But I would have thought it would have been nice to give the political wars a rest for one day.
At least the red button does not have the word “Easy” on it. See the Staples commercials with the “easy” button and the tag line: “That was Easy”
bugs:
Some people don’t get the English sense of humor.
And some people have no sense of humor.
Carrick, it’s a double bad day for em… Santa haters and that embarrassing ol’ red button…
Bugs: ” But I would have thought it would have been nice to give the political wars a rest for one day.”
Is that because you are losing?…
Losing? No, not at all, the IPCC has been consistent from day one, and there has been no change from it’s initial, core findings. If anything the arrival of the ‘luke warmers’ has confirmed it’s assesment. The only real debate, from day one, has been climate sensitivity.
Pound for pound, the English have the best sense of humour in the world. Bloody hell, it’s their only redeeming feature!
P.S. If you stare at the Squiggly Lines too long, you miss out on other stuff.
@Andrew_KY
That mouthpiece in the video was called Comical Ali. If I may adopt one of his more famous lines for our purposes, “Deniers are committing suicide by the hundreds on the melting ice of the North Pole.”
sHx,
How about this one:
“I am not talking about the American people and the British people. I am talking about those Deniers. … They have started throwing those snow shovels, but they are not snow shovels, they are Denialist booby traps to kill the children.”
Andrew
Andrew_KY (Comment#64250) December 25th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
“Losing? No, not at all…â€
-Baghdad Bugs 😉
I think it is more a case of Baghdad Watts. He continually comes up with errors. Look at Goddards ice prediction of a ‘recovery’, for example. The UHI research that is never finished. His inability to decide if it’s even actually warming or not. As soon as he says it is, he says it’s not.
In today’s NYT Judah Cohen “explains” the cold winter in the US and Eurasia by global warming. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26cohen.html?ref=opinion
I feel that his logic is twisted at best but I am no climate scientist. Do these explanations make sense to anyone?
Thanks
“The only real debate, from day one, has been climate sensitivity.”
Masterful! English humour take note!…
bugs (Comment#64244)
December 25th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
“Losing? No, not at all,…”
Jimmy Haigh (Comment#64273) December 26th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
bugs (Comment#64244)
December 25th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
“Losing? No, not at all,…â€
Bugs – you are the Black Knight you are!
The accepted science has only been refined over a century of research, the IPCC has not had to change it’s case for AGW, nor the fundamental science behind it over the course of it’s existence. Those who are against the IPCC have split into two camps now, the ‘lukewarmers’ and the ‘d****’. (can’t use the ‘d’ word here). The lukewarmers accept the fundamental science, as they must, but argue that the warming will be no more than 1-2C, the ‘d****’ can’t decide if it is even warming, or if the fundamental science is even correct, or, if it is warming, then that is a ‘good thing’.
bugs,
Do you think the refusal of the IPCC to change is a sign of its being correct or of its inability to conform to reality?
Your cosmology of belief over looks one vital fact: the predicted climate crisis ain’t happening. And every time you and yours try to claim that heavy cold winters are a sign of warming, or that the theory of global climate disruption is intact, the sound you hear is not people laughing with you, but at you.
bugs:
Those who are against the IPCC have split into two camps now, the ‘lukewarmers’ and the ‘d****
I wouldn’t say all the “luckwarmers” are “against” the IPCC.
Most “luckwarmers” accept IPCC physical science, they are just putting the sensitivity towards the lower end in terms of accepted range of values…with all that entails towards impact on climate from anthropogenic forcings… Most “warmingists” put it at the top end of the range, with similar implications of that choice.
Huh bugs.
I accept the IPCC almost completely. I object to two things.
1. A sentence in chapter 4 where Jones/Trenberth dismissed McKittricks work without referencing any know literature.
2. briffa’s choice of graphics in chapter 6.
If you like I will post a powerpoint of all the problems with models. Does repeating criticism of models made by the IPCC count as being a skeptic now?
Here is the problem you face with lukewarmers. we accept the science. we dont accept some of the behavior of a small number of scientists. We think the science can and does survive this behavior, so we have NO PROBLEM saying the behavior was not best practices.
Mosh, I admit I don’t take the WG2 or WG3 reports very seriously. Actually I take them about as seriously as a typical Joe Romm post.
steven mosher (Comment#64356) December 27th, 2010 at 11:45 pm
Huh bugs.
I accept the IPCC almost completely. I object to two things.
1. A sentence in chapter 4 where Jones/Trenberth dismissed McKittricks work without referencing any know literature.
2. briffa’s choice of graphics in chapter 6.
If you like I will post a powerpoint of all the problems with models. Does repeating criticism of models made by the IPCC count as being a skeptic now?
Here is the problem you face with lukewarmers. we accept the science. we dont accept some of the behavior of a small number of scientists. We think the science can and does survive this behavior, so we have NO PROBLEM saying the behavior was not best practices.
No. You have a big problem saying the IPCC is mostly correct. McIntyre can’t bring himself to do so. He acts like he has OCD when it comes to pursuing individuals and maligning them, but he can’t let the words pass his lips “The IPCC is mostly correct, AGW is real”.
Next “Heartland” meeting, get up in front of them and read from the IPCC report and tell them it’s mostly correct. Tell them that a large number of scientists are actually observing best practice, despite a problem with a small number of scientists. (And I don’t think you are right, I’m just going along with your logic for the sake of this argument.)
Interesting post for bugs (and others) to read over at his favorite blog WUWT:
It is not that the simple law is false, just that there are a number of other simple laws opposing it. In the case of climate we don’t even know what some of these other laws are, so we can’t explain what we see. That is where we should be looking.
Ya know, some day scientists are gonna invent
something that will outsmart a rabbit.
~Bugs Bunny (1953).
I take people who think climate sensitivity is 1C as seriously as I take people who think it is 6C.
bugs, I wouldn’t classify most people who attended Heartland as “lukewarmers”. Many of them still don’t think the earth has even warmed over the last century.
Stuck on stupid.
“Many of them still don’t think the earth has even warmed over the last century.”
How much are they supposed to believe “the earth has warmed” over the last century? .8C? What if they believed it was .45C? or .10C? or .0001C? Which is correct Rev. Carrick?
Andrew
“No. You have a big problem saying the IPCC is mostly correct. McIntyre can’t bring himself to do so. He acts like he has OCD when it comes to pursuing individuals and maligning them, but he can’t let the words pass his lips “The IPCC is mostly correct, AGW is realâ€.
Sorry you are wrong. When people have asked me on Judith’s blog what I would recommend after climategate it was simple.
1. delete a sentence in chapter 4
2. replace a graphic in chapter 6.
BUT, you and people like you have so little faith in the science that you seem to think that simple corrections will destroy the science. Or worse, you worry that this will give a PR victory to skeptics and you care more about that PR victory than you do about good science.
