on repeated occasion), that “sincere and enlightened climate skeptics” should put some distance between themselves and climate “deniers.”

almost never seems to happen. Instead, we seem to see a reflexive kinship. Beats me why.”
.
I don’t have a clue how you can think this is true. Read a couple of threads at WUWT (hold you nose if you feel you need to), where Willis attempts (over hundreds of comments!) to dissuade people of exactly the kinds of nonsense arguments you list. I have done the same myself when I guest posted at WUWT on the relationship between CO2 emissions and the rate of CO2 absorption by the ocean. Read what Jeff Id says on his blog about scientifically dubious claims. How much utter nonsense to you hear in comments at Climate Audit? Do you think Lucia does not refute nonsense arguments here at The Blackboard (or anywhere else she makes comments)?
.
Yes, some people will not be dissuaded from nonsense, but it is not for lack of effort on the part of ‘enlightened climate skeptics’. It seems to me that you are trying to paint with far too broad a brush.
.
I ask you to read over Jeff Id’s thread where his readers and commenters offer mini-biographies. Most are practicing or retired scientists and engineers, many with advanced degrees and most with lots of years of practical experience in industry and academia. Do you honestly believe that these people tolerate scientific nonsense? If so, how do they manage to get by working in technical fields? I discovered some months ago that one of my undergraduate professors (who taught a course called “Principles of analytical instrumentation”, among others) is retired and happens to live in the same city in Florida where I do. He is openly hostile to climate science and says that much of work in the field is extremely weak (I think ‘rubbish’ was the word he used). Do you think he too believes or condones scientific nonsense?
.
Finally, let me turn your argument around: There are often comments, especially at the ‘rabid CAGW blogs’, that claim the sea level will rise by several meters within the century (nope, almost certainly less than a meter), that continued warming will cause less total rainfall (nope, almost certainly more, not less), and that the Greenland ice sheet will rapidly melt (nope, not over hundreds of years; perhaps over thousands of years, if ever). These claims are simply not correct, and anybody familiar with the field knows that. Yet these comments do not get jumped on. Why not?

The funny thing about the “Rupertian Cult” is that I seem to recall that Rupert Murdoch believes in AGW. Maybe not Roger Ailes, but Murdoch I’m almost positive he does. But check one: He hates Fox News.
He uses the phrase “neocon” derisively. Let’s suppose that this isn’t a code word for Jew, like it used to be, and is code for the previous administration-which is funny because they weren’t neocons at all, quite apart from the fact that they weren’t Jewish Democrats, their views did not match so exactly, either, being more skeptical of “social democracy”, although rejecting it like they should have. Strike two.

The appearance of the the word “Jew” is entirely your own. You are creating motivations and thoughts for him.

The Murdoch media are notorious for printing all kinds of ‘skeptical’ garbage, without critical appraisal, while being continually critical of AGW science.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoi.....nce_50.php there is a whole series of these examples.

bugs said:

I would like to see McInytre ‘audit’ the garbage out there. He won’t, because if he did, it would be quickly apparent to his fans that there are far more errors and mistakes made by the ‘skeptics’. Exhibit ‘A’, WUWT. The guy who runs McIntyres web site for him gets off without a second glance and without a word of criticism, while continually putting up topics that are patent nonsense.

I think that’s an unfair critisism of McIntyre. When the garbage that is out there is published by the IPCC and is parroted around as The Consensus truth, I would then expect him to audit that work. McIntyre also had his own site for almost the entire time he did his climate work. The traffic from Climategate brought that site to its knees and he had to move. Just because he moved his site to WordPress with Watts’ help doesn’t show bias. Other than classic “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” type thinking.

bugs said:

Brin is also correct on the ‘left/right’ division on attacking AGW. It is not a hard and fast rule, but if you were to divide the community along belief/’skepticism’, the definite trend is towards that division. Inhofe is a Republican, Morano is, the same pattern is repeated around the world, the conservatives don’t like AGW.

In general that is right. You also have to admit that liberals love AGW. And the majority on both sides don’t really know jack. They simply follow the position that nicely fits into their preconceived political ideas. Liberals, in general, tout most every doomsday article no matter how speculative it is. It’s touted as science and the truth. Conservatives lock on to every article they see on WUWT that fits their preconceived ideas no matter how speculative or wrong it is. It’s given as an example that there is no consensus and that we don’t know anything about AGW.

Personally, I’m burnt out by all the political banter masking as science or the criticism of it. Most of the real issues have been discovered. Arguments have become circular as each side refuses to budge much. The core knowledge of AGW is going to stand although there is much uncertainty around specific details. I at least hope that things like Climategate will help open the science more to the public. I think Keith’s newest post that tries to focus on policy common ground is where the discussion needs to turn. The problem there is that policy discussion brings in far more than science. Areas such as economics and sociology are “soft” and inherently political.

Sorry if the quotes don’t show up like others. Not sure what tags to use around quotes here.

Brin suggests (as I have on repeated occasion), that “sincere and enlightened climate skeptics” should put some distance between themselves and climate “deniers.” If they did this, I bet their voices would be heard more clearly by both climate scientists and the public.

I have spent a number of posts on this issue. It’s impossible to resolve because of the nature of the opposition on both sides. The most popular science based skeptic site owners in blogland all hold the view that CO2 captures heat to my knowledge. What is discussed is the magnitude of the capture and the feedbacks to the capture.

An interesting article which claims to look at these feedbacks in terms of actual measured data is behind a paywall here:

http://multi-science.metapress.....2&pi=8

Steve F,
Broadly speaking, the near total failure of both ‘sides’ in debunking the nonsense from within their own cohort is a striking characteristic of this debate. There are exceptions, of course, and gradients of behaviour. But generally it’s about critiquing the ‘other side’.

And unfortunatley I think the trajectory of the debate, its tone, and some of the approaches and tropes that have developed, have opened up plenty of space for silly ideas to proliferate, and for reasonable criticism – in both directions – to be written off.

dorlomin (Comment#48098)-”Oh sorry that grace was short lived.” I’m sorry you misunderstood me, but what I meant was that I automatically hear someone saying the same things but more openly anti-semitic when I hear the use of “neo-con”. Honestly, what I meant in the second instance was no different than what I meant in the first: Again he is using slur which he may or may not be aware is often used in an anti-semitic context, but he is still using it, and I have to wonder.

bugs (Comment#48112)-”The appearance of the the word “Jew” is entirely your own. You are creating motivations and thoughts for him.”

I am speculating that he might or might not be an Anti-Semite. What there is no question about, is that “neo-con” is a political slur, and it has political motivations. It is not my creation of motivations or thoughts for him that establishes that he has a definite political bent-it’s his own words.

“The Murdoch media are notorious for printing all kinds of ‘skeptical’ garbage, without critical appraisal, while being continually critical of AGW science.”

And this says what about Rupert Murdoch himself? Do you simply assume that he personally holds or wants people to hold every opinion that every bit of media he has a stake in publishes? Because that is absurd. What you are doing now is unfair to Murdoch as his opinion is not know to you.

But check that you also despise Fox News. You prefer your news from DNC websites.

lucia (Comment#48109)-I know that it has entered the political lexicon as a more general term, so I also don’t think that one should assume someone using the term is using it in an anti-semitic sense. I although I often can’t help but jump to that conclusion. I have to force myself to back down from it without further evidence. But it makes me suspicious.

Again he is using slur which he may or may not be aware is often used in an anti-semitic context, but he is still using it, and I have to wonder.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = =
No, he is using a commonly used political term that is widely accepted as describing one strand of conservative thought over the a past 40 years.

What you hear is an opportunity to smear someone you disagree with and using it in place of a more reasoned response.

(Edited)

Andrew FL, I suspect the neocon-Jewish association sits primarily within the US’ political lexicon. I imagine you’d get some blank and confused stares if you asserted such a thing in many other places, even though it makes sense in some contexts.

Re: Hank Roberts #48089 (Jul 6 21:22),

Thanks for the two links on the original use and meaning of the derogatory term “septic” that was discussed earlier in the thread.

In your Google Groups link, William Connelly remarks,

Firstly, no, its not just Mann. The insistence on “Mann” is pretty
characteristic of the septic side.

That does provide context for William’s later Stoat quip “I claim to have originated the label ‘septic’ for the malodourous end of the skeptic range” (your first link).

While holding to none of the views that Carrot Eater recounted above in #48067 after “Blather”, it is unclear from this discussion, and these links, whether I should consider myself part of “that malodourous end,” as William, Carrot Eater, and you see it. After all, I have criticized some of Professor Mann’s work, y’know.

This illustrates a characteristic of this style of discourse. Carrot Eater, William, and you offer insult, without being quite clear on who your spitballs are aimed at. Not that the problem of endemic rudeness is specific to your tribe–note the antagonism displayed towards Michael Tobis recently at Climate Audit.

I suggested that CE introduce the “Science of Doom” blogger to this clever approach to educating the scientificially clueless. Why don’t you propose it to Keith Kloor over at C-a-s? It’d be on topic for the current thread.

Brin’s Jewish heritage may be the source of two other strong themes in his works. Tikkun Olam (“repairing the world”, i.e. people have a duty to make the world a better place) is originally a religious concept but Brin, like many non-orthodox Jews, has adapted this into a secular notion of working to improve the human condition, to increase knowledge, and to prevent long-term evils.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brin
= = = = = = = = = = = = =

I think we can put this strand to bed now.

bombarding people with useless FOI requests instead of doing a simple analysis seems to be not a clever way of communication…
.
We demonstrated that any independent researcher can download station data directly from primary sources and undertake their own temperature trend analysis”.
.
Writing computer code to process the data “took less than two days and produced results similar to other independent analyses. No information from CRU was needed to do this”.
.
Sir Muir commented: “So we conclude that the argument that CRU has something to hide does not stand up”.
.
Asked whether it would be reasonable to conclude that anyone claiming instrumental records were unavailable or vital code missing was incompetent, another panel member, Professor Peter Clarke from Edinburgh University, said: “It’s very clear that anyone who’d be competent enough to analyse the data would know where to find it.
.
“It’s also clear that anyone competent could perform their own analysis without let or hindrance.”
.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci.....538198.stm
.
ouch.

According to that wiki link Brin is just an award-winning author of science fiction just like Dr. Michael Crichton was. But I’m not supposed to listen to what Crichton thought. right? carrot, sod, boris, bugs? LOL!!

” people have a duty to make the world a better place”
Funny how all the left leaning liberal folks embrace this mantra as if there is not one thing wrong with it.
Ask the Native Americans, or Africans, or Aboriginal Australians etc…etc etc… how that all worked out for them. (and the Left and certain scientific types tend to dislike or look down on the religious folk or Christians…lol ! Hypocrisy abounds!)

Liza

” people have a duty to make the world a better place”

It’s a good mantra. The difficulty is that it’s not always easy to figure out which actions make the world a better place.

Sod–
In the part you quote, Muir is, on the balance, wrong about what was going on at CRU. His report isn’t going to change anything, and your quoting it isn’t going to turn his views into wisdom.

Liza

According to that wiki link Brin is just an award-winning author of science fiction just like Dr. Michael Crichton was. But I’m not supposed to listen to what Crichton thought. right? carrot, sod, boris, bugs? LOL!!

Who’s telling you to listen to what Brin has to say? I certainly didn’t.

LOL!!

Anyway, whenever you get a layman speaking about some science, you examine how well supported the statements are by the underlying science. In this case, it seems like Brin is not talking about science at all, so much as how different people (politicians, lay people, Liza with her geologist husband) react to it.

Re: carrot eater (Jul 7 08:29),

In this case, it seems like Brin is not talking about science at all, so much as how different people (politicians, lay people, Liza with her geologist husband) react to it.

I don’t think Brin has much insight into this issue either. For one thing, he appears blind to any distinctions between people he perceives as being on the other side. At a minimum, he doesn’t seem to want to discuss these distinctions.

This blindness or unwillingness to discuss distinctions ill-suits him to describing how different people react to anything.

lucia (Comment#48125) July 7th, 2010 at 8:12 am
The mantra is fine if it means what you think you can do yourself each day without bothering anyone else; but when you go beyond that; think you can decide what the “actions” for everyone else should be and dictate “what a better place” looks like to everybody else I would argue it is a very dangerous mentality.

Liza–
I think it’s sometimes ok to ‘bother’ other people. I don’t have anything against building and sanitation codes, funding public libraries, building public roads and supporting public water treatment facilities.

Questions over collective actions are important ones. I lean toward less collective action than many, but I also think public action is sometimes required to make the world a better place.

I like everyone to have access water to be free of pathogens like cholera. The world is a better place when we act collectively to assure this to even the poorest individuals.

Lucia

In the part you quote, Muir is, on the balance, wrong about what was going on at CRU. His report isn’t going to change anything, and your quoting it isn’t going to turn his views into wisdom.

And yet the wisdom of what is being said there was borne out on your very webpage.

A competent person can go and confirm the results of CRU, NOAA, GISS, using what is easily available.

Does it particularly matter if that competent person has to go to the NOAA website instead of the CRU website to get what he needs? Not really, though it’d be certainly be better if the CRU had been better organised, and better if CRU did not feel the need to use proprietary data, particularly since that proprietary stuff doesn’t seem to make much difference in the modern era (it may in 1860, that part is still unclear).

Actually, there’s an interesting pattern here. GISS, CRU and NCDC all give consistent results. All the information you might want are available from NOAA and GISS. Those minded to do something constructive then worked with that. Others just fixated on pestering CRU and spreading conspiracy theories.

Mind, again I think the CRU could have been better organised, and more open. Maybe it could have produced two series – one using public domain data that it would be totally open about, and then the second series with the closed data added on. People could then choose to use whichever one they wanted.

AMac

This illustrates a characteristic of this style of discourse. Carrot Eater, William, and you offer insult, without being quite clear on who your spitballs are aimed at.

Wow, that’s rich. I bothered to type in a rather long list of the sorts of behavior I’m talking about, and you tell me I’m not clear on what I’m talking about.

What the f more do you want?

If you can’t tell the difference between the idiot who goes around saying “if they ban CO2, do we all have to stop breathing?” or “it’s all a big conspiracy by the railroad engineer and Hansen”, and somebody making reasoned analyses of what features of ocean-atmospheric circulation are not well described by models, and what actual impact that may have on the relevant model results, then I can’t help you.

What’s more, if you are of the second type, and you feel some sort of kinship towards the first type such that you won’t correct and/or criticise him, then I feel disdain for you. That’s the distancing that’s described in the quote above that I’ve taken a liking to.

Carrot

And yet the wisdom of what is being said there was borne out on your very webpage.

To the contrary. You– like Muir– either do not understand or are simply refusing to admit the real purpose of requesting information which was a perfectly valid one. That other goals and purposes might also be valid and and someone can say they might have been achieved is non-responsive to the questions and issues that caused the tension between CRU and outsiders.

If anyone hopes to publish wise evaluation of the event, failing to understand or refusing to admit the true issue between CRU and outsiders is unwise. Muir’s evaluation is foolish; your echoing it– and carrying over the flaw– is no wiser.

AMac:

Yeah, I do know what good science is like.
(Parts of) climate science fall short of that.

I see this more as a sociological than a scientific problem. At its core, I suspect, climate science is just like any other scientific discipline, with its good, its bad, and (occasionally) its ugly. The problem is (1) by its very nature, it has to live with very large uncertainties (the standard error appears to be typically of the order of 40%), and (2) it has partly thrust itself, partly been thrust
into the public arena, where a chorus of politicians, activists, and ordinary citizens continually demand of it more certainty than it can possibly provide.

In short, it is a bit like Lindsey Lohan.

I think it is important not to mistake the climate pseudoscience that is being served to the public by journalists, bloggers, activists, and even the occasional well-meaning but misguided scientist, for the real science that has been, and presumably continues to be, painstakingly done by people laboring in relative obscurity, struggling all the time with those huge error bars.

I’ve never heard of ‘neocon’ as being a slur for ‘jew’. The neocons self-identified as neocons. It only became a negative word as some people came to dislike their politics. Just as ‘liberal’ is a negative word to somebody who isn’t one, or ‘conservative’.

SteveF

I don’t have a clue how you can think this is true.

Quite easily, because the volume of the nonsense on the sceptic side is truly massive, and I see very little attempt to correct it. Are there a few attempts? Yes, as we continue..

Read a couple of threads at WUWT (hold you nose if you feel you need to), where Willis attempts (over hundreds of comments!) to dissuade people of exactly the kinds of nonsense arguments you list.

Yes, I’ve seen him do that a couple times, and credit to him for doing so. And yet the masses weren’t having it. They just can’t be helped, unless they want to help themselves.

But that’s still rather rare, and (this is important) many of the nonsense arguments are spread by the authors at WUWT themselves, or other prominent commentators like Monckton, Marohasy, Inhofe, Bolt, Will, etc – not just the rabid masses.

And for the most part, the nonsense commenters at WUWT run free, with nobody correcting them except the occasional ‘warmist’ ‘troll’, unless it’s a solar issue, in which case Leif is doing yeoman’s duty.

Do you think Lucia does not refute nonsense arguments here at The Blackboard (or anywhere else she makes comments)?

If something particularly stupid comes along here, somebody will say something.

But I see a strong kinship from Lucia that keeps her from speaking out against anything that’s out there, except Monckton. For example, there are a grand total of 2 authors on this pile of confusion and baseless accusation, http://wattsupwiththat.com/201.....e-records/, and it’s been extensively discussed at this website so it’s not something we haven’t looked at here, yet somehow the one author is not to be held to account for it at all? Actually, neither has been.

Yes, some people will not be dissuaded from nonsense, but it is not for lack of effort on the part of ‘enlightened climate skeptics’.

Again, the authors at WUWT are mostly not among the enlightened group. So there is not much effort going on, along those lines, at the biggest website.

I ask you to read over Jeff Id’s thread where his readers and commenters offer mini-biographies. Most are practicing or retired scientists and engineers, many with advanced degrees and most with lots of years of practical experience in industry and academia. Do you honestly believe that these people tolerate scientific nonsense? If so, how do they manage to get by working in technical fields? I discovered some months ago that one of my undergraduate professors (who taught a course called “Principles of analytical instrumentation”, among others) is retired and happens to live in the same city in Florida where I do. He is openly hostile to climate science and says that much of work in the field is extremely weak (I think ‘rubbish’ was the word he used). Do you think he too believes or condones scientific nonsense?

Maybe he does, I don’t know. Kinship seems to help people suffer fools.

And people seem to lose self-awareness about the limits of their own understanding. How often do you see somebody claim credentials in physics, and then proceed to go off into the weeds? You have to spend time, read a lot of papers, see what’s actually being done. I don’t care what degree you have; you can’t read a couple posts on CA and decide you know it all about climate science.

Finally, let me turn your argument around: There are often comments, especially at the ‘rabid CAGW blogs’, that claim the sea level will rise by several meters within the century (nope, almost certainly less than a meter), that continued warming will cause less total rainfall (nope, almost certainly more, not less), and that the Greenland ice sheet will rapidly melt (nope, not over hundreds of years; perhaps over thousands of years, if ever). These claims are simply not correct, and anybody familiar with the field knows that. Yet these comments do not get jumped on. Why not?

I’ll challenge you. Point out where this has happened. It’s not common. And it’s nowhere near as common as uncorrected drivel at WUWT, both in the actual post and the following comments.

The less rainfall thing is subtle. There will be more rainfall on average, globally, but there would be areas where there would be periods of less.

I see two questions here, a philosophical and a practical. Full disclosure, I don’t know the answer to either one. But this is how I see the issues:

Philosophical — How universal should a behavior or an attribute be before it is reasonable to talk about it as associated with a group in a non-coincidental way. Anecdotal reasoning is wrong — I know a child abuser from Oregon, therefore Oregonians tend to be child abusers. Arguing by exception is also wrong — indeed, it’s the same anecdotal fallacy in reverse — some serial killers did not torture animals as children, therefore it is nonsense to talk about childhood abuse of animals as a characteristic of serial killers.

Practical — While most of us aspire to the high road in debate, we also do not want to fall prey to the “Dukakis effect” of appearing less passionate, of less conviction, or generally wishy-washy in comparison with opponents who eschew doubt, qualification, and respectful debate. (Insert obligatory “Second Coming” quote here.)

On the one hand there are people who make boring and careful work to devastating effect — Abrahams, Science of Doom, Skeptical Science. But just as often, people end looking like they are trying to hold off Visagoths with a feather duster — witness Phil Jones’s science-perfect but PR-disaster interview.

The only person I can think who combines the cool, reasonable, and precise and the punchy and funny and sarcastic perfectly Peter Sinclair. But you can’t imitate that; he’s sui generis.

So I don’t have an answer. It’s easy to say that the answer to somebody yelling at you and calling you names is to be calm and reasonable, but on the facts, I think you can make just as good a case for yelling back twice as loud, seeking to be better in your evidence and reasoning, but not necessarily striving to be polite and respectful towards people who do not extend you the same courtesy.

Then again, you waste a lot of time that way on a back-and-forth with people who can always shout nonsense faster than you can shout good science. Falsehood lends itself to oversimplification; so it could be argued that a war of soundbites with a psuedoskeptic is fight own their home ground. So I really am sincere in not knowing the answer to this.

Carrot-

“if they ban CO2, do we all have to stop breathing?” or “it’s all a big conspiracy by the railroad engineer and Hansen

Are these quotes? Can you attach names? Are they anyone in top-level blog posts?

It’s fine to insist people dissociate from “others”. But as a practical matter, fair minded people can only identify rather specific things someone said and then explain why those things are wrong. I’ve done that. I’ve posted to explain flaws in the argument about the surface stations, I’ve criticized Monckton’s “IPCC projections” (and his language), I’ve pointed out when people (on both sides) pull Godwins, I’ve posted to contradict the “violates 2nd law” bit &etc.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the “dissociation” involves something other than that which can actually be achieved by a fair minded person. You know– like maybe dissociating involves labelling unnamed people “septics” or taking pledges that insinuate all sorts of evil things about a broad swatch of people suspected of being part of the “Rupertian Denialist Cult”.

I’m not going to do that sort of thing for 2 reasons. 1) I think it’s inappropriate and 2) it also doesn’t achieve anything I consider useful. In contrast, I have noticed that when I post to explain why a very obviously incorrect notion is incorrect those notions tend to fade away. I think this outcome is more important than fullfilling the dhoganza’s of the world’s dream (I.e. “I just want those responsible to admit, with all honesty, that they don’t care about the future.” see comment 52 at CAS, or the dreams of those whose main goal appears to get people to cry “Uncle”.

lucia (Comment#48133) July 7th, 2010 at 8:40 am
Right; me either; but that’s small scale “making it better where you live stuff” not “the whole world” .

I think that those who label others (and I find AGW believers trying to be psychologists too hilarious!) should look in the mirror or at least get a grip on their small view of humanity. I see that most AGW believers have a very bleak one. My husband carrot; the published environmental geologist US Army veteran; works for two PHD’s from Iran who were raised Muslim (came here in the 70′s) He also works with a Young earther, and an Orthodox jew; just to name a few characters. All of them get along fine, care about the environment, and I don’t think any one of them at this company finds climate science all that compelling and certainly if they handled their data and behaved the way that climate scientists do they wouldn’t get any contracts at all or they’d get sued. I think they are worried about much more important things as well, being a small firm in Lovely California. What would you label that lot?

Lucia

To the contrary. You– like Muir– either do not understand or are simply refusing to admit the real purpose of requesting information which was a perfectly valid one. That other goals and purposes might also be valid and and someone can say they might have been achieved is non-responsive to the questions and issues that caused the tension between CRU and outsiders.

If anyone hopes to publish wise evaluation of the event, failing to understand or refusing to admit the true issue between CRU and outsiders is unwise. Muir’s evaluation is foolish; your echoing it– and carrying over the flaw– is no wiser.

I’ve said and will continue to say that CRU should have been better organised, and I suggested a way for them to get around the obstacle to openness that was caused by their use of proprietary data. As far as obstacles caused by their own disorganisation, well, they just need to get organised.

But it remains important to note that everything you might need to confirm CRU was available from other sources, and those who were actually interested in doing so have done so. Much as you want to, this cannot be discounted.

“I think that those who label others (and I find AGW believers trying to be psychologists too hilarious!) should look in the mirror or at least get a grip on their small view of humanity.”

Somehow I doubt what you say.

Lucia

Are these quotes? Can you attach names? Are they anyone in top-level blog posts?

These, along with everything else at my comment at #48067 are easily found in comments at WUWT and comment sections at newspapers, etc. They tend to go uncorrected, except by ‘warmists’ who come by.

But yes, let’s make a distinction between commenters, and named prominent bloggers. I haven’t time for that now, but if you want, I could over time compile a list of prominent bloggers peddling arguments that go in that stupid list.

But as a practical matter, fair minded people can only identify rather specific things someone said and then explain why those things are wrong. I’ve done that.

Well, continue to do that.

“I’ve never heard of ‘neocon’ as being a slur for ‘jew’.”

It’s a historical thing. In the early 20th century, most Jewish intellectuals were quite liberal or leftist in their views. In the 60s and 70s and onward, for complex reasons, some of these intellectuals turned against the American left, and came to make up the lion’s share of the neoconservative movement pre-9/11. Post 9/11, the picture is probably more blurred.

One of the tricky things about identity politics is that factual observations get taken for racial insults — sometimes, indeed, they are insults. It’s hard to determine intent in most cases. But not always. For example, it’s undoubtedly true that there are many Jewish bankers, Jewish lawyers, and Jewish movie producers and agents. But someone who insisted on reminding us of that fact on a regular basis would probably not just be sharing an interesting bit of demographic trivia.

So I guess the (thin) logic would be:
a) You don’t like neoconservatives
b) Everybody knows the important neoconservatives are mostly Jews
c) You don’t like Jews, in the way that somebody who hated “bankers and diamond merchants” might be supposed not to like Jews.

As I say, I don’t buy it. Other than a very nerdy minority of people who take an interest in the intellectual history of the United States, I think most people know the neocons mostly as the people who pushed for a disaster of a war and helped turn us into a nation where torture is sanctioned and constitutional liberties are taken as suggestions. That’s plenty of reason to dislike them without any racial or religious animus.

Re: Robert (Jul 7 09:23),
Funny, I find Peter Sinclair horrifically boring, slow paced and unwatchable. I always wish those videos had some higher speed setting to make the information content/ unit time reach something remotely reasonable. (A transcript might be nice.)

I also don’t think Abraham’s had any devastating effect. Every individual argument in the tape a reader brought forward suffered from serious logical flaws, and Abraham also set himself up for criticism of having focused on nits. The consequence is that while the Monckton does make a hash on the science, portions of Monckton’s response at PJ media appeared fair on the merits. The result is Abraham’s video falls far short of “devastating”.

Had Monckton cut the page of invective and Godwin silliness from his response, casual readers who didn’t want to dig would assume Abraham’s video amounted to nothing. Those who dig (which will be few) will find Abraham’s video flawed. Those who dig generally already know Monckton’s “science” is far from balanced– but they will also see Abraham as a propagandiss of sorts. So, in the end, Abraham’s efforts has … no particular impact.

…you can make just as good a case for yelling back twice as loud, seeking to be better in your evidence and reasoning, but not necessarily striving to be polite and respectful towards people who do not extend you the same courtesy.

I think David Brin makes this argument in his comments block. Of course, it’s not at all clear he’s yelling back rather than being the one to start the yelling.

Falsehood lends itself to oversimplification

Does it? Oversimplification can be used to create falsehoods, but it isn’t always. When over simplification falls short of the full truth but can be remedied by adding detail when people ask. Refusing to clarify or answer questions is often a symptom of over simplication used to create falsehood. Responding to questions with attacks is often a symptom of falsehood. It seems to me that long winded goobledygook, and equivocation are often symptoms of falsehood.

But even if you see symptoms, you really need to examine what was said and compare it to truth before you diagnose that what was said is false. When you find it’s false, you can simply show this.

That tactic actually seems to work better than calling people “septics”, whining about how tired you are or attacking their motives. Unfortunately, most those who whine and call names often really don’t seem to having ever tried to just respond.

This Brin guy is a total quack. Nobody even knows what he is talking about. I could care less about Rupert Murdoch. I’m 24yrs old and apparently am the only person in my age group smart enough to know why you vote conservative. You vote conservative because they care more about the private sector and they try to avoid new taxes. If we do all of this stuff to stop the supposed global warming, I am going to have to pay more money for gas and I don’t want to do it. Simple as that. Furthermore, there is nothing left to do regarding social issues. If your poor in America, it’s your own damn fault. What do we need unions for now? They are completely useless. At many union shops, you can fail a drug test 3 times before they can fire you. You want more money in your pocket? Do not vote for Obama, you can vote for Democrat just make sure they are conservative.

Here’s the change we can believe in. We’re going to a European style health care because I said so. We’re going to tax co2 because its bad because I said so.

This is how you psychoanalyze. I am justified because I am a denier and I need to stand up for my tribe.
.
“even-while he [skeptic] *nurses doubts* about the likelihood of the full Global Warming …”
.
“The Denier, in contrast, *suckles from* the Fox-Limbaugh machine. ”
.
“energy-related research that might have helped us *get off the oil-teat*….”

Carrot–

These, along with everything else at my comment at #48067 are easily found in comments at WUWT and comment sections at newspapers, etc. They tend to go uncorrected, except by ‘warmists’ who come by.

I agree they are in comments sections where various people argue with each other. I hope no one expects people to troll around comments sections at blogs that our not ours and “dissociate” ourselves with every single low-visibility wrong statement posted on the internet every time a wrong thing is uttered. If that’s the standard for “dissociating” it ain’t gonna happen!

FWIW: I think it’s a good thing people can argue in comments blocks. That means I am going to agree with things said in comments blocks somewhere and disagree with others. The fact that it’s done publicly can help people identify which misconceptions are ‘out there’. Admittedly, the notion that the page could be loaded and read by potentially ‘zillions’ bugs some people. But, quite honestly, though search engines can be used to mine out stale quotes, few people brow stale comments long after they are posted. Just… doesn’t… happen.

Carrot Eater #48135,

A major reason I lurk rather than comment on most interesting (to me) topics is to avoid the sort of interaction that’s developed between you and me in this thread, with respect to the use of the term “septic” by you and others. (Of course, I’m then liable to be mocked as “obsessed” by Michael Tobis etc. for focusing on substantive issues that I have familiarized myself with, e.g. the Tiljander proxies.)

Because some comments get held in moderation but are stamped with their time of submission, the record can be a little vague. But let’s review.

You use “septic” at other blogs. It’s meant to offend. I asked you about that in older thread, but you didn’t notice. I dropped it, but then you brought “septic” up in this thread (#48056).

I made 3 brief points in #48061.

1. I find casual use of such insults to be revealing of the writer’s state of mind.

2. Virtual communities seem vulnerable to self-righeousness. Members then seem drawn to such phrasings.

3. This presents an obstacle to inter-tribe communication.

You wrote a long response in #48067.

Blather. I’m again sorry, but some shorthand is needed for those types who’ll just accept and spread nonsense, no matter how little sense it makes. The types who…

[snip]

Don’t pretend these types of people aren’t common…

That isn’t scepticism. Whatever it is, it needs some sort of shorthand.

My response in #48077 to your charge, “Don’t pretend these types of people aren’t common” was,

You’re addressing your remark to me, not to the-great-out-there. So, reference to that, please.

Your #48078 included,

You objected to the ‘self-righteous’ using labels. I laid out my case for using such labels. Have you something direct to say to my reasoning?

I repeat, all the things I reference are common…

This was non-responsive to my earlier request that you back up the assertion that I “pretend these types of people aren’t common.” You probably were mad and misread me. OK.

In #48083, I had something direct to say to your reasoning.

Your reasoning is that “I’m again sorry, but some shorthand is needed for those types who’ll just accept and spread nonsense, no matter how little sense it makes.” This reasoning is justification for your use of the term “septic.”

Can you link to where you guide the potential objects of your scorn, as far as “septic’s” suitability for mocking this worse-variety-of-skeptic, but not that not-quite-as-bad-type-of-skeptic?

This is relevant because I have been mocked by members of your tribe. (That’s an observation not a whine. Don’t worry, I have my big-boy pants on.)

Your #48084 included,

I’m not worried one bit about “a real obstacle to communication with others” (AMac) or hindering a “two way communication between climate scientists and the public” (Lucia) by coming up with some label for these sorts of people…

The unaddressed issue is who is included in “these sorts of people”? People cataloged in your “Blather” comment, for sure. Are people-like-me also included as explicit or implicit targets of “septic”, as used by some–or all–of the members of your tribe?

You go on to describe your hypothetical willingness to disown hypothetical extremists on your side of the divide. I salute you for declining most or all opportunities to do so, in practice–because that leads to drawn out conversations akin to this one, only worse.

That brings us to this morning, with Hank Roberts’ revealing link to the applicability of “septic” as described by the original punster, Comment #48089 (timestamped last night). Your tribe doesn’t necessarily see your “Blather” list as inclusive, even if you do.

In #48119, I remarked,

While holding to none of the views that Carrot Eater recounted above in #48067 after “Blather”, it is unclear from this discussion, and these links, whether I should consider myself part of “that malodourous end,” as William, Carrot Eater, and you see it… This illustrates a characteristic of this style of discourse. Carrot Eater, William, and you offer insult, without being quite clear on who your spitballs are aimed at.

And finally to #48135, just above, where you riposted,

Wow, that’s rich. I bothered to type in a rather long list of the sorts of behavior I’m talking about, and you tell me I’m not clear on what I’m talking about.

What the f more do you want?

Mostly, I’d prefer if you would read my comments more carefully. I’d prefer if you would proofread your remarks to strike out straw-man arguments. I’d prefer that you understand that your use of derogatory terms derails conversations–even when you think your insults are clearly aimed. I accept that you do think so. Hank Roberts’ links show that your narrow view of the targets of this disdain is your own interpretation, not unambiguously shared with other users.

I’m annoyed at the time I have spent walking through this issue, but — those big-boy pants again — it was my choice. Perhaps it will help. This’ll hopefully be my last word on the subject.

Re: Shub Niggurath (Jul 7 09:53),
Clearly, you are a baby and still haven’t been weaned. Oddly, you can compose sentences and type. Uou must be some sort of genius!!!

Lucia

I also don’t think Abraham’s had any devastating effect.

I doubt it had much circulation, but my own reaction to it: he’s a bit of an outsider, and it showed. Being an outsider has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that you can demonstrate the process by which you can assess and check claims in a field you aren’t closely familiar with. The disadvantage is that you’ll miss some things, get some things a bit wrong, and you’ll focus on things that are less important.

So Abraham’s work is hardly definitive, but I think an example of all of the above.

I’ve posted to explain flaws in the argument about the surface stations,

Actually, can you link to that? I don’t really know what to say about the surfacestations project, until they actually publish something for real. In the interminable interim, all I can do is criticise them for publishing their conclusions (in the Heartland report, given in no uncertain terms) without having shown any analysis. Which is horrible practice, but it doesn’t preclude the possibility that they’ll eventually do and publish some sort of analysis.

Re: Jeffid (Jul 7 07:06),

The most popular science based skeptic site owners in blogland all hold the view that CO2 captures heat to my knowledge.

Yes. Possibly Brin doesn’t consider these people “skeptics”. But any article about climate skeptics published in 2010 that doesn’t recognize how the word is actually used in the climate debate seems rather disconnected from the debate itself.

Of course we can’t know whether Brin doesn’t make the distinction between two types of skeptics because he’s clueless or whether he doesn’t make it because he would prefer to promulgate the fiction that it doesn’t exist. But either way, the article ends up so outside the region of interest to anyone involved in discussing communication or interaction in climate science that one wonders how the editors of Skeptic could decides to run it. (Of course, maybe they also don’t have a clue. Or, maybe they just like “big names” whose names may improve sales. Who knows?)

CArrot–

Actually, can you link to that?

Sorry– I used a bad term. What I meant and said really incorrectly is I posted to discuss things to contradict the notions about problems in the surface station record leads to obvious bias in the derived global temperature series. I mean things like discussing the anomaly method, the false precision and the lack of importance of loosing the “cool stations”. If you want these, I’ll link but I think you were reading then.

carrot

So Abraham’s work is hardly definitive, but I think an example of all of the above.

I think Abraham’s vidoe was a good first try. If he decides to do more, he might actually do something devastating to Monckton. That said, I think someone calling what Abraham already did in his video devastating… no.

” Oddly, you can compose sentences and type. Uou must be some sort of genius!!!”
.
He he! By the way, Lucia, for the benefit of our casual readers, those sentences are David Brin’s article.

Lucia

I agree they are in comments sections where various people argue with each other. I hope no one expects people to troll around comments sections at blogs that our not ours and “dissociate” ourselves with every single low-visibility wrong statement posted on the internet every time a wrong thing is uttered. If that’s the standard for “dissociating” it ain’t gonna happen!

Nobody is going to hold you responsible for anonymous comments left by crazies in the comments at other websites.

That should go without saying.

But my points are twofold:

a) the owners of those websites do precious little to educate their own commenters. What does that say about them?

b) the owners of those websites do their own fair share of spreading the nonsense arguments and conspiracy theories.

So, what to do about that? Not every blogger can be expected to address or debunk every single thing that comes through WUWT, Bolt, Will, Delingpole, Marohasy, etc. There’s just too much of it, and it’s unfair to expect people to blog about things which don’t interest them. So maybe Tamino takes on one piece of Goddard’s nonsense, maybe Chris Colose else takes another piece, and a lot of it just goes without specific reply.

So what would I like to see from say, Lucia? If something falls into the wheelhouse of “things Lucia is interested in blogging about”, then she take it on, even if that means critically taking apart something from a sceptic. Does she already do that? Great, if so. But I also ask for a sense of proportion when discussing the various dynamics and players in the conversation. There seems to be a good deal of asymmetry in what gets called out for criticism – some AGW blogs get called out for being mean, or for their comments policy, or for posting some example code in C; fine that’s your opinion on those things, but it looks petty compared to the nonsense and conspiracy theories being peddled on the sceptic side.

That, and I really want somebody to get comment from Watts and d’Aleo on their accusations on station drop. It’s one thing for those two to get some basic things wrong; I’m used to that. But this was amplified, and included an explicit claim of intentional misconduct that affected the results. I’m not willing to just let that slide. They need to say something.

“There are tons of proxy data now in the public domain. Nothing is stopping anybody from trying it for themselves.”

Good common sense would stop most statisticians.

Mark (Comment#48145) July 7th, 2010 at 9:33 am
You doubt I think it’s funny? Or doubt AGW believers exist?
I am not talking about the labels “AGW believer” and or ” Skeptic” which is a way we refer to people in this conversation on climate science..thats not what I meant or think is wrong at all I meant much much more then that. So Whatever! dude.

Lucia said earlier:
“I like everyone to have access water to be free of pathogens like cholera. The world is a better place when we act collectively to assure this to even the poorest individuals.”

And let us not forget individuals are being made newly poor in places like California over water access and a vision of a “better place” for a small fish; in what used to be called “The Breadbasket of America” and I bet environmental legislation has made and will make lots of people poor or poorer.

Shooshmon (Comment#48149) July 7th, 2010 at 9:49 am
LOL! You forgot “stop the rising seas” and even if we “do all that” in the name of AGW it won’t even stop it they say -allegedly.

“June Sea Ice Results: Devastation!”
The “masses” are thinking what from that title?
Please tell me.

Amac,
First, you say ‘septic’ is meant to insult. That’s your opinion. My opinion is simply that one needs a shorthand for the nonsense-peddlers described very explicitly in my ‘blather’ comment. Now, is there insult embedded in there? Well, I don’t think highly of those people, so maybe so.

Second, you seem very concerned whether you are a ‘septic’ or not. You don’t do the things in the ‘blather’ comment. So, you most probably are not a septic.

Do you do other things that could warrant criticism? Probably, but one can be criticised without being relegated to being a septic. Anybody can be criticised. Einstein can be criticised. Deal with it.

What you do seem to have is a single-minded obsession with one little thing. OK. That usually signals a lack of proportion and context, but I’m honestly not interested enough in paleo to really get into your specific interest. I’m just puzzled why it matters so darn much, if Mann initially showed the results without the proxy in question, as well.

I think paleo as a field offers too little gain for far too much pain. You painstakingly collect these proxies in the field, and you devise all sorts of statistical tools to try to make sense of them, and you’re still left with a rather uncertain mess. Don’t get me wrong, there’s something to be learned there, and hats off to the people who try, but I prefer to spend my time elsewhere.

You go on to describe your hypothetical willingness to disown hypothetical extremists on your side of the divide. I salute you for declining most or all opportunities to do so, in practice

It isn’t hypothetical. If somebody tries to attribute a specific weather event to climate change, on a blog I’m commenting on, I will always call that out. If somebody makes an ‘alarmist’ claim that I know to be out of line with the published literature, I will call that out.

Fortunately, the opportunity just doesn’t come up very often.

Liza–

in what used to be called “The Breadbasket of America”

The midwest has always been and still is “The Breadbasket of America”. California is fruits, nuts, vegetables, wind and, these days, dairy. It’s never really been the endless fields of corn,soy, and what that makes the breadbasket a breadbasket.

Unless California depopulates, California will probably always have water problems. It’s a dry state.

Carrot:

“a) the owners of those websites do precious little to educate their own commenters. What does that say about them?”

It could say several things.
1. It could say they believe that education and englightment is
the result of open dialogue. Let idiots speak. Take a hands off
approach. Provide a forum where truth has a chance to emerge.

2. It could say they are not interested in educating people but rather are interested in traffic and playing school teacher doesnt
lead to great traffic.. in their minds.

3. it could say they are stupid.

4. It could say they want to promote idiocy to delay action.

Basically you are assuming that one has an obligation to correct people who are wrong, to educate, to spread wisdom. I don’t
think there a clear moral obligation to do this and I think people can disagree on the methods. Personally, I think fools should
be allowed to demonstrate their foolishness and I dont feel an obligation to correct each and every one. Neither should Lucia.
If you are talking about WUWT I can tell you that its very difficult to read things into Anthony. You simply do not know how things are done, how decisions are made and who makes them. That is basically what you are trying to do. you are trying to read into anthony through the words that appear on the blog. and you dont even know how those words get to appear.

“b) the owners of those websites do their own fair share of spreading the nonsense arguments and conspiracy theories.
So, what to do about that? Not every blogger can be expected to address or debunk every single thing that comes through WUWT, Bolt, Will, Delingpole, Marohasy, etc. There’s just too much of it, and it’s unfair to expect people to blog about things which don’t interest them. So maybe Tamino takes on one piece of Goddard’s nonsense, maybe Chris Colose else takes another piece, and a lot of it just goes without specific reply.
So what would I like to see from say, Lucia? If something falls into the wheelhouse of “things Lucia is interested in blogging about”, then she take it on, even if that means critically taking apart something from a sceptic. Does she already do that? Great, if so. But I also ask for a sense of proportion when discussing the various dynamics and players in the conversation. There seems to be a good deal of asymmetry in what gets called out for criticism – some AGW blogs get called out for being mean, or for their comments policy, or for posting some example code in C; fine that’s your opinion on those things, but it looks petty compared to the nonsense and conspiracy theories being peddled on the sceptic side.”

Seriously, your sense of proportion is wack. The biggest proponent of conspiracy theories is Mann. Just read the mails. I’m more concerned about the private arguments ( in mails) about how steve mcintyre is part of a corporate conspiracy than I am about a public blog speaking to people with little power over the science.

“That, and I really want somebody to get comment from Watts and d’Aleo on their accusations on station drop. It’s one thing for those two to get some basic things wrong; I’m used to that. But this was amplified, and included an explicit claim of intentional misconduct that affected the results. I’m not willing to just let that slide. They need to say something.”

I’ll agree here. And I’ve made requests to have that record cleared up. Having made a big public mistake myself I can tell you that it’s not a pleasant experience to admit a mistake. I can understand why mann jones watts and d’Aleo refuse to do it. That doesnt excuse it of course. But each person has to weigh the amount of dishonesty they are willing to live with.

Carrot–
Come on! “Septic” is obviously insulting and was always meant to be so. It’s not like someone assembled 6 letter at random and ever-so-accidentally applied a word that means “containing or resulting from disease-causing organisms;” or “of or relating to or caused by putrefaction;” to a group they didn’t like.

Other insulting terms one would recognized as insults even if they had been recently coined and even if the people using them claimed they meant them in a non-insulting way: douche bag, jerk-off, asshole, snot nosed, turd… need I continue?

lucia (Comment#48165) July 7th, 2010 at 10:47 am
Sorry lucia but that sounds awfully cold to me and sounds like you should have said taking care of “only certain poor people” is a good thing.

Carrot

…or for posting some example code in C;

I assume you are talking about a conversation where I was under the impression someone had described a particular blog as being especially good at reaching out to communicate science with hoards of unwashed and non-technically trained masses and I described the actual practices and explained why the practices at that blog were not suited to that particular goal?

Other than with respect to that particular goal, I find nothing wrong with posting code in C. My impression is the bloggers defense is that it is not his goal not outreach to hoards of unwashed non-technically trained masses, but prefers his readership to be limited to small groups.
Admittedly, he seemed peeved that in response to what I thought was a claim that his blog excels at what it does not do, I pointed out that it does not do what it does not do. Also, he seemed to think that I should apologize for saying so because he doesn’t even try to do what I said he does not do. But… well.. in reality, what I said was accurate. Grumbine’s blog doesn’t do what it doesn’t try to do.

And of curse, it turned out that, though I misunderstood you– and even looking back at what you wrote, I still thought you made the claim I understood– you didn’t really mean to make that claim.

So, we all agreed: Bob Grumbine’s blog doesn’t do what he doesn’t try to do. Since he isn’t trying to reach out to bring science to the unwashed non-technical masses, it’s fine to post codes in C.

Lucia,
So what?

Any short-hand for people peddling nonsense will be ultimately insulting. It can’t be helped.

The point is, somebody saying “will they tax breathing, too” just isn’t a sceptic in the classical sense. So it will bother people to give them the benefit of that term.

liza

Sorry lucia but that sounds awfully cold to me and sounds like you should have said taking care of “only certain poor people” is a good thing.

I’m all for California doing what it can for people and I don’t think water should be limited to “only certain poor people”. I suspect many political choices in California unwise.

But where do you think you are going to get enough water to fully resolve your states perpetual water problems? It’s a state where the demand for water is exceeding natural water resources and that presents a major challenge. Are you going to build desalination plants? Depopulate? Tell farmers not to farm? Stop washing cars?

Water is always going to be expensive for you, and it’s something you have to face — and collectively.

You guys are water poor. We in Illinois are nice-weather poor. You will always be faced with pesky water challenges. We will always need to deal with keeping people warm in winter. It may be cold, but it’s reality.

Carrot==

So what?
Any short-hand for people peddling nonsense will be ultimately insulting. It can’t be helped.

Well, I took the following as denying that the obvious fact that ‘septic’ is an insult:

First, you say ‘septic’ is meant to insult. That’s your opinion.

That ‘septic’ is an insult is not just Amac’s opinion. It’s a fact.

I fault your memory on the Grumbine thing, Lucia.

I do think Grumbine tries to explain things on a level accessible by people without higher degrees. He generally does; you don’t need a PhD in anything to follow his blog. It just so happened that he posted a code in C along with one post, but that code was an extra; the content of that post was pretty down-home and easy to follow.

I thought the confusion was whether Grumbine is out there playing whack-a-mole, in terms of specifically replying to the latest internet meme. That, he generally does not do; you thought I was giving him as an example of somebody who did. Instead, his blog is just a very slow motion conversation between him and his commenters; if a commenter asks a question, he’ll try to educate.

carrot eater,
“some AGW blogs get called out for being mean, or for their comments policy”

I hope you are not missing the main issue. Comment policy which is used to block legitimate questions/comments rather than address them is the important issue, and I think considerably more important than the presence or absence of nonsensical comments. Civility is a plus of course, but secondary, so long as hostility does not descend to the level pure insults and personal attacks.

I note that Gavin would not reply to Lucia’s very reasonable request at Keith Kloor’s blog for clarification on why he (Gavin) though two graphs that looked very different to Lucia (and to me) should be considered essentially the same. Lucia’s question could be posed only because Gavin was commenting at a blog he does not control. At RealClimate, it would likely not have ever shown up, since inconvenient questions are often ‘disappeared’. Do you not agree there is a lot of asymmetry between ‘skeptic’ and ‘consensus’ blogs in this regard?

Lucia,

Well, I took the following as denying that the obvious fact that ‘septic’ is an insult:

You could have kept reading what I wrote, right there.

We develop a shorthand to describe people who easily latch onto foolish things. Because such behavior is not seen favorably, it ends up being insulting.

But if you’re insulted by it, just don’t do those foolish things…

If somebody comes my way in good faith, I’ll try to explain things to them as best I can, as best as I’m able. I’ll not insult them.

But when I’m going to speak of group dynamics, and I see a large number of people spreading and accepting nonsense, then I’m going to call it like I see it.

lucia (Comment#48171) July 7th, 2010 at 11:06 am

We have one of the largest desalination plants in the world not too far from my house.

The website for the city of Fresno says : Fresno, and surrounding area, is the largest agriculturally producing region the whole United States.

There is water for the Central Valley farmlands right now.

Right now water is just pouring nonstop into the Pacific ocean instead of part of it going to the farmers for their crops.

The water is being diverted to save a little fish called the Delta Smelt so I don’t know what your argument is based on right now.

you thought I was giving him as an example of somebody who did.

Yes. And I think to be effective at countering the latest whack-a-mole meme involves reaching a large audience of the great unwashed non-technical readership and communicating in ways that are accessible to them. Grumbine doesn’t do try to do that and his practices are not suited to doing that.

So, I’m not really seeing much difference on our recollection, except, of course, I remember what I was thinking more specifically that how you interpreted it.:)

Talking about communication, it just looks like a small ‘incrowd’, talking amongst themselves, with ocasional venture into other ‘tribes territory’.

Has anyone actualy noticed what a small ‘world’ the climate science blogs actually are, sceptic, pro, alarmist, lukewarm, realist, whatever words we try to use to define them..

I had a tour of all the links on Keith’s Kloors, Climate Audits, Bishop Hill and RealClimates blog rolls, yesterday and today..

And it really is most of the same people venturing forth…
ie people acting nice at Keith Kloor, then given Tom Fuller a mouthful at Bart’s , and over at ReaClimate, and elsewhere, discussing Judith Curry going to the ‘dark side’, etc,etc,etc. blog ‘owners’ popping up here and there.

There are also ‘obvious’ blogosphere’ ‘voices of authority’ as well…

ie Steve Mcintyre, pops into a thread, all seem to stop and listen, and Lucia, and even some chap called Gavin

Newcomers, make comments, that generally get overlooked, whatever their content is, because they are new.. Fascinating stuff, for an observer of human nature..

The general public, still know absoultely nothing about all of this (non ‘peer’ reviewed survey, at my children’s school. Hockey stick, climategate, Michael Mann, Climate Audit, Realclimate, IPCC, Oxburgh, Muir Rusell, Phil Jones, Romm, Morano, Richard Black BBC, Booker, Delingpole, Monbiot -( I am in the UK), etc – just blank looks)

As the warmista’s (see josh’s fond cartoon) are now saying Global Warming (Man Made – presumably) is responsible for more snow and cold winters.

How long before the general public, just say ‘enough’ we just ‘don’t believe ANYone, anymore’

As an example, previous predictions out of CRU (10 years ago), children would not see snow in the UK –
(mine just saw ten inches,nothing like it for 30 years)

And then – rightly or wrongly – any politician that votes for ‘cap and trade’ ETS, or where ever else CO2 tax, will be out of office next time..

Then end of ‘climate science’ funding and lots of underemployed PhD’s ?

And nothing to talk about in the blogs

Lucia,

“We will always need to deal with keeping people warm in winter.”
.
Well, that depends a bit on climate sensitivity don’t you think?

Liza

… so I don’t know what your argument is based on right now.

California has a long history of water shortages. While you get enough water certain years– like right now–, supplying sufficient water to the current population of CA requires an act of considerable political will. It’s true that CA as a whole may make wiser or stupider decisions and you have every right to complain if decisions you consider stupider are made. But irrespective of political decisions to save or not save smelt, I see no reason how given CA’s large population relative to natural water supplies that water will not be a continuing political problem.

Your long term water issues are not solely the result of decisions vis-a-vis smelt.

Grumbine doesn’t do try to do that and his practices are not suited to doing that.

I think he does try to be accessible. That’s in his mission statement, practically – that it’ll be a blog where schoolkids and parents can follow along. And my opinion is that most of his posts can be followed by somebody without a strong technical background. If you disagree, that’s up to you. Heck, if you actually care, you can give him feedback on where he could have been easier to read. But he’s taking a summer break from blogging.

Scienceofdoom is the other site that tries to be readable by somebody with no particular technical background. But it will require time and effort from any such reader.

Carrot Eater:

We develop a shorthand to describe people who easily latch onto foolish things. Because such behavior is not seen favorably, it ends up being insulting.

I don’t think anybody is fooled that this is anything other than that poorly socialized behavior on your group’s part. You can pass it off however you like of course, to make you feel more manly, but it comes across as childish crap most of the time.

Carrot-
We develop a shorthand to describe people who easily latch onto foolish things. Because such behavior is not seen favorably, it ends up being insulting.
Yes. I read that. I’m amazed you can write that not once but twice.

Calling someone “septic” would be insulting per se. So would calling them a douche bag.

You can call ‘septic’ shorthand, but somehow, the group picked a word that isn’t merely an insult owing to the behavior you are trying to describe but because the word itself is insulting. No listener need know what behavior your little group attaches to that word. Any english language speaking listener would you mean something bad because, like “turd” or “smegma”, “septic” is predefined to mean something a person would not wish to be. Period.

And if I start calling those who use “septic” “smegmas”, everyone will know I intend to insult. It won’t just be a short hand that means “people who are nasty and juvenile enough to want to bond to each other by hurling obvious insults and pretending that the word ‘septic’ is only insulting to those who have figured out it’s meant to describes bad the smegmas think is moronic.” It will also convey, “I think these people are similar to smegma.”

SteveF

Do you not agree there is a lot of asymmetry between ‘skeptic’ and ‘consensus’ blogs in this regard?

I think everybody has diverging views on this, depending on where they’re coming from. For everybody who’s up in arms about their precious comments not making it through RC, you find somebody who says they’ve been banned (or creepily cyberstalked, which has a more chilling effect) at WUWT.

In the end, discussions of moderation policies at other blogs is boring, and I agree with Lucia that it be avoided here. There are high traffic blogs, there are low traffic blogs. There are blogs where the moderators want to keep the discussion on the original topic, there are those where it is allowed to drift. There are blogs that try to keep a high S/N, there are those that don’t. Everybody does what they see fit, and the result is that some people out there end up feeling greatly aggrieved, because they think they had some important, original and relevant point to make, and it didn’t get through.

Heck, if you actually care, you can give him feedback on where he could have been easier to read.

I think this info has already been conveyed, non? I think the answer was: his goal is not to reach large numbers of people. That’s fine. It doesn’t have to be.

carrot eater (Comment#48186) July 7th, 2010 at 11:38 am
“For everybody who’s up in arms about their precious comments not making it through RC, you find somebody who says they’ve been banned (or creepily cyberstalked, which has a more chilling effect) at WUWT.”
Wow! Let’s just agree to disagree on this point.

Lucia and Carrick:

Fine, it’s insulting, and I don’t care.

Why?

Go through the examples I gave in my ‘blather’ comment. There’s a mass of people who spread these ideas. And I’m going to call it like it is. It’s foolishness.

Again, if somebody comes by in good faith, I’ll engage with them in good faith. But when I see general foolishness out there, I will call it foolishness.

For the sake of getting along, I’ll use ‘sceptic’ for the fools. But I can see why somebody would object to doing so.

Lucia,
I think we’re arguing different things.

I think this info has already been conveyed, non? I think the answer was: his goal is not to reach large numbers of people. That’s fine. It doesn’t have to be.

He’s a small traffic blog, with a fairly intimate (if slow-moving) conversation with that small readership. He’s happy with that.

But, that conversation takes place on a level accessible (I think) to anybody, so if anybody wants to join in, they can.

But if you want high volume, high frequency, high entertainment, you won’t get it there. If you want blog wars, you won’t get it there.

lucia (Comment#48182) July 7th, 2010 at 11:28 am
The “climate” described on all the websites I have looked for the Central Valley of California only describes summer as “dry” the rest of the seasons are described as “rainy” and “foggy” (plus the Sierra Nevada with all that snow) Maybe you are clumping all of California into one climate-yes there are dry areas but I don’t think the valley where the farmlands are were always described as “having no water”. There are rivers. Delta means there is water.

Las Vegas and the surrounding areas should depopulate and close down then if I use the same reasoning. Tell Harry Reid about that! LOL

BTW..summer temp has been 20-30 degrees below normal here, we had a chilly 4th, haven’t swam in our pool but once-not warm enough- and it is drizzling right now.

Carrot

Fine, it’s insulting, and I don’t care.

Fair enough. As long as you aren’t trying to explain why it’s not insulting.

Oddly, it looks like you do care enough to say you’re going to change use. That actually seems a bit more consistent with what I know about you.

SteveF

Like I said, your opinions on this will matter greatly, depending on where you’re coming from. You obviously aren’t somebody who would be banned, snipped or creepily cyber-outed at WUWT, so that side of things doesn’t leave as much impression on you as somebody who has been.

On the flip side, I’m not anybody who would be banned or snipped at a ‘consensus’ blog, so I don’t feel that.

carrot eater,
“For the sake of getting along, I’ll use ‘sceptic’ for the fools. But I can see why somebody would object to doing so.”

And that is the real problem, as succinctly stated as possible.

“Funny, I find Peter Sinclair horrifically boring, slow paced and unwatchable.”

I doubt we’re going to come to agreement on which of our subjective judgments of rhetorical effectiveness better reflects what most people, or most undecided people, would agree with. But it’s somewhat tangential to my point, which is that you can find examples of the high road which are effective, and on the other hand you can find examples when taking the high road works as well as the proverbial knife in a gun fight.

“I think someone calling what Abraham already did in his video devastating… no.”

Well, again, necessarily subjective. Abraham showed the Viscount regularly engaging in dishonesty and distorting and misrepresenting the authors on which he relies. Someone who lies about the data repeatedly not only lacks credibility in terms of what he has said in the past, but also cannot be taken seriously in the future. After Abraham, I think the most reasonable initial hypothesis, faced with an argument by the Viscount, is that he is lying. To overcome that, he or whomever needs to first make a case as to why we should spend time and energy assessing the statements, given his past record. Then I think they need to make a positive case that he is not lying or distorting the facts in that specific case. That’s a pretty devastating blow to a would-be pundit’s ability to ply his trade.

Of course, there is a large market among confirmed “skeptics” for even the thinnest of gruel to feed their ravenous confirmation bias. The Viscount could issue a statement tomorrow that everything out of his mouth henceforth would be a lie, and they’d praise him for humility and forthrightness. Outside that charmed circle of faith — yeah, pretty devastating, I would say.

Lucia

Oddly, it looks like you do care enough to say you’re going to change use.

Context matters.

Like I said, if somebody is conversing with me in good faith, I’ll not call him any sort of insult.

If I’m speaking generally about a population of drivel-spreaders, and I’m among people who will understand what I mean, then I might use ‘septic’ as shorthand.

Obviously at this site, people may not understand what I mean, and I’m not going to take the trouble to type in a huge list of qualifying behaviors each time I want to use the term. So I would be less likely to use that term here. But either way, I’ll still think ill of people who think the rise in CO2 concentrations is perfectly natural, and bloggers who spread that idea, and I’ll say so; I just might not use shorthand.

As long as I can use ‘alarmist’ as short hand, no offence of course intended, then all is fair?

Okay Bugs let me explain to you why some people like myself don’t care about global warming.
1) I drive a car and use a computer and I’m guessing you do also. My computer is powered by coal, my guess is the same for you. It is the same as going to a bar and saying “Wow. We really need to get off this alcohol stuff.”
2) We have had much more co2 in the atmosphere. You and your people never give justice to this important point. Furthermore, we know how many molecules of co2 we add each year to the atmosphere. Therefore, some scientists have issued a tipping point of 580 ppm of co2. (I think it is 580ppm). How was this number arrived at? How do they know 580 will make a difference? They have no way of testing it.
3) The IPCC has changed the radiative forcing value of co2 3 times, all downward. Therefore I do not have faith in many of the mathematical calculations regarding global warming.
4) I am not willing to pay more money at the gas pump. Almost every so called “green product” is more expensive than it’s counterpart. Ex. Solar powered cell phone charger, green garbage bags, green chemical cleaners. Lucia, it would be awesome if you found some of these items of the web and posted a picture and price. I am sure that solar cell phone chargers are at least $400. Why would anybody buy one?

As long as I can use ‘alarmist’ as short hand, no offence of course intended, then all is fair?

I was actually going to make that point.

In terms of shorthand, you see all sorts of things from the sceptics – ‘warmist’, ‘alarmist’, ‘cultist’, and so on.

I think all of these are poorly founded, but I don’t bother complaining about it here or at WUWT, because, well, what’s the point? There are better things to spend time on.

Take ‘alarmist’. I almost never talk about the adverse consequences of climate change; it’s not my direct interest. I’m not a WGII sort of guy. Yet I get pegged as an ‘alarmist’. Oh well. Except for this here, you won’t see me whinge about it. And even if I did talk about impacts, so long as what I said was defensible, that should be fine, shouldn’t it…

“But even if you see symptoms, you really need to examine what was said and compare it to truth before you diagnose that what was said is false. When you find it’s false, you can simply show this.”

It’s not that simple. Look at Mann. Possible the most closely examined and repeatedly exonerated scientist in the world. More scientific chops than every d**** on the face of the Earth, combined. Everybody imaginable has taken a whack at examining the nonsense attacks on Mann, from NAS to the universities to the government. All have cleared him. His work has been reproduced by others.

Now, how many minds have been changed by all that effort among the people who whine about Mann’s nonexistent ethical lapses or attack his motives? Have any of the prominent psudeoskeptics admitted publicly “Hey, we were wrong about Mann. He’s a great scientist, all the allegations of misconduct have proven false, other researchers have confirmed his findings, and subsequent observations have made the trend he wrote about even more clear-cut.”

I haven’t seen a lot of posts like that. You? This is not to say all psuedoskeptics are immune to evidence, but the idea that you are going to answer their questions and they are going to accept it and move on is just not true, very unfortunately.

“That tactic actually seems to work better than calling people “septics”, whining about how tired you are or attacking their motives. Unfortunately, most those who whine and call names often really don’t seem to having ever tried to just respond.”

You can call it whining if you want. Sometimes you have to call a spade a spade, an idiot an idiot, a liar a liar. We do the truth no favors by withholding contempt from the contemptible, and meekly reiterating the facts to those that storm and threaten and scream insults, those that sneer and patronize whilst parading their ignorance.

I respect those that treat me with respect, and I answer any question in which I believe there is even a ghost of a chance the person really wants the information. If you push me, I’ll push you right back. I won’t be bullied.

Maybe it’s the wrong approach. Certainly, it often leads to escalation. Maybe I should be cool and respectful even to people determined to be neither. I’m honestly not sure. But I think the difficulties in navigating those discussions are greater than you acknowledge.

Working group 1 seems ok to me..
An IPCC climate scientist friend, said to me that wG2 was ‘ a bit of a mess’

My concerns are the alarmist, 20 foot plus, Al Gore Tidal inspired ‘tidal waves’, and the wilder pronoucements of the WWF, etc
If the scientists could reign in, ie speak out agaisnt, a bit of this ‘propaganda’ that presumably suits the message, then their would be less ‘scepticism’. Unfortuanetly, the broad silence of scientists, just seems like complicitness.

The “broad silence of the scientists” can be traced to the fact that they are, well, scientists. Arguments rage — in the peer-reviewed literature. All the specific consequences of warming are discussed. Some think the changes will be more destructive, some less so, and both get published. Look at the recent dialogue about sea level rise, in which the optimists and the pessimists exchanged information until the optimists conceded and withdrew their paper. That’s how scientists make noise, for the most part.

This dialogue is slow to unfold and detail-intense. You can’t cover it like a boxing match, and most journalists don’t know how to cover it any other way. But it is a huge mistake to conclude from that that scientists are “silent” on how the group two stuff is going to play out.

The “broad silence of the scientists” can be traced to the fact that they are, well, scientists. Arguments rage — in the peer-reviewed literature. All the specific consequences of warming are discussed. Some think the changes will be more destructive, some less so, and both get published. Ditto for those who think warming will be faster or slower. Look at the recent dialogue about sea level rise, in which the optimists and the pessimists exchanged information until the optimists conceded and withdrew their paper. That’s how scientists make noise, for the most part.

This dialogue is slow to unfold and detail-intense. You can’t cover it like a boxing match, and most journalists don’t know how to cover it any other way. But it is a huge mistake to conclude from that that scientists are “silent” on how the group two stuff is going to play out.

Yup, nobody’s got it harder, or has ever been more correct than Mann. Robert says so, a bunch of people who “investigated” him have said so, yup yup. He is righter than right. His findings are what is called “super true”. The opposite of wronger than wrong.

It’s obviously not worth talking with someone who actually believes all that, if you know enough to know how ridiculous it is. Anyone who can’t see how bad the Hockey Stick studies are, doesn’t because their psychological welfare depends on denial of that.

Alternatively, choose to turn this around and conclude that all this is really true of Robert’s “enemies”, and since previously I concluded it is not worth their time to talk with him, obviously there is no point in him arguing with them.

So my question is, why does he bother to try and engage people at all, since he is only going to insist that people who disagree with him are wrong, and why do people bother to engage him, when all they are going to do is insist that he is wrong?

Such Hyperbolic rhetoric is not helpful to rational discussion.

Now watch as he replies to the first part of my post only, and then says that the rest, where I go all balanced and say, “or maybe the opposite situation is true”, and when I point out that he attacked me for “abusing” him in the first sentence, but didn’t read the rest of the comment, well, how can he be bothered with going to the trouble of actually reading what I write? After all, I just described how any discussion involving him is fruitless. Seriously, I will be shocked if that prediction does not come true, but pleased. Please prove me wrong, Robert.

Baby want his rattle? Maybe Blankie?

Have you read a paleoclimatology book yet? Remember, no more chats between you and me until you know what the Holocene is. Mann, a paleoclimatologist, triggers the rule.

within scientific circles – not silent..

But who is correcting the wilder pronouncements of the advocacy groups to the media, politicians and general public, and issueing corrections outside of the ‘scientific cirlces’
Given, the wwf ‘s, etc, involvement in grey literature and the IPCC process, that is where I see ‘silence’

Robert (Comment#48206)-Dude, what the hell is your problem? Seriously. You really are impossible!

Look how he talks down to me, everyone, and you can see I was right. He won’t let go of our previous disagreement and says completely false things about me.

WTF? Really…

Robert (Comment#48201) July 7th, 2010 at 12:18 pm
as you say Mann the “good scientist” has been examined forever and you mentioned the NAS panel which was one of the first, but they looked at his work mostly and a little bit about the “social network too; but in the end the important scientific thing they stated for all to see was: “his conclusions are not supported by his data”.

That should have been the end of it all yet he lived on with his graph as a scientific icon and comments all over the internet like yours keeping him on that pedestal. Amazing. I think everything about that guy is wrong. From the his graph, to the comments by him on RC I’ve read; to his own “In Press” interviews; to his interaction with anybody who questions the science basically.

But we really didn’t see the character part until the Climategate emails put his personality out there for all to see. Did it surprise anybody? I don’t think so. I think some one mentioned before that time will tell if anybody really wants to be associated with this scientist at all anymore. We’ll be watching.

PS. your comment is amusing in many ways to me since your screen name links to a blog called “idiottracker”. lol

liza (Comment#48209)-You were warned not to try and engage him, so now be prepared. I mean, just look how nasty he gets.

I feel sorry for you, and the vitriol he will throw your way.

“his conclusions are not supported by his data”.

You’re going to need to link that. The report I read concluded the opposite:

“The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years. Not all individual proxy records indicate that the recent warmth is unprecedented, although a larger fraction of geographically diverse sites experienced exceptional warmth during the late 20th century than during any other extended period from A.D. 900 onward.

Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium.”

You may be confusing the fact that they are more confident of certain of Mann’s conclusions, and less confident than others, with the conclusion that Mann’s findings were “not supported by his data.”

Robert, you know you argue like you do? Nerds do. It is all fine inside science.

You want to make a play for someone’s pocket, you better not quote Mann.

I realize I asked for a link and forgot to include mine: http://books.nap.edu/openbook......amp;page=3

“Look how he talks down to me, everyone, and you can see I was right. He won’t let go of our previous disagreement and says completely false things about me.”

FL,

Welcome to the Wide Wide World of Global Warming. Same as it ever was. It’s like peeling an onion. The farther you go, the more it stinks.

KY

Liza–

Maybe you are clumping all of California into one climate-yes there are dry areas but I don’t think the valley

Yes. I mean CA in general, not just a sub-portion. Yes, California is not the only state with water issues.

Robert (Comment#48213) July 7th, 2010 at 1:26 pm

I read it all. did you read all of it ?

Basically they say with all that gobble gook is that there was a significant cool period (LIA), and there is high confidence that recent temperatures are higher than that period. lol

Over half of that time line of temperature reconstructions made by Mann is questionable and there is less and less or no confidence in the data as it goes back in time. That means that they don’t know if the MWP was warmer or not too. That hockey temp reconstruction was of a thousand years. 600 yrs of it isn’t reliable or “high confidence” data according to what I see there.

1600′s on to present has “higher confidence” so… If you want to say it’s warmer now then the LIA from Mann’s data I am okay with that.

((Then we have all these “new” graphing exercises on the Blackboard that begin in the 1800′s.
More and more years wiped off the hockey stick! ; ))

Robert

Abraham showed the Viscount regularly engaging in dishonesty and distorting and misrepresenting the authors on which he relies.

Well… no. This is precisely where Abraham fell short.
Abraham presented a pretty good case that the Viscount was based on cherry picking. (It’s not hard to make such a case.) ,But what Abraham did not do is show Monckton actually distorted or misrepresented anything anyone actually wrote. This is where at some point on a thread, someone visited, told me where they thought Abraham showed that Monckton actually distorted or misrepresented. Someone gave me two examples– and if you dig and see what Abraham did, he failed to show any distortion or misrepresentation in both cases.

“Basically they say . . .”

No, liza, maybe I wasn’t clear. I wanted the specific place in the report that you quoted. See the quotation marks?

in the end the important scientific thing they stated for all to see was: “his conclusions are not supported by his data”.

Where do they say that?

“Basically they say . . .”

No, liza, maybe I wasn’t clear. I wanted the specific place in the report that you quoted. See the quotation marks?

liza: in the end the important scientific thing they stated for all to see was: “his conclusions are not supported by his data”.

Where do they say that?

Robert–
repeatedly exonerated scientist in the world
Exonerated of what?

Look, I know there are panels. And I know what their formal findings are — and on what questions. If the panels don’t address the criticisms of his critics then Mann is not “exonerated” of those things that his critics have been complaining of. They will obviously continue to complain. You might not like this, but this is not an example where Mann actually answers questions presented, but people continue to complain. It certainly doesn’t prove that there could be no resolution if Mann actually engaged critics and answered their questions, because he doesn’t.

[double post]

lucia: “Well… no. This is precisely where Abraham fell short.”

We’ll have to agree to disagree for the moment. Again, this is rather tangential to the main point, but I’d be happy to take up the discussion in the future when I have some time to pull up specific examples.

Robert (Comment#48206)–
Stop that.

Robert-

Again, this is rather tangential to the main point

Your main point seems to be that you think you and scientists you like should get to argue by hurling insults and calling people names, . . . right? Or was it something else?

Even if it’s not, I’d like you to stop doing it here.

“Your main point seems to be that you think you and scientists you like should get to argue by hurling insults and calling people names, . . . right? Or was it something else?”

That would be “something else.” Namely the problem of how to relate to people who treat you in an insulting and immature way. And if you look at your own posts, you are going to find things like accusations of “whining,” which do not elevate the debate in the manner you seem to be exposing.

I’m doing my best to avoid the conversations with useless people that tend to degenerate into a back-and-forth. I’m not sure why you hold the people who disagree with you to a higher standard of politeness than the “skeptics” who post here.

“Look, I know there are panels. And I know what their formal findings are — and on what questions.”

You are illustrating my point. It’s not just a matter of telling people the facts. People find excuses to reject the facts. Answer ten questions, and they will hurl ten more. Cite repeated inquiries clearing Mann of misconduct, and they will complain the wrong questions are being asked.

Unfortunately, not all questions are motivated by a desire to learn. I think you have to take the question in the spirit in which it is raised. If there is even a chance it’s raised to find an answer or build and argument, answer it. If it’s just a rhetorical flourish in a scurrilous attack, answering it will not help.

Robert–

Namely the problem of how to relate to people who treat you in an insulting and immature way.

This would not be a “point”. It would be the “question”. Your “point” seemed to be this

“but on the facts, I think you can make just as good a case for yelling back twice as loud, seeking to be better in your evidence and reasoning, but not necessarily striving to be polite and respectful towards people who do not extend you the same courtesy. “

Here, your words seem to communicate Robert thinks he and scientists he likes “should get to argue by hurling insults and calling people names,”

I’m doing my best to avoid the conversations with useless people that tend to degenerate into a back-and-forth

It’s difficult to believe that any mature adult’s best effort to avoid conversations with “useless” people requires them to post stuff like: “Baby want his rattle? Maybe Blankie?” which you did above. This looks a lot like either a) “not necessarily striving to be polite and respectful towards people”, which you advocated above or b) hurling insults and calling people names, which is what I infer you mean by “not necessarily striving to be polite and respectful towards people”.

Even if you have a theory that comments like that are as useful as engaging Andrew_FL or others with reasoned responses, I prefer you avoid resorting to that sort of name calling here. Thanks.

“Unfortunately, not all questions are motivated by a desire to learn.”

And not all inquiries are motivated by a desire to expose the truth.

Works every which way, Robert.

Andrew

Robert-

You are illustrating my point. It’s not just a matter of telling people the facts. People find excuses to reject the facts.

Yes. You are rejecting facts that don’t suit you.

Cite repeated inquiries clearing Mann of misconduct, and they will complain the wrong questions are being asked.

If the wrong questions were asked during the inquiries, people will complain the wrong questions were asked. These complaints are fair and accord with the facts.

If it’s just a rhetorical flourish in a scurrilous attack, answering it will not help.

Not all questions waved away as rhetorical flourishes were actually rhetorical flourishes. Sometimes, people who don’t want to answer honest questions concoct excuses to wave them away.

So are you going to continue to post a series of platitudes unhinged from specific examples? Because there are plenty of counter- platitutes that present the exact opposite “truth”.

Carrot:

Fine, it’s insulting, and I don’t care.

But you should care. “Septic” is not just rude, it’s also gross, and childish; potty humor, schoolyard bullying.