As for McIntyre. You know his position. As a policy maker he would consider the IPCC to be the best science has to say today. his point: It needs to be better. As far as his position on lukewarming? he does not believe in numbers below lindzen. In my book anything below lindzen is a unsupportable position, sub luke warmer. The real question is Mc a warmist? (3C and above) he’s not an alarmist (6C)
I kind alike Boris’ approach
0 to 1C: :ignorati
1C to 3C :luke warmista
3C to 6C :warmista
6C + : alarmista
0 to 1C: :ignorati
1C to 3C :luke warmista
3C to 6C :warmista
6C + : alarmista
Thats a sublime range of beliefs, there. Whoda thunk less than 1C could separate stupidity from genius? 😉
Andrew
AndrewKY, what is genius really? People who spend a heck of a lot of time on a computer and an internet connection telling other people that their energy consumption is causing the planet to warm a fraction of one degree and there needs to be something done about it? lol
“AndrewKY, what is genius really?”
liza,
The warmers who comment here say it’s believing in unverified and adjusted sets of numbers. This doesn’t match the dictionary def, but evidently that’s what warmers have agreed it means. 😉
Andrew
Andrew_Ky, that’s weird; because my little sister has an official genius level IQ number; a MEASURE of intelligence and ability to understand complex issues and problems and she thinks just like we do about this issue. LOL! 😉
One can have genius level IQ as measured by standard tests and still be ignorant about a particular subject. Ignorance is a measure of knowledge, not intelligence. As such, ignorance is curable…
BUT, you and people like you have so little faith in the science that you seem to think that simple corrections will destroy the science. Or worse, you worry that this will give a PR victory to skeptics and you care more about that PR victory than you do about good science.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. If you read the IPCC reports and the blogs out there, there are scientists who are actively researching AGW, and former scientists, and they are actively debating the sensitivity and methods used to evaluate the models. It’s all interesting stuff, and it meand the IPCC report is going to be wrong in some more areas, and it doesn’t bother me at all. Well, it does bother me, because it means that there is a huge uncertainty, and that is a real problem. When the NH sea ice retreats at the rate the ‘alarmists’ would have predicted, then other ‘alarmist’ claims of above 6C start to have more credence.
I completely understand how Jones and Mann reacted, and any normal human being would have done the same. If you read the blogs of those who were ‘requesting’ information, they were doing exactly what Jones said they were doing, only looking for errors. That is all they were after. Scientists challenge each other all the time, that is clear and obvious. But they don’t try to destroy research, they try to advance it. The requests for data and the use it is put to are all over the blogs. Just look at the latest farce in New Zealand. The d***** are proclaiming utter nonense, that they have found errors in the temperature record, due entiryely to their hard work, and the the official record is no completely different. Utter fantasy. The record has been checked and it substantially the same.
A similar thing happened with McIntyre and the ‘Y2K’ error. Another example of an insignificant error blown out of all proportion. McIntyre milked it for all he was worth, using the error to attempt to humiliate scientists and denigrate them. If you don’t believe me, just look at who his ‘dog whistle’ tactics brought out, and read his blog. He knows what the audience wants, they want blood, and that’s what he feeds them. My guess, and it’s purely a guess, is that it’s all about him and his ego.
Look at the McLean paper on the lag between enso and the temperate record. Another paper that says one thing, and is used as a tool to attack climate science and climate scientists.
Annan took part in a paper with Michaels on the evaluation of models. The paper was rejected. He said he thinks it was because Michaels wasn’t prepared to just do what the paper was about, evaluate models, but pushed the politics too hard and was rejected on those grounds, as papers will be. He was quite prepared to go out there and challenge the way models are evaluated, but he knows you don’t go out there and turn a challenge into something more. Another paper he wrote himself that also challenged the evaulation of models was accepted. So, criticism is good, science is advanced, but push that criticism too hard, it will be rejected.
As for McIntyre. You know his position. As a policy maker he would consider the IPCC to be the best science has to say today. his point: It needs to be better. As far as his position on lukewarming? he does not believe in numbers below lindzen. In my book anything below lindzen is a unsupportable position, sub luke warmer. The real question is Mc a warmist? (3C and above) he’s not an alarmist (6C)
McI has no position. His only position is himself.
Dewitt Payne, I know that. That’s why there’s a winky at the end.
Having a sense of humor is also a sign of intelligence. Having a degree in and a vast knowledge of the Earth and is geological history and the data that supports it also helps in this subject. So did you look up the Global DSDP records yet or not?
DeWitt Payne (Comment#643810
“As such, ignorance is curable…”
.
At least for some people.
Bugs,
.
Please do remember that climate scientists can be influenced by political inclinations as well. The people who rejected the Michaels/Annan paper are (surprise) climate scientists, who could very well bring their own political agendas to the peer-review process.
.
You seem more than ready to suspect the motives of those who express doubt about extreme AGW predictions, yet seem to believe those who support extreme AGW are as pure as the driven snow. A more realistic position is that climate science is in reality dominated by people with very similar politics and philosophical views, and that alone is reason to hold a skeptical position about the validity of their work. It is the absence of political balance in climate science that is of concern to many, including me.
I completely understand how Jones and Mann reacted, and any normal human being would have done the same. If you read the blogs of those who were ‘requesting’ information, they were doing exactly what Jones said they were doing, only looking for errors. That is all they were after. Scientists challenge each other all the time, that is clear and obvious. But they don’t try to destroy research, they try to advance it.
And if Jones and Mann were really good scientists they wouldn’t care, in fact, they’d welcome it. Finding errors is how science advances. Feynman argued that one should be most skeptical of one’s own work.
Your last sentence is incredibly naive as well. Scientists are human. Human beings take great pleasure in humiliating others. Otherwise no one at all would watch a movie like Borat and German wouldn’t have the word schadenfreude in the language.
Most IPCC scientists are enviro-wack-jobs/ substance abusers masquerading as scientists… we should all vote to entrust them with the world economy
Speaking of which, have you read the comments at Judith Curry’s on the two radiative transfer threads? I really shouldn’t let myself get sucked into that sort of thing when the end result is so obvious.
The signal to noise ratio in the comments there seems to be very small. It’s approaching WUWT and RC level, unfortunately.
I think it has been conclusively demonstrated that you can’t do science by blog. The formal publishing process, for all it’s faults, is still superior.
Bugs,
“I think it has been conclusively demonstrated that you can’t do science by blog. The formal publishing process, for all it’s faults, is still superior.”
I have no idea where that came from.
Jeff Id, Steve Mc, and the two Ryans were pretty clear about their problems with the Steig et al Antarctica warming paper right from the start… and that was all laid out in blogs; the arguments in the final published paper may have been more polished and complete, but were essentially the same… too few principle components retained to generate a meaningful spacial represenation. The Yamal ‘dirty dozen’ was a clear corruption (or perhaps ‘deception’ would be better) of science, even though that was only made apparent in blogs. The doubts/problems with the ‘Hockey Stick’ reconstruction were endlessly belabored on blogs before McShane’s formal paper. Being technically correct has little to do with the forum or format, and even less to do with formal review and publishing.
I dunna what you’re talking about bugs, I’ve seen lots of good science discussion on blogs that wouldn’t have happened had it been left to the peer reviewed process.
In fact it’s just a silly argument that you are trying to advance that science only gets advanced by peer-reviewed pubs.
DeWitt Payne (Comment#64388)
I agree about Judith’s blog. Way too much noise, and yes, it is approaching WUWT and RC… too bad.
Carrick (Comment#64395)
Great minds post at the same time on the same subject.
MikeC (Comment#64387),
“Most IPCC scientists are enviro-wack-jobs/ substance abusers masquerading as scientists… ”
You mean, like Lindzen and Christy? OK, OK, maybe cigarettes count as ‘substance abuse’…. Mr. Obama, are you listening?
“I think it has been conclusively demonstrated that you can’t do science by blog. The formal publishing process, for all it’s faults, is still superior.”
“doing science”
Doing science is what an author does before he writes the paper. The paper ADVERTISES the science.
what you meant to say
“I think it has been conclusively demonstrated that you can’t do science Publishing by blog. The formal publishing process, for all it’s faults, is still superior.”
with that clarification I would agree. However, properly, structured I believe the journals (or someone) could do a superior job by “blog” if they wanted to.
The structure would be the same but several things could be improved.
1. no need for constrictive word counts
2. Open anonymous review.
3 preservation of rejected papers.
I’d sell tickets. and adwords. very tight demographic.
a year costs 200 bucks.. 60,000 subscribers
figure if they let McIntrye publish and staged on online back and forth between him the team reviewers, you could sell tickets. not sure how many
but science as a blood sport. if they had virtual ring girls … a slam dunk
Re: DeWitt Payne (Comment#64388)
I took a look at the thread DeWitt mentioned at Curry’s blog. It is a mess indeed. I think bugs’ comment needs to be read in this context.