There are alternatives, some more polite than others. In a way, it is too bad that the word “d3ni3r” has been banned because of what I think is misplaced political correctness, since it is the perfect word to describe somebody who purposefully chooses to live in denial.

In any case, and on the general topic of politeness in public discourse, I liked this recent column by Michael Gerson. Here is the first paragraph:

“My political friendships and sympathies are increasingly determined not by ideology but by methodology. One of the most significant divisions in American public life is not between the Democrats and the Republicans; it is between the Ugly Party and the Grown-Up Party.”

“Here, your words seem to communicate Robert thinks he and scientists he likes “should get to argue by hurling insults and calling people names,” ”

And yet, in order to conclude that, you have to ignore the rest of what I wrote:

“So I don’t have an answer. . . .Then again, you waste a lot of time that way on a back-and-forth with people who can always shout nonsense faster than you can shout good science. . . . So I really am sincere in not knowing the answer to this.”

That’s clear-cut cherry-picking. A more accurate description of my “point” would be that I think a case could be made for either side. I know the line I try to walk, but I’m open to the fact I may be completely wrong in my approach. I try my best to do the right thing, but suspect I may be fooling myself. There’s a word for this attitude: skepticism. It’s odd you wouldn’t recognize it.

“Even if you have a theory that comments like that are as useful as engaging Andrew_FL or others with reasoned responses, I prefer you avoid resorting to that sort of name calling here. Thanks.”

I’ve made it perfectly clear that I don’t want to talk to Andrew, after suffering through a large volume of his ignorant, insult-ridden, nasty posts, highlights of which included comparing me to Lenin and the Nazis. Yet, knowing this, he continues to try and engage with me, and indeed to intentionally provoke me:

“Now watch as he replies to the first part of my post only, and then says that the rest, where I go all balanced . . .”

I don’t have anything else to say to Andrew, so it would be my pleasure not to address him again in any way. His stuff speaks for itself.

“Yes. You are rejecting facts that don’t suit you.”

I really think you can do better than “I know you are, but what am I.” Multiple independent panels of scientists have examined the evidence and found no misconduct. That is a fact. That they all missed something (you don’t say what) is only your opinion — and not a very persuasive one.

“Not all questions waved away as rhetorical flourishes were actually rhetorical flourishes. Sometimes, people who don’t want to answer honest questions concoct excuses to wave them away.”

Sometimes that happens, of course. But you agree that SOME questions are rhetorical flourishes, and require a different approach?

“So are you going to continue to post a series of platitudes unhinged from specific examples? Because there are plenty of counter- platitutes that present the exact opposite “truth”.”

First, a very minor point, but one whose truth you may be absolutely confident of: unless you’re British, the period goes inside the quotation marks. On to more important matters.

Ironically, you don’t give any examples of my failure to give examples, and I really don’t know what you mean. Don’t think because I am ready and willing to mount an argument that everything I post is an argument in disguise. Sometimes it’s just a thought.

Robert–

A more accurate description of my “point” would be that I think a case could be made for either side.

What you wrote was both preceded and followed by your indulging in rudeness and name calling.

I’ve made it perfectly clear that I don’t want to talk to Andrew,

If you really wish to make this perfectly clear, then don’t talk to him. As in: Don’t respond. Period. If you respond — i.e. voluntarily exercise your fingers to tap out a message to him– then you are, by definition, not making it perfectly clear you don’t want to talk to him.

I don’t have anything else to say to Andrew, so it would be my pleasure not to address him again in any way.

That’s allowed. Your responding by name calling and insults is not.

Re: Julio #48232 (Jul 7 14:48) -

Michael Gerson column

The rhetoric of the Ugly Party shares some common themes: urging the death or sexual humiliation of opponents or comparing a political enemy to vermin or diseases. It is not merely an adolescent form of political discourse; it encourages a certain political philosophy — a belief that rivals are somehow less than human, which undermines the idea of equality and the possibility of common purposes.

Robert–
This was discussed on language log

First, a very minor point, but one whose truth you may be absolutely confident of: unless you’re British, the period goes inside the quotation marks. On to more important matters.

Yes. I know. This appears to be the most substantive point in your posts today.

Ionically, you don’t give any examples of my failure to give examples, and I really don’t know what you mean. Don’t think because I am ready and willing to mount an argument that everything I post is an argument in disguise. Sometimes it’s just a thought.

The entire following paragraphs is a platitude containing no specific example:

Unfortunately, not all questions are motivated by a desire to learn. I think you have to take the question in the spirit in which it is raised. If there is even a chance it’s raised to find an answer or build and argument, answer it. If it’s just a rhetorical flourish in a scurrilous attack, answering it will not help.

There are plenty of others above. However, I don’t judge conversation with you worth any more time or effort than already expended.

Please try to avoid name calling. If that means that you don’t don’t get to indulge in the joy of talking with people you insist you don’t want to talk to, then so be it.

Oh my God! Now I see why Robert can’t seem to reply to me without invective! He never got over any argument I had with him in the past! Not a single one.

Of course, I have, so I was baffled why he can’t seem to bring himself to engage in a respectful manner, until now. He is bitter because he still thinks of every past argument we have had where he thinks I said things that I did not mean. Jeez man, seriously, if I was unable to let things go, I’d also be really pissed off all the time.

Julio

But you should care. “Septic” is not just rude, it’s also gross, and childish; potty humor, schoolyard bullying.

To be honest, I never really dwelt on the graphical gross side of it. Potty humor? Septic refers to rotting, decomposition.. I always took it as a fun play of words; take away the c and you get something rotten.

If other people are going to take it literally graphically, then fine, I’ll use something else. Maybe illiterates.

No name-calling (what would that be, in this case? “Baby”? Doesn’t matter.) No insults. And I’m sure you’ll be applying that rule consistently to all your comments, not just me. That’s a good thing. I like a respectful discussion.

“What you wrote was both preceded and followed by your indulging in rudeness and name calling.”

Rudeness, really? There’s a lot of that going around. It goes without saying that I and I alone am guilty of rudeness, and Andrew and lisa and the rest of the psuedoskeptics are never less than polite. Heavy is my conscience.

“If you really wish to make this perfectly clear, then don’t talk to him. As in: Don’t respond. Period.”

That’s a good point. Technically I did leave him a loophole if he reads a textbook on paleoclimatology. But that was always a long shot. So, no response period.

“However, I don’t judge conversation with you worth any more time or effort than already expended.”

It seems like you know that your “example” is really weak, and want to forestall further discussion by hand-waving. Still, let’s look at what I wrote:

“Unfortunately, not all questions are motivated by a desire to learn. I think you have to take the question in the spirit in which it is raised. If there is even a chance it’s raised to find an answer or build and argument, answer it. If it’s just a rhetorical flourish in a scurrilous attack, answering it will not help.”

That seems like a reasonable, measured take to me. I’m not sure where you get “platitude.” It kind of seems like you now have a full suite of insults to dismiss anything I write: if it’s vitriolic, it’s rudeness and name-calling. If it is calm and searches for a middle ground, then it’s a useless platitude.

It’d be curious as to the specific “counter- platitutes that present the exact opposite ‘truth’.” Are there platitudes that say you shouldn’t answer honest questions but you should engage with insincere ones? That page is missing from my Aeosp’s.

Robert, I was paraphrasing in my quote but here’s the link to the conclusion from the Congressional hearing or Wegman Report:

http://republicans.energycomme.....Report.pdf

and the quote is: “Overall our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis”

I realize I got the NAS mixed up-with this Congressional hearing sorry! but my opinion of both stills stands. IMHO I would even go so far to say that NAS report spins the whole thing into “we know your analysis has flaws and we lack confidence in over half of it (see my above) but that’s ok, you are right anyway”.

I’d like to know what “less confidence” is in how many tenths of degree. The gray area is HUGE on the stick! http://www.lewrockwell.com/and.....-stick.gif

Robert–

Rudeness, really?

Look, this was just too much “Baby want his rattle? Maybe Blankie?”

From the dictionary:
1. A platitude is a trite, meaningless, biased, or prosaic statement that is presented as if it were significant and original. The word derives from plat, the French word for “flat. ”

The counter platitude was

“Not all questions waved away as rhetorical flourishes were actually rhetorical flourishes. Sometimes, people who don’t want to answer honest questions concoct excuses to wave them away.”

Both statements are equally, equally reasonable and measured and obviously true. And… Yawn.

I’m going to get groceries now. Have fun exchanging platitudes with others.

“Look, this was just too much “Baby want his rattle? Maybe Blankie?””

OK, I can own that. I was wrong. It was uncalled for.

“Both statements are equally, equally reasonable and measured and obviously true.”

But they are not opposed to one another. I don’t disagree with your statement; thinking it is the opposite of my statement really says to me you didn’t get what I was saying. Yes, sometimes people find clever ways to dismiss legitimate questions. On the other hand, not all people are looking for more information — some questions aren’t really questions in that sense.

Rhetoric is a squishy discipline, as are ethics and psychology (sometimes). They probably will tend to bore a student of the hard sciences. But I think they are important to understanding the conversation about global warming, the politics, why people so often talk past each other, how groups develop strong identifications with their own version of events, until they seem to be describing two different worlds.

I don’t mean to imply by my interest that “skeptics” are the subject of my research, and that I and my fellow “believers” are not subject to the same fundamental problems. People are people. We have to try and understand people, even if not in a scientifically rigorous way.

“Look, this was just too much “Baby want his rattle? Maybe Blankie?””

OK, I can own that. I was wrong. It was uncalled for.

“Both statements are equally, equally reasonable and measured and obviously true.”

But the two thoughts are not opposed to one another. I don’t disagree with your statement; thinking it is the opposite of my statement really says to me you didn’t get what I was saying. Yes, sometimes people find clever ways to dismiss legitimate questions. On the other hand, not all people are looking for more information — some questions aren’t really questions in that sense.

Rhetoric is a squishy discipline, as are ethics and psychology (sometimes). They probably will tend to bore a student of the hard sciences. But I think they are important to understanding the conversation about global warming, the politics, why people so often talk past each other, how groups develop strong identifications with their own version of events, until they seem to be describing two different worlds.

I don’t mean to imply by my interest that “skeptics” are the subject of my research, and that I and my fellow “believers” are not subject to the same fundamental problems. People are people. We have to try and understand people, even if not in a scientifically rigorous way.

How boring if everyone agreed.

Regarding skeptics/deniers/nose-breathers/whatever. Everything you need to know about this, you learned in kindergarten: you can’t read another man’s mind or look into his heart.

So, climate debate taxonomy based on obivously unknowable factors seems rather pointless. But that’s just me.

The rhetoric of the Ugly Party shares some common themes: urging the death or sexual humiliation of opponents or comparing a political enemy to vermin or diseases. It is not merely an adolescent form of political discourse; it encourages a certain political philosophy — a belief that rivals are somehow less than human, which undermines the idea of equality and the possibility of common purposes.

.
I don’t know that American politics have been any different in previous eras, but it is my belief that the political rhetoric of this day seeks to undermine trust in the very process of American democracy. Whether it is (D)s bemoaning the SCOTUS appointment of Bush II, or (R)s pushing the line about ACORN and Illegal Aliens corrupting the voting process. The idea that the process itself is corrupt is intended to explain why someone’s pet political pony isn’t being ridden to success.
.
Similarly, some denialists and minimalists attack the scientific process as corrupted, deliberately undermining trust in another Enlightenment process in order to score cheap points in a political debate. I would urge you to check your sources: do the come from a Senator’s office? A partisan portion of a Congressional Commitee? A former VP? If so, I would urge you to seek more scientific sources. But of course, if science itself is corrupted, where are you to turn except to the political propaganda of your choice?
.
Without trust that the system is basically fair, that *our* democracy works better than the alternatives, that science weeds out the mistakes and builds on the truth, where else are we to turn?
.
In the end, it seems, we are to only trust in God. At the least in the God that our religious interpretors and moral minders approve for public belief. Science. Democracy. Humanism. All corrupted and corrupting Enlightenment distractions from our True Purpose on Earth.

Robert–
Ok. I got groceries. I’m going to go make diet blueberry ice cream next. (Anyone want the recipe?)

Now for this:

But the two thoughts are not opposed to one another. I don’t disagree with your statement; thinking it is the opposite of my statement really says to me you didn’t get what I was saying

I didn’t say it was the two statements are opposites. I am saying both are true.

Two could tap dance around the specifics of an actual event with each person posting platitude after platitude, each platitude expressing a “truth” that might help the view they prefer never engaging any specifics to permit anyone to discern which platitude is more appropriate for the specific facts involved in the event. It’s a boring pointless exercise.

You want to post platitudes? Fine. I’m not going to debate the truth of your platitude– by definition a platitude is true. I’m just going observe they are platitudes and move on to other more interesting conversations.

If you want to interpret this as your having presented as meaning I can’t come up with a counter argument to the platitude so it’s true… well.. uh huh. The problem with platitudes is not that they are untrue. It’s that their truth is pretty pointless in the context where the platitude was dropped.

Ron

In the end, it seems, we are to only trust in God.

Well… that would be a problem for me!

Re: Ron Broberg (Jul 7 16:17),

> In the end, it seems, we are to only trust in God. At the least in the God that our religious interpretors and moral minders approve for public belief

??? Non-sequitor (I hope).

Anyway, count me out for that one.

I suspect that you still have faith in “the system.” So you haven’t reached the end of that particular rope.

“Septic”
.
Cockney ryhming slang for a yank (american). The whole phrase is ‘Septic Tank’ – but as with most cockney ryhming slang the first word is used only. The reason for the link is that, like a septic tank nobody likes a filthy stinking american!!!
“What are you f**king shooting at me for you filthy f**king septic c*nt, im on your side!!!!”
(Source: Urban Dictionary)
.
“Do your friends call you dull? How about Boring? Don’t forget Platitudinous!”
(Source: Spongebob)

Ron–
I have faith that open conversation and representative democracy can eventually sort political issues out. It’s a noisy contentious process. Mistakes are made and later corrected– sort of. I think it always has been this way. But…well… there you go!

“You want to post platitudes? Fine. I’m not going to debate the truth of your platitude– by definition a platitude is true. I’m just going observe they are platitudes and move on to other more interesting conversations.”

So . . . you are not going to present any argument or evidence, except to use a dismissive label. OK. Doesn’t that seem like the opposite of the approach you are promoting? Shouldn’t you carefully show me the clear evidence that demonstrates that my platitudes are not meaningful?

Let’s go back to your original assertion . . . your platitude, if you will:

“Responding to questions with attacks is often a symptom of falsehood. It seems to me that long winded goobledygook, and equivocation are often symptoms of falsehood.

But even if you see symptoms, you really need to examine what was said and compare it to truth before you diagnose that what was said is false. When you find it’s false, you can simply show this.”

No examples, I note in passing. Here, you seem to be arguing that even if we see a person like I’ve described, we can “simply show [that it is false]” and that that will “work better.” What I said was directly in response to this — that in many cases, it’s not just a matter of showing someone something is false.

Since you accept that as true — indeed assert it as obvious and self-evident — I would say we have settled that disagreement in my favor, and that having issued a platitude (without examples) it’s not really fair to attack my (dissenting) platitude as meaningless and obvious.

Shades of Schopenhauer:

“To truth only a brief celebration of victory is allowed between the two long periods during which it is condemned as paradoxical, or disparaged as trivial.”

Lucia,

If we’re extending the conversation to politics (which I think is always to be avoided on climate blogs, at least WGI oriented ones),

I think the internet and cable “news” has allowed a sort of fractionation that is new, in that people are having contradictory and competing views of “reality”. And they can stay in a comfort zone where they aren’t challenged by people who think otherwise. And in these comfort zones, people are free to become further and further detached from reality.

I hate the term, but it’s the concept of epistemic closure.

What I said was directly in response to this — that in many cases, it’s not just a matter of showing someone something is false.

And I engaged that.

Since you accept that as true

Huh? I accept that the platitude

“Unfortunately, not all questions are motivated by a desire to learn. I think you have to take the question in the spirit in which it is raised. If there is even a chance it’s raised to find an answer or build and argument, answer it. If it’s just a rhetorical flourish in a scurrilous attack, answering it will not help.” is true.

If this was supposedly meant to elaborate on “it’s not just a matter of showing someone something is false”, it would seem to be both a platitude and an irrelevant observation in context of the previous discussion. That is: the correct response is: So, what does this observation have to do with your previous claim?

Alluding to Schopenhauer is not going to glue your disjointed observations together.

Lucia,
You’ve finally been linked by RC. You happy?

Carrot

I think the internet and cable “news” has allowed a sort of fractionation that is new,

Sure. And this has both good and bad aspects. The good is, it’s more difficult for any “side” to monopolize the spin on the news (either intentionally or unintentionally. The bad is that people self select and often pick the news for the spin they like.

…but it’s the concept of epistemic closure.

CE, I think you are onto something that K. Kloor was trying to unravel.

Epistemology – Knowledge that, knowledge how, and knowledge by acquaintance

Every “denier”, “septic” and “idiot” (Robert is tracking with a certain zeal) is holding back the “righteous” of the “cause”. Everyone of those quotes can be replaced with a string that applies to something. It is always about the “tobacco”, the “oil”, “pagans” etc., and therefore “bad knowledge”. This goes both ways, and “viola”, impasse.

And, here I was confused that this was a “scientist” vs “engineer” debate. Learn something new every day

Carrot–
I’ve been linked by RC before. They link when they agree. It’s when they are rebutting “arguments” “out there” that they don’t link/name (and I’m not talking about me, I’m talking about a general practice.)

From what I see, when “not linking” what they often do is concoct a strawman drawing various bit (often twisted) from different people to create something no one any where wrote, or just distort something to rebutt. In these cases, if they linked or named, someone somewhere could clarify or explain why the strawman they are rebutting is a distortion. Not linking or naming is a necessary practice in that case.

But they will link to criticisms of Monckton etc.

Lucia,

It’s when they are rebutting “arguments” “out there” that they don’t link/name (and I’m not talking about me, I’m talking about a general practice.)

I started checking on this claim of yours, and going through the archives, they link to what they’re talking about, more often than not. If you want it done quantitatively, I could do that sometime.

In the current post, they’re clearly taking a passing swipe at McIntyre without explicitly mentioning or linking him (talking about people obsessing about how the padding was done for the smooth on some old graph, when it barely matters how you do it). So I’ll give you that. Though that’s no straw man, for that is just what he’s doing. Deep Climate took the bait on that one, to check it out.

Even when they don’t link to the source, I don’t think they generally put apart straw men, in that the things they address are definitely things you see popping up in comments and columns. Perhaps somewhere there is some blog that gave a better, more nuanced form.

Again, if you want, I can put some time into looking into this systematically, to see if your charge holds up. I don’t have time for that sort of thing now, but maybe later in the year.

Even when they don’t link to the source, I don’t think they generally put apart straw men, in that the things they address are definitely things you see popping up in comments and columns

How will you know if you don’t know the source and don’t know what the source wrote?

How will you know if you don’t know the source and don’t know what the source wrote?

Lucia, because there is often more than one source for any given meme or idea. I know what I’ve seen in comments. They can respond to what they’re getting in comments.

And anyway, from my brief look, it did look like they link more often than not. Now, maybe they sometimes link to an easier target, like George Will; that will come out if I do this systematically. Then again, Will has a greater visibility than most climate blogs, so there’s public education value in responding to that.

If somebody wants their particular articulation of some idea to stand out amid the cacophony of different blogs and comments, and get considered seriously and in particular, the way to do it is to write it up and publish it. Otherwise – maybe your wonderful thought gets picked up on, maybe it doesn’t.

Lucia,
When I worked for a big company, some of the engineers described a certain executive’s management style as “sea gull manager”. Which meant he would, “Fly in unexpectedly, make a lot of noise, crap on everything, and then fly off squawking loudly.”
.
Seems to me a certain commenter on this thread could accurately be described as a “sea gull commenter”. Maybe automatic moderation of a known “sea gull commenter” is appropriate.

… more desperation from the good folks who were caught hiding the decline, tweeking the literature and (in the case of Gore) caught with their tool in the wrong shed. I wonder when the strain sill cause them to graduate from bong to meth pipe.

I didn’t expect to get a laugh in the comments section, but for some reason it amused me that Lucia thinks English speakers would know what someone meant by the word smegma. Is that true? Am I alone in my ignorance? I’m sure carrot eater would put me in the illiterate group, but does my not knowing the meaning of smegma prove it?

Since I am an illiterate fool, it won’t surprise some people that I wasn’t impressed by David Brin’s Skeptic magazine article. I thought it was condescending and that he was just trying to define the terms of the debate. Of course, saying that there is anything to debate probably proves that I’m a denier not a reasonable skeptic.

Lucia,

“Carrot
I think the internet and cable “news” has allowed a sort of fractionation that is new,
Sure. And this has both good and bad aspects. The good is, it’s more difficult for any “side” to monopolize the spin on the news (either intentionally or unintentionally. The bad is that people self select and often pick the news for the spin they like.”

C’mon Lucia. Like this is new? My city has four daily newspapers. Each represents a specific part of the socio-political spectrum. People spend there dollars (unless they’re news junkies like me ) on one paper and one point of view and that’s been happening for decades, maybe centuries in some parts of the world. What’s the difference?

It seems each generation needs to believe that what it faces is somehow unique, but I believe we have the same arguments (different subject matter perhaps) over and over again. This thread certainly reads that way.

Cheers!

Steve E (F?),
That’s true, to some extent. Politics in the 1800s, into the 1900s was more uncivil than it is now, in many respects, and this was fueled by/reflected by rival newspapers. I think we’ve lost cultural memory of what it was really like in the past. “Rum, romanism and ruin” would simply be beyond the pale today.

But modern era allows some different things. Take conspiracy theorists. Nowhere are there enough 9/11 nuts to sustain a local newspaper that spreads their views. But globally, there are enough of them that they can sustain some webpages.

I also think the ratio of straight news to partisan entertainment has changed more than you acknowledge. Your four newspapers might have had different slants in 1960, but the slant was largely limited to the op/ed page and to some extent story selection, where there is room for editorial discretion on that. Now, straight hard news seems to be a minority of the input that people get. They spend their time watching/reading opinion.

I know there’s been some research on how partisan identification affects your perception of reality; I wonder if they’ve looked at whether that’s changed over the decades.

MikeC

Desperate is anybody still saying “hide the decline”, and thinking that means anything. I’m sure you’re oh so offended that the cover figure from some WMO report that nobody ever read (I still have trouble finding a copy online) didn’t have a descriptive caption. Aside from a lack of caption on that figure, nothing was ever hidden, despite McIntyre’s contortions trying to milk something out of nothing. You simply don’t hide something by publishing a paper about it in Nature. That and Science are the most high profile places you can possibly put something.

C’mon Lucia. Like this is new? My city has four daily newspapers.

It’s new to tv relative to when I was a kid. You’re correct that it’s not new to newspapers. I thought about that while fixing dinner… but didn’t dash back to add.

During the time when there were limited numbers of broadcast stations, and tv is so easy to consume, large swaths of people were exposed to a small number of stations rather than segmented among stations of their own choosing. So, it’s a change relative to the 60s-70′s or 80s. But that’s hardly a period one would call forever, is it?

Damned

… it amused me that Lucia thinks English speakers would know what someone meant by the word smegma. Is that true? Am I alone in my ignorance?

People don’t know the word smegma? I think that was my brother’s favorite word in junior high!

But modern era allows some different things. Take conspiracy theorists. Nowhere are there enough 9/11 nuts to sustain a local newspaper that spreads their views. But globally, there are enough of them that they can sustain some webpages.

Again, this sword bites both ways. Until this “conspiracy”, “communist”, “Bolshevistic” labeling ceases, it will always be a battle of attrition.

Epistemology – Knowledge that, knowledge how, and knowledge by acquaintance

Stoat brought this to my attention: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/.....p#comments

Apparently, since the George Marshall institute is an “acquaintance” with funding (and tobacco ties) it must be rubbish. One can not be trusted with the intellect or reason to find it a steaming pile, but the GMI conveys this easily enough.

Why is it so difficult to read from each and every persons “apocrypha” and maybe learn something, or learn nothing. The chose is yours not the “doctrine” that will be some other incarnation in a mere tens of years.

Mosher

Digging things out:

Good common sense would stop most statisticians.

I’ll assume that’s a quip, and that you don’t actually think that paleoclimatology is inherently impossible (beyond the coarse features like picking out ice ages). Or maybe you do.

As I said, I think it’s a high pain/low gain field, but the gain is non-zero.

It could say several things.

It could indeed say all sorts of things, very few of which are flattering. You are wrong on one thing: I don’t care to psychoanalyse Watts or discern his motivations; that’s not my interest. What I do see is the quality of what is written there up top, and the general confusion down below. I see a high concentration of the things that go in the nonsense list.

Seriously, your sense of proportion is wack. The biggest proponent of conspiracy theories is Mann. Just read the mails. I’m more concerned about the private arguments ( in mails) about how steve mcintyre is part of a corporate conspiracy than I am about a public blog speaking to people with little power over the science.

My sense of proportion is out of whack? I’m sorry if I don’t think the privately expressed opinions of one guy (and I’m taking your word on that, as dangerous as that may be, as I’ve not read those emails) are playing a bigger role in the general conversation than the paranoia expressed by members of the public at large and sometimes named actors. Do the latter actually affect any science? Thank heaven no, but then, neither do Mann’s speculations as to McIntyre’s motivations.

I’ll agree here. And I’ve made requests to have that record cleared up. Having made a big public mistake myself I can tell you that it’s not a pleasant experience to admit a mistake. I can understand why mann jones watts and d’Aleo refuse to do it. That doesnt excuse it of course. But each person has to weigh the amount of dishonesty they are willing to live with.

Well, can you give an inkling of how they’re disposed on the matter? Do they at least understand the content of all the rebuttals, be they historical (explaining how the GHCN was built up), conceptual (explaining how anomalies are calculated, and what is needed for station drop to cause trouble) or quantitative (Zeke, Tamino, ccc, Broberg, Stokes I think, Broberg again with a different data set, Spencer)?

By the way, I’m bullish on what Ron can do with the GSOD. There’s more to be unpacked there, and he’s probably got the field pretty much to himself, for now. In principle he should be able to check GISS’s interpolation in sparse areas. You could always already test the method in areas with high data density, but now you should be able to test it in areas with low GHCN data density. Unfortunately, I’m afraid the results won’t be general: the interpolation might work well in Bolivia and OK in south-central Africa (I don’t know that it does, I’m just giving hypotheticals), but wouldn’t really tell you anything about the Arctic, I don’t think. And it’s the Arctic that’s really of interest.

I have been following the climate blogwars for a few years now, and just can’t take my eyes off this total train wreck of a scientific endeavor. The thing that has really captured my attention is how the leading lights in climate science have created a situation where the hacks on the right (Beck, Limbaugh etc) have the opportunity, on specific issues, to be correct! Why do scientists in leadership roles like Serreze talk about summertime Arctic ice completely disappearing? Why do blowhards like Pachauri accuse the Indian environent minister of voodoo science when the guy is correct? Do they not understand how partisan that looks? And do they not understand that these gaffes can be used by the anti-science hacks to show that all claims re the climate are thus equally open to question?

It amazes me that these pioneers in a very young science have not taken a more conservative approach. One thing that gets lost in the whole E-Mail controversy is that previous to the E-Mails being released, the “denier” crowd had been making accusations of being unable to publish, that the peer-reviewed process was rigged, etc. These were just accusations that could be easily dismissed as the whining of losers, and the majority of press coverage reflected this. Then the E-Mails came out, gave more than a small whiff of credence to many of these charges, and the reaction from the climate graybeards was…..we didn’t do anything wrong, everyone does this type of stuff in science……..simply staggering!

The CAGW advocates need to know that the hardcores listening to the Becks etc will never be swayed, ever. But, there are less of the hardcores than they think. The swayable middle ground has many many more people than the hardcore group, but this middle ground has aquaintances that are hardcores. Every time the hardcores have a “gotcha”, they will trumpet it to their middle ground betheran, and while that by itself will not change the middlers to become hardcores, they will start seriously questioning any group of experts that seems to tolerate these shenanigans. It is a hard hard hill that the CAGW crowd needs to surmount to win this PR battle; it still can be done but if softballs keep getting lobbed to the hardcore crowd, there’s no chance.

carrot eater (Comment#48274)

Definitely Steve E, I’m a lurker sometimes commenter when it’s in my wheelhouse.

Are we really sure what “straight news” is anymore. Read the headline; read the lede; so-called “statements of fact”–the basis for hard news–are made (almost by rule) without attribution. I fully acknowledge a shift in news versus entertainment, but I believe it’s probably better characterized by “playing to your constituency” which is kind of the point I was trying to make. In my four newspapers, the op/ed opinions are never very far from the slant in the news section. Headlines and cutlines are really the way editorial boards bring op/ed to the news–just take a broad cross section of print media on any one issue.

We do, in general, gravitate towards like minded (slanted) presentations of current events, issues, opinions, comment, etc. The more curious (voyeuristic?) among us read the opposing views to make us feel better, vindicated (superior?), maybe even to satisfy our inner belief in balance.

You make a good point about conspiracy theorists. They’ve never had a better opportunity to be heard, but they must make their way through the socio-political-economic filters we all maintain and have always maintained.

As you suggest, I would love to see how or if our perceptions of reality have changed over the decades based on our partisan lenses. My intuition tells me we probably haven’t evolved very far.

lucia (Comment#48276)

I think you’re definitely right about television. Through much of its life it maintained a reserve (if only on the surface) that several generations could ever remember in print. That has changed dramatically. Perhaps it’s due to the lapse in what was once broadly acknowledged as the public nature of the airwaves. Cable/Satellite has destroyed that view. These legally aren’t considered public any more. It’s why Howard Stern can use George Carlin’s seven words plus a few more and it’s why the same spectrum we’ve always seen in print is now seen in broadcast.

One other thing that has changed is the velocity of information in all media. In print it wasn’t unusual to see as many as seven editions in a day to make current events current. We now see a new edition via the web, cable and radio every minute. I’m just not sure that that has changed the filters we use to process the information.

How did the ice cream turn out? I must confess I was disappointed to find the freezer empty after you mentioned it.

lucia (Comment#48277)
Damned Skeptic (Comment#48272)

Smegma belongs in the pantheon of great adolescent scatological discoveries.

If you can say it without smiling or busting out laughing then you’re just not human! In that respect it’s far more endearing than “septic.”

Call someone smegma breath and inside they probably smile and say “good one!” Call someone “septic” and be prepared for a punch in the nose!

I believe there are equal portions of madness at both ends of the political spectrum.

While political polarization is probably at it’s highest point in my lifetime I still prefer the democratic process to any other. Two hundred years ago political differences were often settled with ball and musket so perhaps we should count our blessings.

Carrot.

“I’ll assume that’s a quip, and that you don’t actually think that paleoclimatology is inherently impossible (beyond the coarse features like picking out ice ages). Or maybe you do.”

no Ive said many times that it is not inherently impossible.

if we assume away various issues with metadata

I’d start here:

http://climateaudit.org/2008/0.....bration-1/

Basically using standard methods you end up with very wide CIs.
Low gain. high pain. And so the tendency is to make up novel methods. Nothing wrong with that PROVIDED the novel methods get proven out in statistical journals ( for example)

Otherwise you end up with somebody (ahemm) misusing a method

http://climateaudit.org/2008/0.....at-tamino/

Now, cornered thusly, do people say simply that Mann misused this method.? no. They move on and say the mistake doesnt matter, pointing to other suspect methods. maybe we should take Mann at his word when he says he is not a statistician. Maybe his blatherings on those matters should be as annoying as the babblings of goddard on venus.

Carrot,

First you ask us to consider what the behavior of Anthony and his commenters tell us about him, and the you write

“It could indeed say all sorts of things, very few of which are flattering. You are wrong on one thing: I don’t care to psychoanalyse Watts or discern his motivations; that’s not my interest.”

That’s confusing.

WRT people making mistakes

“Well, can you give an inkling of how they’re disposed on the matter? Do they at least understand the content of all the rebuttals, be they historical (explaining how the GHCN was built up), conceptual (explaining how anomalies are calculated, and what is needed for station drop to cause trouble) or quantitative (Zeke, Tamino, ccc, Broberg, Stokes I think, Broberg again with a different data set, Spencer)?”

I suspect like mann they will have moved on from the mistake.
Their mistake did not change the science, so what would be the point of correcting the mistake. hehe. you think about that. Their mistake did not change the science, and you want them to admit their mistake. Hmm, same goes for Mann I suppose. All I can say is this. I called on them to correct the mistake. crickets.

I think we both know why. This situation has gotten so twisted that nobody can make a mistake and survive. Kinda sad. Its gotten to the point that these arguments are actually boring.

BTW, as Zeke will probably report I’ve completed a replication as well. in R. He’s got the data earlier today.

WRT Ron’s work. There was also a study done with the daily stations ( by CRU) very high density that had slight different distances for correlation than hansen.. ( we discussed it on the air vent) So I’m also hopeful for Ron’s work.

In terms of the larger debate I think the battleground is going to move away from the temp record. Already has. with the data freed and multiple replications you can expect the battlefield will change.
Its going to get warmer, so the battlefield will change.

Just a word on D’Aleo and Watts SPPI publication.
.
I unfortunately do not have a copy of the Jan version of their “Deception?” publication, but it was quietly replaced in April with a version which *severely* reduced their claims – rewording things away from testable claims and towards claims that are more vague and therefore difficult to quantify and test.
.
For instance:
Jan: 5. There has been a severe bias towards removing higher-altitude, higher-latitude, and rural stations, leading to a further serious overstatement of warming.
.
April: 13. Due to recently increasing frequency of eschewing rural stations and favoring urban airports as the primary temperature data sources, global terrestrial temperature data bases are thus seriously flawed and can no longer be representative of both urban and rural environments. The resulting data is therefore problematic when used to assess climate trends or VALIDATE model forecasts
.
Given the rewrite, I was genuinely surprised to find that D’Aleo was maintaining the station drop, hi-alt, hi-lat,and rural claims at Heartland.

Ron Broberg (Comment#48289) July 8th, 2010 at 12:59 am

Just a word on D’Aleo and Watts SPPI publication.
.
Given the rewrite, I was genuinely surprised to find that D’Aleo was maintaining the station drop, hi-alt, hi-lat,and rural claims at Heartland.

It follows the McLean pattern, make a claim in writing that is very subdued, publicly claim something very different publicly.

As for rewriting the more lunatic aspects of that paper, they did keep it quiet, didn’t they.

whoa. They’ve indeed completely re-written the SPPI report, or at least the sections related to station drop.

Mosher, that’s a ridiculous comparison and you know it.

Mann using a de-centered PCA wasn’t an accusation that somebody else intentionally manipulated something to get a result. Mann using that form didn’t make a difference in the end, even if it’s theoretically not best practice. And he stopped using that method.

Watts, d’Aleo, Smith did make such an accusation. The ways they went about it did make a huge difference to the ‘results’, as they thought they found a big effect due to station drop. In their heads, at least.

So perhaps this is the non-retraction retraction, the non-apology apology? Change your document and don’t tell anybody?

I’ll tell Tamino..

It follows the McLean pattern, make a claim in writing that is very subdued, publicly claim something very different publicly.
.
yes. typical “sceptic” method.

Re: Steve E (Jul 7 22:15),

How did the ice cream turn out? I must confess I was disappointed to find the freezer empty after you mentioned it.

Great! Blueberry. Yum!

You can download the January version of the SPPI publication from this link:

http://www.virginiaclimate.pol.....e_temp.pdf

I loved when Watts and D’Aleo claimed that “It can be shown that they systematically and purposefully, country by country, removed higher-latitude, higher-altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler”, and then it turned out that they were in fact unable to show it…

Rubbish me a lamp;
Jeannie lucent lucia.
This is all garbage.
=============

Mosher said (I think)

Now, cornered thusly, do people say simply that Mann misused this method.? no. They move on and say the mistake doesnt matter, pointing to other suspect methods. maybe we should take Mann at his word when he says he is not a statistician. Maybe his blatherings on those matters should be as annoying as the babblings of goddard on venus.

Ah, but people don’t move on, McIntyre being exhibit A. He is like a dog with a bone. Even the officially endorsed Loehle method reveals a hockey stickwarming, despite his errors. Mann did ground breaking research, it was not the case for AGW. McIntyre, if we are to believe the reports of his attempts to understand AGW itself, just doesn’t get it, and has let his ‘auditing’ talents go to waste. Tamino’s findings that in the case in point, the centered or non centered came up with essentially the same answer was not in dispute, just whether or not centered or non centered was done correctly.

McIntyre just made a mountain out of a molehill, will ignoring the actual mountain, the case for AGW as presented by the IPCC. He is a nitpicker.

Hoi Polloi #48254 Ref “septic”

Australian slang also and has been used for donkey’s years.

seppo, septic, septic tank
noun:- a derogatory term for an American, “septic tank” rhyming with “yank”.

http://www.aussieslang.com/Search/qsearch.asp

But what’s a piece of totally unoriginal plagiarism amongst friends?

Seems to me a tenth of a degree of warm air is becoming like porn for some folks. They can’t take their eyes off of it. They can’t get along with the rest of society.

I think they are becoming quite hostile!!!

Re: Ron Broberg #48289 (Jul 8 00:59),

I unfortunately do not have a copy of the Jan version of their “Deception?” publication, but it was quietly replaced in April with a version which *severely* reduced their claims – rewording thing…

I recall looking at d’Aleo a while back; it seemed wrong to me. Emailed him via his think tank to see if he’d engage here, but no response (maybe he never got the message).

It would be interesting to compare the January and April versions, if the earlier one could be put online. [Edit -- Whoops, thanks already, doskonaleszare -- I missed Comment#48296!]

Amac–
That might be useful. INAL… but if I had both, I think hosting an old version might be a copyright violation, so I’d be worried about doing that myself. But I suspect if someone ran some sort of comparison process and put the result up, that would be ok. Are there any copyright attorney readers who might actually know?

liza (Comment#48300) July 8th, 2010 at 7:13 am

Seems to me a tenth of a degree of warm air is becoming like porn for some folks. They can’t take their eyes off of it. They can’t get along with the rest of society.

I think they are becoming quite hostile!!!

Seems to me some folks can’t even represent the facts honestly. It’s not a tenth of a degree, the rise represents record temperatures and significant changes to the environment, that we depend on for our lives, and this is only the start of the changes to come.

Re: carrot eater (Jul 8 04:13),

Mosher, that’s a ridiculous comparison and you know it.

The point of looking at Mann08′s use of the Tiljander proxies is to explore this issue. Actually, it’s not really “looking at Mann08′s use of the Tiljander proxies” — that science is settled, to coin a phrase. Or to be more precise, that science should be settled, among scientifically-literate people who take the time to read Mann08, its SI, Tiljander03, and a couple of blog posts (try Stoat, and me, and Gavin at C-a-s).

But it’s not settled. Ari Jokimaki is the first pro-AGW Consensus advocate to admit, grudgingly, that the Tiljander proxies are not calibratable to the instrumental record–and he’s not certain yet. Arthur Smith is struggling. Everyone else, it’s variants of courthouse science and “who are you gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?”

Curious.

Willful blindness isn’t a syndrome that’s limited to one corner of the AGW controversy (or any other emotion-laden issue, it seems).

(Links to C-a-s, Ari, and Arthur via clicking on my name, to avoid having SpamKarma route this comment to the dog pound.)

Thanks for the pointer, doskonaleszare.

The original SPPI report was an extreme discredit to its authors: They blew a chance to make an original contribution, and instead turned it into a hastily pasted together rant fully of contradictory statements and noobish errors. They were wrong about the impact of the loss of high-latitude stations (esp its sign), and under standard scholastic practice, this error should be admitted, not airbrushed into oblivion.

Lucia, I don’t see how fielding a freely released public document, even an old version, could possibly put you in danger of copyright violation.

Re: AMac #48304 (Jul 8 07:54),

By the way, a lookback to some September 2008 work by Jeff Id now makes me think that I’ve been wrong to believe that the Tiljander proxies make an outsized contribution to the earlier parts of the Mann08 reconstructions (that’s the “and it doesn’t matter” part of Gavin’s answer to the calibratability question; so I’m saying he may be right on that). Added as a comment at Arthur Smith’s post.

More when I can devote some time to it.

Carrick–My understanding is that the copyright holder has the right to grant or refuse permission to “copy” any document. Posting a pdf on my server is “copying”. Even if SPPI made the document available at their site, I don’t think SPPI did anything to relinquish the copyright. If they did not, it would be a copyright violation for me to host the document to permit visitors to my site to download and copy.

There are fairuse provisions that would permit me to quote, comment etc. But I don’t think it goes so far as to permit me to just create a copy of the whole thing and host that copy myself. INAL– and I know I could be wrong, but since I think it would be a copyright violation, I’m not going to do copy the whole document and host it.

bugs (Comment#48303) July 8th, 2010 at 7:41 am
Oh bologna. Those “record temps” only exist when you manipulate selected thermometers readings with a bunch of statistics and computers. And computers are made from petroleum products and use energy! So funny! Every day you are online promoting doom and gloom you actually contribute to the demise of the environment you believe is happening.

The REAL record temps are right here in the REAL WORLD. Temperatures 20-30 degrees below normal and it is drizzling in Southern California. Not a tenth of a degree, not a whole degree even, 20 to 30 degrees below normal!

for Pete’s sake Amac, the entire world does not revolve around Tiljander. The conversation you stumbled upon here had nothing to do with Tiljander; it was about the proper use of PCA. From 1998/1999.

Re: carrot eater (Jul 8 09:49),

> the entire world does not revolve around Tiljander.

Agreed. It’s a very modest, restricted topic.

> The conversation you stumbled upon here had nothing to do with Tiljander

That’s a matter of opinion. The topic as I understand it started with d’Aleo’s, er, irregular way of dealing with mistakes that were highlighted after he published his work. Steve Mosher brought up a possible instance of Prof. Mann taking an unusual approach to dealing with mistakes that were highlighted after he published his work. The Tiljander episode — like the d’Aleo episode and unlike the PCA controversy — is relatively easy for a scientifically-literate person to understand. Both the technical issue and the response. So you think it’s not relevant, but I think it is relevant.

Re: stumbling — if that’s a concern, lightly moderated blog comments may not be the best venue.

Anyway, back to SPPI:

The new version has all the accusations taken out of it, which is good. It even has pretty much all the definite claims taken out of it, which is good because they haven’t done any analysis yet. As far as technical content: it’s much less bad now as well; it’s gone from ‘laugh out loud’ stupid to being generally inadequate and pointless – that’s a definite upgrade.

They still can’t bring themselves to give a straightforward recounting of how the GHCN was put together, though they hint that they have an understanding of it. They still can’t quite handle the fact that many US stations aren’t missing at all; they’re just in the USHCN, and anybody who wants them (like GISS does) will just find them there. Perhaps they were going off old information before USHCN v2 was launched, but it’s been launched for a while now.

They keep clinging to Willmott 1991 like a blanket; they’ve now clarified that this analysis was with a dataset from another era. I still think Willmott is itself bizarre; why was he not using anomalies?

We have this nice quote now

We fully understand that the NOAA GHCN trends are with regards to anomalies from normal for a global grid and not mean temperatures of the available stations.

So they realise that all their absolute-mean graphs are irrelevant

and then this

However, we do not believe that this use of grids and anomalies fully eliminate the effects of the station loss.

OK, so do they explore this? They give a general discussion of undersampling, with some figures about empty sub-boxes (we can see if their numbers check out). But do they ever get anywhere, in terms of analysis? No. It’s left as future work for EM Smith. Which is fine, I guess, as they aren’t making any specific claim anymore; just that there could be a problem.

But the continued existence of this thought bugs me

It can be shown that country by country, they lost stations with a bias towards higher-latitude, higher-altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler.

Umm.. I still don’t see any mental clarity from these guys on where the potential bias could come from.

If you have a bunch of stations being used for the same grid box, and you remove some stations that had different trends from the other ones, then station drop will have an effect.

I don’t see comprehension of that here. They’re still stuck with hot/cold, which is irrelevant, instead of warming/cooling, which is relevant.

They’re also still saying the record has become proportionately more urban. Using the GHCN’s indicator of R/U for now (as they do), I don’t think that’s even that accurate. Especially once you add the USHCN stations back in.

In terms of copyright, I’d think the same issues would apply to both the old and the new versions. So if you can’t host one, you can’t host the other, either.

So if you can’t host one, you can’t host the other, either.

I think I can’t host either, but I can link the new version. Is the old version available on line?

Also, the new version of the SPPI document notes that it’s a work in progress, and they note a lot of discussion was generated by the previous version.

OK, but that’s a far cry short of “we’re sorry we accused people of intentionally fudging the data, when they didn’t”.

As for how quiet it’s been: perhaps we should inform Watts that an important revision has been made to his paper? We could use the “Tips and Notes to WUWT” section. Having been informed of this, perhaps he’ll remember to blog his thoughts on the update.

Carrick

They were wrong about the impact of the loss of high-latitude stations (esp its sign),

They repeat that error. Actually, it seems like they think the well-observed latitude relationship is itself an artifact of undersampling – that the high latitudes only look like they’re warming quickly because those grid boxes are interpolated in from urban airports at lower latitudes. At least, I think that’s what they’re trying to say; you can check it out. No analysis to back that up either; it doesn’t make sense anyway.

Lucia, there’s a link at
doskonaleszare (Comment#48296)

on the webpage of EJ Long, complete with sticky notes from him. Once he figures out what’s up, he may remove it as well.

Long turns out to be the guy who put out that recent UHI survey, sample size of ~100, with the sample selection appearing somewhat… odd, as explored here in a Zeke post. Perhaps we could get him to comment on exactly how he went about choosing his sample.

Thanks carrot– I’ll repeat it

http://www.virginiaclimate.pol.....e_temp.pdf

I suspect he won’t take it off line unless the copyright holder complains. But I’d rather not host it because, though I may be wrong, I think it’s a copyright violation.

But the continued existence of this thought bugs me …
.
That’s what I get for only reading the summaries!

Carrot:

“Mann using a de-centered PCA wasn’t an accusation that somebody else intentionally manipulated something to get a result. Mann using that form didn’t make a difference in the end, even if it’s theoretically not best practice. And he stopped using that method.”

Really? How long did the denial that he had misused the method go on? it took years to get the community to admit it. Now say the words:

“Mann was WRONG.” Mann made a mistake. Mcintyre found it.
Those are facts you cannot say. say them WITHOUT qualification.

Heres how:

Watts was wrong. Joe D was Wrong. They made a mistake.
Tamino and others found it.

“Watts, d’Aleo, Smith did make such an accusation. The ways they went about it did make a huge difference to the ‘results’, as they thought they found a big effect due to station drop. In their heads, at least.”

There mistake has made no impact on “the science” That is
the standard you folks seem to be pushing for evaluating misconduct. So I claim YOUR STANDARD for Them.

“So perhaps this is the non-retraction retraction, the non-apology apology? Change your document and don’t tell anybody?
I’ll tell Tamino..”

Actually this is a trick they learned from Mann.

Here:

http://climateaudit.org/2008/1.....-in-spain/

for Pete’s sake carrot, the entire world does not revolve around the SPPI report.

part of the reasons these things persist is that OTHERWISE rational people persist in defending obvious mistakes by themselves and others. or slithering around the basic facts. or changing the terms of the debate. You make a mistake, own it. That’s my suggestion, FWIW.

Carrot:

“Long turns out to be the guy who put out that recent UHI survey, sample size of ~100, with the sample selection appearing somewhat… odd, as explored here in a Zeke post. Perhaps we could get him to comment on exactly how he went about choosing his sample.”

send him and FOIA. he will tell you that his stations are publically available on the web.

send him and FOIA. he will tell you that his stations are publically available on the web.
.
Then maybe the FOI is the wrong tool for the job. In fact, it is obviously the wrong tool for the job. How did science progress for 300 years without FOI requests? Hmmm….

Mosher,

Really? How long did the denial that he had misused the method go on? it took years to get the community to admit it. Now say the words:

“Mann was WRONG.” Mann made a mistake. Mcintyre found it.
Those are facts you cannot say. say them WITHOUT qualification.

First off, I don’t use PCA. So I’m not in a position to say what is misuse or not. All I know is that his implementation of it gives the same result as the more usual implementation of it.

If some statisticians say the centered method is theoretically better, then so be it. Is it “WRONG?” Hard to say that.

When you have scientific data, there’s always different choices for how to analyse them. If the method I choose is reasonable, and my analysis properly reflects the information contained in the underlying data, but a statistician says there was theoretically a better way to do it, am I “WRONG”? I don’t think so. You can say I could have done it in a better or more rigorous way, sure. Heck, this is probably true for any anything I’ve ever done. I’m not in the habit of consulting with professional statisticians on everything, or indeed anything.

Now, if the statistician says I got lucky that I got about the same results, and that the way I did it really is asking for trouble, then you could say I did it wrong.

Not being a user of PCA, I can’t say which occurred here.

The above is a lot more subtle than the way in which Watts/d’Aleo were wrong: they messed up basic history, they said things that don’t make any basic mathematical sense, or physical sense. And they made accusations of fraud that they couldn’t back up.

There mistake has made no impact on “the science” That is
the standard you folks seem to be pushing for evaluating misconduct. So I claim YOUR STANDARD for Them.

Wow, that’s what you want to go with? That’s disingenuous squared. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Situation A: somebody takes his data, does some analysis, gets some results; somebody points out he could have done the analysis somewhat better, but the results don’t change.

Situation B: Somebody takes some data, does an awful analysis, gets results that are completely different from what you’d get if you did a reasonable analysis. But no, Mosher says that doesn’t count as being wrong, just because… nobody believed them? The results don’t change, in that, nobody adopted their results? That’s supposed to be the same thing as situation A?

That’s a joke, Mosher.

Re: carrot eater #48313 (Jul 8 10:20),

That looks like a really thorough and careful introduction to the flaws of the D’Aleo paper, CE. Nice job. (You & I tangled on an unrelated matter earlier in the thread, but good work should be broadly recognized as such.)

I wrote up a long post on Collide yesterday (my first) but it seems to have been swallowed, so I’ll just quickly recap my thoughts here.

My first impression of the piece as quoted by Kloor was that at least it served to destabilize the old caricatures of skeptics and the mainstream, revealing the debate is actually more complicated and we shouldn’t be so quick to lump people into camps based on their views.
After reading the piece in full today I realize Brin has just supplemented one caricature with another, which I don’t think is helpful.

On the topic of sides, I grappled with this for a while when writing about the debate recently, until I realized just how many possible positions there were and the challenge of lumping people into boxes. In the interest of readability, I finally settled on an (explicit) simplification of skeptics vs. AGW advocates, qualified with examples of everyone from the Pielkes to Lucia to show just how diverse the middle ground is, and even how arch-skeptics like McIntyre can hold surprising moderate views. If we were to have a truly accurate delineation of sides/categories, it would be even more complex than Tobis’s formulation (in the Collide-a-scape thread) and I don’t think it would be of any use.
Perhaps more useful than trying to sub-divide any of the sides of the debate, it would be better to realize just how broad the range of opinions and participants is, and the dangers of quickly lumping people into boxes. Yes, some people might not be worth engaging with, but it’s dangerous to create a relatively open category, the contents of which can be immediately dismissed.
I agree with the broad thrust of the post that the unity of the skeptics can do a disservice to the more reasonable voices who find themselves lumped into that group, but I think that unity can be challenged without the creation of some new distinct category.

Mosher,

Since you deal in innuendo and not science, perhaps this is lost on you.

Any paper you pick up out of a journal will in a few years turn out to be wrong in some way, shape or form. Or at least, able to be improved. That’s fine, you’re allowed. Just hopefully, the review process and your basic competence would keep obviously bad things out of there.

What isn’t normal is claims of scientific fraud. Tell a scientist he’s fat or ugly, and he won’t care much. Publicly accuse a scientist of fraud, and that’s fighting words. That’s something people take extremely seriously. So if you’re going to come out with that, you’ve got to be able to back it up.

Since practically nothing they do goes through the review process, and they aren’t very competent, I’m not surprised that Watts and Co tend to make bigger mistakes than what you could get published. So they make mistakes. But what stands apart is an unsupportable yet widely publicised claim of scientific fraud, the claim that the station list was purposefully and intentionally weeded out to artificially cause warming in the record.

No matter how much you want it to be just a mistake Mosher, it isn’t. It’s bigger than that.

Re: carrot eater #48326 (Jul 8 12:07),

> Wow, that’s what you want to go with? That’s disingenuous squared. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Slow down… I don’t think you are interpreting Steve Mosher correctly. At least, that’s not–at all–the way I read his comment #48320. His general advice in #48321 is -

> Part of the reasons these things persist is that OTHERWISE rational people persist in defending obvious mistakes by themselves and others. or slithering around the basic facts. or changing the terms of the debate. You make a mistake, own it.

“You” referring to “scientists” or “people in general”. So that standard should hold for d’Aleo and Watts as much as for anybody else.

My 2 cents.

Thanks, Amac.

Might as well give them credit for what they have improved, you know.

Ron,

That’s what I get for only reading the summaries!

The section of the SPPI report at hand isn’t all that long… and thankfully they’ve taken out most of the meaningless plots of absolute temperatures averaged together. I think it’d down to McKitrick’s original, and one additional from Smith.

Again, the same sort of plot appears in Willmott 1991. I can never figure out why. It’s just weird; by 1991 anybody should have known better.

Carrot:

“No matter how much you want it to be just a mistake Mosher, it isn’t. It’s bigger than that.”

Whoever said “just”

I’ll start with the basics. Can you say that mann was wrong.

You dont want to to tackle the PCA question. want to hem and haw and find differences and shave the language and the facts this way and that and avid a simple clear question.

Let’s take an easy one:

Mann’s locations for precipitation proxy’s.

Say, he made a misatke. Say it. say he was wrong. Say it.

You can’t. you cannot say that simple thing WITHOUT TRYING TO QUALIFY WITHOUT TRYING TO COMPARE WITHOUT DUCKING OR JIVING. you can’t say it.

I’ll start. Watts and Joe were wrong.

once, you show yourself willing to say black is black and white is white. THEN we will go onto the next question. How should such a mistake be handled, is it more serious than a mistake. etc etc. But, inless you can prove that you are willing to call facts facts, then there really is not point.

So start. you dont like PCA discussion of Tiljander. Lets start with
The precipitation proxies. Say it. Mann made a mistake. he was wrong. you can’t.

Your games aren’t going to work here, Mosher.

Watts and d’Aleo made baseless accusations of scientific fraud, and publicised them widely.

That is not just a mistake. Those happen. That is not a debatable or improvable choice of methodology. Those things happen routinely, in probably every single paper.

What don’t routinely happen are unsupportable accusations of fraud.

That’s what sets the SPPI report apart. If I were going to be upset each time Watts and Co made a comical error, I’d spend my life being apoplectic.

But that isn’t it. This is different, it’s extra, it’s special. Because it’s an accusation of intentional scientific fraud, and one that they cannot back up.

Stop playing games, trying to divert attention from what actually happened here.

Carrot:

“Or at least, able to be improved. That’s fine, you’re allowed. Just hopefully, the review process and your basic competence would keep obviously bad things out of there.”

and if the mistake were pointed out by somebody would you publish the mistake AGAIN, or fix it and give credit. And it was pointed out a second time and you finally fixed it would you call attention to that correction or just slip it out there, again without crediting the person who pointed it out. regardless of who pointed it out, regardless of whether it changed the “truth” of AGW. What would your idea of best practices be? You won’t say. you won’t say because you know that certain individuals did things that you wouldnt do. and you are unwilling to hold them to account, however small that account may be. That is fascinating. That’s why folks like Amac and I keep harping on these small issues. because people won’t admit even the smallest of errors in particular cases. Now, if rob wilson or kim cobb made such a mistake, people would act differently. i’ll bet. It has less to do with the actual mistake and more to do with who made it. That’s also interesting.

Mosher,

Stop playing games.

Nothing you dislike about Mann or his papers is in any way analogous to what happened here.

What happened here was an unsupported and unsupportable accusation of intentional fraud. A fraud that was allegedly done to purposefully inflate the warming signal, and thus to artificially alter the results of one of the most important data sets there is in climate science.

Nothing you say about Mann, his methodology choices, or his personality, has any bearing or relationship to that. Zero.

Allegations of such an important fraud cannot be made lightly. They got the attention of many people. They went out of their way to get that attention.

And it requires an apology.

On a slightly different note…

Michael Tobis has published a new thriller, “The Krypton Cataclysm: Why So Few Survivors?”

Fair Use Excerpt -

Most readers will know the story of Kal-El, the child of celebrated Kryptonian scientist Jor-El… the most captivating of all the survival stories remains the escape of Kal-El in a tiny homebrew spacecraft built by Jor-El with his own hands. But why was Jor-El compelled to this bizarre course of action?…

[snip]

It was at this point, around the year 20010, that a previously obscure effort of the Negative industry came to the fore. A diverse group of hobbyists with negativist inclinations had been discussing Global Exploding on the StegaNet. Leaders of this group, notably a retired negativist Ma-Kint and the mysterious statistician, Ms. L L, had been second-guessing a small group of scientists who had been scrounging up old seismograms to reconstruct the seismic history of the past…

Ma-Kint and L L and their group managed to make life extremely difficult for these reconstruction groups, ultimately resorting to legal mechanisms to force release of mountains of obscure data of trivial importance. Then, a mysterious ally (never identified) brazenly stole a copy of all recent correspondence of the KRU, picked out a few somewhat embarrassing samples, and published them.

[continues]

Super!

What is it with unreadable prose, all of a sudden? I guess I’m not enough of a dork.

Carrot Eater at 48339,

Perhaps if some independent body had examined the science you could make your case against Mosher (and presumably myself) with a bit more emphasis added.

Pity nobody found time to look at it.

Amac–
Ok, it’s a metaphor, right? Does MT’s writing this particular metaphor suggest MT is sufficiently confused to think I’m involved in anyway what-so-ever with paleo reconstruction?

How about this:

They questioned the statistical significance of the commonly accepted increase in equatorial seismicity.

Does these mean MT is sufficiently confused to think I’ve questioned the statistical significance of warming trends? Ever?

They demanded copies of all the old seismograms, which were in various formats stored in various places, scanned with various equipment, and had been painstakingly but informally collated over the years at the Kryptonography Reconstruction Unit (KRU) at a minor university on Sceptred Isle.

Is he sufficiently confused to believe I ever requested temperature data from CRU? Or tree ring data? (I requested information on confidentiality agreements.)

Committee after committee after committee found that no wrongdoing had taken place at KRU

So, the commitees on Krypton didn’t find any wrong doing of the sort identified in the recent Muir Russel report, which includes:

But we do find that there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness, both on the part of the CRU scientists and on the part of the UEA, who failed to recognise not only the significance of statutory requirements but also the risk to the reputation of the University and, indeed, to the credibility of UK climate science.

or this

On the allegation of withholding station identifiers we find that CRU should have made available an unambiguous list of the stations used in each of the versions of the Climatic Research Unit Land Temperature Record (CRUTEM) at the time of publication. We find that CRU‟s responses to reasonable requests for information were unhelpful and defensive.

or this

On the allegation that the references in a specific e-mail to a „trick‟ and to„hide the decline‟ in respect of a 1999 WMO report figure show evidence of intent to paint a misleading picture, we find that, given its subsequent iconic significance (not least the use of a similar figure in the IPCC Third Assessment Report), the figure supplied for the WMO Report was misleading. We do not find that it is misleading to curtail reconstructions at
some point per se, or to splice data, but we believe that both of these procedures should have been made plain – ideally in the figure but certainly clearly described in either the caption or the text.

or

we believe that CRU should have ensured that the data they did not own, but on which their publications relied, was archived in a more timely way

or

On the allegation that CRU does not appear to have acted in a way consistent with the spirit and intent of the FoIA or EIR, we find that there was unhelpfulness in responding to requests and evidence that e-mails might have been deleted in order to make them unavailable should a subsequent request be made for them. University senior management should have accepted more responsibility for implementing the required processes for
FoIA and EIR compliance.

Clearly, KRU on Krypton must not have dirtied its fingers the way UEA CRU did. Interestingly, UEA CRU dirtied its fingers in pretty much the way I’ve always believed. They should have been made access to information underlying their data products, research articles etc.

“The Krypton Cataclysm: Why So Few Survivors?”

“The Global Warming Hoax: Why Such Stupidity?”

Andrew

Re: carrot eater (Jul 8 15:30),

What is it with unreadable prose, all of a sudden? I guess I’m not enough of a dork.

Michael Tobis is trying his hand at fiction/satire. I think we suspect “Ms. L L” is intended to refer to “Dr. Lucia Liljegren”… though of course, one never knows. . .

Re: lucia (Jul 8 15:38),

> Ok, it’s a metaphor, right?

Oh. I thought it was an adventure story.

It doesn’t work nearly as well as a metaphor. Too many of the details don’t map correctly.

I think the criticisms made by the Muir panel are reasonable, though it’s thoroughly bizarre to call the cover graph of the WMO report “iconic”. That report was as obscure as it could be.

A similar figure in the TAR was indeed ‘iconic’, but that figure came with a caption..

and why does Lucia insist on thinking that any reference to any sort of sceptic must be about her?

So start. you dont like PCA discussion of Tiljander. Lets start with
The precipitation proxies. Say it. Mann made a mistake. he was wrong. you can’t.

According to Stoat, the analysis method used was sign invariant, it didn’t matter if they were right way up or not.

Re: The Krypton Cataclysm

I actually found some parts of it pretty funny. And the “mysterious statistician, Ms. L L” sounds like a promising character. Of course, Superman fans know well the significance of the initials “L L”…

Julio (recovering dork)

Perhaps if some independent body had examined the science you could make your case against Mosher (and presumably myself) with a bit more emphasis added.

Pity nobody found time to look at it.
.
how many additional examinations do you need Tom?
.
Phil Jones is back to work, and rightly so.
.
the “climategate” story was as fake as stories get. if only someone had written a book about it….

“mysterious statistician, Ms. L L”

Ah, sorry Lucia. My eyes and/or brain couldn’t handle reading any more of that, so I did not see this.

Oh. I thought it was an adventure story.

I took it as fantasy-parable. Like Crichton’s stuff.

Actually, I didn’t take it, in the first place. Sometimes spoofs/fantasies/metaphors/whatever are amusing; I found this one unreadable.

Re: bugs (Jul 8 16:02),

> According to Stoat, the analysis method used was sign invariant, it didn’t matter if they were right way up or not.

You could raise this issue at Arthur Smith’s post on the subject. He’s pro-AGW Consensus and thinks very poorly of S. McI., but he’s not derailing discussion of Tiljander by snipping awkward comments and injecting his own opinions in their midst. (As would be his right, of course, as it’s his blog.)

If there’s a scientific point to be made, you should make it.

bugs (Comment#48348):
Mosher is talking about another mistake Mann made that he refuses to correct. Mosher gives a link.
Tijander: Stoats (and Manns) remarks about sign invariance are just silly.

Any Superman geek knows that anyone with the initials L L is likely to play a special role in Superman’s life. It’s a peculiar bit of fate that was much played up when I was a reader of their stuff, ca. 1965. So that was hard to pass up. There wasn’t room in the story to expand on Ms L L’s character, even if I were fool enough to try to characterize those of the real L L in any detail, but I couldn’t resist throwing in the detail that there was an L L on the scene.

I’m bemused to see nitpicking about minor variations in position among the fictionalized characters. That’s not the point.

The point is there is already pre-existing popular fiction where hot-headed scientists’ warnings are disbelieved by a complacent public. Of course, this goes back at least as far as Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, but a pastiche of that would be less accessible.

The main point is this. The fact that mainstream scientists are perceived as hotheaded and extreme doesn’t make us wrong.

I remain unconvinced that anything at all worth the public’s attention was revealed by the CRU emails, nor that the CRU is at all important, so that’s the way the story goes with KRU. Nobody has convinced me that I need to know the details of that business, so it’s little wonder if the analogy isn’t perfect in that section.

I hope that some naysayers read the story in the intended spirit. That is to say, this story represents how the situation feels to those of us inside the field. Indeed, you folks are the intended audience. Try not to dwell on the details of the individual Kryptonians, okay?

On a more serious note I thank Lucia for summarizing the key criticisms of CRU from Muir. That is a useful list to refer to, and I can’t say I would defend any of those actions in themselves. Is that effectively complete? Is there anything more serious that you believe Muir has “whitewashed” as so many seem to claim?

“The fact that mainstream scientists are perceived as hotheaded and extreme doesn’t make us wrong.”

No, but it does make you seem childish.

Andrew

Lucia
Here is the kool-aid drinking, gun-toting skeptical military-looking parrot
.
http://nigguraths.files.wordpr.....litary.gif
.

.
The next thing would be to do a skeptical flying monkey as Tobis suggests.

Tom Fuller

On the issue of how to center for the PCA analysis, which is what Mosher was talking about, the NAS report says

In practice, this method, though not recommended, does not appear to unduly influence reconstructions of hemispheric mean temperature; reconstructions performed without using principal component analysis are qualitatively similar to the original curves presented by Mann et al.

Which is pretty much consistent with what Mosher calls me hemming and hawing. Is it the best way of going about it? No. Was it important enough to change the results? Not really. Do you move on and improve? Yes.

(Does this example have any bearing or relationship to the unsupported accusations of serious fraud by Watts and d’Aleo? No. The resident PR guy is just trying to divert attention and play games, trying to equate totally unrelated things).

That’s how science proceeds, Fuller. Somebody strikes off and does something entirely novel (Mann 98 wasn’t an incremental advances on previous works; it was really the first paper of its sort). They’re obviously not going to do everything perfectly right away, and in hindsight, it will be recognised that there are things to improve. Even in incremental papers, there are always things to improve. That’s the normal and healthy progression of science. Does it make it “WRONG”, like our resident PR spin guy would have it? No. Not unless you want every single paper and scientist of all time to be “WRONG”. That would not be a useful choice of language.

And it still has no resemblance to the accusations of fraud by d’Aleo and Watts. Because it isn’t an unsupported accusation of serious fraud. Plain and simple. That’s an entirely different class of action, Fuller. It’s not an everyday thing in science. It’s serious and it’s unusual.

Superman, eh? Here I thought it was Star Trek.

Man, I’m out of touch.

Michael Tobis,
“I remain unconvinced that anything at all worth the public’s attention was revealed by the CRU emails”
.
Perfectly tone deaf, as always. Lots of people found the content of those emails at least surprising, and many found it wholly inappropriate.

Re: Jar-El #48354 (Jul 8 16:24),

Well this naysayer proponent of pro-science reform found your account to be light-hearted and amusing, without diluting the intended serious underlying message (as comments at your site affirm).

> The fact that mainstream scientists are perceived as hotheaded and extreme doesn’t make us wrong.

I agree. Some mainstream AGW-Consensus-supporting climate scientists are seen as hotheaded and extreme, and that doesn’t make you wrong. There’s always the temptation to say more, but it can be left at that.

There is also a reverse:
to
Brin suggests (as I have on repeated occasion), that “sincere and enlightened climate skeptics” should put some distance between themselves and climate “deniers.”
which is:
sincere and enlightened climate scientists should put some distance between themselves and climate alarmists.

Carrot

and why does Lucia insist on thinking that any reference to any sort of sceptic must be about her?

I don’t insist on that.

However, I think quite a few people will suspect that Tobis’s characters “Ma-Kint and the mysterious statistician, Ms. L L, ” are meant to be identifiable, and that Ma-Kint is probably Steve McIntyre and “L L” is Lucia Liljegren. Will those people be right? Maybe not. Maybe MT picked those character names at random.

Michael-

I’m bemused to see nitpicking about minor variations in position among the fictionalized characters. That’s not the point.

Let’s review my response to your previous complaint that people are distracted from your point. From collidascape:

Michael

The point isn’t what McIntyre believes;

If your point has nothing to do with SteveM,, why create a distraction from your point by specifically introducing the SteveM’s name into the discussion at all? I should think a half-way decent writer could make a point about picking a point in the middle without inaccurately attributing a position to SteveM.

Now, substitute the name of any real identifiable person for “SteveM”. If you continue to inject specific people into your point making rhetoric and you say inaccurate things about those people, readers will continue to comment on your inaccuracies and miss your point. Didn’t the nuns teach you this in high school?

The main point is this. The fact that mainstream scientists are perceived as hotheaded and extreme doesn’t make us wrong.

Thanks for translating because I assure you, I did not get this particular point from your long winded whatever it was.
Of course being perceived as hot headed and extreme doesn’t make you wrong. No one has ever claimed it does so I don’t know why you feel the need to go to any length to tell people this.

To point out the obvious: being wrong makes you wrong. Being hot headed often makes you unlikeable and being seen as extreme often makes people not trust you.

so it’s little wonder if the analogy isn’t perfect in that section.

What’s a wonder is that given how unimportant you think the topic, you wore off your finger tips writing all that!

Try not to dwell on the details of the individual Kryptonians, okay?

Instead of telling people to try to ignore your individual characters, why don’t you learn to spend more time and edit to avoid asking people to try to imagine what you might have meant and then read that into what you wrote?

That is a useful list to refer to, and I can’t say I would defend any of those actions in themselves.

With regard to the things to my criticism, as far as I can tell, Muir pretty much says the ones I thought were valid were valid.

Is that effectively complete?

I don’t know. I scanned it this morning. I opened it again when I read your rather distorted looking claim at the end of the whatever-it-is type of fiction which seemed to communicate the claim that committees are finding CRU beyond reproach in all possible ways. I found some of the criticism, and then cut and pasted. I don’t know if I got all of the ones in Muir and I haven’t evaluated it sufficiently to know whether I’ll later discover Muir missed some.

Is there anything more serious that you believe Muir has “whitewashed” as so many seem to claim?

Beats me. Who claimed a white wash? (BTW: I have no doubt it’s out there. I just haven’t read everyone’s reaction because I figured I’d rather just wait until I read the report. So, if you tell me who said it, then I’ll know.)

I know some visitors who popped in here have claimed Muir “exonerates” the scientists — that is not so. Also, someone posted a few paragraph out of context here, and taken as the sole results my interpretation to that paragraph was Muir didn’t look at the right question. However, it now just looks like the visitor decided to paste the paragraphs he likes and overclaim the degree of exoneration.

A quick glance suggest Muir criticized them for a number of things the scientists obviously did wrong, and which many apologists have been claiming are perfectly all right. I think the things they got criticized for are important and should not be minimized. That was very bad behavior on the part of people at CRU and it lead to their being in very hot water indeed. This is largely their own fault, and anyone who says otherwise is just, well, wrong.

On the other hand, Muir didn’t find all of climate science overturned. I didn’t expect them to find that. No matter what anyone claims, that’s not the only important thing in the CRU incident.

Well, Lucia, now that I know where the fantasy is coming from, you shouldn’t flatter yourself too much. LL is a natural name here. If say Richard Lindzen had been named Larry, then maybe Tobis’s LL character would have been a male MIT prof.

When adapting from real life to art, composite characters are fairly common, I think.

I suppose when such books or film scripts are written, the real life analogues of those composite characters might be a bit miffed, too. I don’t know.

Carrot–
I think it’s clear MT know that L L would point to me:

but I couldn’t resist throwing in the detail that there was an L L on the scene.

I agree he might not have inserted L L if the initials hadn’t done double duty of pointing to both me and Lois Lane… but still… And of course, if he just wanted to put Lois Lane on Krypton before Superman was even born, he could have said “Lois Lane”.

Lucia,
I’ve said long ago that I would not be surprised if it were found that the CRU mishandled some FOI requests. And that’s what this panel has found.

As a result, it appears that Jones has been given a research-only job, with administrative duties like coordinating the response to FOI have been given to somebody else. I think that’s quite appropriate, as it appears that Jones allowed his personal antipathy against the FOIers to interfere with the FOI process. Mind, I don’t think all the FOIs were filed in good faith; by the end they were making a game of it. But CRU has to be able to (for example) produce a list of stations that they use, even if some of the data are proprietary. They should have done that without being asked for it.

I share some of the sceptic concerns about CRU’s bookkeeping skills. They do not appear to be organised. Or rather, they might be as organised as a typical research lab, but not up to the standards required when you are maintaining a widely used record. They are also not nearly as systematic as NCDC or GISS. I’m guessing this also contributed to their lack of openness.

The reason this doesn’t bother me is that the CRU is totally redundant. Whereever CRU is lacking, the NCDC and now the JMA come through.

And that’s the perspective the more excitable voices have lacked. The weather station data are not lost or corrupted; just go to the NCDC for it, and go on your merry way. Meanwhile the NCDC is working on recovering yet more data as we speak, we’re told.

And if all the recent independent reproductions of CRU/NCDC/GISS weren’t enough, it looks like the Muir guys went ahead and did their own, which was unexpected but quite welcome.

So I guess there’s something here for everybody. CRU’s issues with FOI and openness are called out. But the actual work that is done there checks out fine, yet again.

Lucia

I think it’s clear MT know that L L would point to me:

Never disputed that. Just saying you were used as a happy coincidence; anybody on the scene named LL would have sufficed. And that the result is a composite character.

Lois or Luther? I didn’t read carefully enough to decide which. Actually, I don’t care. I’m not a comic book guy.

lucia (Comment#48362) July 8th, 2010 at 4:43 pm

I’m having a hard time seeing you as Lex Luthor. I think you’d make a better Lara Jor-el (Superman’s Mom), but the initials obviously don’t fit.

Look on the bright side you could have ended up in a Pachauri novel satire. Ewwww!!!

It’s not *just* Lois Lane. There’s also Lana Lang, Lori Lemaris, and of course, Lex Luthor, and that’s just off the top of my head. And anyway, Lucia, didn’t you ever want to be a super-villainess?? (Or is that arch-villainess?)

Julio (wanted to be Dr. Doom, but I guess James Hansen got there before me…)

Paleo scientists make amazing conclusions:

http://www.theonion.com/video/.....rst,14320/

I didn’t realize there were so many LLs in Superman! I guess if I had my choice of villainesses, I’d be Cat Woman.

If I could be a villain, I’d be a CGI polar bear.

Mild-mannered mathematician and his attractive female assistant warn of danger to mankind !

http://www.theonion.com/video/.....rab,14318/

If I could be a villain, I’d be a CGI polar bear.

As in the movie The Golden Compass, or as in Science magazine?

lucia (Comment#48372) July 8th, 2010 at 6:38 pm

So which version of Cat Woman would you be? Julie Newmar, Eartha Kitt, Lee Meriwether, Michelle Pfeiffer, Halle Berry, Adrienne Barbeau, or Gina Gershon?

Enquiring minds want to know!

I guess if I had my choice of villainesses, I’d be Cat Woman.

Funny you should mention that, since apparently you have something in common! I was going to post this last week, but thought better of it. Now I just can’t help it–the relevant reference is on p. 3.

(And yes, Andrew_KY, I agree this is all in very poor taste. It’s not my fault. I haven’t actually bought a comic book since last century. In fact, I have nothing to do with this. This message has been posted by somebody else masquerading as me.)

Gentlemen, I think some of you are taking an unhealthy interest in our host…

Julio (Comment#48375) July 8th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
“If I could be a villain, I’d be a CGI polar bear.”
“As in the movie The Golden Compass, or as in Science magazine?”