For a scientific conversation (as any other conversation) to get anywhere, the people involved have to first agree implicitly on certain basic beliefs that will serve as the foundation of everything that follows. You cannot have a serious talk with somebody who systematically keeps questioning the evidence for everything you say.
Scientific journals avoid this problem by rejecting summarily any papers that try to pull that type of trick, when the paper’s thesis is obviously nonsense: alternatives to Einstein’s theory of relativity or perpetual motion machines, for instance. There are always borderline areas (such as cold fusion), but in general the message is clear, and necessary. It sets up a bar; it tells the prospective author “if you want to talk to this audience, you need to accept these basic, well-established facts as at least true to an excellent approximation, and then move on from there.”
To avoid turning into a madhouse, a popular blog like Curry’s may have to end up resorting to this kind of moderation. She would just have to come out and say that discussion of basic radiative physics (for instance) is off-limits, and that anybody who does not accept the basic greenhouse effect, as it is currently accepted by every scientist from Lindzen to Hansen, for (say) a hypothetical planet without water vapor should go debate his (mis)understanding of physics elsewhere. This is not really a very high bar, and Curry, as a physical scientist, is better qualified than most bloggers out there to set and enforce this kind of rule.
MikeC (Comment#64406),
I have no idea what ‘everclear’ is. Never used LSD. Maybe you could bring yourself to make a substative comment… or maybe not.
H Julio,
.
I agree that restricting comments to those based on acceptance of well confirmed basic physical science would reduce the noise level a lot. But I think there are three problems:
1. This eliminates the possibility that someone who really does not understand something, but wants to learn, will have their misunderstanding explained. (Some might argue that this is so rare a case that it makes no difference; I am not certain either way.)
2. It requires a huge effort in terms of moderation, and that moderation needs to be both prompt and politically neutral; not easy to achieve. Outright banning of repeat offenders to avoid the need for constant moderation is not so simple… changing ‘handles’ and IP addresses can get around efforts to ban certain individuals.
3. The temptation to use moderation as a means to suppress technically meaningful comments the moderator does not like for political reasons is always present (see RealClimate, Tamino, and a host of others).
I don’t see any simple solutions, especially at high traffic blogs.
Maybe a ‘membership account’ for each person who wants to comment (say $5 up front) and an associated password for each account would work: any comment that violates the blog rules would result in loss of $1 from the commenter’s account.. reach zero balance and your password expires. Money has a way of focusing minds. Make only comments within the rules and your $5 would last forever. Reading the blog would be free for everyone.
I think a lot of the kooks hang out at Judy’s because they imagine she is reading everything they write. And they take her silence at their nonsense as consent to the nonsense.
She clearly likes a free wheeling debate. thats good. But the s/n is suffering. There are certain pairs of people who should just get a room.
Basically her blog needs a moshpit. when 2 or three people get into it and stray off topic, they need to be directed to take there fight to the moshpit or thunderdome. A permanent thread where the clueless beclown themselves
She simply tells them to take their fight to the thunderdome thread. Same for Oliver Manual posts. Thunderdome or the MoshPit(tm).
A good moderator could also do that. That way people get to talk and display their stupidity and we are provided entertainment
SteveF (Comment#64415) December 29th, 2010 at 9:27 am | Reply w/ Link
MikeC (Comment#64406),
I have no idea what ‘everclear’ is.
180 proof. grain alcohol. nasty stuff to put in the sunday school punch bowl.
SteveF… you know what they say, you cannot solve the problem until you admitt… but when I say “most IPCC scientists”… you infer that to mean former IPCC scientists, I’d say substance abuse is most likely your problem…
Mosher… proof that you have absolutely no redneck in your blood… real everclear is 190… although I prefer to cook it down to about 175 or so and add a little fresh fruit (berries are best)… takes that yucky zing off of it
MickC,
“I’d say substance abuse is most likely your problem…”
And I ‘d say disconnection from reality is most likely yours.
How about AGC?
Anthropogenic Global Cooling?
0 to -1C?
-1 to -3C
-3 to -6C?
> -6C?
Please discuss…
awwwwwww…. does the po po need a tissue?
… or a crack pipe cleaner?
Re: SteveF (Comment#64416)
Hi Steve,
I agree it is difficult and time-consuming, but I think the blog owner needs to be proactive at nipping those sorts of zombie threads in the bud, or else the blog becomes unusable. When a totally clueless person makes their first outrageous post, it’s OK to spend a little time trying to educate them, but after that, if they are not really willing to listen, there is no point to continue.
Perhaps at that point the blog owner should simply intervene and declare that no more replies to that particular post will be allowed. That way you do not actually censor the kooks, you just save a lot of other people the time they would have wasted trying to reason with them.
(I’m not sure I like the idea of having to pay to post. I know it *would* deter a lot of people–including me!)
And yes, I agree that the moderation policies at those sites you mention are rather obnoxious. I have always thought, in particular, that Tamino’s blog’s title was a sad joke. But there is also such a thing as having your mind so open that your brains fall out, and I would not want that to become a description of Curry’s blog.
Julio,
“I’m not sure I like the idea of having to pay to post. I know it *would* deter a lot of people–including me!”
I doubt you would ever pay for a post… only people making off-the-wall comments would be paying! If you didn’t want to pony up $5 to get started, I would be happy to pay $5 on your behalf; one more voice of reason is worth that much at least. 😉
Well, thanks, Steve! (What can I say–I’m a tightwad, really.)
Julio,
In Portuguese: Mao de vaca…. so tight-fisted that your hand resembles that of a cow! Perhaps Spanish has a similar expression?
Re: SteveF (Comment#64433)
“Mao de vaca”! Really? No, I can’t think of anything equivalent in Spanish. We do have “agarrado”, which comes from “agarrar”, to hold tightly to something. But nothing nearly as fanciful as a cow’s hand!
And if Jones and Mann were really good scientists they wouldn’t care, in fact, they’d welcome it. Finding errors is how science advances. Feynman argued that one should be most skeptical of one’s own work.
Scientists care, but they are also human. But that is not what I was talking about. You don’t have to look to far even here to see people who don’t want to correct errors, but believe AGW is a complete hoax by a bunch of frauds that is designed to bring down western civilisation. I would see why scientists would want to have nothing to do with them. McIntyre is portrayed as someone who wants to make sure the science is right, but when has he ever gone out there and said that it is substantially correct, that they fundamentals are correct? The song and dance over a Y2K bug was cheered long and hard by the fans, I can guess someone called it the “final nail in the coffin of AGW”, it amounted to very little at all. The temperature record is still fundamentally correct, it’s still warming. When does he ever gravely tell us that? The latest paper from his ‘team’ tells us that there is no AGW warming, it’s just UHI.
bugs (Comment#64435),
“You don’t have to look to far even here to see people who don’t want to correct errors, but believe AGW is a complete hoax by a bunch of frauds that is designed to bring down western civilisation.”
I suggest you don’t engage those people, but do engage people who are focused on getting the science right… with cogent technical arguments.
“The latest paper from his ‘team’ tells us that there is no AGW warming, it’s just UHI.”
I don’t think that is a fair description. They do suggest that there is a significant UHI effect; that is not the same as suggesting that the earth as a whole has not warmed. The ocean surface has warmed, and there is no UHI over the ocean.
My Colomobiana, the lovely Mrs. hunter, says the term you are looking for in espanol is ‘codo’, irt an equivalent for ‘mao de vaca’.
bugs now admits the IPCC is getting stuff wrong, which is 180o off of what he and the rest of the believers were asserting just over a year ago, with claims of ‘gold standard’ etc.
But it is still the wicked skeptics who are at fault.
Believers need it to be all ways for their faith to work.
Steve Mosher,
A a question if I may: when you and Tom Fuller laid out what climategate e-mails revealed in your excellent book, where di you think the discussion would go? Since so little honest discussion of the e-mails was carried out in in the public square, I for one am not surprised that wilder and wilder speculations about what is going on has occurred.