If I could be a villain, I’d be new-school super villain Gru from Despicable Me–impatiently evil (can’t abide the line at the coffee house) but with a (relatively) big heart to take in three young kids while trying to run an evil empire!

Sorry, I took my kids to the sneak preview. Couldn’t resist…maybe a better role model than get-your-nose-in-everyone’s-business Superman.

Thanks to AMac for his positive review.

People who didn’t instantly recognize that Superman was mentioned in the first sentence are unlikely to be amused by the story. (I would have expected that to be a minority around here.) I am pretty surprised that anyone whose initials actually are LL doesn’t know the odd LL business in the Superman stories.

http://superman.wikia.com/wiki/LL

Anyway some people enjoyed it and I am glad of that.

Well, this thread seems to have fallen apart beyond all repair now. It’s probably OK, though–I think everybody is entitled to act a little goofy at the end of a long day.

Shub, I liked the story about the giant crabs. Steve E, I’m impressed you could rattle off seven Catwomen–I would probably only have remembered four of them

I saw a trailer for Despicable Me last week when I went (with my kids also) to watch Toy Story 3. It looked really cute.

Well, this thread seems to have fallen apart beyond all repair now.

We started with, and ended with, literary criticism. Sort of. Looks tidy and symmetric to me.

Tobis

Anyway some people enjoyed it and I am glad of that.

Sure. That’s what’s going to happen when you go out on a limb like that, and try something creative. Some people will enjoy it. Some people won’t. Some people will nod. Some people will overanalyse. And some people (me) will lack the cultural awareness to understand it, in the first place.

MT,

Anyway some people enjoyed it and I am glad of that.

Of course you realize that our enjoyment of it does not in any way imply that we believe your very clever story actually reflects anything that has happened, is happening, or is about to happen in our world. I just thought I had to point that out.

Julio (Comment#48385) July 8th, 2010 at 7:53 pm

Well played sir!

Michael Tobis (Comment#48380) July 8th, 2010 at 7:24 pm

The effort is appreciated based on the spirit in which it was offered. I’m with Julio, however, I’m not sure I buy it metaphorically or satirically, but you get an A for stylin’.

Based on where we are in this thread, I think we could use a Holden Caulfield take on angst and phonies. I don’t think that would be much of a stretch for carrot eater. What do you think?

Cheers

Re: Steve E (Jul 8 19:05),
Eartha Kitt.

Michael–
I knew there was a lois lane and a lex luthor. I never really followed Superman though.

Here’s my catwoman costume:

From carrot eater (Comment#48367)
July 8th, 2010 at 5:49 pm

Lucia,
I’ve said long ago that I would not be surprised if it were found that the CRU mishandled some FOI requests. And that’s what this panel has found.
.
.

This brings up a question – did the CRU honor any FOI requests, ever?

Re: lucia (Comment#48388) July 8th, 2010 at 8:27 pm

Santa Baby! lol

My hands down favourite. The right blend of cat, camp, and s-camp. (Sorry, was looking for the non-repetetive triple alliteration. Alas It’s late and I’ve been up since 4:30 EDT.)

BTW, love the costume. “http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/LuAndMaxSmall.jpg” What’s that woman doing in the picture?

SteveE–
Hhhhmmm… who is that woman?

Lucia

a la “Who was that masked man?”

Who was that woman in the fuchsia halter top…

I promise not to comment anymore. It’s been fun. I agree with carrot eater there is something symmetric to this thread.

Ciao

I promise not to comment anymore.

Now that’s a silly promise. I can only speak for myself, but I’ve quite enjoyed your thoughts.

Charming foe
With 9 lives to spare
Sharpens cyber claws

Sisyphutic chat
knits up the raveled thread and
Shreds with cyber claws.
================

“And yes, Andrew_KY, I agree this is all in very poor taste.”

Julio,

Yes, ALL of this is in very poor taste. From Big Al’s Misplaced Tool to all of the cat-related innuendo.

Happy Friday to all Comic Book Nerds everywhere! Thankfully, my own Nerd Days did not include comic books. Best. Thread. Ever.

Andrew

Woah! A cat-woman?
It makes me stop and wonder
Who is the mouse-man?

Syphilitic scat
Unravels willful knitted
Stream of Consciousness.
============

Lex Luthor, Lois Lane
Both are in the shadow of
Intriguing feline

Andrew FL let me answer your question. Most of the people that come here that believe in global warming do not even care about it. That Robert guy is using a computer, he obviously has no problem using fossil fuels. Your right too, these investigations were a total set up from the start. It is similar to a mother prosecuting her child in court for taking a cookie from the cookie jar. There is some other clown here that keeps talking about “record” temperatures. The earth is billions of years old and this idiot seems to think that the earth was created in 1975.

The main thing revealed in Brin’s piece is that standards at ‘Skeptic’ have been lowered.
The cult of global warming is lowering intelligence and ethical standards in its true believers in significant ways.

Well I read, or in some parts skimmed over the article and have to say that Brin’s article helps to illustrate Sturgeon’s law that 90% of anything is crap. I found his remarks mostly (to use the words of another SF writer) a load of fetid dingo kidneys. But I’m not going to detail his failings but instead make a point that seems to be rarely made despite being pretty obvious. Now, since I didn’t get into this thread until it was 300 replies long it’s possible someone else above made it but missed it amongst the Superman nostalgia.

When engaging in honest debate in any subject, the rational thing to do is to look for and engage with the best and strongest arguments of the people on the other side. Now Brin somewhat admits this point when he says that one should listen to the climate experts before saying very much on the subject. But he seems not to be able to transfer this knowledge to his side of the argument. If one wishes to deal righteously with those who don’t accept the findings of the Manns and IPCCs of the world, one should find the strongest and best arguments against AGW / CAGW. Then one should find the people best able to articulate those positions and engage them in spirited but good-natured discussion. And this is precisely what the AGW proponents have consistently and dishonestly failed to do from the beginning. There is absolutely no excuse for Michael Mann’s refusing to engage Steve McIntyre, for instance. And this fact in and of itself is sufficient to allow anyone trying to find out where the truth lies, and unable or unwilling to spend loads of time researching the subject, to determine immediately that Mann is not to be trusted. By extension, those scientists who support Mann and ignore his treatment of McIntyre, are also not to be trusted.

Now I am able to follow the arguments for the most part (and I do trust experts in the areas beyond my training). I can also therefore make a decision based on the facts and theories and they also favor the “skeptic” position. But until more climate scientists than just Judith Curry and the couple of others who engage with Steve come along and make a real attempt to debate, studies in the taxonomy and morphology of climate skeptics is nothing but an attempt to obfuscate.

When engaging in honest debate in any subject, the rational thing to do is to look for and engage with the best and strongest arguments of the people on the other side. Now Brin somewhat admits this point when he says that one should listen to the climate experts before saying very much on the subject. But he seems not to be able to transfer this knowledge to his side of the argument.

Yes.
And this is where if you are honestly engaging you need to also name the people associated with the argument when “rebutting” it. Because picking out the weaker form of arguments– which may be easier to rebut precisely because of the missing elements– and also not naming the people or person whose argument you claim to be rebutting means that the audience is robbed of the opportunity to seek out the full argument.

If your “rebuttal” of an opposing argument is strong, your rebuttal should be able to withstand
1) Being discussed in public,
2) naming the person whose argument you are criticising and
3) permitting your audience to find the both argument you are criticizing and the person who advocates that argument, and ask both you and the opposing side questions.

I guess it’s fine for Brin to decree that he thinks “his side” has good reasons to not talk to people, not answer questions &etc. He buys his own argument– fair enough. But other individuals who don’t happen to be Brin get to have their own standards and decide what they think of Brin and/or those who won’t answer.

It really isn’t as if those people Brin disapproves of are going to dry up and die just because he decrees he (or scientists who he purports to speak for) aren’t going to answer their questions. They’ll just find other places to talk to each other, and other people to discuss things with.

Is this the outcome Brin wants?

If somebody thinks they have a strong argument, there is one thing you have to do, if you really want it to be noticed and carefully considered: clean it up, write it up, and publish the thing.

Otherwise, there’s no guarantee you’ll get picked out amidst all the noise. Otherwise, no whingeing.

Blogs serve some public communication and social purpose. They still aren’t where the real work gets done.

Carrot–
Not all arguments are publishable. If you publish or read articles, you should be perfectly aware of that.

Otherwise, there’s no guarantee you’ll get picked out amidst all the noise.

Who is asking for a guarantee that they will be picked out? My impression is the problem for Brin is that whether he likes it or not, arguments he would prefer no one listened to or read are getting picked up and read by the public.

They still aren’t where the real work gets done.

Define “real work”. Some people think public communication is real work.

Look, if all Brin wanted to say is “Scientists won’t listen unless it’s in a peer reviewed article”, he could write that single sentence. Clearly, he’s trying to say something else.

Also, clearly, some scientists are being forced to deal with the fact that blogs are being read and influence how the results of their papers are perceived and received by the public. The Russel report pretty much tells them to get used to it. As I wouls say– put on your big boy pants!

“Blogs serve some public communication and social purpose. They still aren’t where the real work gets done.”

The processes and results of the “real work” need to be communicated honestly to the public if the public is supposed to be involved.

Don’t tell me you think Big Al’s Big Mouth is how this gets done.

IPCC reports? Who honeslty cares?

Andrew

Scientists shouldn’t have to public communicators if they don’t want to be. It’s not what they are good at. There are plenty of lay people who understand the science who can take up the defense of science in the public sphere.

Because many “skeptical” communicators like to pretend to be scientists, that does not mean scientists should pretend to be mass communicators. Division of labor. If a scientist chooses to take on both roles, more power to them. Otherwise, the scientists should do science and the debaters should debate. Chris Monckton and I have the same scientific qualifications. If he wants to debate the science in speeches, he can debate me or people like me. If he wants to debate scientists, he should make a scientific argument in a peer-reviewed journal.

Lucia

Not all arguments are publishable.

That which are actual contributions are publishable.

Let’s see: things that aren’t publishable:

1. Questions with no real attempt made to answer them: something you’d like somebody else to look at. Well, OK, that’s a question, not an argument.

2. Half done analyses. Finish it, clean it up, publish it.

3. Claims/accusations about process, I guess. Complaining that somebody isn’t responding to your FOIs, or that the whole thing is an evil massive conspiracy to raise taxes.

4. Minor nit-picks that don’t add up to a paper.

In the end, if your strongest argument isn’t something publishable, even as a short communication or something, that’s a really bad sign for your argument.

So it’s put up, or shut up. How’s anybody supposed to know, from the cacophony of half-finished blog analysis and the noise of comment threads, what are the strongest arguments?

Publish it. Otherwise, this topic is just meaningless talk.

lucia: “Alluding to Schopenhauer is not going to glue your disjointed observations together.”

This is the third time you’ve introduced a dismissive label rather than make a substantive argument (“whining,” “platitudes,” “disjointed.”) This tends to suggest to me that the difference between us is not so much that we argue differently as it is that I’m more aware of when I’m leaving the realm of pure rational argument and “going rhetorical.” You seem to think you are saying something substantive, but parse it, and it’s just an insult.

“Huh? I accept that the platitude” [sic]

My argument may very well have been disjointed, but at least I managed to finish my sentences. Do you want to take another crack at what you were trying to say here?

“Me: What I said was directly in response to this — that in many cases, it’s not just a matter of showing someone something is false.

lucia: And I engaged that.”

It didn’t seem like that to me. My question was: how do you deal with people who are not arguing rationally, but are rude, insulting and sometimes abusive. You said: just answer their questions. I said: that doesn’t always work. You said: you want scientists you like to scream and abuse people [straw man]. Me: no, I am asking a serious question about the most effective rhetorical strategy for responding to people who are rude, abusive (do you hew closely to calm, rational arguments or do you pay them back in their own coin?). Both nice-response and mean-response have shortcomings. You: you were really rude in a comment above. Me: yes I was, it was wrong of me. You: you are speaking in disjointed platitudes. Me: [I have just been accused of disjointedness in a comment that breaks off in mid-sentence and starts talking about something else. It's time to go to bed.]

That was the bare bones of the exchange as I understood it. If you addressed the question of how to engage people who do not want their questions answered and will never accept that they have been answered, I missed it. Can you give it to me again.

Carrot,

How’s anybody supposed to know, from the cacophony of half-finished blog analysis and the noise of comment threads, what are the strongest arguments?

Aside from the fact that for all the whitewashes of Climategate, it’s quite clear that the Team was stopping articles they didn’t like from being published; and aside from the fact that the team (Mann in particular) started Real Climate to rebut Steve McIntyre and Ross McKittrick before Climate Audit was started; and aside from the fact they’ve never allowed Steve to answer on their site and haven’t responded to him on his site and don’t even have a link to his site, it’s not that hard to just ask around and find out what arguments are admired and supported on the other side and go from there.

The answer is quite simple. Show some respect for your best adversaries and you’ll be respected by the general public. There are many other anti-AGW scientists who are also worth engaging with, but I’ve been following M&M ever since the first news report came out saying a couple of Canadians were about to publish a refutation of the Hockey Stick. At the time I posted a message on a board called Climate Debate where I said that I sure hoped they were right, otherwise they’d set back the skeptic community big-time. I’ve read everything Steve has posted on ClimateAudit and most all of the comments, and I’ve never had to worry about what he has to say. When he does make the occasional error he corrects it, which is more than the Team is willing to do 95% of the time.

Re: carrot eater (Jul 9 11:27),

Tim Lambert found a mistake in the code used by McKitrick and Michaels in one of their climate-science papers, and reported it on his blog Deltoid. To my knowledge, he never published that finding in the peer-reviewed literature.

1. Should we criticize Lambert for blogging instead of going the route of peer-reviewed publication? (I say ‘no.’)

2. Did Lambert’s ferreting and blogging advance the science? (‘yes.’)

3. Did M. & M. subsequently publish a correction, recalculating their results and lowering the P values they reported for their key findings (‘yes.’)

4. Should M. & M.’s actions be celebrated for their outstanding integrity? (no–according to Feynman, examining your work for mistakes and then correcting them is in the job description for ‘scientist.’)

5. Is this parable relevant to any of the current controversies in climate science, particularly with respect to McIntyre? (‘yes.’)

6. Is one’s opinion of the relative attractiveness of Lambert and McIntyre as dinner party guests a key consideration? (‘no’–although they’d each liven up a party.)

Your turn.

[Edit: Dave Dardinger says, "aside from the fact they’ve never allowed Steve to answer on their site." Actually, McIntyre has had a number of comments pass moderation at RealClimate.]

Dave,
That’s a whole lot of confirmation bias, lapped up by the McIntyre fans. Name a single paper that should have been published, that wasn’t.

Name one.

Amac,
Congratulations, you found an example of an unpublished nugget that was a contribution. Yes, they do happen; I should add minor or obvious observations to the above list.

Lambert’s finding (calculation error with radians/degrees) could have been published as a one-sentence comment with one table, self-evident to all, if he and the journal were so inclined. [OK, this is a weakness of my statement; getting a comment published is not always a slam-dunk]. In this case, it wasn’t worth the effort, as the original authors accepted the point and corrected.

You’re telling me that strongest argument from the sceptics would be analogous to that? Something that maybe isn’t publishable because it’s so simple and obvious, it isn’t worth the effort?

Even your obsession with Tiljander, if you actually did some actual analysis,you could come up with a publishable comment, or better, do some more work on issues with proxies and RegEm in general, and come up with a standalone paper. In fact, why don’t you go do that. Best of all, do an entire reconstruction using what you think are best practices.

The claim here seems to be that the sceptics strongest arguments aren’t something you could publish. Well, what are they? If you say the sceptics’ strongest biggest scientific argument is that it is impossible to meaningfully calibrate Tiljander to the instrumental series, wow. That’s great.

“Name a single paper that should have been published, that wasn’t.”

My husband’s theory was published but if it hadn’t been, you would find the “paper” in the garage in a box. (it is there now anyway too!)

Well, that’s nice, Liza.

My point is that the emails that people got most excited about were about paper(s) that *were* published, and were awful. Including one that was so awful, a somewhat “in the middle” sort of editor (von storch) resigned in protest. Keep in mind that this was both totally voluntary, and that von storch is a critic of Mann and the RC guys.

Re: carrot eater (Jul 9 12:33),

CE, thanks for the reply, though I’m not sure it’s totally responsive to the earlier points I was speaking to.

Beyond that, the other criticisms on offer have been made, and rebutted, before. I don’t think your reasoning is persuasive, but one detailed explanation per thread is enough for me.

What’s been rebutted?

I’m seriously curious.

We are given to believe that there is this mass of weighty, serious, well-thought out, well-analysed “sceptic” arguments, be they theoretical or observational, that apparently need to be engaged, yet aren’t publishable. Huh? What are they, and what’s keeping somebody from developing them, and publishing them? Either as shorter notes, or full length papers?

Things that might support ‘lukewarmerism’ do get published – there are papers out there that come in with estimates of climate sensitivity that are on the low end, for example. But you’ve got to do some serious work, and write it up.

Awful? Hockey Stick!

CE says:

In the end, if your strongest argument isn’t something publishable, even as a short communication or something, that’s a really bad sign for your argument.

Yet, here you are, arguing and discussing the very issue in a blog. If it is entirely unimportant and a bad sign for your argument, might I suggest that your time might be better spent elsewhere ?

Like our friend Gavin who never seems to have time to address his opponents strongest points yet always manages to find time to slam softballs out of the park, I notice this “publish” meme seems to show up mostly when it is more convenient to dodge and weave, then actually address the issue at hand. It is a nifty rhetorical device to argue your point by authority without having to engage the technical issues but it doesn’t seem to have much use in this venue.

Perhaps, I should hold you to your own standards and note that none of your previous arguments are published in a technical journal. If you are simply going to argue from authority, perhaps you should make yourself absent and correct this lapse so we can take you seriously here.

Artifex,

Yet, here you are, arguing and discussing the very issue in a blog. If it is entirely unimportant and a bad sign for your argument, might I suggest that your time might be better spent elsewhere ?

…

I’m not presenting an original and substantial scientific contribution that I want the world to notice. Nobody here is. We’re just talking. You can’t tell the difference between one and the other? That’s.. special. Though perhaps telling, as well, and not in a good way.

Again, I’m still curious. Lindzen, Svensmark, Christy, Spencer have all published their work. So what is this well-developed important scientific contribution that sceptics have somehow forgotten to publish, while they were so busy blogging?

Again, I’m still curious. Lindzen, Svensmark, Christy, Spencer have all published their work. So what is this well-developed important scientific contribution that sceptics have somehow forgotten to publish, while they were so busy blogging?

I simply wasn’t aware that you had to publish to make a valid argument. I know that AMac has pointed out in depth flaws with Tiljander. I read his work and it looks convincing. Most of the counter arguments appear to be the fluff equivalent to sticking ones fingers in ones ears and yelling “I can’t hear you”. I simply note that it is high comedy to show up and to a blog and announce you will only take the argument seriously if they publish. Perhaps you should just get right to work publishing that. I am sure that will convince most of us.

Re: carrot eater (Jul 9 13:20),

> What’s been rebutted?

The definition I had in mind was “To present opposing evidence or arguments.”

> We are given to believe that…

One of the recurring difficulties of AGW discussions is the low standards to which paraphrasing is held. Suppose Alice means X but types X’. All too often, Bob interprets Alice’s argument as X”, or X”+Y. Carol might then chime in, wondering how Alice could possibly argue X”’+Z. It would be better if Bob paid more attention to capturing the original argument, before rushing to rebut.

> But you’ve got to do some serious work, and write it up [submit it to a peer-reviewed journal].

Look, this is a blog. RealClimate and Deltoid are blogs. There are many others, covering many subjects. Even if you applied “everybody should ignore what you say until you publish it” even-handedly — and you don’t — it would still be a silly argument. Imagine offering that proclamation at a seminar — or in a journal club — or at a poster session — or when scientists gather for happy hour. There has always been a place for informal communication. And those are examples from the pre-Internet era. The more interesting conversations are the ones concerning how online media should be integrated with the older formal formats — or replace them.

And Feynman was right. Scientists are obligated to check their work for errors, and acknowledge and correct the ones they recognize.

You keep forgetting Feynman.

An argument can be valid, without being published. But if you want people to really take notice, then you go through the motions of writing it up. This forces you to tidy it up, clean up the unfinished bits, do more work to make sure it’s substantial, write it coherently, have it get through review (which then reinforces all of the above). All that is a quality filter. Mediocre things can still get through, but if you really want some original work to be noticed and seriously considered, then these are the steps you have to take.

And so again, I ask. What is this big weighty analysis, this most strong argument, already well-developed, that exists, yet nobody’s bothered to publish?

Re: carrot eater (Jul 9 14:12),

> And so again, I ask. What is this big weighty analysis, this most strong argument, already well-developed, that exists, yet nobody’s bothered to publish?

See my just published added-to-the-thread comment #48445. Link to the original, please. That way, we’ll know whose words you have in mind, and thus (1) whether your paraphrasing was accurate, and (2) who it is that should respond to you.

Have you read any of Feynman’s popular essays?

Carrot

That which are actual contributions are publishable.

Sure. But criticisms of bad papers often don’t amount to “contribtutions” and aren’t worth a formal anything. The mantra of publish is often used as a talking point when someone criticizes a paper as if one can’t criticize without writing it up into a formal paper.

In the end, if your strongest argument isn’t something publishable, even as a short communication or something, that’s a really bad sign for your argument.

Huh? Look, not all valid points are worth publishing. In most fields bad work is dealt with by being ignored and later not built on. This is the traditional method. I don’t know where anyone got the impression it was not.

There is absolutely no reason why, if someone asks about a paper, a blogger can’t explain why it’s bad, and then move on. Sure, scientists won’t see the blog post. So? Why are you giving advice as if it’s a given that a blogger feels any need to get the attention of scientists when they say “Miscolzi is incomprehensible” &etc.

Amac,

Perhaps you are confused on how the conversation got to this place. So please review.

lucia (Comment#48419) July 9th, 2010 at 10:51 am

was concurring with Dardinger, saying that scientists should engage directly with the sceptics best arguments.

carrot eater (Comment#48420) July 9th, 2010 at 10:58 am

I replied that this is greatly facilitated, or even simply made possible by, the sceptics actually cleaning up and writing up their best arguments. If Lindzen had buried Iris in a blog someplace, maybe it never makes any impact. But he wrote it up and published it.

But Lucia says that not everything is publishable. Well, no, not everything is possible. But I’d dearly hope that whatever you consider to be the sceptics’ most substantial scientific contributions, that the sceptics can put in the work required and publish them.

Nothing you say is in any way relevant to what I’m saying. Of course this is a blog. We discuss things informally. We discuss informally presented work. Zeke’s, for example. Yes, very well and good. We’re the equivalents of his colleagues down the hall, that he bounces ideas off of. But when you have made an original and weighty scientific contribution, and you want the world beyond your hallway to notice, you’d better publish. And you’d want to publish anyway; going through that process forces you to improve, add, strengthen. It takes work, but your work is better for it. And that’s why it’s a pretty good quality filter.

Take whatever Lucia is trying to publish now. Note that she’s taking that step. Apparently they’re in endless reviewer-induced revisions. That can be irritating, but your paper is generally the better for it, when it’s done.

Carrot–
Thanks for clarifying. Yes, some things do need to be published. If nothing else, that lets people focus on which version to criticize.

BTW: I’m not convinced reviewer comments generally make papers better. They sometimes do; they sometimes don’t. I’ve seen papers that have been made worse by concessions to reviewer comments — not mine — but some where I’d seen the original version and then saw the changes that arose from a reviewer. The stuff inserted for the reviewer made things worse. After all, everyone knows there are some reviewers who are PITA’s, but the easiest course can be to make a concession rather than argue about something. But it’s a process.

Lucia

Sure. But criticisms of bad papers don’t amount to “contribtutions” and aren’t worth a formal anything. The mantra of publish is often used as a talking point when someone criticizes a paper as if one can’t criticize without writing it up into a formal paper.

As you mention, if it’s an awful paper, then it is normally ignored, gets zero citations, and is forgotten. For the author’s sake, somebody might give him suggestive questions when he presents at a conference sometime.

Though when the sceptics get an awful paper through, they publicise living daylights out of it, so somebody might feel obliged to put in a formal comment, as with Eli and G&T.

But there are also papers worth submitting a comment for. Or even better, if the paper suggests some bigger analysis to you, you write a standalone paper, either building on the original, or criticising it, all the while developing the field in a new light. All these things are possible.

It is rather telling, and it should be extremely embarrassing to you, if the only thing you can think of as being sceptic contributions are just nitpicks and criticisms of other people’s papers. You can’t extend those criticisms into original work? You can’t develop your own theories, models, reconstructions? You can’t turn those criticisms into improvements, or at least, you can’t do a careful enough job of documenting and analysing the importance of those criticisms that they become publishable? That’s quite poor. And it’s not even accurate. Lindzen tries to do it. Svensmark tries to do it.

Heck, just this week we mentioned a paper or two that found that climate models agree with each other in 20th C runs partly because they handle aerosols in different ways, which may offset other differences. See that? That’s what might be termed a sceptic criticism, turned into a more careful analysis, fleshed out, cleaned up, and published. And it tells you something you maybe didn’t know before.

Carrot

it should be extremely embarrassing to you, if the only thing you can think of as being sceptic contributions

I’m not sure why it should be embarrassing to me. I believe AGW is true, so obviously, I’m don’t find it embarrassing that papers disproving it don’t appear in the literature.

If you classify the paper showing the importance of aerosols to models agreeing with each other in the 20th century as skeptic, then there are a lot of skeptic papers published. So, presumably, skeptics should be embarrassed at all because lots of skeptic papers have been published.

Lucia

Carrot–
Thanks for clarifying. Yes, some things do need to be published. If nothing else, that lets people focus on which version to criticize.

Thank you.. I didn’t imagine this would be such a controversial idea. It’s a little hard for me to understand.. I’m used to thinking that people actually want to publish their work.

Though it doesn’t just have to be criticism. You read, you assess, you think about, you see if you can build on it.. it need not be so antagonistic.

BTW: I’m not convinced reviewer comments generally make papers better. They sometimes do; they sometimes don’t. I’ve seen papers that have been made worse by concessions to reviewer comments — not mine — but some where I’d seen the original version and then saw the changes that arose from a reviewer. The stuff inserted for the reviewer made things worse. After all, everyone knows there are some reviewers who are PITA’s, but the easiest course can be to make a concession rather than argue about something. But it’s a process.

They can make it worse, but I think on balance they generally make it better. The most useless are the guys who don’t care, but just want you to cite them. Kind of takes the anonymous out of the anonymous review.

Re: carrot eater #48449 (Jul 9 14:25),

I’m not confused, thanks. But your comments do improve when you write carefully, as in #48449. Still, I note that you haven’t linked as I asked in #48447, so I don’t know if your paraphrase is accurate, or who might owe an answer to your question.

I might, or might not, try to publish something on Tiljander, some day. I haven’t complained about the obstacles, or discussed downloading Instructions To Authors, or made any promises to my fans or detractors. I haven’t said anything at all on the subject. Your opinion that I must publish to have my arguments taken seriously by others is just that–your opinion.

That said, you make some good points about publication’s merits; I’ll add them to the list of plusses and minuses.

It’s a good topic for discussing on an open thread in a science-themed blog.

So is a different subject: Feynman’s thoughts about the duty that scientists have to correct their errors, when they recognize them. Link if you need it.

If you classify the paper showing the importance of aerosols to models agreeing with each other in the 20th century as skeptic, then there are a lot of skeptic papers published. So, presumably, skeptics should be embarrassed at all because lots of skeptic papers have been published.

I don’t classify it a sceptic paper, but I’m giving a positive example of what sceptics can do with their energy. Instead of just saying “eh, I think the models do a bad job of x”, and not developing the thought past that, why not actually flesh that out. Get to work, and see if you can show in a deeper way how the models are lacking, what the resulting uncertainty is, how they could be improved, or identifying something that needs to be improved but wasn’t fully appreciated before.

This is how you go from an idle criticism, to a well-developed contribution that can be published, and adds to our understanding, and so we’re all much better for it.

Carrot,

That’s a whole lot of confirmation bias, lapped up by the McIntyre fans. Name a single paper that should have been published, that wasn’t.

Name one.

Well, I know of at least one note that McIntyre tried to have published which was first required to be so short it was hardly worth it, but when it was submitted, it was refused with some excuse it was not new. Of course, that brings up the question of how one determines a paper “should have been published”? Just who gets to decide? Remember the e-mails where team members ganged up on an editor who allowed a paper they didn’t like to be published and they then had the editor removed.

Now in one sense one can almost always find a way to get a particular article in print if you’re willing to pay for the publication costs. But then the team has another arrow in their quiver; claiming the journal it’s published in isn’t worthy of being considered peer reviewed.

BTW, for anyone reading along, what was the article someone published recently concerning years of effort to get an article published? I think it was a climate skeptic, but i can’t remember just who.

Amac,
For about the nth time this month, we’re talking at cross purposes. I clearly pointed out what line of discussion I was in, going back to Lucia and D.D., about why you really ought to publish, if you think you’ve got something substantial.

Why you should expect my discussion to be responsive to something I wasn’t talking about, I don’t know.

Re: carrot eater (Jul 9 13:20),

> Why you should expect my discussion to be responsive to something I wasn’t talking about, I don’t know.

Who wrote this?

We are given to believe that there is this mass of weighty, serious, well-thought out, well-analysed “sceptic” arguments, be they theoretical or observational, that apparently need to be engaged, yet aren’t publishable. Huh? What are they, and what’s keeping somebody from developing them, and publishing them? Either as shorter notes, or full length papers?

And so again, I ask. What is this big weighty analysis, this most strong argument, already well-developed, that exists, yet nobody’s bothered to publish?

Perhaps what you meant was, “I don’t want to talk about that any more.” That’d be fine. The ins and outs of scientific publication is more interesting, as are many of Feynman’s thoughts.

No, I do want to talk about that.

What is this hugely important work, ready to go, well-developed, fully-analysed, but for some reason unpublished? One that’s important enough that it can be called among the sceptics strongest arguments?

You seriously don’t think it’s a critique of whether Tiljander can be meaningfully calibrated, do you? If you do, just wow. Not to belittle whatever you are obsessed about, but it’s a little detail; if that’s the strongest sceptic argument, there’s no point at all to being a sceptic.

I’m looking for stuff along the lines of “because of this theoretical basis, and these observations, we can expect this negative feedback to be stronger than is currently considered, and therefore climate sensitivity is on the lower end of the current range, and by the way, even with these physics, we can still explain the ice ages, etc”. That’s the grand slam to convince somebody to be a lukewarmer, and that’s the sort of thing I’d look for, if I were looking for the strongest arguments.
For the record, Iris is something that tried to fulfill some of those things, though I’m not sure if Lindzen ever gave a physical understanding of how ice ages can happen with a low climate sensitivity.

Carrot

Get to work, and see if you can show in a deeper way how the models are lacking,

Here, you are adding the hurdle. If models don’t forecast, and the data show that, it should be possible to discuss that without going identifying anything in a “deeper” way. However, if the hurdle for publication is to show something deeper, than an important point cannot enter into the literature until the cause of model disagreement is understood.

In principle, this hurdle should not exist. In practice, it may– depending on who peer reviewers are. (And this is a matter of practical importance btw.) Likewise, the rhetoric vis-a-vis McIntyre is often that if he thinks Mann’s reconstruction is wrong, he should come up with his own. But papers merely showing that the uncertainty is too high to permit conclusions can be very difficult to get past reviewers because they may be seen as “not new”.

So, blogs exist. People are going to keep writing, and others are going to keep attending to these writings. Some scientists want to gnash their teeth and complain that readers should all understand that these blogs shouldn’t be attended too. But then, the scientists who complain won’t engage the blog post.

But now to the more important bit. Whether you like it or not, the dynamic about who needs to pay attention to what has two prongs. Sure, I, or SteveM or JeffId can’t expect any scientists to specifically rebut anything we write in blog post if we don’t publish. But by the same token, if readers come to believe what any of us write, those people are likely to continue to attend what we write until such time as it’s specifically rebutted.

If scientists decline to specifically engage or rebut on the basis that it’s not peer reviewed– as is their right– readers and the public can continue to attend to the bloggers if the readers so choose. That’s readers right.

And, when I read scientists bloggers complaining that the readers are believing the bloggers and notice that the scientists have not rebutted, I will simply say, “Well, then rebutt them.”

This isn’t complaining that they should engage the bloggers in some moralistic way. It’s simply observing that if they don’t engage the bloggers who have followers then they have no right to complain that the public continues to follow the bloggers and believe them.

And no, non specific rebuttals, with no names, and of arguments that are weaker versions repeated over and over and over won’t cut it because the blogger will simply come back and explain to readers that important points were left out.

If the scientists don’t care that readers won’t accept these arguments, fine. But if they keep complaining (as some seem to do)? Well, they might as well complain that rain falls down.

Re: carrot eater #48463 (Jul 9 15:22),

Carrot, in the linked comment, once again, you are not correctly paraphrasing what another person has written. In my opinion, this is a principal cause of the frustration that presumably is behind remarks like,

For about the nth time this month, we’re talking at cross purposes. I clearly pointed out what line of discussion I was in…

The options of quoting directly and of asking for clarification are always open. Their use would help lower some barriers to communication, and not just with me.

[/2₵]

Have a good weekend.

It’s probably also worth noting that while it might make a good strawman argument for some parties, the issue is really not the results of Tiljander per-se. Tiljander is small potatos. It’s really just another questionable proxy in a series of questionable proxies in a questionable study. When Tobias says it is really a meaningless sideshow to the main event, he is absolutely 100% correct.

What makes Tiljander scary is the rationalization and defense of the indefensible by the usual parties. Look at the sequence:

Steve M and the Climate Audit crew finds that Tiljander is used in an opposite sense than the original author intended. In a scientific environment, it would be corrected as one of those silly goof ups that just happen and that would be the end of it. That’s not what happened is it ?

First we have the usual complaints of “it’s not true if it’s published.” Hello ? This is just a misused data set. What exactly is there to publish here ? Using AMac and Jean S’s guidance from CA, a high school student could see that this is the case. That doesn’t stop several “slow on the uptake” B list physics types from admonishing us that we are wrong because we didn’t check the data, when in fact that was first thing examined.

So once we establish that the data is in the wrong sense, instead of “oops you were right, it is upside down”, we are treated to arguments about how the sign doesn’t matter in a correlation. This is true, but is not responsive to the problem. First, from reading the code that’s not actually what the code is doing. Second, there are problems with what correlating with inverted data actually means in a physical sense. We can’t have that addressed though. After all, obviously the attitude is if we can’t “out physics” our opposition, we can “out sophist” them.

It is then decided that “It doesn’t matter”. Hmmmm, in my world “doesn’t matter” is usually associated with some form of numerics. Yes, it may very well not matter, but you are going to have to make a solid argument with at least some error bars to convince me. Also, the fact that we arrived at this point through some of the lamest argument that I have seen is not just suddenly erased from my memory either.

Now it gets even better. Some of those same voices who were just a little while ago shrieking about “peer review” have suddenly decided that peer review and publishing don’t matter after all and Tiljander should be used in its opposite sense form. Who needs peer review if it forwards our cause ! (Cough, cough) Really firm with those principles it seems.

This isn’t rocket science. All of this is approachable by a serious high school science student. There is nothing publishable or unique here. In fact, the only thing notable is that such poor arguments are accepted as gospel by certain tribal members. I don’t care how much “deep climate science” you understand, the arguments made are silly and in some cases mutually contradictory. A critique of this comedy of rationalization is not something that one is going to publish, but the point remains. If you can’t manage basic logic and your analysis ceases as soon as you have something that satisfies your biases, your deeper climate understanding is probably closer to deep art history than to deep physics.

The science is insignificant but the casual rationalization displayed is scary.

Here, you are adding the hurdle. If models don’t forecast, and the data show that, it should be possible to discuss that without going identifying anything in a “deeper” way. However, if the hurdle for publication is to show something deeper, than an important point cannot enter into the literature until the cause of model disagreement is understood.

If you can clearly show that the models don’t forecast, in ways that are actually surprising or unexpected, then that in itself can be a short paper. No additional hurdle needed.

But to make it a better, more useful paper, you ought to do a bit of diagnosis as well, if you can. Are there some individual models that do fine, within whatever metric you chose? Do you notice some spatial pattern the models don’t get, in latitude or altitude? Can you tell whether it’s a matter of the models just not having good internal variability, or are there signs of incorrect or missing forcings, or incorrect physics? The latter would be tough to get at, especially if none of your co-authors are in a modeling group, but it would be a strong paper if you could sniff that out.

And I see no reason why McIntyre is not just making his own reconstruction. If he is so expert in every step of the process, he ought to be able to crank one out with his eyes closed, no? Why not do that, and show the world what the best practices should be. The only excuse is if you think paleoclimate at this scale and resolution is inherently impossible. In which case, you’d better write that paper too, and it’d be published, because it would be indeed new; it’d be more than just a discussion of uncertainty, it’d be a demonstration of the field’s futility.

All the other stuff, you’re stuck on what the public thinks, and how the public reacts. That’s a secondary topic from what I’m talking about, which is – “where’s the beef”. Where is the scientific basis. And for scientists to know where to find the beef, you ought to publish. And the very process of publishing will make your beef tastier. You ought to know this. When you prepare something for formal presentation, you inevitably make it better, as you think about how to most convincingly present it. You may well end up doing more work, as you realise your story isn’t quite complete yet.

Oh, and my challenge remains.