Until a deep critical and credible review of climategate and cliamte science takes place, I think the public square is going to have a lot of noise in the signal.
Since that day seems far away, what is happening at Dr. Curry’s is going to be fairly common.
SteveF:
I don’t think that is a fair description
Then again, nobody has ever accused bugs of being fair in his descriptions. He just expects everybody else to be fair, but apparently gets his own set of rules.
I personally don’t agree that UHI can be a significant player (I think at most it accounts for about 10% of the warming on land since 1950, or 3% of global). For one thing, there is an inconsistency of the latitudinal pattern of global warming (peaks around 65°N) seen in the data versus the latitudinal population distribution (peaks around 30*N).
Somehow remote, rural areas have all of the warming and the large urban areas that Goddard claims are important show a lower rate of warming.
Steve Mosher,
A a question if I may: when you and Tom Fuller laid out what climategate e-mails revealed in your excellent book, where di you think the discussion would go? Since so little honest discussion of the e-mails was carried out in in the public square, I for one am not surprised that wilder and wilder speculations about what is going on has occurred.
########
I will try to recall this as best I can. We certainly had no hope that certain skeptics would stop their braying about “frauds” In fact, there mischarging of the case is PART of the reason why the independent reviews had such an easy time avoiding the real issues. It’s like this. A couple of guys were guilty of tax evasion. The skeptics charged the whole community with mass murder. So the defenders were given an easy job of it. defend against the murder case.
Our sense of how the community would respond was probably a bit off the mark. We ruled out a sacking for Jones or Mann. That was not in the cards and not justifiable. I think we thought Jones might retire after a suitable period or be given some kind of post outside of doing direct research. Mann, we thought, would soldier on. We did not rule out counter attacks against skeptics, since they had already played that hand. We anticipated a retrenchment on both sides and not much movement in the battlelines. Our hope, the chapter I outlined but never wrote, was our view of a science going forward. Judith curry was a model of what we wanted to see.
I certainly expected more journalists to get on the FOIA trail, but sadly they seemed content to cover the overcharging of the skeptic case and the defense against that. On reading the book a week after finishing it, I thought. This is way to effing hard to get. too nuanced, not sound bitable. I thought “noble cause corruption” would get more traction but given the battlelines that were drawn, that view of things just hasnt resonated. Credit for that metaphor is due to steve Mc. I interviewed him and Anthony for the book and steve really struggled to make sense of the scientist behavior. “what were they thinking!”
we knew it wasnt fraud. They actually BELIEVED in the rightness of what they were doing. I still think noble cause corruption is the correct rubric to class the behavior under. and we knew that one side would complain it wasnt noble and the other would claim it wasnt corrupt and that we should not give up our day jobs.
Nutshell: we probably expected that a few more AGW believers would climb out on a limb with us and toss someone or something under the bus. wishful thinking. coralling skeptic responses into a FOCUSED attack on the weakest points ( The FOIA and ch 6) was a lost cause. Not to say I havent tried.
thats about it
despite the strategy to frame the debate, change the subject… as well as the usual druggie rhetoric… Cancun results in nothing but a few more tons of GHG’s created by all of the luxury jets flying the dopers there n back… the planet would have been better off had they stayed home and engineered some new mushroom genes
certainly expected more journalists to get on the FOIA trail, but sadly they seemed content to cover the overcharging of the skeptic case and the defense against that. On reading the book a week after finishing it, I thought. This is way to effing hard to get. too nuanced, not sound bitable. I thought “noble cause corruption†would get more traction but given the battlelines that were drawn, that view of things just hasnt resonated. Credit for that metaphor is due to steve Mc. I interviewed him and Anthony for the book and steve really struggled to make sense of the scientist behavior. “what were they thinking!â€
we knew it wasnt fraud. They actually BELIEVED in the rightness of what they were doing. I still think noble cause corruption is the correct rubric to class the behavior under. and we knew that one side would complain it wasnt noble and the other would claim it wasnt corrupt and that we should not give up our day jobs.
Nutshell: we probably expected that a few more AGW believers would climb out on a limb with us and toss someone or something under the bus. wishful thinking. coralling skeptic responses into a FOCUSED attack on the weakest points ( The FOIA and ch 6) was a lost cause. Not to say I havent tried.
thats about it
The evidence of harrassing FOI requests is on McIntyres own blog. The FOI officer was quickly convinced that the FOI requests were harrassment after a short perusal of his blog. That’s the best you have got. I wonder what makes McIntyre run with the whole “I’m just in it to ensure the correctness of the science” claim, while doing nothing to say “the science is correct”. It wouldn’t be too hard to do, now would it? At the same time, there has been a continual stream of suggestions that fraud and deception are behind the IPCC and the science of AGW. The audience knows what it is there for. And what is ‘audited’ is cherry picking of the leading edge science, which is continually being re-assesed and refined, while ignoring the bleeding obvious. Where is the questioning of the fraud behind the Arctic ice extent?
I don’t feel hugely energetic right now in terms of writing anything very complicated. As a simple exercise, I decided to quickly revisit the everchanging Hansen adjustments, a topic commented on acidly by E.M. Smith (Chiefio) in many posts – also see his interesting comments in the thread at a guest post at Anthony‘s, a post which revisited the race between 1934 and 1998 – an issue first raised at Climate Audit in 2007 in connection with Hansen’s Y2K error.
Where is the audit of Smith? He still can’t seem to get his head around anomalies. The “Y2K” error? He still can’t get over that? The “everchanging” adjustments? Yes, they adjust, and they refine. Why frame it like that, like it is Hansen comitting fraud?
bugs (Comment#64444) – the UK ICO does not agree with your myopic assessment of the UEA’s failure wrt FOI:
Steve,
Thanks. That is an excellent explanation of what you are trying to do.
I think you and Tom were far too optimistic and went way too far to allow for good will in the climate catastrophe movement.
Think on this:
The problem of noble cause corruption is not the noble cause, it is the corruption.
Look at the drivel bugs comes up with to defend the FOIA evasion by Jones for a micro demonstration of this. Think on the deliberate strategy to not actually investigate by the investigators. Consider the money train that is flowing regularly through every level of the climate catastrophe promotion industry.
Here is an interesting splice of Moberg and satellite data. Blue is Moberg, grey is Moberg error bars, red is instrumental, all downloaded from the Nature SI; purple is satellite. At right is the post-1850 blow-up. You can see that the post-1980 satellite temperatures are high but not off the charts relative to Moberg’s reconstruction.
To even contemplate use of Moberg, the Hockey Team has to rely entirely on the splice of CRU records, rather than satellite records.
How did that satellite vs CRU (and other surface based temperature records issue resolve)? The satellites were wrong, Moberg was right. So in McIntyres own words, the actual temperature record is ‘off the charts’, and we have a hockey stick.
Where is it? Isn’t it his responsibility to archive it? No, he just links to another website, which is now gone. According to the McIntyre logic, that’s his fault.
In this post, he starts to make accusations of fraud, which TCO picks up on. But when you click on more, it leads to nowhere. What standard of record keeping are these auditors using? Don’t auditors have to have even higher standards than those of the people they are auditing. Poke around some more. There are plenty more dead links and missing data.
curious (Comment#64446) December 30th, 2010 at 5:36 am
bugs (Comment#64444) – the UK ICO does not agree with your myopic assessment of the UEA’s failure wrt FOI:
The scientists worked with the FOI officer, and were concerned that the requests were not genuine, but harassment and vexatious, which, if you read the websites, would appear to be the case. If the error was made by the FOI officer, then that can be rectified. The idea that it was all done in secret by the scientists is wrong.
“braying about “frauds†In fact, there mischarging of the case is PART of the reason why the independent reviews had such an easy time avoiding the real issues. It’s like this. A couple of guys were guilty of tax evasion. The skeptics charged the whole community with mass murder. So the defenders were given an easy job of it. defend against the murder case.”