So far as I can tell, nobody has articulated what are the most important, strongest, scientifically substantive sceptic arguments that already have been well developed, but don’t already appear in the published literature.

I think that in itself is a demonstration: you need to publish, to separate the wheat from the chaff. Don’t expect people to go looking into every blog, looking for the occasional fully baked idea among all the half-baked ideas. Do yourself and everybody else a favor, and publish.

Carrot Eater,

the most important, strongest argument against AGW is STILL the FACT that the scientific observations and experiments do NOT support the claims made by the IPCC, James Hansen, Phil Jones, and the rest of the loonies.

Whether there is backradiation or not is simply not a real issue. Is the environment acting in any way as predicted. Other than a slight warming over 30 years, which may have stopped, NO!!!!

If there were solid Science behind the claims, this whole blog industry would be disappearing. But hey, it’s a free country. You are free to entertain YOUR DELUSIONS as I am mine!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

carrot eater (Comment#48469) July 9th, 2010 at 3:44 pm

In general terms, I agree with you that publishing would be better than posting (or commenting) at blogs. I also agree that preparing a paper makes the content better, just like teaching a course makes your understanding of the subject matter more complete and more connected. There are some real hurdles though.

The first hurdle is that most people do not have the time to invest in preparing a publication; that does not mean they don’t have decent ideas. As I am sure you know, there is a huge investment (typically many weeks, if not many months) in preparing a paper; heck, there’s a lot of work in preparing a poster! One simple example: I have read a fair amount about what controls the formation and depth of the well mixed layer (surface waves, eddy down mixing, ect.) but I am quite sure the current explanations do not properly treat the contribution of solar heating at and below the transition between the well mixed layer and the thermocline. I think that if this were properly accounted for, the odd discrepancy between assumed large down mixing of CO2 and the lack of recent heat accumulation (ARGO) could be explained. But I sure don’t have 6 months or a year to dedicate to the effort. Few people who are not funded (or independently wealthy) can afford the required investment.

The second hurdle is the peer review process itself. As you may have noted, climate scientists may be just a little sensitive about critiques of consensus positions. I think Jeff Id, Ryan O and company did some very good work on Antarctic temperatures, but it looks like peer reviewers will never let their paper see the light of day. Now you can say that I am ‘biased’ if you wish, but their temperature maps sure looked to me a heck of a lot closer to the manned station data than did Mann et al RegEM effort that made it to the cover of Science. It’s kind of hard to make a huge (uncompensated) investment in time like that if you think the game is rigged against you from the start.

But to make it a better, more useful paper, you ought to do a bit of diagnosis as well, if you can.

Sure. No one is arguing against that.

If he is so expert in every step of the process, he ought to be able to crank one out with his eyes closed, no?

Not if the truth is that the proxies don’t contain sufficient information go create a decent reconstruction. If the correct answer really is that the uncertainties are too large. So, in this regard the rhetoric of “not seeing” that the contribution is to recognize that proxies that were published have insufficient resolution on which to based conclusions advanced is the only legitimate scientific result.

Sure, hypothetically, it might be better to create a better reconstruction and such a construction would be a contribution. But the fact that this hypothetical can be imagined doesn’t mean the state of proxies are sufficient to permit a good reconstruction to be made. Worse, if the hypothetical is used as the basis for deeming papers without new reconstructions “not knew”, that becomes a disservice to science.

That’s a secondary topic from what I’m talking about, which is – “where’s the beef”.

So what if it’s secondary to the point you want to make? Anyway, I think we are at cross-purpose here because you are assuming that “the beef’ is merely that skeptics care whether scientists attend to their blog post.

That’s not precisely the issue.

Very recently, at Collide-escape, we were treated to Gavin moaning that they keep engaging Tijander over and over, but the public won’t shut up. Going through that discussion, it’s quite evident that with regard to questoins posed at blogs, they have never responded to actual criticisms– so of course the topic doesn’t go away. So, in that context, my response to gavin is: You need to really engage the criticisms that exist. It appears you haven’t. Ever. You keep repeating responses that are non-responsive because they don’t address the criticisms.

That’s the context in which I criticize scientist bloggers for not engaging other bloggers. I’m not saying the scientists should just read blogs and respond. But if they are going to actually complain that things on blogs are believed? I say: Well, engage and rebut them.

The fact that you don’t intend to make this point doesn’t mean I can’t make it. That fact that I get your point that if I just want people to attend to my little theories specifically, I need to publish. I get that. But likewise, I can perfectly well criticize a blogger– like Gavin– who complains that arguments he doesn’t like won’t go away and observe he needs to stop whining and actually start listening to the arguments and address the ones actually presented. Or, he can not address them on the basis that they don’t appear in peer reviewed articles and then stop complaining that the arguments don’t retreat from the public sphere. No skin off my nose.

Lucia

Not if the truth is that the proxies don’t contain sufficient information go create a decent reconstruction.

Which goes back to my other point. If you don’t think it’s even possible to do a meaningful job of it, then that itself is a paper. Give your reasoning. And you can’t say it wouldn’t get through for being old hat, because nobody’s published a claim that strong before, I don’t think.

If you could reason it well and defend it, it’d be a landmark paper. If he really wanted to change the field, that’s what he’d do. It’d be much more important than kvetching about trivialities like which series was on top of which in a plot, or what was used to pad out a smooth on some plot (when there’s no real indication that it wasn’t done just how the caption specifies).

Anyway, I think we are at cross-purpose here because you are assuming that “the beef’ is merely that skeptics care whether scientists attend to their blog post.

Well, that’s where I started this track, as I think I’ve made clear, and from your latest response, I think you see where I am.

But now we’ve moved to a rather different point. It seems you say that Gavin is engaged in comments somewhere (I’ve not been over there), and is not adequately answering questions, while wondering why people are still asking those questions.

OK, well that is a different pickle altogether, from what I’ve been talking about. If you’re actively involved in a comment thread, then you’re actively in a conversation. You don’t need to know where the beef is; things are being directly addressed to you in a semi-intimate setting. In this case, the sceptics don’t even need a strong argument, if all they want to do is ask questions, for things they don’t understand. So perhaps he thinks he’s answered those questions, and the questioners don’t. Or he thinks the questions are irrelevant, and he can’t convince the people of that. Or he just hasn’t answered the questions at all. Any of these things could be true.

OK, yes, that’s different. I don’t feel like reading whatever thread it is to assess the situation, but I’ll agree, if you are engaged in a conversation, you need to actually be responsive. I take it the topic is paleo. I wonder why Gavin gets dragged into being the jack of all trades. He models paleoclimates, but I wouldn’t think he’s an expert on paleo proxies and reconstructions, beyond being a colleague of those who are. Which when dealing with the public will be good enough for a lot of things, but not everything.

SteveF

You pose in there an interesting scenario.

You’ve read some papers, you have the relevant background, and you have an idea, but it isn’t your day job. So you haven’t got the time/resources to test your own hypothesis. But you know that without doing the work, it’s just a hypothesis.

So what do you do?

I’m not entirely sure. If you’re an acquaintance of the relevant academics, you bounce it off of them. If you aren’t, you’re sort of stuck with your pet idea. A cold email doesn’t sound productive; it’s one thing to ask a question, it’s another to randomly pitch a research topic. Leaving a comment at a blog on an unrelated comment, it’ll just get lost or ignored, unless it’s a low traffic blog, like… Grumbine.

I don’t know how to best approach that, Steve.

The neat thing about Zeke’s work with the surface record is, it’s stuff that’s easy to do at home. If you have a computer and some programming skill, and a halfway-logical mind, you can do that stuff in your spare time. So it’s a topic that’s very amenable to amateur participation.

But that’s something of an exception to the rule, I’m afraid.

actually start listening to the arguments and address the ones actually presented.

I’ll draw a distinction here, though.

If you say Gavin is being non-responsive within a comment thread he’s active in, that’s one thing.

But at the same time, blogs/columnists do tend to recycle stuff that has already been addressed. Quite frequently. There are lots of zombie arguments out there, and you get tired of whacking the moles.

So there can be both things going on.

Hi Lucia

bit o/t but may be relevant.
i’ve lurked here/CA/RC/ALL over/etc… for a while & enjoy your & others posts & the lively debates.

may be wrong, but appears to me you are now being hit by a lot
comments from names i recognise (from prominent to me,blogs) that have never commented before.
is it just this thread do you think?
or have you been noticed & singled out for minder attention?

anyway
carry on your good work, much appreciated.

dougie

But now we’ve moved to a rather different point. It seems you say that Gavin is engaged in comments somewhere (I’ve not been over there), and is not adequately answering questions, while wondering why people are still asking those questions.

Why do you think this is a different topic rather than the one everyone else had in mind all along?

… more desperation from the good folks who were caught hiding the decline, tweeking the literature and (in the case of Gore) caught with their tool in the wrong shed. I wonder when the strain will cause them to graduate from bong to meth pipe.

Why do you think this is a different topic rather than the one everyone else had in mind all along?

Because they are quite different.

I think the original request was to

the rational thing to do is to look for and engage with the best and strongest arguments of the people on the other side.

So, what are the strongest arguments the sceptics have? To me, the strongest arguments would be things like, “because of this, this, this, and this, climate sensitivity is lower than you think, and yet our finding is consistent with glaciation cycles”, or “because of this, this and this, not only are the climate models inaccurate, but they’re inadequate in a way that matters to the important results thus”. These are what I’d consider strong arguments, and they’re the sort of things that belong in the published literature. They need to be cleaned up and reported.

The above quote also says the scientist has to go out looking for it; I again think it’s only reasonable to assume they’ll actually find your brilliant idea if you actually publish it.

But what you’re talking about here now are people, while in conversation with Gavin, asking questions about various little things. Those aren’t your strongest arguments; they’re just questions/complaints you’d like answered about various little things. And another difference is that he’s already engaged in conversation, so he doesn’t have to magically know there’s some question being asked or point being raised somewhere on the internet; he’s already there and in the conversation.

So I see this as being quite rather different.

And I see no reason why McIntyre is not just making his own reconstruction. If he is so expert in every step of the process, he ought to be able to crank one out with his eyes closed, no? Why not do that, and show the world what the best practices should be. The only excuse is if you think paleoclimate at this scale and resolution is inherently impossible. In which case, you’d better write that paper too, and it’d be published, because it would be indeed new; it’d be more than just a discussion of uncertainty, it’d be a demonstration of the field’s futility.

McIntyre is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Carrot Eater,

I probably shouldn’t try and speak for skeptics, but from the lukewarmer point of view I should think the strongest arguments are:

Uncertainty about sensitivity and ocean to atmosphere transfer of heat and CO2 is quite troubling. Until this is resolved, much of the conversation about climate change is just haggling over details. These issues do not look as though they will be resolved soon.

Roger Pielke Sr. makes a very strong case for various other issues as first order forcings of climate change, such as changes in land use and land cover. He also makes a cogent case for approaching our efforts to deal with climate change with a focus on mitigating resource constraints on a regional basis.

Attempts to limit emissions have not yet been successful where tried, and appear to have structural flaws that may make them ineffective. The rancor they inspire seems to have halted any attempt at forming ‘coalitions of the willing’ to take concrete action.

As a lukewarmer, it seems obvious to me that the globe has warmed and that our CO2 emissions have played a role. Without solving the issue at any greater depth than that, I am willing to support rational efforts to reduce emissions, such as a carbon tax, support for renewable energy, research and development, stricter fuel standards, and improving energy efficiency for buildings and appliances.

As a lukewarmer, I don’t disagree with what I consider mainstream climate science. I admit I respond more empathetically to the IPCC’s first and second assessment reports than their third and fourth. And I cannot abide the hysterical claims put forth on sites like Joe Romm’s.

These beliefs, which I have consistently stated since I started blogging on this subject, have been sufficient for me to get called a denialist on a daily basis.

Because of what has happened to me, and because of the vitriol I have seen spewed forth against real skeptics, I don’t think anybody is in a position to demand papers from them on the time of day (I guess that would be TOBS, wouldn’t it?).

I should think that a strategy of condeming McIntyre for five years and then demanding he publish a reconstruction of paleoclimatic temperatures or a paper of some sort might be destined to fail.

Re: Tom Fuller (Jul 9 19:51),

I should think that a strategy of condeming McIntyre for five years and then demanding he publish a reconstruction of paleoclimatic temperatures or a paper of some sort might be destined to fail.

But of course M&M published several papers to start and then presented a long paper to the NAS. Steve has made various presentations to public groups, and M&M have some other papers out which haven’t made it through the publishing maze. Some of these were rejected by name journals according to the hints Steve has dropped, but he’s not gotten to the state yet where he’s given up and posted them on his site.

Because they are quite different.

Of course they are different. But why do you think the original request is not in the context of responding to the constant widely posted complaints by scientists?

The above quote also says the scientist has to go out looking for it; I again think it’s only reasonable to assume they’ll actually find your brilliant idea if you actually publish it.

Of course they have to go read it. If they are complaining about an idea that keeps coming up in comments at their own blog, and happen to only read what comes to them in comments, they still have to look for the originator of the notion. (They could ask the person commenting– assuming they don’t know perfectly well the original notion is at CA.)

Carrot Eater wrote “And I see no reason why McIntyre is not just making his own reconstruction. If he is so expert in every step of the process, he ought to be able to crank one out with his eyes closed, no?”

As Charles Babbage apparently said, “I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.” How is it possible for the concept of finding error to be difficult to grasp? How do you think anyone can ever debunk a charlatan if ability to demonstrate actual greatness rivalling the charlatan’s claimed greatness is a prerequisite for valid criticism? No one knows how to fuse hydrogen in a beaker or read minds or build an anti-gravity machine or clone a trilobite from fossils, much less crank out such innovations with their eyes closed. Fortunately in the real world it doesn’t follow that we lack people capable of spotting various kinds of errors in claimed demonstrations of doing so.

Carrot Eater continues “Which goes back to my other point. If you don’t think it’s even possible to do a meaningful job of it, then that itself is a paper.” Not being able to clone trilobites doesn’t make for much of a paper. Finding a fundamental new reason why it’s absolutely impossible that any attempt to clone trilobites could succeed could make a wonderful paper. However, it’s absurd to demand such a wonderful paper of someone who merely wants to point out the particular error in a particular purported cloning of a trilobite. Similarly, a clean mathematical demonstration that no meaningful reconstruction is possible from the messy collection of datasets which are the plausible raw material for reconstructions might indeed be a wonderful paper. As far as I know, however, it would be very far from routine to produce such a paper for the existing collection of proxy datasets. If you know differently, could you point to at least one paper which successfully demonstrated that it’s absolutely impossible to extract some desired estimate from some realistically messy mixture of real datasets (comparable in messiness and in possible information content to the raw material for proxy reconstructions)?

Lucia,
The comment that started us on this path was this

When engaging in honest debate in any subject, the rational thing to do is to look for and engage with the best and strongest arguments of the people on the other side.

I took this to mean exactly what it says. That you consider the strongest arguments being presented by people of different viewpoints. So we are to consider the strongest arguments of the sceptics. So, what are they?

Tom Fuller gets it, above, though some of his arguments delve into WGIII issues, economics and politics; I’d like to keep us strictly on WGI for now. When we’re talking about the strongest arguments, we’re talking about the big things, that cause you to be a lukewarmer or sceptic or whatever in the first place. Not trivialities and minutiae. So far as I can tell, the big thing simply has to come back to climate sensitivity. So your strongest arguments should logically revolve around the sensitivity.

Of course they have to go read it. If they are complaining about an idea that keeps coming up in comments at their own blog, and happen to only read what comes to them in comments, they still have to look for the originator of the notion. (They could ask the person commenting– assuming they don’t know perfectly well the original notion is at CA.)

So it seems that while I’m looking for the strongest arguments of the sceptics, you’re upset that scientists complain about stupid zombie arguments that keep popping up.

You have to keep in mind that a lot of the whack-a-mole arguments that come in via comments are from the downright stupid file I mentioned earlier this week (search for “blather”). Scientists complain about those. I hope those original notions aren’t at CA; that would speak quite ill of CA. Some of them can be found at WUWT, and they’re all allowed to flourish in the comments at WUWT.

So in the last comment, I left out memes that come in directly from McIntyre. I suspect that’s what Lucia has been talking about the whole time. I don’t think any McIntyre ideas can rate as being among the strongest arguments, since they aren’t related to climate sensitivity. Many are trivialities anyway, either wrong or overblown – worrying about what data series is on top, how some graph was padded at the endpoint, etc. Even Tiljander, while it actually raises questions of methodology or data choice, is in itself a triviality. Complaints about hiding the decline? Please. Even McIntyre knew he couldn’t really milk the actual offending graph (the captionless one from the WMO report that nobody ever noticed), so he tried to spread the issue to divergence in general. But that’s not hidden; you don’t hide something by publishing it in Nature. It is clearly described in AR4. The discussion in TAR isn’t quite as good; is that what it’s all coming down to?

When engaging in honest debate in any subject, the rational thing to do is to look for and engage with the best and strongest arguments of the people on the other side.

I’d like to know what they are, because the only ones that can be found, if we are to use Judith Curry as a guide, are climate sensitivity. But right from the start, that is the only debate that has been worth having, and is the active debate among scientists themselves. Instead, years have been wasted on attacking individuals, lunatic conspiracy theories and non-science like G&T, Beck and the rest of the time wasters.

I should think that a strategy of condeming McIntyre for five years and then demanding he publish a reconstruction of paleoclimatic temperatures or a paper of some sort might be destined to fail.

That’s a bit rich, McIntyre’s apparent reason for existence is condemning scientists.

Uncertainty about sensitivity and ocean to atmosphere transfer of heat and CO2 is quite troubling. Until this is resolved, much of the conversation about climate change is just haggling over details. These issues do not look as though they will be resolved soon.
.
yes, this is a field of uncertainty. but scientists agree to a great deal. you are listening to outliers, Tom.
.
Roger Pielke Sr. makes a very strong case for various other issues as first order forcings of climate change, such as changes in land use and land cover.
.
yes, Roger beats them all.
.
Attempts to limit emissions have not yet been successful where tried, and appear to have structural flaws that may make them ineffective.
.
nothing but your wild opinion. and you and your “sceptic” friends are doing their best to prevent any action.
.
I am willing to support rational efforts to reduce emissions, such as a carbon tax, support for renewable energy, research and development, stricter fuel standards, and improving energy efficiency for buildings and appliances.
.
wow, you support the improvement of energy efficiency? that is a great step forward. so you don t deny my right to safe some money? rich!

carrot eater: “I took this to mean exactly what it says. That you consider the strongest arguments being presented by people of different viewpoints. So we are to consider the strongest arguments of the sceptics. So, what are they?”

I think this is good questioning, and I think it’d also be good to be able to consider predictions(*) from the most accurate GCM. Which one is it? and, perhaps more importantly, is it even possible for any human to determine right now?

(*) yeah, I know

bugs wrote “I’d like to know what they [the best and strongest arguments of people on the other side] are, because the only ones that can be found, if we are to use Judith Curry as a guide, are climate sensitivity.”

You’re using Judith Curry as a guide? Really? Then how’s that devastating rebuttal of _The Hockey Stick Illusion_ coming along?

(Sorry about the duplicate comment: the last one gave me an “internal server error” so I wrote a new version, and only noticed the existence of the old version after I posted the new one. So I’ve deleted everything in this new comment except the one piece of new info, the URL.)

http://www.collide-a-scape.com.....us-anyway/

You’re using Judith Curry as a guide? Really? Then how’s that devastating rebuttal of _The Hockey Stick Illusion_ coming along?

Like I said already, the only real debate is climate sensitivity. The Hockey Stick debate is a diversion that leads nowhere.

Re: Artifex (Jul 9 15:42),

Carrot Eater’s “publish it!” challenge is actually quite a good one, even though I disagree with many of the trimmings that accompany it, in tone and content. His (her?) back-and-forth with Lucia raises many worthwhile points, so thanks to both (and again to Lucia for hosting).

With respect to Tiljander/Mann08, it’s a particularly tricky topic, because of the context that Artifex’s remarks provide.

Procedurally the issues have already been (partly) sketched out and (inadequately) rebutted, in McIntyre & McKitrick’s Comment and Mann et al’s Reply in February ’09 in PNAS.

Technically, the core question isn’t interesting. Per Artifex, that the Tiljander proxies are uncalibratable should become obvious to any reasonably-open-minded and scientifically-literate person who (1) reads Mann08, the Mann08 SI, the Comment and Reply, and Tiljander03, (2) looks at a couple of blog entries pro (e.g. Jarvykotta River) and con (e.g. Gavin at C-a-s), and (3) spends a few minutes in reflection. And yet the issue remains contentious, with Ari Jokimäki being the sole pro-AGW advocate or scientist to (grudgingly) concede that Prof. Mann’s group may have made an error in this instance.

So the fascinating aspect of the saga concerns climate science itself, with respect to (1) how paleoclimatology is practiced and (2) how the mainstream AGW Consensus position is presented by its advocates. Assuming I was willing to invest the effort into preparing a manuscript–there are both pro and con considerations–I’m not familiar with any scholarly journals that I think might be willing to entertain it. (I’d be interested in suggestions.)

In general, I try to stay away from analogies, but this may help to give a sense of my perspective.

I open a savings account at the Paleo National Bank. My second statement looks like this: Opening balance $250.00, Deposits (credit) $20.00, Withdrawals (debit) $40.00, Interest (~3%,credit) $0.60, Service charge (debit) $1.00, Final balance $228.40. On inspection, it looks okay — but the arithmetic seems sketchy:

250.00 + 20.00 – 40.00 + 0.60 – 1.00 = 229.60

It seems that Interest of $0.60 has been debited from rather than credited to my balance.

When I phone the bank, the rep doesn’t dispute my arithmetic, but says that the bank’s computer has correctly calculated my balance.

I drive to my local branch, where the manager repeats that the bank’s calculations are correct, and tells me that claims to the contrary are bizarre.

I persist in expressing my doubts. Senior employees of other banks chime in, siding with my local branch’s manager. Puzzlingly, none will go on the record to explicitly state,

“The Interest of $0.60 was correctly debited from your balance.”

Instead, their contention on how that month’s Interest should have been handled is,

“I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter.”

The arithmetic is uninteresting. And indeed, $1.20 is a small sum, and may not matter, as such.

But this controversy may be informative about the practices of retail banking.

bugs:

x Like I said already, the only real debate is climate sensitivity

That maybe the first real debate, but not the “only” one.

Assessing the economic, social and ecological impact of human activities and needs (not limited to CO2 emissions) is the framework in terms of which any serious discussion on CO2 emissions and their consequences need to placed. CO2 reduction unfortunately is not some panacea that will magically cure all human ills, it may not even be first on the list.

I don’t blame people for putting so much emphasis on the “hockey stick”… after all activists for CO2 reduction themselves have overblown this. To an extent they are simply replying to a conversation that has already be started by the other side.

bugs wrote “Like I said already, the only real debate is climate sensitivity. The Hockey Stick debate is a diversion that leads nowhere.”

How regrettable, then, that the IPCC promoted the HS so energetically and successfully. And how regrettable that to this day IPCC advocates avoid distancing themselves even from the version in _An Inconvenient Truth_. And how regrettable that IPCC advocates magnify the importance of the resulting credibility problem every time they try to shift the grounds of arguments about AGW from technical issues to how their preferred system of experts, panels, and peer reviewed literature should be entitled to a special grant of credibility.

Of course, whether or not you are complicit in that regrettable pattern of blunders, you remain entirely free to ignore some of your most prominent critics’ most catchy criticisms after they (McIntyre, Montford, Curry) have passively or actively staked a significant amount of credibility on them. Similarly, no matter what, you remain entirely free to believe that you believe in an dragon who is not only invisible but also inaudible and permeable to flour. (As per http://www.fanfiction.net/s/57.....ationality chapter 23 “Belief in Belief” — I haven’t found a URL which jumps directly to that chapter.) But if you actually believe in the dragon, as opposed to merely believing you believe, you might consider that avoiding engaging prominent critics where they have chosen to commit themselves would be a suboptimal tactic.

(I haven’t read _Hockey Stick Illusion_, so I don’t know firsthand how well argued it is or isn’t. But I did observe firsthand the diving for cover at the c-a-s thread, and I think it makes a pretty amusing contrast to a claim to be “using Judith Curry as a guide” to things to refute.)

Kinda funny how when Andrew Montford, Steve Mosher, myself and others actually do publish something that there’s a flurry of activity on the hyper-consensus side looking for reasons why they don’t have to read it.

Or has last month already disappeared down the Memory Hole?

Kinda funny how when Andrew Montford, Steve Mosher, myself and others actually do publish something that there’s a flurry of activity on the hyper-consensus side looking for reasons why they don’t have to read it.
.
the title of the paper shouldn t indicate that it is rubbish. like “climategate” did.
.
multiple investigation have shown by now, that the book was worthless.

Carrot Eater wrote “And I see no reason why McIntyre is not just making his own reconstruction
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Because he is only interested in manufacturing doubt. He has zero interest in advancing knonwledge.

Amac,
I simply don’t have the time or interest to get into paleo. But having read Mann 2008 and its SI, I remain mystified what you’re so up in arms about. In the original paper, they discuss that Tiljander may be difficult to use, and they were concerned enough about that, that they also showed results without it.

I would have thought that the latter step would preempt objections, yet here you are, with this single-minded obsession. But why? If they already anticipated your concerns, then what are you going on about? I’ve asked this before, and I can’t quite figure it out.

You guys are so full of it.
Shame on you.

William Newman (Comment#48529) July 10th, 2010 at 9:42 am

bugs wrote “Like I said already, the only real debate is climate sensitivity. The Hockey Stick debate is a diversion that leads nowhere.”

How regrettable, then, that the IPCC promoted the HS so energetically and successfully.

“the IPCC” put together a huge document that is amazing in the amount it gets right, for a document so complex and with so many authors. The story from the start has been consistent, because it is based on scientific research. Whoever had to create the cover appears to have looked for a diagram that looked nice, and came up with the paleoclimate reconstruction. If you actually read the document itself, the FAQ, the summary, the paleoclimate stuff is only a small part of the whole argument, and it does not depend on the paleo stuff to be correct. I never saw much point in the paleo stuff since the error bounds, which are clearly shown, are so large. The scientists who put the document together knew that no one piece of evidence made the argument for AGW, so they put together multiple, independent streams of supporting evidence, to come to their conclusions.

From the technical summary.

TS.2 Changes in Human and Natural Drivers of Climate
TS.2.1 Greenhouse Gases
TS.2.2 Aerosols
TS.2.3 Aviation Contrails and Cirrus, Land Use and Other Effects
TS.2.4 Radiative Forcing Due to Solar Activity and Volcanic Eruptions
TS.2.5 Net Global Radiative Forcing, Global Warming Potentials and Patterns of Forcing
TS 2.6 Surface Forcing and the Hydrologic Cycle
TS.3 Observations of Changes in Climate
TS.3.1 Atmospheric Changes: Instrumental Record
TS.3.2 Changes in the Cryosphere: Instrumental Record
TS.3.3 Changes in the Ocean: Instrumental Record
TS.3.4 Consistency Among Observations
TS.3.5 A Palaeoclimatic Perspective
TS.4 Understanding and Attributing Climate Change
TS.4.1 Advances in Attribution of Changes in Global-Scale Temperature in the Instrumental Period: Atmosphere, Ocean and Ice
TS.4.2 Attribution of Spatial and Temporal Changes in Temperature
TS.4.3 Attribution of Changes in Circulation, Precipitation and Other Climate Variables
TS.4.4 Palaeoclimate Studies of Attribution
TS.4.5 Climate Response to Radiative Forcing

Paleo does not stand out as the only argument, or the most important one, it is just one part of something much larger and comprehensive.

Re: bugs (Jul 9 23:21),

While I agree that climate sensitivity is a question of great interest, it’s far from the only strong skeptic argument. Let me list a couple of more and then present a question of my own.

1. The climate has shown a strong tendency to avoid any run-away temperatures in geologic times. This implies there are strong negative feedbacks built into the system (though they might only come into play as the CO2 levels become greater.) The logical candidate for the primary negative feedback is an increase in cloud cover (of the right sort of clouds). Since cloud-cover feedbacks are an admitted weakness in present climate science, it would seem that it’s premature to claim that there’s enough known to support the consensus climate position.

2. My wife and I were recently on a cruise to Alaska and only part was a visit to Glacier Bay. We often hear that the retreat of glaciers is an important argument for AGW. But the map we received from the National Parks Service show that while the Glaciers had filled the bay and jutted out into the strait, by 1750, it is now some 65 miles up from the strait. But at that it has extended a couple of miles on both the Grand Pacific Glacier and the Johns Hopkins Glacier since the 1920s which was before there was sufficient fossil fuel burning for AGW. Since Alaska is claimed to have been warming severely, it seems strange that there are glaciers which have been growing during this period of time.

My question is what you think are the strongest arguments for AGW (say the strongest 2-3). If you’re daring, you might also pick what you think are the two strongest skeptic arguments.

I’ve been setting here trying to think of a strong AGW argument I could present. The problem is that I like so many “skeptics” accept that CO2 increases will cause some warming but I doubt the net increase would amount to much so far, so I’m having some problems. Since we’re in an interglacial, we’d expect a continued decrease in global ice, resulting in a retreat north and uphill. Separating this process from one caused by increased CO2 is difficult. Likewise temperature measurements are difficult to attribute given both the ups and downs of natural processes and the demonstrated weaknesses in the temperature measurement process. Then there’s the models which I have 0 trust in, not because I think the modelers are bad but because there is too much science (physics) which has to be left out of the process to make them computationally possible. Add in the likelihood that climate is chaotic and the chances that the models do a good job, even in ensemble, is essentially nil. Multiproxy climate reconstructions I’m quite familiar with via Climate Audit and they’re toast. So what are the good AGW arguments which can be verified as to their anthropic component?

Eli, this took a bronze at a science faire, does it break the ‘law’(?)…you know, the Stefan-Boltzmann formula. No one has expained it clearly yet. Would you please point out the weak points in the Nasa data to us?

http://www.ilovemycarbondioxid.....e_Moon.pdf

Also, why do you think Nasa hid this stuff and made it so hard to get at? At least they saved the data this time, thats a good start.) Cheers

oh dear. I was at first convinced that was parody, but it isn’t.

Atom, do you really want a discussion of that?

… while we watch more desperation from the good folks who were caught hiding the decline and tweeking the literature… and while the only tipping point is Tipper tossing Al out on his a$$ because his tool was found in the wrong shed… La Nina continues to emerge…

bugs said:

“Like I said already, the only real debate is climate sensitivity. The Hockey Stick debate is a diversion that leads nowhere.”

Then please do explain why you and so many other Warmists defended that piece of illusion so vociferously for so many years??

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Re: Atom (Jul 10 18:15),

You may be interested to know that “The Science of Doom” has looked carefully at the piece you linked, at Lunar Madness and Physics Basics.

His arguments are clear, and can be followed in detail, even without an extensive science or math background. Here’s the conclusion (but read the article!) -

So the reason that the moon – with a surface with a real heat capacity – appears to have a warmer climate “than predicted” is just a mathematical error. A trap for the unwary.

The right way to calculate a planet’s average radiation is to calculate it for each and every location and average the results. The wrong way is to calculate the average temperature and then convert that to a radiation. In the case of the earth’s surface, it’s not such a noticeable problem.

In the case of the moon, because of the wide variation in temperature, the incorrect method produces a large error.

So there’s no “lunar explanation” for the inappropriately-named “greenhouse” effect.

Re: carrot eater #48540 (Jul 10 13:28),

> I simply don’t have the time or interest to get into paleo.

Fair enough, no problem there.

> In the original paper, [Mann08's authors] discuss that Tiljander may be difficult to use

Agreed.

Here’s a thought experiment. In the case discussed in Comment #48433, suppose McKitrick and Michaels had stated in their methods, “we recognize that latitude may be expressed in degrees or in radians, and that data must be input in the correct format.” Would that have nullified Lambert’s criticism of them? In this hypothetical, the authors identified a possible trap, then fell victim to it anyway. Same with Mann08.

> and they were concerned enough about that, that they also showed results without it. I would have thought that the latter step would preempt objections

Mann08′s twice-revised Fig. S8a is inadequate for the purpose, for reasons discussed at Gavin’s C-a-s thread and elsewhere. Among other problems, the assertion that “with Tiljander” and “without Tiljander” curves are “pretty much the same” is made without the basis of uncertainty calculations. However, as I noted upthread (#48308), a 2008 post by skeptical blogger Jeff Id strongly suggests that the Tiljander proxies make very modest contributions to the reconstruction. (If correct, this highlights other, related problems with Mann08.) I missed the post’s significance the first time around, and only just re-read it.

> I remain mystified what you’re so up in arms about… If [Mann08's authors] already anticipated your concerns, then what are you going on about? I’ve asked this before, and I can’t quite figure it out.

Here’s a puzzle. To my knowledge, the only people who have been mystified by the concerns about Tiljander are in Michael Tobis’ Camp I. I doubt it’s because these folks are smarter (dumber), or more educated (less educated), or nobler (baser) than everyone else.

So there must be another explanation.

Thank you AMac, I like the authors paper though, it makes sense to me.
“6. CONCLUSIONS
This analysis of the radiative equilibrium balance between Sun and Earth shows that
the average temperature of the “surface” of the Earth, which perforce includes all the
entities in its physical surface plus its oceans and atmosphere, is controlled by the ratio
of its absorptivity to emissivity. It is shown that modest changes of at most one to two
percent in the Earth’s albedo brought about by modest changes in cloud cover, are
sufficient to account for the observed average temperature changes of the last century
- provided that those changes in absorptivity are not counterbalanced by comparable
changes in emissivity. Several mechanisms are suggested to account for the imbalance
in the absorptivity to emissivity ratio. However, those suggested mechanisms by no
means exhaust the possibilities.
Nevertheless, the analysis suggests that, in the long run, the emissivity to
absorptivity ratio is generally near unity, as required by Kirchhoff’s radiation law. That
requirement insures a moderate average Earth temperature of about 5.7 0C for the
entities involved in that radiative equilibrium – in fair agreement with the observed
mass-average temperature of those entities. That mass-average is dominated by the
92 Energy & Environment · Vol. 20, No. 1&2, 2009
ocean’s mass.
Except for the influence of cloud albedo, this analysis makes no assumptions
regarding the detailed composition of the atmosphere. Nor are any such assumptions
needed in explaining the observed variations in 20th Century temperatures, or the
larger, longer-term variations of Glacial Coolings and Interglacial Warmings. This
refined analysis supports this author’s earlier conclusion [1] that:
It is implausible to expect that small changes in the concentration of any minor
atmospheric constituent such as carbon dioxide, can significantly influence that
radiative equilibrium.”
He seems serious about the math.
http://icecap.us/images/upload.....tzberg.pdf

It’s my considered opinion that the skeptic bloggers don’t play fair and are trying to create a false impression. I’m sure they think they are doing the right thing, but they are biased and not really truth-seeking (“let the chips fall where they may”.)

And before I get a bunch of ad hominem whining, I am well to the right of McCain, politically. I was initially sympathetic and hopeful regarding the skeptic style analyses (McI, etc.) but the more I looked into them, the more flaws I saw in the work and the more equivocation and denial of problems, when challenged. And the more running with tiny points for public effect, rather than doing real issues analysis, real disaggregation and testing of impacts.

I say this as someone with a lot of experience taking complex questions in technical and business areas apart. You acquire a certain facility at looking for when people are using wishful thinking to support biases and when they are really taking the problem apart to learn new things.

McI, Lucia, Watts, Id don’t measure up. Zorita and Von Storch do. JohnV does. That English computer guy who found that one flaw, does. Burger does.

Obviously, I don’t expect every blogger to address every buddy’s silliness. But that’s a false defense. The problem is the pattern. There’s a pattern of not calling out buddies, of socializing with them, etc. Lucia had a great opportunity to interview Watts and pin him down? Where’s the beef? There seems to have been time for a chummy dinner.

And where’s the post assessing the overall intellectual honesty and capability and subject matter knowledge of the participants at Heartland? She had time to blog about the conference before going there, so it’s not an interest gap. If I went to a fringe conference, I would be able to give you a quality assessment of it, using my brain and my experiences with all kinds of other groups and conferences in assessing relative smarts and truth-seekingness. And I would give you the good and the bad of it. The “I expected this” and the “didn’t expect this”. But we get the dinner table photo…

Then there is the manner in which they lead with PR, but don’t really put down fixed, well written critiques. The interminable Lucia analysis of recent temps was a great example of this. And I (this is my objective opinion, and based on a lot of analysis myself) think she was halting, hesitant and just lacking in being self-critical. In trying to challenge her own claims in a Popperian, Feynman style. (the whole thing comes down to nature of noise…and also an uncharitable semantic characterization of her opponents “claims”)

Sadly, also the tendancy to self-publish has made a lot of the analytical bloggers (McI, Lucia, Id, and Godsaveus Watts) overestimate the import of what they are doing. There’s a real comfort factor in being able to put stuff up, admit it is partial work, never finish it, control the comments, etc. The work ends up being poor quality, even just to read (lacks footnotes, meanders, has personal remarks mixed in, mislabels axes on graphs, etc.) It’s hard enough to really dig through a paper…but blog posts? They honestly don’t stack up. I’m well, well, well familiar with different qualities of papers, of what bad papers look like when they start, of what editors add, etc. If someone were getting done high quality written analysis and white papers, I would not hold the venue against them. But…as one could expect…the lack of editorial strictures has led to very sloppy, sefl-indulgent, disorganized and verbose analyses.

That said, the Zeke guy Lucia has posting lately is a big improvement over her own earlier work. Kudos.

kuhnkat said (Comment#48552) July 10th, 2010 at 10:10 pm

bugs said:

“Like I said already, the only real debate is climate sensitivity. The Hockey Stick debate is a diversion that leads nowhere.”