What a bunch of BOLOGNA.
Re: hunter (Comment#64437)
Thanks! Where I come from, a “codo” is just an elbow, but I see from the Diccionario de la Real Academia that the word can be used to mean “stingy, miser” in parts of Latin America. (Who would have thought? You learn something new every day!)
bugs – I followed it at the time and your attempts to revise UEA’s response to the FOI requests as anything other than obstructive are pathetic. A proper, full and professional response to the orignal requests would have put the issue to bed. However, as we now know, not only was there no desire to meet FOI/EIR requests, CRU’s data management and archive practices meant it was not possible.
As far as your claim that it was “all done in secret” is “wrong” is concerned, it was only through the release of the CRU emails that the full reality behind their obstuctive behaviour was revealed.
Steven Mosher knows there is deception involved in Climategate.
Deception = fraud
He just won’t say ‘fraud’ because he doesn’t have the fortitude.
Andrew
bugs:
The scientists worked with the FOI officer, and were concerned that the requests were not genuine, but harassment and vexatious, which, if you read the websites, would appear to be the case
Actually it appeared to me that the FOI officer colluded with Jones to prevent the release of data that the law required to be released.
If you want people to decry Smith’s nonsense (that hardly seems necessary, mostly he’s his own worst spokesman), you could start by being a bit more honest about situations like this.
Some of the science is right on, other portions (paleoclimate, much of the impact of climate change) have been subject to heavily politicalization and distortion. This has in fact been far more over the top than any abuse you perceive McIntyre to have done, if for no other reason that it gets rehashed almost daily in the scaremongering media.
You could admit that too in a more direct way than “the scientists are human too.”
I think Lucia should do a post on the (Global Warming-Caused?) Earthquake we had this morning.
“The epicenter is “highly irregular, extremely rare, unprecedented,†John Steinmetz, director of the Indiana Geological Survey at Indiana University, told the Star Press at Muncie.”
I think Lucia should do a post on the (Global Warming-Caused?) Earthquake we had this morning.
“The epicenter is “highly irregular, extremely rare, unprecedented,†John Steinmetz, director of the Indiana Geological Survey at Indiana University, told the Star Press at Muncie.â€
I’m ain’t buying anything with neutrinos in it anymore. Not even Gatorade. 😉
Andrew
Bugs said: requests were not genuine, but harassment and vexatious,
Ahem. Is there a written exception from the FOIA rules for “not genuine” requests? Are there clear criteria given for recognizing requests as such?
Steve Mosher said: we knew it wasn’t fraud. They actually BELIEVED in the rightness of what they were doing. I still think noble cause corruption is the correct rubric to class the behavior under.
Steve, to me the fact, that they believed in their own rightness is worse than fraud. It frightens me.
Somewhere I’ve read that the worst atrocities are best performed with the noblest aims on mind…
Bugs,
You are woefully unaware of the facts:
“The evidence of harrassing FOI requests is on McIntyres own blog. The FOI officer was quickly convinced that the FOI requests were harrassment after a short perusal of his blog. That’s the best you have got. ”
WRONG.
“From: Phil Jones
To: santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Tom Wigley
Subject: Re: Schles suggestion
Date: Wed Dec 3 13:57:09 2008
Cc: mann , Gavin Schmidt , Karl Taylor , peter gleckler
“Ben,
When the FOI requests began here, the FOI person said we had to abide
by the requests. It took a couple of half hour sessions – one at a screen, to convince them otherwise showing them what CA was all about. Once they became aware of the types of people we were dealing with, everyone at UEA (in the registry and in the Environmental Sciences school – the head of school and a few others) became very supportive. ”
This was written in 2008. Lets see what Jones was referring to.
1. “when the FOI requests began here [cru] That would be 2007.
In 2007 the records at CRU indicate that there were
TWO requests. One from willis eschenbach and one from Steve.
2. These were not harassing. CRU answered them and delivered a portion
of the information UNDER the 18 hour time constraint.
3. The investigations found that CRUs behavior in answering these was not
helpful ( cru delayed and delayed before finally relenting in part) This behavior was admosnished.
4. The FOI people saw no evidence of harassment, what they saw was the
‘kind of people” these are.
“I wonder what makes McIntyre run with the whole “I’m just in it to ensure the correctness of the science†claim, while doing nothing to say “the science is correctâ€. It wouldn’t be too hard to do, now would it? ”
Because one can never say the the science is correct. One can just say it has not been proven incorrect. which part of popper dont you get?
“At the same time, there has been a continual stream of suggestions that fraud and deception are behind the IPCC and the science of AGW. The audience knows what it is there for. And what is ‘audited’ is cherry picking of the leading edge science, which is continually being re-assesed and refined, while ignoring the bleeding obvious. Where is the questioning of the fraud behind the Arctic ice extent?”
I love this logic. ‘at the same time there has been a stream”
If you want to talk about INDIVIDUAL WRONG DOING then name the individuals and we can discuss that. Steve Audits what he chooses to audit. That is called specialization. And yes recons are the leading edge. ALL THE MORE REASON to understand the uncertainty. all the more reason NOT to make an icon of the hockey stick. mcintyre didnt do that.
EW (Comment#64463) December 30th, 2010 at 12:32 pm | Reply w/ Link
Bugs said:
requests were not genuine, but harassment and vexatious,
Ahem. Is there a written exception from the FOIA rules for “not genuine†requests? Are there clear criteria given for recognizing requests as such?
######
the requests were not vexatious. HAD THEY BEEN, the officer could have denied them. Instead The requests were:
1. combined into one request ( as allowed by guidelines)
2. processed and responded to in 18 hours or less.
3. Jones wrote a 1200 word response and posted 4 agreements.
The notion that the requests were harassing and vexacious was not supported by any of the investigations. The investigations found that CRUs behavior was in violation of the law, and that their behavior caused them more trouble than compliance with the law would have.
Basically it goes like this. IF you make a vexacious request you get a nice letter from Palmer saying so. If you make a request that will take MORE THAN 18 hours ( in their estimation) you get a denial. ( I got one of those )
So, 50 or so requests were made. The officer “combined” them into one request. he determined that the one request could be answered in less than 18 hours. Jones answered it in less than 18 hours.
What consumed their time was trying to figure out ways to object to requests, rather than simply fulfilling them. As the investigations noted. Cru brought the trouble on themselves.
Andrew_KY (Comment#64455) December 30th, 2010 at 7:49 am | Reply w/ Link
Steven Mosher knows there is deception involved in Climategate.
Deception = fraud
He just won’t say ‘fraud’ because he doesn’t have the fortitude.
#####
You don’t believe that. you believe every word I say but you don’t have the fortitude to say it. I convinced you long ago that I was right about this, but you are just afraid of saying you are wrong.
you’re not the only one with ESP.
bugs (Comment#64445) December 30th, 2010 at 2:32 am | Reply w/ Link
I don’t feel hugely energetic right now in terms of writing anything very complicated. As a simple exercise, I decided to quickly revisit the everchanging Hansen adjustments, a topic commented on acidly by E.M. Smith (Chiefio) in many posts – also see his interesting comments in the thread at a guest post at Anthony‘s, a post which revisited the race between 1934 and 1998 – an issue first raised at Climate Audit in 2007 in connection with Hansen’s Y2K error.
Where is the audit of Smith? He still can’t seem to get his head around anomalies. The “Y2K†error? He still can’t get over that? The “everchanging†adjustments? Yes, they adjust, and they refine. Why frame it like that, like it is Hansen comitting fraud?
###########
Funny Smith is a friend of mine and he allows me to post criticisms of him on his web site. And Anthony allowed zeke and I and Nick to post a critical artcile of McKittrick ( and smith and anthonys SPPI article) on his web site.
You see bugs because we have no consensus to defend we get to attack each other and still be friends.