Then please do explain why you and so many other Warmists defended that piece of illusion so vociferously for so many years??

Because the criticism of it was wrong and the means used to criticse it was anti-science. I didn’t sayt he hockey stick was wrong, I said the debate over it was a diversion.

It is implausible to expect that small changes in the concentration of any minor
atmospheric constituent such as carbon dioxide, can significantly influence that
radiative equilibrium.”

That’s because he has no understanding of the physics behind the GHE.

Carrot Eater writes “oh dear. I was at first convinced that was parody, but it isn’t.”

Don’t be all “oh dear” about it, rejoice that irony is a bountiful renewable resource.

Parody-like comments from a new anonymous poster are common in online AGW debates. It *is* somewhat noteworthy how timely this comment is as an illustration of your complaint about the kind of dazzlingly stupid anti-IPCC arguments you worry about on comment posts, “the types who think that climate models predict a monotonic linear increase in temperature, and therefore the wiggles due to El Nino falsify the models. [...] Don’t pretend these types of people aren’t common.” As it happens, though, it’s not as timely or noteworthy an illustration as is a comment that you yourself wrote earlier.

You wrote “I see no reason why McIntyre is not just making his own reconstruction. If he is so expert in every step of the process, he ought to be able to crank one out with his eyes closed, no?” That’s just as fallacious as it would be for one of your “septic” cranks to write “I see no reason why we should believe the IPCC. If the climate is warming, we should see a monotonic linear increase in temperature, no?” As you explained at length, you’ve sincerely convinced yourself that gratuitously disgusting imagery is appropriate when choosing labels for online behavior. Alas, it seems that “septic” is reserved for anti-IPCC cranks, so you will need a different disgusting term to describe pro-IPCC cranks. What do you think of “pusbag,” as a “teabagger”-level brilliancy of leftist wit playing on the “pushback” that this kind of crank often fancies he’s engaging in?

For extra noteworthiness, you weren’t falling into a common fallacy, but instead professing to believe a rather weird and unusual one, the fallacy that making a valid proof must necessarily be easy as finding errors in bogus proofs. So it’s a noteworthy coincidence that you loyally offer this tendentious argument at about the same time as Ken Miles
http://www.collide-a-scape.com.....ment-10032
This evidence seems to support a Brin-style “smoking gun proof that koolaid-drinking [apologists] are parroting talking points from a conniving oligarchy that is spreading sedition purely for personal benefit.”

William

It *is* somewhat noteworthy how timely this comment is as

Are you accusing Atom of being a Poe, in order to make the sceptics look bad?

Re: Atom (Jul 10 23:52),

> Thank you AMac, I like the authors paper though, it makes sense to me. “6. CONCLUSIONS…

Atom, two thoughts that’ll probably close out our dialog, on my side.

First, it’s rarely helpful to do big cut’n'pastes into comments. If I’m going to read that much, I’ll use the link to see the material as the author formatted it. In the case of “6. CONCLUSIONS,” you didn’t carefully strip linefeeds from the PDF version, and so forth. It’s almost unreadable.

Second, in the short excerpt I gave in #48553, “The Science of Doom” blogger identified a fundamental mistake in the Science Fair piece: “In the case of the moon, because of the wide variation in temperature, the incorrect method produces a large error.” Once pointed out, even my modest physics background suffices to understand it.

Now Martin Hertzberg is going to have acknowledge the criticisms and take his lumps. In this case, they’re pretty big, as he’d have to entirely redo the maths in his E&E paper. Richard Feynman would demand nothing less. Until Hertzberg acknowledges and corrects his errors, we’re not discussing science any more; we’ve moved on to the sociology of science.

If this piques your interest, I’d suggest you learn more about the shortcomings of Hertzberg’s work (assuming you have the maths/physics background to understand SoD’s critiques). If and when Hertzberg (1) acknowledges his errors, and (2) corrects his errors, you can get back to the science.

Atom,
Those authors don’t make any physical sense. Their starting premise:

as a blackbody – something that absorbs and emits all of the radiance it’s exposed to. Since by definition a blackbody cannot emit less than 100% of what it absorbs, this fictional entity has no option of drawing heat into itself, for that would compromise its temperature response and thus its thermal emission. Its 100% thermal emission effectively means that a blackbody is a two dimensional surface with no depth.

Do you understand that this basic premise is just hopelessly wrong? So regardless of how much you like the sounds of their conclusions, you have to reject this.

Something can have thermal mass, regardless of whether it’s a blackbody radiator or not. Looking over it, the SoD article does a pretty good job.

Re: carrot eater (Jul 11 07:56),

Nietzsche claimed that “The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.”

“Deliberately” may not apply fully in this instance, but his notion is still relevant.

H/t Brandon Shollenberger.

Thank you ce, the question I asked though was about the Stefan-Boltzmann formula… It is not valid anymore with what the nasa(Strong’s-Hebrew, H5375:) data shows, right? I mean, the models did not work and they had good sensors to collect a bunch of data, what gives? Something about the Stefan-Boltzmann formula(law) is wrong, right? The number of watts remains unchanged…AGW is still a go? If you say so doc.

AMac

Here’s a thought experiment. In the case discussed in Comment #48433, suppose McKitrick and Michaels had stated in their methods, “we recognize that latitude may be expressed in degrees or in radians, and that data must be input in the correct format.” Would that have nullified Lambert’s criticism of them? In this hypothetical, the authors identified a possible trap, then fell victim to it anyway. Same with Mann08.

That’s a horrifically bad analogy. One is a simple matter of mathematics; there is absolutely zero ambiguity there. The other appears to be a fairly ambiguous matter of data selection and interpretation. So it’s reasonable to present two versions, one with and one without the problem proxy, and let the reader make his own judgment about which version is preferable.

Mann08′s twice-revised Fig. S8a is inadequate for the purpose, for reasons discussed at Gavin’s C-a-s thread and elsewhere. Among other problems, the assertion that “with Tiljander” and “without Tiljander” curves are “pretty much the same” is made without the basis of uncertainty calculations.

OK, so maybe you don’t like how that figure was made, but that hardly justifies the sweeping philosophical conclusions you’re drawing. The point remains, they were aware of the potential difficulties, and so showed plots both with and without the problematic proxies. If you think the figure is then somehow sloppy or lacking in some other way, then fine, voice that point, and then (moving to the next point)…

However, as I noted upthread (#48308), a 2008 post by skeptical blogger Jeff Id strongly suggests that the Tiljander proxies make very modest contributions to the reconstruction. (If correct, this highlights other, related problems with Mann08.) I missed the post’s significance the first time around, and only just re-read it.

If you’re so interested in it, and you’re investing so much time into it, just do the calculations yourself. Mann’s put all his code up on his webpage, for that paper. Make whatever change you want to the input data set, make any needed edits to the code, run it, and make whatever figure you want.

Without doing the work, you can ask questions. But you can only say you have answers, if you or somebody else has done the work.

You’d also have to set some idea of what you’re even looking for. The ‘with’ and ‘without’ graphs need not be identical. The extent to which they aren’t similar will tell you how influential Tiljander is, on the overall result – both in the trajectory of the curve, and its calculated uncertainty bounds. Which would then tell you how important the issue is, to Mann’s results.

But even if it turns out that the Tiljander proxy is fairly influential, that doesn’t mean it’s used physically incorrectly by Mann’s regression routines. That’s then a different discussion, which I have not gotten into, and I don’t think I could get into it without some time investment. But it would mean that this is an important question to clear up (within the context of paleo), and the answer to the question should guide future work and future publications.

Here’s a puzzle. To my knowledge, the only people who have been mystified by the concerns about Tiljander are in Michael Tobis’ Camp I. I doubt it’s because these folks are smarter (dumber), or more educated (less educated), or nobler (baser) than everyone else.

So there must be another explanation.

There’s a non-answer. I get that there are concerns about Tiljander. Reading the original paper, one can see that it may not be easy to use. So Mann noted that, thought he could use it anyway, but gave the reader the benefit of doing a calculation without it. So if you are really interested in the details of paleo, then you can spend some time figuring out which version is more justified – with or without. That would be helpful to know, going forwards, so it’d be useful for some capable people to look into it. But why that turns into this obsession with great philosophical implications, I still cannot fathom, and your answer wasn’t an answer. This is just science stumbling forward, as it does.

Re: Trollcontrolled (Jul 11 01:08),

I am well to the right of McCain, politically.

I’m not quite sure what this is supposed to be trying to prove. If you were truly a conservative, you’d not use McCain as your touchstone. Yes, he’s conservative in some areas, but he’s also flaky and prone to compromise unilaterally with liberals. If you don’t know this, your claim would appear to be bogus.

On to the rest of your message this afternoon if I have time.

Atom,
There’s nothing wrong with S-B, if you use it correctly; it has its limitations, which are apparent when you see how it’s derived from Planck’s law.

What’s wrong is that your authors think that a body that radiates as a blackbody cannot have thermal mass. When you start from that weird beginning point, you’re going to get weirdly wrong results.

You seem to be jumping ahead to the conclusions that you like. Slow down and back up, and see how the authors reached those conclusions. Do you see the problem with the part I quoted?

Amac,
Atom persists, so I’m guessing he’s correctly representing him(her)self.

AMac, if you still have your ears on… what about the other planets listed in the pdf? The moon is the one that bugs ya huh?… OK. You see no flaw in the Stefan-Boltzmann formula? What more can I say.

ce, how much of a limitation… more than say 2′F? The swings through our solar system seem big, right? It is not just on the moon, right? I mean, no?

Atom,
If you’re not willing to go back to the beginning of your moon document, and follow the logic (or rather, the lack thereof), then I cannot help you, and will not further respond to you.

Atom,
What you’re really missing is the findings by several pannels that the statement “Mike’s nature trick to hide the decline” was really part of a discussion about whether he should use an anti-gloss or a tupe at the upcoming WMO conference.

Carrot Eater writes “Are you accusing Atom of being a Poe, in order to make the sceptics look bad?”

I don’t know what “a Poe” is. Admittedly, I can make some reasonable guesses from context. But anyway I don’t need to guess exactly what you mean, because I was not accusing Atom of anything. I grant that I was snarkily pointing out that Atom could be a sock puppet cooked up to try to support generalizations such as those made by Brin and by you. So perhaps if I knew what “a Poe” is, I would grant that I was insinuating that he could be “a Poe.” I was indeed insinuating that he could be a fake identity for someone whose real goal is to make IPCC critics look bad, as opposed to being an authentic ordinary joe who sincerely believes in his heart that the strongest objection to the IPCC is that science project and that this thread is where he needs to unburden himself about it, or being an authentic sinister shill of the conniving oligarchy Brin writes about. But the immediate point of my snark was not that I had evidence that Atom is such a sock puppet for a dishonest IPCC advocate. The immediate point was, instead, that your post was itself evidence that you don’t take any care to consider that such a comment might not be reliable evidence of the perfidy of IPCC critics, but uncritically chalk it up as a worthy data point to support your perceived need for your debating tactics.

Beyond that insinuation about Atom and that specific observation about you, I intended two more general snarky points. The first was that your not taking such care combines synergistically with your other bad habit of not specifically citing examples to weaken your arguments like “don’t pretend these types of people aren’t common … majority of people … many of the webpages out there.”

My second m.g.s.p. was a riff on the general theme of my comment, the theme of pointing out a ridiculous double standard. (And indeed, a doubly ridiculous double standard when the double standard is used as grounds for a tu quoque justification for ridiculously bad own-goal misbehavior: “septic” and “smoking gun proof … parroting talking points from a conniving oligarchy that is spreading sedition purely for personal benefit” forsooth.) Transient anonymous commenters chiming in with goofy talking points criticizing the IPCC are like unto a mote, and long-term commenters stubbornly pushing comparably goofy talking points apologizing for the IPCC are like unto a beam, and “thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

Hope that helps.

Re: carrot eater (Jul 11 08:47),

But even if it turns out that the Tiljander proxy is fairly influential, that doesn’t mean it’s used physically incorrectly by Mann’s regression routines. That’s then a different discussion, which I have not gotten into, and I don’t think I could get into it without some time investment. But it would mean that this is an important question to clear up (within the context of paleo), and the answer to the question should guide future work and future publications.

That paragraph contains reasonable points, notably “this is an important question to clear up (within the context of paleo)”. It’s always good to spot areas of agreement.

> But even if it turns out that the Tiljander proxy is fairly influential

As discussed earlier, I now think that these proxes are probably not the major influences on the reconstruction.

> that doesn’t mean it’s used physically incorrectly by Mann’s regression routines.

Non sequitor, and see below.

> That’s then a different discussion, which I have not gotten into, and I don’t think I could get into it without some time investment.

If you have an actual meritorious argument to make, why not actually make it, where it will get noticed. Tiljander is under active discussion at two pro-AGW blogs, Arthur Smith’s here and Ari Jokimatti’s here. Focusing (e.g. stripping out the double negatives and ambiguities), “that doesn’t mean it’s used physically incorrectly by Mann’s regression routines” translates into

The Tiljander proxies were used correctly in Mann08.

‘Correctly” must include “calibrated correctly to the instrumental record, as described in the Methods and SI.” Which brings us to

The Tiljander proxies were calibrated correctly to the instrumental record (1850-1995) in Mann08.

I think you should make that argument. Then you and others can cite the best evidence in its support. Such clarity would be a welcome change.

As I’ve noted, one of the curious features of this episode is that no scientifically-literate person has made that argument, and supported it. Instead, readers are treated to go-rounds of legalistic grammar with escape hatches, compound sentences, double negatives, and flabby reasoning. You can change that.

Another curious feature is how often the following sort of caveat appears among the defenders of Mann08′s use of the Tiljander proxies: “[that's a discussion that] I have not gotten into, and I don’t think I could get into it without some time investment.” What compels so many people to defend Mann08 on a particular technical point–a pretty simple one–while acknowledging that they haven’t familiarized themselves with the technical details?

> just do the calculations yourself

I’m working on it, but (1) day job, (2) it’ll take time, (3) Jeff Id did it already, not liking what he found, and (4) it’s superfluous to the calibratability issue. As stated, for a scientifically-literate person, familiarity with a few papers and blog posts and the application of reasoning skills are all that are required to evaluate that narrow technical issue.

Lastly, I note your sixth repetition in this thread of the talking point that I am obsessed. I haven’t acknowledged it till now, because it’s neither helpful nor perceptive–just an invitation to a food fight. A discussion of the science is more attractive to me.

Re: Atom (Jul 11 09:10),

The Science of Doom has a post discussing the problems with the article you cite. It’s only correct if you assume that the lunar surface has zero heat capacity. The NASA scientists used that as a crude first approximation. Since they were looking at a site on the side of the moon facing the Earth, they corrected the night time temperature for the thermal radiation from the Earth so it didn’t go to the 2.7 K cosmic microwave background temperature. There are other papers that use a diffusive surface heat capacity model that match observed surface temperatures quite well, see here, here and here. Here’s a relevant quote from the second cited reference:

Surface daytime temperatures are mainly controlled by their surface albedo and angle of incidence. On the other hand nighttime temperatures are affected by the thermal inertia of the observed surface.

[my emphasis]

Amac

As discussed earlier, I now think that these proxes are probably not the major influences on the reconstruction.

Shrug. If that’s so, then that reduces the importance of the topic. Still something that interested parties can work on, to improve our understanding, but it’s becoming a minor detail.

But there’s no need for ‘think’; a definitive analysis is possible. You appear to think Mann didn’t quite do it; maybe Jeff did it, I don’t know, but it’s doable.

If you have an actual meritorious argument to make, why not actually make it, where it will get noticed.

I think I’ve made it clear that I’m not that interested in paleo, and therefore have not put in the time or effort required to actually say anything of substance on the topic. I’m just responding to what you’re saying here, on a basic logical level, not on any technical level.

translates into

no, it really doesn’t. that’s your own non-seq. There is inherently a lot of ambiguity in things like this; there is room between definitely incorrect and definitely correct. In paleo, definitely correct is probably impossible.

I think you should make that argument.

Why the heck should I make that argument? I have no idea whatsoever whether it’s true. I have no stance on it. I’ve said that. I think assessing that argument would take a lot more time than I care to put into paleo, despite your insistence that reading a couple blog posts would do it.

All I’m doing is objecting to your grand philosophical pronouncements about the integrity of a field of science and some individual researchers, based on what appears to be an ongoing discussion about a minor messy detail. It all seems rather disproportionate.

It’s something like messy surface stations. We know some stations have discontinuities and spurious defects. So adjustment methods are devised. Are the adjustments 100% perfect? Nobody claims that they are. But are they good enough? And does it anyway matter? Context and proportion are needed.

Re: carrot eater (Jul 11 10:11),

This comment of mine from 5/10/10 near the end of the thread following “Judy Curry Interviewed by Kloor” includes a snapshot of our arguments and provides a link upthread, to where you first chimed in on Tiljander. That was a lengthy and detailed exchange, where you offered many defenses of Mann08′s handling of Tiljander, starting with an ambiguous claim about RegEM (#42193).

This is the back and forth you were referring to in a comment on a later thread,

The other endless back and forth is Amac’s obsession with Tiljander, and I still can’t quite figure out what his complaint actually is, but that’s already polluted another thread, so we’ll leave it there.

I will get my dander up when I see sheer incompetence or misrepresentation, though, and there is a lot of that out there.

In #48584 just prior, your take on the key technical issue, the calibratability of the Tiljander proxies, is -

Why the heck should I make that argument? I have no idea whatsoever whether it’s true. I have no stance on it. I’ve said that. I think assessing that argument would take a lot more time than I care to put into paleo, despite your insistence that reading a couple blog posts would do it.

This strikes me as disputation for disputation’s sake. Your reasoning isn’t persuasive, and there’s a ~0% chance that you will alter your view of the matter. That’s hardly a tragedy, but we’ve conversed enough for today, I think. Enjoy the afternoon.

Global Warming Audit
http://www.forecastingprincipl.....Itemid=130

The Global Warming Challenge
Evidence-based forecasting for climate change
Global Warming Alarm Based on Faulty Forecasting Procedures: Comments on the United States Department of State’s U.S. Climate Action Report 2010, 5th ed.
http://www.theclimatebet.com/

Re: Dave Dardinger (Comment#48547)

The climate has shown a strong tendency to avoid any run-away temperatures in geologic times. This implies there are strong negative feedbacks built into the system (though they might only come into play as the CO2 levels become greater.)

The problem with this argument is that any “negative feedbacks” that failed to prevent the Ice Ages–or, for that matter, the desertization of the Sahara–are not likely to prevent the anticipated, and potentially highly disruptive, changes in climate zones as the world warms up.

My question is what you think are the strongest arguments for AGW (say the strongest 2-3).

The main argument for AGW is simply that basic physics predicts a correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentration and global temperatures, and when you actually look at the data, lo and behold, you see a correlation. Then, of course, you have to take the thing apart, estimate how much other factors may contribute to it, and so forth, and yes, it is not easy, but if you try to follow the details the final result, for all its uncertainties, is pretty convincing.

Add in the likelihood that climate is chaotic and the chances that the models do a good job, even in ensemble, is essentially nil.

This is a common but misplaced cop-out. People say “it’s chaotic” and take that to mean “we cannot predict anything about it”, but that is simply not the case. To give a not-totally-irrelevant example, a gas of hard spheres bouncing around inside a box is a chaotic system, but if you increase its energy, you can certainly predict that they will bounce around harder.

AMac,
What you are trying to say is 100% unsupported.

I’ve never said that I know Tiljander was used reasonably, or is even usable. Because I do not know. I’ve not put in the required effort.

for example, I said then,

What is my personal opinion on whether the Tiljander series are calibratible? Not having read the Tiljander paper carefully, I don’t know. At a glance, it seems marginal.

If you look through that thread, I’m willing to say that the input orientation probably is irrelevant. I couldn’t tell if that’s what you were worried about. And I’ve said the use of Tiljander doesn’t seem to really matter much, because of what’s shown in the figure in the SI.
But going beyond those points, I’m not saying anything specific about what the algorithms do with that proxy. Because I cannot do so.

You appear to have done some reflection, and reached a strong conclusion on this. I am not going to reach any conclusion, without putting in a good deal of time and effort. You may as well respect that.

What I have been consistent about is this: expressing puzzlement over why you are so up in arms about this. You seem to want to make big philosophical statements about how bad this science is, or how bad certain commenters and bloggers are, based on … what? At issue is a minor detail, with some ambiguity. The ambiguity was initially acknowledged by the authors. If you think you are able to cut through the ambiguity, and reach a definitive answer that should guide future use or non-use of this particular proxy, then great. We’ll see if anybody qualified will agree with your analysis. I, currently, am nowhere near qualified. But what you’ve got there is the normal progress of science, as it feels its way forward on difficult matters, including little details like this that may not matter much in the end. You seem determined to make it more than that. I have no idea why.

Seriously Amac, WTF.

Your reasoning isn’t persuasive, and there’s a ~0% chance that you will alter your view of the matter.

I’m not persuasive when I say I don’t have an opinion on something? What on earth do you want? You want me to invent an ill-informed opinion, just so I have one?

And yes, there is a 0% chance that my mind will be altered on that. I won’t suddenly come to have an opinion on it, out of the blue. If I want to have an opinion, I’ll have to put in a lot of work.

Re: Julio (Jul 11 12:22),

any “negative feedbacks” that failed to prevent the Ice Ages–or, for that matter, the desertization of the Sahara–are not likely to prevent the anticipated, and potentially highly disruptive, changes in climate zones as the world warms up.

Well, that’s a problem with AGW in the first place. A look a the past series of ice ages shows we’re actually just near a”tipping point” to fall into a new ice age, which event would be far worse than the opposite would be. If our present release of CO2 into the atmosphere forestalls that likelihood, it’s a good thing, not a bad thing.

The main argument for AGW is simply that basic physics predicts a correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentration and global temperatures, and when you actually look at the data, lo and behold, you see a correlation.

Which point most skeptics accept. What we don’t accept is the amount of the increase in temperature, which requires unproven positive feedbacks from H2O.

People say “it’s chaotic” and take that to mean “we cannot predict anything about it”, but that is simply not the case.

First I’m not “people”. But please! We’re talking a small perturbation in temperatures, not a giant one. And the natural differences in temperature over time far outweigh the anthropic differences; especially absent the proposed feedbacks. Therefore, the “box” within the climate may be found is pretty large and thus the ability to project climate changes in such a chaotic climate system is pretty small.

Dave

“Well, that’s a problem with AGW in the first place. A look a the past series of ice ages shows we’re actually just near a”tipping point” to fall into a new ice age, which event would be far worse than the opposite would be.”

That’s not true. If you look up “Milankovitch Cycles” you will see that the Earth is in no danger of falling into a new ice age within the next 40 000+ years.

“What we don’t accept is the amount of the increase in temperature, which requires unproven positive feedbacks from H2O.”
Climate sensitivty studies point to around a 3C increase per doubling, if you have a better study it would be good to see it.

“We’re talking a small perturbation in temperatures, not a giant one. And the natural differences in temperature over time far outweigh the anthropic differences; especially absent the proposed feedbacks. ”

This is a nonsense statement, as nature doesn’t distinguish between Human and non-Human changes. So because all the changes in the past have been non-Human doesn’t mean anything to the present scenario.

Re: Dave Dardinger (Comment#48592)

A coming ice age in the immediate future (say, the next 100 years) is a much more improbable event than the relatively small (on a planetary scale) but potentially very disruptive changes in climate patterns that would inevitably result from increasing the thermal energy content of the planet. I think it is reasonable to expect that the negative effects of such changes would, on the whole, outweigh the positives.

There are millions of people on the planet who live literally “on the edge”–on land encroaching in, or encroached by, the desert, or the jungle, or the sea. Even a relatively small shift of one of these boundaries in the wrong direction can cause a great deal of damage.

It is important to realize that the global temperature anomaly merely stands as a proxy for the total thermal energy content of the Earth. It is misleading to compare it to any particular temperature at any time anywhere. If you do, of course, a change of a couple of degrees is going to look insignificant. But it is a couple of degrees all over–it is not like when it’s winter here but summer in the southern hemisphere, or day here and night elsewhere. It is the whole world that gets 2 degrees warmer, and that is, in fact, an awful lot of thermal energy. You may not be able to predict exactly what or where is going to be affected, but you certainly cannot expect it not to have any consequences.

Re: Nathan (Jul 11 19:44),

That’s not true. If you look up “Milankovitch Cycles” you will see that the Earth is in no danger of falling into a new ice age within the next 40 000+ years.

You’ve pushed one of my buttons. Milankovitch cycles do not precipitate ice ages. Quite the opposite. Milankovitch cycles, or perhaps orbital inclination variation, trigger interglacial episodes followed by a decay back to glacial conditions, which is the current normal state of the planet.

What flips my bic (cracks me up) is that the AGW advocate crowd actually think that people believe their garbage after climategate… by the way, did anyone ever find that missing heat? Because if not, I can program my pac-man game to find it

Re: Nathan (Jul 11 19:44),

Climate sensitivty studies point to around a 3C increase per doubling, if you have a better study it would be good to see it.

The basic physics shows that doubling CO2 results in about a 1 deg C rise in temperature. Any increase in that is due to a purported positive feedback, usually ascribed to water vapor. This is a bit misleading since vapor is only one phase of the water cycle. More import is liquid water in the form of clouds. This is one of the weak points in climate research. Air with water vapor tends to rise until the vapor turns to clouds. The clouds will both reflect SW sunlight and cause the release of the latent heat of condensation of the water vapor at a high altitude where it can more easily escape to space. This process is not properly parametrized in the models. There have been several studies by skeptics which show low sensitivity to CO2 and if you don’t know which ones I’m referring to I’ll look them up.

Dave Dardinger,

What about observations that provide evidence of sensitivity around 3 degrees – such as the observations over the last 130 years? For these observations, the natural logarithm of CO2 correlates well with temperature (R^2 value of .82) and has a slope of two degrees per doubling. This is the non-equilibrium value, and is what was predicted by the IPCC. This implies that our understanding of what is going on is good, and that the equilibrium value – climate sensitivity – is what we expect it to be: three degrees.

I’m not persuasive when I say I don’t have an opinion on something? What on earth do you want? You want me to invent an ill-informed opinion, just so I have one?

You just have to love this attitude. The point is that this is not some deep technical point that AMac is disputing. The point in dispute is a the entire sequence of silly arguments and obvious dodges made by notable AGW voices. It’s also pretty funny that one can have so much to say about the subject matter, but when it comes down to details that are going to make certain tribal members look like abject fools, a studied ignorance is assumed.

This new debating style is brilliant. Just claim ignorance of subject matter that is damaging to your cause so you don’t have to discuss it, but still claim the other side is wrong. “You’re wrong, but I’m ignorant, so we don’t have to discuss this”, has got to be one of the all time winners as a debating tactic.

If I were to take someone like Bart V. seriously, here is where the methodology of trust he so proudly posted would be utilized and we would decide that the people can actually advance an argument of the form:

Your argument is not peer reviewed. Well, the data set is not upside down. Well it is upside upside down but the math fixes it. Well, that might not be what the code does, but it just doesn’t matter, Well, peer review doesn’t matter and it was the original author that had it upside down. Well, this silliness is damaging to my cause so we can’t be discussing details.

might not have much intellectual honesty or credibility.

Or maybe the lesson is that the “logical consistently and honesty” thing that Bart was touting when determining who to trust is exactly as important as peer review. It’s only required when one wants to score points against those nasty skeptics. Otherwise, just stick your fingers in your ears up to the elbows and ignore any data that might upset your bias.

re: Julio (Comment#48594)

A coming ice age in the immediate future (say, the next 100 years) is a much more improbable event than the relatively small (on a planetary scale) but potentially very disruptive changes in climate patterns that would inevitably result from increasing the thermal energy content of the planet. I think it is reasonable to expect that the negative effects of such changes would, on the whole, outweigh the positives.

Hmm. A statement like this really begs for a citation. Considering the climate behavior for the last million years, the ice ages and interglacials, it looks to me that we’re about due for another ice age. Who’s to say it will or won’t happen in the next 100 years?
Deserts? Shrinking. Islands? Expanding. And it seems to me that humans are much more susceptible to cold than to heat.

2. My wife and I were recently on a cruise to Alaska and only part was a visit to Glacier Bay. We often hear that the retreat of glaciers is an important argument for AGW. But the map we received from the National Parks Service show that while the Glaciers had filled the bay and jutted out into the strait, by 1750, it is now some 65 miles up from the strait. But at that it has extended a couple of miles on both the Grand Pacific Glacier and the Johns Hopkins Glacier since the 1920s which was before there was sufficient fossil fuel burning for AGW. Since Alaska is claimed to have been warming severely, it seems strange that there are glaciers which have been growing during this period of time.

The cryosphere is retreating overall. There is no doubt of that.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/c.....0-2007.jpg

Hmm. A statement like this really begs for a citation. Considering the climate behavior for the last million years, the ice ages and interglacials, it looks to me that we’re about due for another ice age. Who’s to say it will or won’t happen in the next 100 years?
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
insolation

Milankovitch cycle

This is the widely touted source of the next ice age in 50 000 years

(heres hoping this blog takes html!)

William Newman (Comment#48497) July 9th, 2010 at 8:20 pm

Carrot Eater wrote “And I see no reason why McIntyre is not just making his own reconstruction. If he is so expert in every step of the process, he ought to be able to crank one out with his eyes closed, no?”

As Charles Babbage apparently said, “I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.” How is it possible for the concept of finding error to be difficult to grasp?

Science thrives on finding errors, gaps and misunderstandings, but the catch is you can’t then go out and publicly pillory people for such things, and make snide insinuations of corruption and incompetence using childish puns in your headings over a period of many years. If you do, you are no longer taking part in science. McIntyre apparently found the NAS episode not good enough for him, and went back to beating up on individuals on the web.

dorlomin (Comment#48606) July 12th, 2010 at 6:20 am

Hmm. A statement like this really begs for a citation. Considering the climate behavior for the last million years, the ice ages and interglacials, it looks to me that we’re about due for another ice age. Who’s to say it will or won’t happen in the next 100 years?

“Soon” in geological terms is “a long time” in human terms. In human terms, the ice age is much further away than AGW.

All this begs the question(s)

What behavior of the climate system would contradict models of global warming?

Specifically what behavior of what variables over what time scales??

Carrot Eater-”I hate it when journalists and laymen dabble in attribution of individual weather events; I will call that out if it comes my way.”

Would you also apply this to scientists? Here is your test:

http://greenhellblog.com/2010/.....e-warming/

(BTW, Trenberth is notorious for doing exactly that sort of thing, so one can count on him to provide more tests for you)

Dave Dardinger,

This is what David Gould (Comment#48600) is referring to:

This is no model, just the data. Temperature anomaly (HadCRUt) on the vertical axis, logarithm of the CO2 concentration on the horizontal axis. This is how the planet has been responding to the increasing CO2 concentration for the past 160 years. If you extend the line, say, another 90 years, how far from it do you think the data will fall? More importantly, how much are you willing to bet on it?

Those are, of course, not rhetorical questions. Those are the real questions!

To begin to answer them, you need models. You need to understand the deviations from the straight line, which are due to causes other than CO2 increase. You can take out solar cycles and the PDO and get a better fit that way. You need to account for other causes of warming, such as other greenhouse gases, which have also increased over this time period, and may have contributed about 20% of what CO2 does. That would bring the data down a bit, if you want only the CO2 part. Finally, there are aerosols; those would bring the curve up somewhat, but they are hugely uncertain.

Playing with these things, it is relatively easy to get values of the transient, or nonequilibrium, climate sensitivity (what they call the TCR, or transient climate response) between 1.5 and 2.5 degrees C per CO2 doubling. I personally favor the lower estimates, but this is pretty much the IPCC’s “official” word (see fig. 9.21 of AR4, WG1).

Anyway, this is the range you have to play in, if you are going to accept the data and the basic science behind the models. Generally, lukewarmists believe that the relative lack of warming over the past decade or so suggests that the lower estimates are more likely to be right. Eric Steig thinks that makes us disingenuous or dishonest. Go figure…

Re: David Gould (Jul 11 23:27),

You might want to look a thread called Sense and Sensitivity by Willis Eisenbach on WUWT. It also links to the Idso’s test of sensitivity.

Julio (Comment#48611) July 12th, 2010 at 7:38 am

“This is how the planet has been responding to the increasing CO2 concentration for the past 160 years.”

No. Correlation is not causation. The Little Ice Age is generally agreed upon all over the place to have ended 160 yrs ago in 1850. How convenient.

Andrew_FL (Comment#48610) July 12th, 2010 at 7:09 am
Geez. I suppose the lack of heat where I live in Southern California, where temperatures are way below normal! all fits the AGW story too. We are getting angry around here! Just want to see the sun!

Julio (Comment#48611)-”This is no model, just the data.” I must protest this. If you had plotted up the points it would be just the data. But you drew an OLS(?) line through it. That is a model.

liza (Comment#48615)-I could use some of that cold. Florida is more used to the kind of heat they are dealing with, and we actually have comparable conditions right now, but I still don’t much care for it. Of course, I’m half French Canadian, so maybe lack of tolerance for heat is in my blood.

Andrew_FL (Comment#48618) July 12th, 2010 at 9:34 am
High today is projected at 69°f in the middle of July!
It’s not really cold cold, but it is not summer temperatures.
My daughter is a few quarters (lol or something)French Canadian (on the dad side) and a dash of MikMaq too.

Hey the ancient Celts made deals like this too! (to be paid off or collected in the Afterlife)…;)

“If you extend the line, say, another 90 years, how far from it do you think the data will fall? More importantly, how much are you willing to bet on it? “

Re: liza (Comment#48614)

Julio (Comment#48611) July 12th, 2010 at 7:38 am
“This is how the planet has been responding to the increasing CO2 concentration for the past 160 years.”
No. Correlation is not causation.

No, but correlation can be used to verify causation once you have postulated a plausible physical mechanism as the cause (in fact, it is the only way to verify causation, really).

I will admit that the quote above turned out slightly misleading in a warmist sort of way. What matters is not really temperature versus time but temperature versus CO2 concentration, and the latter is not growing linearly with time. So the extrapolation I was implying is not as clear-cut as I made it sound.

(Warning, numbers ahead.)

The figure I showed has data for log₂CO2 in the range 8.1 to 8.6. Assuming a CO2 concentration of 670 ppm by 2100, the range of log₂CO2 for the rest of the century is about 8.6 to 9.4, more than 1 and a half times wider than the range in my figure. So a small uncertainty in the slope may be telescoped into a large uncertainty at the other end.

In fact, it is not that bad. The uncertainty in the slope that I quoted (0.5 C) translates to an uncertainty in temperature, by the year 2100, of about 0.4 C up or down, around a mean temperature increase of about 1.6 C.

Re: Andrew_FL (Comment#48618)

”This is no model, just the data.” I must protest this. If you had plotted up the points it would be just the data. But you drew an OLS(?) line through it. That is a model.

Fine, pretend the red line isn’t there. Sheesh.

Re: liza (Comment#48619)

Hey the ancient Celts made deals like this too! (to be paid off or collected in the Afterlife)…;)
“If you extend the line, say, another 90 years, how far from it do you think the data will fall? More importantly, how much are you willing to bet on it? “

I finally figured out what you meant by this (thinking kind of slowly today!). I take it you’re not planning to be around 90 years from now. Neither am I, but I was thinking of “betting” things such as the future of your children, grandchildren, etc. They are the ones who will have to collect, or pay.

Re: Julio (Jul 12 07:38),

That’s a nice graph. Helps me think about trends.

I’m soon to receive my Certificate of Lukewarmation, thus I stipulate that

(1) Per Zeke’s posts (e.g.), the global average temperature anomaly has risen about 0.8 C from 1880 to the present, a significant (both senses) indication of a warming earth.

(2) CO2 has risen from pre-Industrial Revolution levels of ~260 ppmv to current levels of ~390 ppmv (RealClimate, Mauna Loa).

Taking those two trends together, I would have confidently predicted the general shape of that graph. Even if I (mistakenly) thought that CO2 wasn’t a greenhouse gas.

Trivially, it must be that, on the whole, data points from early dates are mainly on the left side of the graph, and the most recent ones are mainly on the right side, etc.

The goodness of the linear fit on the semi-log plot is interesting, though–it supports the idea that each doubling of [CO2] will add a certain number of degrees to the surface temperature anomaly, a central AGW tenet.

I’m sure people have looked at this (and your comment alludes to it): what happens when you account for unambiguous, clearly-defined, transient forcings? Probably the best candidate would be the cooling caused by Mt. Pinatubo’s injection of aerosols during the following 2-3 years. How much should that improve the goodness of fit of the linear regression (r^2), on theoretical grounds, and how does that thought experiment actually change it?

I’m not demanding a long explanation at the tail of long thread. But if you can think of a good paper that talks about this, a cite would be appreciated.

Re: dorlomin (Jul 12 06:20),

Berger and Loutre’s paper isn’t what you would call the consensus view. Of course, neither is Muller and MacDonald’s hypothesis that orbital plane inclination variation is the real driver. But I like Muller and MacDonald’s math a lot better than Berger and Loutre. The correlation between 65 N insolation and the Vostok ice core isn’t really very good. The temperature for the Eemian 130,000 years bp is going up before the 65 N insolation starts to increase. Also, the current 65N insolation is well below the peak and in the range that had much lower temperatures in the past.

Re: AMac (Comment#48623)

Thanks! Unfortunately I do not have references to papers, but maybe David Gould (Comment#48600 above) can help. He’s obviously been looking at the same sort of graphs, only with the GISStemp data (no significant difference, BTW).