Unlike the Team there is no thin green line to defend. Heck, I think I even agreed with a criticism that deep climate made of SteveMc.
That’s the strategic advantage we have. The Team MUST PROTECT its weakest member. because they are a team. those outside the team have the freedom to attack each other, support each other,ignore each other.
You should study warfare
“you’re not the only one with ESP.”
Steven, I don’t need ESP. I just observe nobody writes books called “Climategate” unless there’s a good reason to. All The Global Warming Scientific Elite just happen to be accidentally incompetent together at the same time about the same subject. Suuuuuuure…. It’s Harmonic Convergence.
Remind me again, you think you’re a Scientist, right?
Andrew
Andrew_KY (Comment#64469) December 30th, 2010 at 3:23 pm | Reply w/ Link
“you’re not the only one with ESP.â€
Steven, I don’t need ESP. I just observe nobody writes books called “Climategate†unless there’s a good reason to. All The Global Warming Scientific Elite just happen to be accidentally incompetent together at the same time about the same subject. Suuuuuuure…. It’s Harmonic Convergence.
Remind me again, you think you’re a Scientist, right?
Andrew
##########
Huh. I explained very clearly what motivated me to write the book on Judith’s blog when some idiot suggested that I did it for profit.
I watched the media between nov 19th and the 29th to see if anybody would follow the FOIA. ( on the 19th I told andrew revkin that was the storyline.
I saw the skeptics saying all sorts of stupid things. Especially about hide the decline and the harryreadme. i saw the media focusing on the charges of fraud. i saw everybody missing the story.
On the 26th of november, Tom asked me how I would frame things.
I wrote
“These emails reveal what many suspected. The behavior of scientists behind closed doors does
not comport with the high standards we demand of them. Their integrity is vital to public trust
and public trust is key to taking effective action. Words and PR can only go so far and as we have seen they can backfire. Nothing establishes trust like right action. What’s the next right action to take.
On the 29th, he asked me if I would write a book, by the 30th the outline was done. The focus was the last chapters. What should change going forward?
Since I saw it basically as a trust issue I suggested the following.
free the data; free the code; open then debate.
I will have to say after attending AGU that I saw a bunch of focus on data availability. I also saw a focus on communicating with the public better. I know of two new efforts to redo the surface record ( one of our recommendations) and more attention to the problem of uncertainty.
Tim Palmer gets the message. Trust has been eroded, like it or not. Now is the community and government doing everything in its power to reduce uncertainty?
So, if you asked me what i wanted out of writing the book I would say this.
Commitment to open data and code.
Participation by more stats guys in paleo and GCM work.
A ground up revision of the temp series.
A few lessons learned in PR and compliance with regulations.
Steve Mosher,
Thanks for that summary.
I do wonder a bit though. In reading the emails, is is clear that those involved are very ‘human’, with all the normal human failings and foibles people are subject to.
What I struggle with is the failure of any of those involved to stand up and demand more. More integrity from themselves and their associates. More consideration of uncertainty. More sense of noblesse oblige (or even common decency) to people requesting data. And most of all, more humility in their evaluation of their own work.
Is it, as Jeff Id has suggested, a failure due to lack of maturity/experience; a lack of education in the school of hard knocks?
I do not pretend to know, but I do know that the tone and content of the UEA email messages continue to bother me, no matter how many times I read them. I wonder if the public disclosure of these messages has given those involved a measure of perspective/introspection, or if it has made any impression at all.
I hope that it has, but I fear it has not.
Fortunately, none of the doper scientists listen to Mosher and continue to make the same ol ridiculous mistakes… thus, hide the decline and missing heat remain the order of the day
What I struggle with is the failure of any of those involved to stand up and demand more. More integrity from themselves and their associates. More consideration of uncertainty. More sense of noblesse oblige (or even common decency) to people requesting data. And most of all, more humility in their evaluation of their own work.
The scientists I have read seem to see it the way I do, there is a concerted attack on science, similar to that by the creationists. They have no problem disclosing data, it’s the act of taking data and using it to personally denigrate scientists for incompetence and corruption that is the problem. Read the link to CA link I gave. McIntyre is asked by TCO is he is implying corruption, and no wonder. The audience knows what he means. The inference is always there. The irony is that McI is using the incorrect satellite data to do so, accusing the CRU of getting it wrong, and in the process using language that, when the correct satellite data is used, disproves his accusations. At the same time he is using data he only links to, which is now a dead link. Piling up the irony on the irony. Where is the data? What is he trying to hide? Doesn’t he know about audit integrity, the standards the public should not only expect, but demand? Is it because he is in the pay of big oil? I’m not saying he is in the pay of big oil. No, not at all, but when you see such shoddy scientific practice, the question must be asked. I could go on for as long as he does, but you get the picture.
MikeC (Comment#64472) December 30th, 2010 at 9:05 pm
Fortunately, none of the doper scientists listen to Mosher and continue to make the same ol ridiculous mistakes… thus, hide the decline and missing heat remain the order of the day
So far, the science has been mostly correct, which is amazing when you consider the complexity of the problem they are addressing.
… if you say so bugs…
… care to give me your latest on bigfoot, pyramid power and Nessie?
No such thing, no such thing and no such thing.
… you mean they didn’t vanish due to global warming?
Comment#64470
Mosher must be doing something right to draw hits from such disparate commenters.
The Climategate revelations seemed at the time to represent the ‘bugsification’ of climate science such that the science, the particular policy goals that brought so much new funding to the science, the wider ideological context of those policies and the careers and egos of the anointed became so intertwined that any criticism or any kind on any aspect of the enterprise was deemed an assault on the whole. Circling the wagons became a major feature of AGW.
A number of articulate warmists have made the entirely reasonable point that AGW does not depend on the Hockey Stick thus any flaws in Prof. Mann’s methodology don’t change the substance of the debate. A fair point which only serves to make the ferocious wagon-circling more curious.
It is not as if the siege mentality has dissipated after Climategate either. Markedly non-dogmatic figures like Judith Curry, Roger Pielke Jr or Mike Hulme (or lucia or Mosher for that matter) still get cast as heretics and radical threats to The Consensus.
I note that bugs continues the mythic struggle against Steve M in fresh comments above. Because bugs is theologically barred from considering the possibility that there is any objective weakness in the Hockey Stick oeuvre, he always faithfully returns to the theme of malice and dark motives by those who examine that work critically.
I note that bugs continues the mythic struggle against Steve M in fresh comments above. Because bugs is theologically barred from considering the possibility that there is any objective weakness in the Hockey Stick oeuvre, he always faithfully returns to the theme of malice and dark motives by those who examine that work critically.
I used McIntyres own logic to prove the hockey stick. When he discards the CRU temperature record, which he scorns, in favor of he satellite record. In fact, the satellite record he used was in error, CRU has been demonstrated to be more correct.
The Climategate revelations seemed at the time to represent the ‘bugsification’ of climate science such that the science, the particular policy goals that brought so much new funding to the science,
The absurd conspiracy theory that always lurks just beneath the surface. Climate is always researched, no matter if AGW is true or not. There is no conspiracy.
SteveF (Comment#64471) December 30th, 2010 at 7:31 pm | Reply w/ Link
Steve Mosher,
Thanks for that summary.
I do wonder a bit though. In reading the emails, is is clear that those involved are very ‘human’, with all the normal human failings and foibles people are subject to.
What I struggle with is the failure of any of those involved to stand up and demand more. More integrity from themselves and their associates.
#########
Mc and I discussed this at length.. and we kinda agree with Jeff
“Is it, as Jeff Id has suggested, a failure due to lack of maturity/experience; a lack of education in the school of hard knocks? ”
From my own experience you were always expected to put your material to the acid test of your worst critics. murder boards. And releasing adverse results was a badge of honor. People who gave crafty answers were called to account and demoted. First time I saw that happen I was greatly impressed.
The other thing was the utter lack of any notion of selling a customer.