This is just me doodling on the back of an envelope.

Yes, the early data are all bunched up on the left of the graph. The (roughly quadratic) rate of CO2 increase means the points are more and more sparse towards the right, even when you take the logarithm (which, as you recognize, is crucial; otherwise you do not get anything like a straight line).

As I said above, removing the PDO and a 21-year cycle (almost certainly solar in origin) improved the fit to an r^2 of about 0.84 (0.87 for GISStemp data). I posted this here back a few months ago, and some kind souls pointed me to the GISS model E forcings, to see what I could do with their aerosol data.

I messed around with that for a few weeks, and eventually concluded that there is no good way to account for the effect of those volcanic aerosol spikes in the context of any kind of linear model. The system response appears to exhibit what one would call “clipping” in audio technology. How significant an observation this is, I don’t know, but it makes me skeptical of attempts to derive the TCR from volcanic eruptions, such as Roy Spencer’s recent one. In fact, if you look at Spencer’s next to last figure, you’ll see what a mess you get from a linear model–

julio (Comment#48622) July 12th, 2010 at 10:32 am
My children won’t be around either (everyone over the age of 10 right now will probably not be ) and no grand children as of yet..however; if I listened to such things back when I was young when I heard them ; I wouldn’t even have had kids.

My husband takes care of and cleans up the planet every single day in his job while you just talk about it; and I take care of him! We are all paid up.

Re: julio (Comment#48625)

correction (again)

As I said above, removing the PDO

I should have said: removing (spectrally) a 70-year cycle that looked a lot like the PDO. I did not actually try to subtract the PDO index or anything like that.

Re: liza (Comment#48626)

if I listened to such things back when I was young when I heard them ; I wouldn’t even have had kids.

Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t listen, then

Here’s a song I’ve always liked along those lines (Bob Dylan’s “Let me die in my footsteps”)

(Googling for it I found out that a line came from Matthew 24:6, which is also not a bad reference.)

Re: julio (Jul 12 11:06),

Responses like yours are what make the comments worth reading!

Re: AMac (Comment#48630)

Thanks! (And with that, it’s back to the day job…)

Bugs.

“but the catch is you can’t then go out and publicly pillory people for such things, and make snide insinuations of corruption and incompetence using childish puns in your headings over a period of many years. ”

As the Muir Russell investigation concluded you have to consider the medium when evaluating peoples words. As they argue it is acceptable for scientists to say potentially defamatory things about McIntyre and others in emails to other scientists, even though those scientists may serve as reviewers of mcintyre.
Consequently, if we grant your assertion about mcintyre’s wording, then I imagine we can claim the same linguistic sanctuary for him. The verbiage you accuse him of is the norm for the blogosphere and is not out of the ordinary and we cannot, following the Muir Russell logic condemn him for it.

For those not inclined to look it up-

Matthew 24:6

“You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.”

Andrew

liza (Comment#48614) July 12th, 2010 at 8:09 am
“The Little Ice Age is generally agreed upon all over the place to have ended 160 yrs ago in 1850. ”

is that the consensus? anyways, how can we know there was a little ice age when we didnt have thermometers every 50 feet.

You cannot consistently argue: there are times when you argue against the notion of sampling the globe at many miles apart to determine that it is WARMER today, and other times when you flippently assert that we are coming out of a LIA. A LIA that
is not measured by more than a hand ful of thermometers around the entire globe, a LIA that is only estimated by proxies which you sometimes accept and other times reject.

the most fundament radiative physics predicts that if you increase C02 you will see a rise in temps. This is not GCM wizardary, but basic physics. Physics folks like JeffId and I used in our everyday jobs as engineers. Physics that works. This physics ( not even considering feedbacks) predicts increased C02=in increased temps. It predicts a log response.

The data support that theory. This is NOT a case of looking at the data and finding a correlation. This is a case of having a PHYSICAL THEORY, more than 100 years ago, and having the data turn out as that theory predicts.

could “other things” explain the data? OF COURSE. that is logically TRUE OF EVERY DATA SET, since theory is underdetermined by the data. but “coming out of an LIA” is not a THEORY, its not an explantation. its a restatement of the observation in unclear termenology.

I second Amac on Julio. very clear.

Re: AMac #48623 (Jul 12 10:34) on Julio’s graph in #48611,

I just realized that all the information is available to answer the question I posed about Mt. Pinatubo’s effects. Duh.

From Wikipedia, Pinatubo blew up in June 1991, and “over the following months, the aerosols formed a global layer of sulfuric acid haze. Global temperatures dropped by about 0.5 °C… This led to a decrease in northern hemisphere average [surface] temperatures of 0.5–0.6 °C, and a global fall of about 0.4 °C.”

From Mauna Loa, [CO2] in ppmv in 1991-1993 ranged from ~352 to ~358 ppmv. To read off the X-axis of the graph, the base 2 log interval is ~8.46 to ~8.47.

This is just to the right of a spot where the temperature anomaly takes a big dip, “big” meaning about 0.1 C. But at X-axis readings of 8.46 to 8.47, the temperature anomaly pretty much follows the regression line. Raising those values by 0.4 C to 0.5 C to “get rid of” the Pinatubo effect would take the data way above the regression line, and thus would weaken the correlation and lower the r^2. A test of whether that lowering is significant would require some thought.

A glance at Novarupta’s 1912 eruption: [CO2] = ~310 ppmv, log2 = ~8.28, same thing, it seems.

Oh well. Would’ve been neat if it’d panned out… or am I missing something? (How could the large (>0.4 C) claimed cooling effect of Mt. Pinatubo not show up prominently when the data are graphed this way?)

DeWitt Payne (Comment#48624)-”The correlation between 65 N insolation and the Vostok ice core isn’t really very good.”

Have you seen Gerard Roe’s paper that shows that the derivative of ice sheet volume correlates extremely well with insolation? It seems to be beautiful evidence for Milankovitch:

http://earthweb.ess.washington....._GRL06.pdf

Actually, the idea that the derivative of ice volume would relate to the insolation was proposed more than thirty years ago by Nigel Calder, then a global cooling alarmist as I recall, in a 1974 Nature paper. But the idea seems to have been completely forgotten about until Roe came along.

Re: AMac (Comment#48639)

How could the large (>0.4 C) claimed cooling effect of Mt. Pinatubo not show up prominently when the data are graphed this way?

These are the (HadCRUt) monthly anomalies for 1991-1994:

1991: 0.229, 0.283, 0.176, 0.317, 0.254, 0.287, 0.292, 0.24, 0.182, 0.135, 0.077, 0.079

1992: 0.282, 0.251, 0.208, 0.12, 0.11, 0.108, -0.021, -0.017, -0.093,
-0.08, -0.119, -0.007

1993: 0.217, 0.166, 0.209, 0.104, 0.153, 0.131, 0.08, 0.06, 0.018, 0.061, -0.032, 0.103

1994: 0.157, -0.09, 0.181, 0.173, 0.244, 0.213, 0.152, 0.171, 0.158, 0.238, 0.247, 0.217

The claim of a 0.4 C drop must refer to the drop between June 1991 and November 1992 (0.287 to -0.119). But it was not even a continuous drop (look at January 1992!), and it certainly did not cause a 0.4 dip in the annual averages. The annual anomalies for those years are 0.213, 0.062, 0.106, 0.172. So you were looking at the right dip in the data–it is just not nearly as dramatic as one would expect from looking at the GISS model E aerosol forcings:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/RadF.gif

(See what I meant by “clipping”?)

Re: julio (Jul 12 14:47),

Thanks for the clarification. Not much in climate modeling gets to use the qualifier “obvious,” it seems

As a newbie who delights in misinterpreting things, I’m struck by the graph “Net Forcing” at the link you gave (corrected, I think). The “obvious” interpretation is that the earth has warmed, on average, about 2.5 C from 1890 to the present. But Zeke’s shown that GISSTEMP (etc.) depicts a warming of about 0.8 C over that time. My interpretation of that graph is bound to be wrong.

I’m struck by the graph “Net Forcing” at the link you gave (corrected, I think). The “obvious” interpretation is that the earth has warmed, on average, about 2.5 C from 1890 to the present.

Um… why? Those are not degrees, they are “forcings”–presumed changes in radiant intensity reaching the (surface of the) earth (in W/m^2). The question of what temperature change ultimately results from such an irradiance change is what some would consider the central question in climate science–the question of the climate sensitivity.

(Note, I may be misinterpreting you, now, or missing something obvious, myself. I’m not firing on all cylinders today.)

Re: julio (Jul 12 15:23),

> Those are not degrees, they are “forcings”–presumed changes in radiant intensity reaching the (surface of the) earth (in W/m^2).

[turns red] Thanks, that’s it. I wrongly assumed “degrees” for the Y-axis.

Re: Andrew_FL (Jul 12 13:54),

I still don’t buy the argument that ice ages require a trigger of well below average insolation at 65 N in July so even in the absence of AGW the current inter-glacial would last at least 50,000 years or longer. Even Roe says that:

The Milankovitch hypothesis as formulated here does not explain the large rapid deglaciations that occurred at the end of some of the ice age cycles (i.e., the several large negative excursions in Figure 2): many studies point to the need to invoke internal dynamics of ice sheets as a mechanism for occasional rapid collapses if a threshold size is exceeded [e.g., Imbrie and Imbrie, 1980; Paillard, 2001]. Nor do the results explain the mid-Pleistocene transition between an earlier interval characterized by ~40 kyr durations of ice ages and a later interval with ~80 kyr to ~120 kyr durations:

Adding orbital inclination could explain both. 65 N insolation has dropped about 40 W/m2 from its recent peak at the onset of the Holocene. There’s no reason to believe that this shouldn’t cause an increase in ice volume relatively soon. Roe also says that albedo forcing from glacial to interglacial is about 5x larger than CO2 forcing.

If you’re going to try and relate CO2 increase to temperature, you really need something closer to a “real” climate model:

E.g., the IPCC comparison.

What’s striking to that (for me) is you don’t need to invoke anthropogenic effects until circa 1980.

What that also says it is a mistake to try a correlate log(CO2) against temperature anomaly. It’s the total forcings over time that matters: e.g., see this figure. Until circa 1980, it’s thought that forcings from anthropogenic CO2 and sulfates pretty nearly canceled each other.

People can argue that we really don’t know the sulfate forcings…while that’s probably true if you mean “haven’t measured it directly”, we can infer something about the sulfates if we have a good bounds on natural forcings and and atmospheric CO2 concentration over time. You can’t just pull alternative numbers out thin air, you need to show they fit the data as well or better than the numbers that have been proposed in the standard models, e.g., GISS Model E.

When I can get alarmists like David Gould to admit that there is more to climate than log(CO2) variation, then I will have accomplished something.

steve mosher,
“a LIA that is only estimated by proxies which you sometimes accept and other times reject.”

Once again you don’t know what the heck you are talking about. There is a historical record that exists for the LIA. It lasted for 500 years.
This country was fought for and founded during The Little Ice Age. People suffered and died because of it. Tens of thousands of people in Europe earlier on from starvation. Even Thomas Jefferson wrote about “The Year Without Summer”. It wasn’t even that long ago -a blink of an eye in geologic time.

“the most fundament radiative physics predicts that if you increase C02 you will see a rise in temps. This is not GCM wizardary, but basic physics. Physics folks like JeffId and I used in our everyday jobs as engineers. Physics that works. This physics ( not even considering feedbacks) predicts increased C02=in increased temps. It predicts a log response.”

That’s nice Mosh. But where’s the rest of the world and the solar system in your “fundamental” physics? You really don’t have anything but a model of a “certain” planet in your computer not this rocky wobbling cloudy wet one I live on. The vast geological record looks much different then what you claim. We could argue forever about how much “power” (or forcing) C02 should carry in the models. The temperatures rose all by themselves and C02 concentrations were lower then now. Last million years shows us that. And we don’t look at temperature down to a tenth of a degree from a proxy sample either. It is sea level high stands, sea level low stands and ice advances and retreats etched in the rock and stone that tells us that story from all over the world.

My husband and I understand physics fine. You don’t understand the planet and are thinking in a box. (and in a green house) You should take a geology course before you talk down to people. Husband had to pass 5 semesters of physics to be qualified for his Masters in Environmental Geology.

Carrick,

I most certainly admit that. I am, however, not sufficiently intelligent enough to understand two-box models and the like, unfortunately.

Re: Carrick (Comment#48660)

You know, I have spent hours “playing” with the temperature data and the GISS model E forcings, with two-box models and all sorts of other kinds of linear models; done everything conceivable short of running model E myself; and in the end, all the sophisticated math in the world does not give you anything better than the above picture: 2 +/- 0.5 C per doubling. Different people, with wildly different approaches, all get something in that range.

So to make a simple point quick, I go with the simple picture. There is an underlying methodological issue as well. The temperature anomaly we know, and the CO2 concentration we know. Everything else is up in the air. There is a belief that adding parameters to your models makes them more accurate, but if your parameters are not well characterized to begin with, all you are really adding is more uncertainty, and making the results more arbitrary.

There would really be no point in me or anybody else running GISS model E, since Hansen has already done that, so we already know what it predicts. There is also no reason to believe model E, or indeed any other general circulation model, since it is just a black box and we are all quite unqualified to look critically at what goes into it. The only thing we can do is compare them with the data.

Julio:

So to make a simple point quick, I go with the simple picture. There is an underlying methodological issue as well. The temperature anomaly we know, and the CO2 concentration we know. Everything else is up in the air

Sorry Julio, you can’t ignore the effect of something simply because it hasn’t been well characterized, if you can demonstrate that it is of the same order of magnitude as those things you do know.

We know sulfates are important, we may not be able to directly characterize them, but that is a very poor reason indeed for neglecting them. Neglecting them is not good science.

Also I certainly admit I’m not an expert at climate modeling, but I don’t think the fact that I am not one and don’t fully understand how they work somehow empowers me to dismiss that and other work.

Dave Dardinger,

I have to say that I do not think that much of Willis’s position in the link that you posted

Temperature can swing much more rapidly than seasonally – it can change day on day. This depends on much more than forcing, as various air and sea masses are moved around the globe.

The forcing changes between summer and winter do not really alter the amount of forcing from the sun that the earth as a whole receives, because – obviously! – when it is summer in one place, it is winter elsewhere. The *distribution* of that forcing alters, and this is what causes winter/summer variation for various regions. As such, I do not see how you could calculate the climate sensitivity of a particular region using seasonal differences.

Carrick,

However, if Jules is right and the more complicated models give us a result that is pretty much identical to the simplest one, is it just chance? My thinking is that given sufficient time, the various forcings aside from CO2 will show both up and down movements in roughly equal measure. Thus, over this sufficiently long time (whatever that happens to be) their effect on the slope of the line should be able to be ignored as a rough approximation.

I may well be wrong about that. But, as I asked in my first sentence, is it chance that the slope using log C02 comes pretty close to matching the slope determined from more complicated models?

Listen to Carrick. you want the net sum of all forcings. that isn’t adding complication; it’s simply a matter of not leaving things out when they are known to be of a magnitude to matter.

carrot eater,

If I use a simple mapping of the net sum of all forcings versus temperature to find the expected change in temperature per each full one watt change in forcing, I get a figure for the period 1880 to 2003 of .217 degrees celsius.

How would I calculate the climate sensitivity using this?

My guess is that this value should be multiplied by each value for well-mixed greenhouse gases to get the temperature increases that we should have seen for the rise in C02 if the observed temperature change per full one watt change in forcing is correct.

Mapping these derived temperatures against ln C02 then gives a sensitivity value (I think). The value I got was 1.75 degrees celsius, (with quite a large error range, however).

Is this methodology reasonable as a simple method to find an approximation for climate sensitivity?

Carrick, Carrot,

Of course you are right in principle, and if I was trying to write a scientific paper I would be a lot more careful. My point, however, is that if somebody asks me what is the best evidence for AGW I am not going to show them a complicated equation full of terms that would take several hours to introduce properly; rather, I will show them a simple correlation that, as I happen to know, is enough to get the “correct” order of magnitude. I shall also mention, as I did above, that there are lots of other smaller contributions to the effect that either show up as noise because they tend to cancel out, or change the result slightly while staying within the margin of error quoted.

For a quick introduction to the situation, I think that is perfectly fine. For anybody who really wants to get at the technical details, and to calculate a few things for themselves, the situation is a lot more complicated, because–as I keep repeating here, and as AMac discovered yesterday–the volcanic aerosols in the GISS model E forcings simply do not fit well in any linear model.

Again, just look at the Pinatubo dip in the figure at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/
It is the second-largest thing in the figure, as large by itself as the whole contribution of the well-mixed GHG. If you add all the negative forcings at that point, you would fairly expect the onset of another ice age. Yet in the temperature record it shows up as noise: less than a 0.2 dip, indistinguishable from any number of similar random dips. Now what does that tell you?

It tells me that, for some reason I don’t understand, it is OK to dismiss all the volcanic aerosols as “noise”, and to not even bother trying to include them in this kind of simple model. The question is, of course, “why??? Aren’t all radiative forcings created equal??” It is a good question, and if I were a researcher active in this field, it is probably the first question I would like to try to answer. But it is much too convoluted a starting point for an introduction to AGW.

Regarding my casual dismissal of GCMs–I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. Again, I meant simply that they are not, in my opinion, the most convincing argument for the reality of AGW, because they are, in essence, black boxes that I, at least, do not even begin to understand.

Julio,
Be careful with the dynamics of the system. You of course don’t get the long-range response called for by the sensitivity right away. If the volcanic forcing post-Pinatubo persisted for decades, then the cooling would have been more pronounced, more lasting. As it was, it’s pretty impressive to get such an obvious cooling out of a short-term change in forcing, which is a testament to how strong volcanic forcing can be. In that sense, looking at the short-time response, or just the simple magnitude of the forcing, volcanic forcing due to the intermittent big explosions is much stronger than the greenhouse gas ones. They just don’t persist in the atmosphere for a long time, like CO2 does.

Re: carrot eater (Comment#48698)

Carrot,

I accept all that, but from the point of view of the simple correlation that I am trying to show, it still leaves me with unusable data.

If I simply leave the “stratospheric aerosols” out, and plot the temperature vs the sum of all the other GISS model E forcings, I get this plot, which starts out messy but then straightens itself out nicely:

The slope is 0.353 C/(W/m^2). The CO2 forcing is typically given as 5.35 log(2) W/m^2 for CO2 doubling. So this way I get a “climate sensitivity” (more precisely, a TCR) of about 1.3 C per CO2 doubling, which is a little beyond the low end of what I’ve been quoting here–not surprisingly, since I have in fact removed all the stratospheric aerosols!

What is the delta T on the graph, the change in temperature from the value at 1880, or something like that? And what’s the forcing relative to, 1880, 1850, generic ‘pre-industrial’?

The delta T is just the canonical GISStemp global temperature anomaly (yearly average). The forcing is relative to 1880, as in http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/RadF.txt

Re: David Gould (Jul 12 20:31),

I just reread both the Sense and Sensitivity article and the one he links on the first line of it called The Thermostat hypothesis and I don’t see exactly what you’re talking about. This may be the result of your not quoting from what Willis wrote. Particularly when you’re talking about something from another web-site it’s almost mandatory to quote what you wish to discuss.

But guessing that you’re referring to the basic calculation of sensitivity, which Willis does for various latitude bands, I don’t know that there’s any problem. You calculate the seasonal differences in isolation and the seasonal differences in temperature of a given band and voila, you have the sensitivity. Now, it’s true that a given latitude band will get a different amount of heat transferred from the tropics, and that this will affect the measured climate sensitivity, but it’d seem to me that this would make some areas have higher sensitivity than without this heat transfer and others a lower value. But even the bands with the highest sensitivity (in CO2 doubling units), are still much lower than is predicted by IPCC model runs.

Figuring out the sensitivity (the equilibrium, long term response) from transient data is difficult to begin with. Doing it from the seasonal cycle is even harder, especially when you don’t seem to appreciate that you aren’t finding the equilibrium response. Nevermind the issues with doing it on regions that aren’t closed to heat transfer.

Try this for a more careful attempt at it.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/kn.....ti06jc.pdf

Well, so far as communication goes, Zeke and Mosher have coauthored a nice overview of how global temperature anomaly indices are calculated, and it’s on WUWT.

Let’s see how it’s received and remembered.

Julio,
So you’re leaving all the forcings in there, but taking out the aerosols?

I don’t understand the justification for that. Ending up with a decent looking correlation is not in itself a justification for anything and everything you did to find it.

Re: David Gould (Comment#48672)

The forcing changes between summer and winter do not really alter the amount of forcing from the sun that the earth as a whole receives, because – obviously! – when it is summer in one place, it is winter elsewhere.

This is not quite true, as the northern and southern hemispheres have somewhat different properties (e.g., one is much wetter than the other!)

Re: carrot eater (Jul 13 15:18),

One problem with the linked article is that as they say in a throwaway sentence,

…many AOGCMs have errors and biases in common, so in the event of all climate-resolution GCMs sharing a common bias with respect to the real world, we appear to be doing misleadingly well in predicting GCM sensitivity.

That is, global climate models have not been verified. And what studies have been done, by skeptics at least, show that they all the models assume a positive feedback from clouds, contrary to what the actual data seems to show.

In addition, Willis’ articles are based on an assumption of a global temperature thermostat. This basically eliminates the equilibrium problem since a thermostat will maintain the system near equilibrium (in terms of what the thermostat will allow, if not the thermodynamic equilibrium.) Thus if the thermostat exists, your problem disappears. OTOH, if the thermostat doesn’t exist then such arguments as you make aren’t needed.

IOW, we need to look at his thermostat theory and accept or reject it in terms of what it predicts vs what the global system shows.

In addition, Willis’ articles are based on an assumption of a global temperature thermostat. This basically eliminates the equilibrium problem since a thermostat will maintain the system near equilibrium (in terms of what the thermostat will allow, if not the thermodynamic equilibrium.) Thus if the thermostat exists, your problem disappears. OTOH, if the thermostat doesn’t exist then such arguments as you make aren’t needed.

I find this to be meaningless. You can’t just assume that the system is always in equilibrium.

IOW, we need to look at his thermostat theory and accept or reject it in terms of what it predicts vs what the global system shows.

Take quick look at what enormous forcing is required to cause ice ages cycles, with his low sensitivity.

Re: carrot eater (Jul 13 17:04),

Well, this just amounts to the usual AGM, “we can’t make it work without CO2 warming and that amplified.” It’s an argument, but not a disproof.

I think I’ll see if Willis is around and willing to defend his theory here.

Re: carrot eater (Comment#48752)

I only left out the “stratospheric aerosols”. I included all the other forcings, including the ones labeled “reflective tropospheric aerosols” and “aerosol indirect effect”.

The point was just to show you that the temperature anomaly actually correlates pretty well with the sum of all the radiative forcings except the volcanic aerosols.

You can see what happens if I do include the stratospheric aerosols” at this link (for some reason I cannot post the figure).

http://comp.uark.edu/~jgeabana/withvols.png

I find this intriguing. The temperature anomaly appears to be nicely proportional to the sum of the radiative forcings, except around the time of a big volcanic eruption, when you clearly do not have anything like a simple proportionality anymore.

If you do not find it intriguing, though, that’s fine. I wasn’t planning to make a career of this…

I see. I was afraid you took out all the aerosols.

In that case, it all makes sense. The net sum of forcings has been rising throughout the entire period, as has temperature. Take out time, and you get a decent correlation.

Throw in a monkey wrench – the much more sudden but very temporary drop in forcing due to volcano, and your correlation goes to heck at those times; it has to.

What you did is ok so far as it goes, but I’d just advise great caution when interpreting your result quantitatively, as it is a transient figure. Which you have pointed out yourself. To translate from your transient response to the long-term response, one needs some physics. So I guess there’s not much more to say.

Dave,
Forget CO2; this isn’t specifically about CO2.

Take Willis’s sensitivity. Take the change in global mean temp over the ice age cycles (~6 C). See what forcing is needed to make it happen.

Toss in the sun, orbital, CO2, ice-albedo, whatever you want to toss into the mix, you’ll have trouble coming up with a forcing change that big.

If you decide there are fast-acting and extremely strong negative feedbacks, then sure, you’d expect an Earth where the climate never really changed. But yet, that’s not the Earth we live on. Climate does change.

Re: carrot eater (Jul 13 19:23),

I wasn’t talking about CO2 per se. I was talking about the sort of silly argument which has been used about CO2. The idea that because you can’t figure out a way to make things work in a model, it proves the opposite. Here’s you’re claiming that because you don’t know how to combine low climate sensitivity with the existence of ice ages means there must be high climate sensitivity.

Of course high sensitivity has a problem when you try explaining why there’s never been a Venus type run-away. Of course the actual situation is that there’s not just one fixed sensitivity. Different physical situations will have different climate sensitivities. If you’ve actually read Willis’ articles and comments you’ll know that he maid some suggestions.

Re: carrot eater (Comment#48760)

Take quick look at what enormous forcing is required to cause ice ages cycles, with his low sensitivity.

On the other hand, if we have high sensitivity due to large positive feedbacks, then what is it that takes us out of ice ages once they begin?

oliver,

The sensitivity is the sensitivity to *changes* in forcing, either up or down. So sensitivity *has* to be high to take us into and out of ice ages.

David,

The net forcing and hence the “sensitivity” to CO2 are much larger than the results of CO2 acting alone if one takes the common definition of sensitivity as the change in equilibrium temperature due to x increase in CO2 concentration (often where x = 100%, for a doubling). This is due to a hypothesis of strong positive feedbacks (e.g., water vapor, albedo, CO2 outgassing from the oceans).

Positive feedbacks mean they have the same sign as the change in forcing. Accordingly, it would seem that a reduction in temperature (for any reason) would create effects which are opposite to those seen in “greenhouse warming”: less water in vapor atmosphere, more ice albedo, more ocean absorption of CO2, it gets even colder than it otherwise would, etc.

This would also seem to make the “current” climate an unstable equilibrium. Once perturbed away from the “normal” climate due to a reduction in solar energy received (for whatever reason), the climate ought not return from the ice age once the solar input returns to “normal” levels — since the new, drier, whiter and generally less-greenhousy planet now tends to be less warm for the same solar energy received (as previously).

P.S.: As ably pointed out by Dave Dardinger (Comment#48801), the idea of a single climate sensitivity is (of course) a simplification, but nevertheless it persists both in the literature and in the public discourse.

I wasn’t talking about CO2 per se. I was talking about the sort of silly argument which has been used about CO2. The idea that because you can’t figure out a way to make things work in a model, it proves the opposite. Here’s you’re claiming that because you don’t know how to combine low climate sensitivity with the existence of ice ages means there must be high climate sensitivity.

What I’m doing is insisting that your physics work. Unfortunately, they simply don’t. You can’t declare by assertion that there are strong negative feedbacks that make the climate invariant, when in fact the climate is not invariant.

Of course high sensitivity has a problem when you try explaining why there’s never been a Venus type run-away.

That’s insanely wrong. You simply don’t get Venus, with the feedbacks as currently modeled. The positive feedbacks amplify a forcing, but you still converge on a stable outcome.

On the other hand, if we have high sensitivity due to large positive feedbacks, then what is it that takes us out of ice ages once they begin?

???

A reversal of the forcings that got you into the ice age…

This would also seem to make the “current” climate an unstable equilibrium. Once perturbed away from the “normal” climate due to a reduction in solar energy received (for whatever reason), the climate ought not return from the ice age once the solar input returns to “normal” levels — since the new, drier, whiter and generally less-greenhousy planet now tends to be less warm for the same solar energy received (as previously).

There can be a hysteresis on how long it takes, but otherwise, this is again wrong. A bit of warming kicks off all the processes required to get you out. It’s what happens.

Now if you get a total snowball earth, it can be much harder to get started, because you’re reflecting so much.

Carrot, et al.,

Thanks! I’ve enjoyed the discussion, and I apologize for anything dumb I may have said upthread. I’m about to leave on vacation, so I’ll “see” you in a couple of weeks. Enjoy discussing Monckton in my absence…

Re: carrot eater (Jul 14 04:07),

You can’t declare by assertion that there are strong negative feedbacks that make the climate invariant, when in fact the climate is not invariant.

How about an actual discussion of Willis’ theory? He isn’t claiming that the climate is invariant, merely that there’s a safety valve, as it were, which first reflects sunlight via low lying clouds, and if that doesn’t “work” thunderstorms develop and transfer heat to higher altitudes here it can be released to space, largely at night. This, at least in the tropics, is a daily routine. Since the amount of insolation at a given spot varies with the seasons, to a degree much greater than other forcings, he calculated the ratio on insolation change to temperature change (or vice versa; not worth looking up) and finds it to agree with the theory. In terms of the amount of temperature change expected to result for a forcing equal to that caused by a doubling of CO2 (3.7 watts per square meter) it’s quite low. Now I’m not sure that this should be called a climate sensitivity, but it operates somewhat similarly. It means that if an actual CO2 doubling happens, it’s going to have little or no effect on the climate since it’s the natural setting on the “thermostat” which is going to determine the temperature, not the amount of forcing going on.

Now yes, this means we need an additional theory as to how ice ages are entered and left, but its a separate issue and Willis did mention several possibilities which could come into play.

Doesn’t change things one bit. He requires implausibly enormous forcings to get the climate to change very much, to overcome his alleged fast-acting thermostat. That isn’t a ‘separate issue’.

Now I’m not sure that this should be called a climate sensitivity,

It can’t be, because it has not much relationship to what is generally cited, due to how he calculated it.

carrot eater (Comment#48815)

oliver:
the climate ought not return from the ice age once the solar input returns to “normal” levels — since the new, drier, whiter and generally less-greenhousy planet now tends to be less warm for the same solar energy received (as previously).

There can be a hysteresis on how long it takes, but otherwise, this is again wrong.

Could you explain how you can simultaneously agree there is hysteresis while also finding what I said “again wrong”?

A bit of warming kicks off all the processes required to get you out. It’s what happens.

Now if you get a total snowball earth, it can be much harder to get started, because you’re reflecting so much.

How is the snowball earth different but in degree (ha ha)?

A snowball earth is different in degree to a very large extent. But you can still get out of it, if you push hard enough, and we have a decent idea of how you can get out of it.

I don’t understand what your problem is. There are observations (we know you can get into and out of ice ages), and there are self-consistent physical explanations for those observations. Some aspects are still being worked out, but that’s fine.

The problem with Willis’s low sensitivity is that it isn’t consistent with the range of observations observed on Earth. Nevermind that it isn’t calculated in a sensible way.

Re: carrot eater (Jul 14 08:21),

That isn’t a ‘separate issue’.

Yes it is. You seem to have the meme stuck in your brain that says, “climate sensitivity is a constant in time and space and temperature and scale.” It isn’t on any of them. But perhaps it would help if you’d present a definition of climate sensitivity which you’d be willing to defend from now on. And I mean a scientific definition showing how it’s to be calculated, in what circumstances it applies and any caveats which would be helpful in discussing it.

BTW, it would also be helpful if you’d indicate where you think Willis is physically wrong in his thermostat theory. That is, do you disagree with his description of the daily weather cycle in the tropics? Do you think his test using satellite photos of the earth is incorrect? Or is it something else he’s done wrong?

carrot eater (Comment#48847)
A snowball earth is different in degree to a very large extent. But you can still get out of it, if you push hard enough, and we have a decent idea of how you can get out of it.

You can get out of it if you push “hard enough” — this is always true within the radiative forcing concept — but it isn’t very helpful. Deglaciation events are a very active area of current research, and some of the most plausible mechanisms are not described within RF.

The implication would be that RF is too simplified to account for some long-term variability, and thus trying to constrain the “sensitivity” using the long-term records might be comparing apples and oranges.

I don’t understand what your problem is.

I’m trying to ask questions about some of your points which are either unclear to me or seem different from my understanding. Does that imply a “problem”?

Yes it is. You seem to have the meme stuck in your brain that says, “climate sensitivity is a constant in time and space and temperature and scale.”

I’m not saying that at all. But I’m saying that it’s utter nonsense to just say that the climate is extremely insensitive to changes in RF, except for all those times when it wasn’t. Willis has a lot more work to do before he’s got anything resembling a theory that is consistent with observations.

Re: carrot eater (Jul 14 10:51),

Willis has a lot more work to do before he’s got anything resembling a theory that is consistent with observations.

Last I knew the GCMs didn’t work on the ice ages well using sensible values either. Willis’ theory seems to work well with current observations. And the theory is new, so trying to use conditions tens of thousands of years ago to give you an excuse to ignore it isn’t very useful. Even Mann only asks us to go back 1000 years on his multi-proxy reconstructions. Try showing me a physical problem which can be tested and please, your definition of climate sensitivity.

Last I knew the GCMs didn’t work on the ice ages well using sensible values either.

Ongoing area of work, but it’s physically feasible with the understanding of physics that we have. With a tiny sensitivity, you are moving far, far away from there.

And the theory is new, so trying to use conditions tens of thousands of years ago to give you an excuse to ignore it isn’t very useful.

You’ve got ice ages, you’ve got the past century, you’ve got the cooling after a volcanic explosion – lots of observations to try to explain. If Willis’s theory isn’t consistent with any such observations yet, then is it useful? Not yet.

Even Mann only asks us to go back 1000 years on his multi-proxy reconstructions.

? The reconstructions are to try to document what happened over the 1000 years, not come up with a new physical theory as to why. Of course, once you have a reconstruction, you move onto that step.

Try showing me a physical problem which can be tested and please, your definition of climate sensitivity.

Same as the usual Charney. The change in global surface mean temp for a given sustained change in RF, observed on time scales such that fast-time scale feedbacks (water vapor, clouds) have responded entirely and the ocean catches up. Not including slow things like some ice sheet dynamics.

Something you’ve got to be extremely careful about, if you’re trying to back it out by looking at a forcing that changes at high-frequency, and is regional, like the seasons.

Re: carrot eater (Jul 14 11:43),

Climate Sensitivity: The change in global surface mean temp for a given sustained change in RF, observed on time scales such that fast-time scale feedbacks (water vapor, clouds) have responded entirely…

Ok, first of all note that you’re limiting your definition to RF (I assume Radiative Forcing). Now let’s look at Willis’ theory again. He has two components to his thermostat; the clouds and the thunderstorms. The clouds will not particularly affect the CO2 forcing, but the thunderstorms will. They raise large amounts of heat high above the surface due to evaporation of water. This, especially at night, will allow heat to be radiated to space, bypassing the CO2 trap. Indeed, any extra CO2 in the higher parts of the atmosphere will make it easier for the heat to be radiated to space since there will be more GHG there to radiate it.

Now, if this thermostat does indeed exist, and I have been noticing that you’ve not been anxious to point out any flaws in the theory itself; just what you see as possible problems based on your definition of Climate Sensitivity; then it bypasses the whole climate sensitivity problem since the excess heat is eliminated daily by convection and either reflection of incoming sw radiation or emission high in the atmosphere of lw radiation. IOW, throw all the CO2 you want in the troposphere, it doesn’t affect the ability of the thermostat to regulate surface temperature.

Oliver,

As carrot eater said, you reverse the process.

In other words, if a positive change in CO2 increases temperature – through various feedbacks – by three degrees, then a negative change in CO2 will decrease temperature by three degrees through those same feedbacks.

For example, if a doubling of CO2 increases temperature by 1 degree, but that increase water vapour enough to increase temperature by a further 1 degree, then we have a positive feedback.

Likewise, if a halving of CO2 decreases temperature by 1 degree, that will decrease water vapour enough to reduce temperature by a further 1 degree. That is also a positive feedback, in that it is a feedback operating in the same direction as the original change.

A negative feedback would be in the opposite direction as the original change.

David,
I thought that was what I described earlier.

But it still does not explain ice ages and deglaciations, since Anthropogenic CO2 forcing presumably did not exist at the time and could not have been the “triggering” forcing in either direction.

oliver,

Oh. I thought that you said that if sensitivity is high then it only goes one way. Apologies if I misunderstood.

No-one is invoking anthropogenic CO2 to explain ice ages, so I am not sure what you are arguing against. There have certainly been changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration in the past, however.

We also know that there have been significant changes in global temperature. The only way to explain these changes is if climate sensitivity to changes in forcing is high. If it was as low as Willis suggests, for example, the earth could never get out of a particular climate state, and that is completely at odds with what we know of the earth’s history.

Geez!

When these three changes in Earth’s orbit—its shape, the tilt of the Earth’s axis, and the wobble of the Earth’s axis—are combined, they can explain why we get glacial and interglacial periods.
If the same change (force/power!) creates WINTER and SUMMER, NIGHT AND DAY (and the temperature differences can be large!) (and at the poles continuous night and days too!) why is it hard to see that interglacial and glacial periods are depending on the earth’s orbital patterns as well? There is a 3 million mile difference in Earth’s proximity to the sun when the shape of the Earth’s orbit changes. That’s huge. Plus, just like everything else, the Sun changes as well.

There are plenty of folks who have confirmed and are confirming these things.
Some recent papers are listed here for example:
http://www.theresilientearth.c.....erglacials

Willis takes on the understanding of clouds. Willis rocks.

Heat is convectively pumped latitudinally as well as higher in altitude and the heat trapped by greenhouses equatorially is released more poleward where the energy released to space is more than would otherwise occur. Greenhouse gasses trap energy at the equator and release it more poleward.
==============================

Liza (Comment#48952)
When these three changes in Earth’s orbit—its shape, the tilt of the Earth’s axis, and the wobble of the Earth’s axis—are combined, they can explain why we get glacial and interglacial periods.

Yes, these are always plausible explanations, but then two questions arise immediately: can one show that this always explains glaciations/deglaciations with some fairly fixed timing, and if not, why at some times but not others?

Geez indeed!