These of course are gross generalizations from very limited data. Trying to make some sort of sense of the behavior. The whole notion of withholding data was foriegn to me. I mean you get a great deal of joy plopping a 600 page report on your opponents desk and saying ” find a mistake, if you can.”
That’s why I found it so funny when they challenged Odonnel et al to publish a paper. christ, that’s asking for a beating.
I also dont get the whole team concept. Every R&D team I worked on in industry was designed to have people with radically different views of things.
kind of a darwinian approach to idea generation. shrugs.
At its heart I think there is a bit of the culture clash between engineers/scientists going on. a bit of that to be sure…
I also dont get the whole team concept. Every R&D team I worked on in industry was designed to have people with radically different views of things.
kind of a darwinian approach to idea generation. shrugs.
At its heart I think there is a bit of the culture clash between engineers/scientists going on. a bit of that to be sure…
You act as if it’s a battle between CRU and the rest of the world, with Michael Mann and a couple of assorted hangers on. The CRU had three full time staff. That’s it. There are research centers around the globe, with hundreds of scientists actively researching and publishing papers. They don’t really care about you, if they even know you exist, or what you think. They have work to do, and they are concentrating on that.
Mc and I discussed this at length.. and we kinda agree with Jeff
“Is it, as Jeff Id has suggested, a failure due to lack of maturity/experience; a lack of education in the school of hard knocks? â€
A lack of maturity? Honestly?
What is McI saying now?
As CA readers recall, Hansen’s Y2K error resulted in a reduction of US temperatures after 2000 relative to earlier values. The change from previous values is shown in red in the graphic below; the figure also shows (black) remarkable re-writing of past history since August 2007 – a rewriting of history that has increased the 2000-6 relative to the 1930s by about 0.3 deg C.
Re-writing history. He’s close to scraping the bottom of the barrel, He hasn’t called them Nazi’s yet, but if I was a scientist, I wouldn’t give him the time of day.
Bugs, isn’t McIntyre right that some of the changes to historical data are quite astonishing? Even 1934 data are not settled yet.
Niels A Nielsen (Comment#64484) December 31st, 2010 at 4:48 am
Bugs, isn’t McIntyre right that some of the changes to historical data are quite astonishing? Even 1934 data are not settled yet.
The data were settled when they were taken, including long ago in 1934. McIntyre is a statistician, he knows that. Taking raw data with flaws and errors is finding the best way to adjust for those errors is an ongoing process. He also knows that. The Y2K error was insignificant for the global average. Ditto. Revising the data and detecting errors is ‘rewriting history’ if Hansen does it, but when McIntyre does it, it is a noble and fearless pursuit of the truth. It is truly amazing how his framing of the issue is so readily accepted.
Look at that McIntyre, he’s continually trying to get the temperature record lower, does that mean he is a Nazi. I’m not saying he is, but the question must be asked, for the good of statitics and the honor of the professionalism of statisticians everywhere. Don’t mention the war.
Bugs, the surface temperature record is GISSTEMP, HADCRU etc. Those are the data used by me you and others to represent temperature trends. And they are the numbers used in other research. (It must be frustrating to be researcher and user of these everchanging data)
“the figure also shows (black) remarkable re-writing of past history since August 2007 – a rewriting of history that has increased the 2000-6 relative to the 1930s by about 0.3 deg C.”
Has anyone explained the change of data that Mcintyre observed? The change is no doubt documented somewhere, right Bugs? So, please explain to us what is going on?
As McIntyre phrases the question:
“The changes in the GISS US temperature adjustments since August 2007 are very large (~0.3 deg C) relative to the size of the trend in the most studied and measured area of the globe. Surely that deserves to be noticed and explained regardless of the direction. The size of the change is surely very surprising regardless of the direction.
Hansen et al 2010 is a very recent publication on GISS methodology, but did not contain a reconciliation of why the new adjustments differ so remarkably from adjustments believed to be satisfactory at the time of AR4. It is surely Hansen’s job to present a mathematical rationale for why these new adjustments are correct relative to the former adjustments. Why didn’t the peer reviewers ask Hansen for such a reconciliation? At present, I don’t know whether the changes arise in modifications at GISS or at USHCN or both. If people critical of my merely noting the new adjustments can clarify this point, I’m sure that readers would appreciate such a reconciliation.”
Bugs’ desperation here reminds me of Comical Ali: “Today, the tide has turned, we are destroying them. “
I’m desperate! My thermometer says 1 degree C this morning in Southern California ! Maybe it’s really 0, .6 or .8 or .4 or .3 outside because the temperature collecting device is too close to the house! Help me!
😉
“I also saw a focus on communicating with the public better.”
Steven,
Did this include beginning to be honest?
Andrew
liza,
And all the snow we had on the ground the last 2 weeks is gone. I guess I have believe in Global Warming now. Except for there are piles of snow that haven’t melted. The earthquake must’ve had something to do with it, and the neutrinos. It’s very confusing. 😉
Andrew
Hoi Polloi (Comment#64489) December 31st, 2010 at 6:25 am
Bugs’ desperation here reminds me of Comical Ali: “Today, the tide has turned, we are destroying them. “
No, doesn’t remind me of that at all. Comical Ali lasted a few weeks, the IPCC is still here after 23 years, the temperature trend is up, the ice extent is down.
Andrew_KY (Comment#64492) December 31st, 2010 at 7:59 am
It is confusing. But they’ve got people like Bugs and The United Nations (both have such a great reputation) to help spread the enlightenment. 😉
Hansen et al 2010 is a very recent publication on GISS methodology, but did not contain a reconciliation of why the new adjustments differ so remarkably from adjustments believed to be satisfactory at the time of AR4.
Who said that they thought they were satisfactory? Every research group that puts out a temperature record comes up with a slightly different answer. Zeke has put up some of his own, and explained how and why he came up with the answer he got. The records all come up with the same conclusion, it’s getting warmer, even allowing for slightly different methodologies. Science is a process of continually revising and refining research. It takes McIntyre to spin that into a conspiracy theory.
” It’s getting warmer Thank goodness! We prayed it would.”
Quote heard round the world after The Little Ice Age.
I also like the way McIntyre uses WUWT. WUWT has no qualms about making any number of nutty conspiracy theory claims and repeated and blatant accusations of deliberate fraud. McIntyre is too classy for that, so he just links to WUWT, and commends them on their fine work. How to have your cake, and eat it too.
Sheesh bugs, if hiding, adjusting, suppressing data (and opinions that don’t agree) or ignoring official codes of conduct and conflicts of intrest don’t discredit these men; tell us what will? how many ways can you say climate scientists can’t do anything wrong?
steven mosher (Comment#64481),
In industry, I have found that there usually is a lot of give-and-take and friction between people with different views of a technical issue. What I saw only rarely (fortunately) was corruption of the process via political means (efforts to “pull the plug” on research someone did not agree with, behind the scenes suppression of “undesirable” information, even efforts to get someone demoted or fired). In every case, this was someone with a very questionable technical position but a lot of influence higher up in the organization. Obscene. The circling of the wagons by the ‘Team’ suggests to me that the there was a lot of weakness in the science.
Have a Festive New Year is lucia’s message at the top. From this morning’s WSJ, “In the Chinese calendar, 2011 is the Year of the Rabbit, which is predicted to be a peaceful year, conducive to artistic pursuits.” Maybe this applies:
If BS were music, bugs would be the Philadelphia Philharmonic.
(Oops. Inappropriate ad hom. Sorry.) 🙂
bugs (Comment#64493)
December 31st, 2010 at 8:29 am
“… the IPCC is still here after 23 years, the temperature trend is up, the ice extent is down.”
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA… I’m gonna have an extra few tonight just for you
Happy New Years all
It is worth revisiting the Soon and Balyunis paper. From Wikipedia.
Baliunas received her M.A. (1975) and Ph.D. (1980) degrees in Astrophysics from Harvard University. Her scientific awards include the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy from the American Astronomical Society, awarded in 1988. She also received the Derek Bok Public Service Prize from Harvard University. In 1991 Discover magazine profiled her as one of America’s outstanding women scientists.
She has also received a political award, the Petr Beckmann Award for Scientific Freedom from Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, a body associated with the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine in recognition of her work criticising the theory of global warming.
[edit] Astrophysics
Baliunas’s main focus is on astrophysical research.[2] She studies visible and ultraviolet spectroscopy of stars; structure, variations, and activity in cool stars; evolution of stellar angular momentum; solar variability and global change; adaptive optics; exoplanets of Sun-like stars.
[edit] Global warming and solar variability
In 1992, Baliunas was third author on a Nature paper[3] that used observed variations in sun-like stars as an analogue of possible past variations in the Sun. The paper says that
“the sun is in an unusually steady phase compared to similar stars, which means that reconstructing the past historical brightness record may be more risky than has been generally thought”.
Around 2000, she entered the global warming controversy. The work of Willie Soon and Baliunas, suggesting that solar variability is more strongly correlated with variations in air temperature than any other factor, even carbon dioxide levels, has been widely publicized by lobby groups including the Marshall Institute[4] and Tech Central Station,[5] and mentioned in the popular press.[6]
Baliunas is a strong skeptic in regard to there being a connection between CO2 rise and climate change, saying in a 2001 essay with Willie Soon:
But is it possible that the particular temperature increase observed in the last 100 years is the result of carbon dioxide produced by human activities? The scientific evidence clearly indicates that this is not the case… measurements of atmospheric temperatures made by instruments lofted in satellites and balloons show that no warming has occurred in the atmosphere in the last 50 years. This is just the period in which humanmade carbon dioxide has been pouring into the atmosphere and according to the climate studies, the resultant atmospheric warming should be clearly evident.[7]
The claim that atmospheric data showed no warming trend was incorrect, as the published satellite and balloon data at that time showed a warming trend (see satellite temperature record). In later statements Baliunas acknowledged the measured warming in the satellite and balloon records, though she disputed that the observed warming reflected human influence.[8]
Baliunas contends that findings of human influence on climate change are motivated by financial considerations: “If scientists and researchers were coming out releasing reports that global warming has little to do with man, and most to do with just how the planet works, there wouldn’t be as much money to study it.”[9] Baliunas’ own 2003 study with Soon et al. was funded by NASA, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the American Petroleum Institute.[10]
[edit] Controversy over the 2003 Climate Research paper
Main article: Soon and Baliunas controversy
In 2003, Baliunas and astrophysicist Willie Soon published a review paper on historical climatology in Climate Research, which concluded that “the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium.” With Soon, Baliunas investigated the correlation between solar variation and temperatures of the Earth’s atmosphere. When there are more sunspots, the total solar output increases, and when there are fewer sunspots, it decreases. Soon and Baliunas attribute the Medieval warm period to such an increase in solar output, and believe that decreases in solar output led to the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling from which the earth has been recovering since 1890.[11]
The circumstances of the paper’s publication were controversial, prompting concerns about the publishers’ peer review process. An editorial revolt followed and the publisher subsequently admitted that the conclusions of the paper could not be supported by the evidence and that the journal should have requested appropriate revisions prior to publication.[12]
She is associated with the extremely nutty (read their web site if you don’t believe me) OISM, which has taken a very activist political position on AGW and a distinctly fraudulent and anti science one at that. She is an astrophysicist, not a specialist in climate research. She came up withthe highly controversial, and counter to accepted science, idea that increasing CO2 content in the atmosphere will warm the climate, instead saying that all the climate variations were due to the sun and could be correlated to solar sun spots.
Guess what she was wrong. The solar cycle has been extremely quiet, the temperature is rising. The temperature has been rising, and she denied even that was happening, using the same erroneous sattelite data that lead McIntyre to inadvertently prove the hockey stick is true. That an astrophysicist could publish such a paper led to a revolt of the board of the journal that published that paper, because the process of publishing it was politically corrupted in the first place. People accuse the CRU of being politically corrupt, they were forced into a position of having to deal the the political machinations of others who were subverting the publishing system to come out with a paper that effectively denied that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that will warm the atmosphere when it’s concentration is increased. Time has vindicated them, the Soon and Baliunas paper was completely wrong, and in denying even the CO2 greenhouse effect, going against the fundamental science that is known to be right. They have disappeared, since their research was proven to be wrong in only a few short years, back to what they hopefully know something about, astrophysics. Their findings, however, will still be remembered and quoted by ‘skeptics’ around the world as being one more nail in the coffin of AGW.
Andrew
““I also saw a focus on communicating with the public better.â€
Steven,
Did this include beginning to be honest?
Andrew”
seriously andrew, Go walk the floor at AGU. listen to people talk, engage them. Mann is not the sum total of AGW. I had lunch with peter webster and we talked about ICOADS. there wasnt any spin, just good honest communication.
Write to a few scientists and ask them for help with data. You’ll see that almost all will be of help. Rasmus Benestad even answers my mails. I work with a climate scientist on code. He gives me credit. My point about getting to the PARTICULARS in this matter is to avoid the kind of obtuse things that bugs says. To avoid painting all climate science with a broad brush. That was Mann’s mistake with Mcintyre.
Bugs:
“You act as if it’s a battle between CRU and the rest of the world, with Michael Mann and a couple of assorted hangers on. The CRU had three full time staff. That’s it. There are research centers around the globe, with hundreds of scientists actively researching and publishing papers. They don’t really care about you, if they even know you exist, or what you think. They have work to do, and they are concentrating on that.”
Jones, melvin,obsborn, briffa, I think when I counted there were 13. But when I speak of the “team” its much broader than CRU. Futher you miss the point. Before McIntyre wrote his paper in 2003 the mails show that Briffa and Osborn were planning a similar attack. In fact Osborne asked for the same data that Mc requested for exactly the same reason. Read the mails were mann chastises briffa. Jones was caught in the middle. So was ed cook. Cook in fact decided to stop working yn that feild be cause he caught it from both sides. Dissent was not tolerated. the thin green line. Briffa and Osborn dropped their paper. If you read the mails you will see the pressure put on briffa. you will see mann putting the screws to Jones and others. hold the party line.
seriously andrew, Go walk the floor at AGU. listen to people talk, engage them. Mann is not the sum total of AGW. I had lunch with peter webster and we talked about ICOADS. there wasnt any spin, just good honest communication.
Write to a few scientists and ask them for help with data. You’ll see that almost all will be of help. Rasmus Benestad even answers my mails. I work with a climate scientist on code. He gives me credit. My point about getting to the PARTICULARS in this matter is to avoid the kind of obtuse things that bugs says. To avoid painting all climate science with a broad brush. That was Mann’s mistake with Mcintyre.
Did you accuse webster of fraud and incompetence? Did say “Webster rhymes with dumpster”? Did you put stupid cartoons of him on your web site? Perhaps you could give McIntyre a few tips. I notice it was all Manns fault with McIntyre, McInytre is, in fact, blameless. If it wasn’t for Mann, McIntyre would never have made a pun on anyone’s name, and he would be telling everyone that AGW is, in fact, based on sound scientific theory. It’s all Manns’ fault. Who would have guessed.
Bugs,
Please read Mann’s many email messages; they speak for themselves.
He comes off as an miserable, arrogant SOB (and not just to people outside the team!) with chip on his shoulder and a overriding political agenda. All your complaints about Steve McIntyre’s reaction to Mann’s antics will not change that.
The change that McIntyre is talking about is obvious to anyone who has spent 10 seconds looking at these issues. The change occurred only to the US48. Or, more specifically, it was primarily TOB adjustments not present in the rest of the world.
In his Dec 26 update, McIntyre coyly says that it is “entirely possbile” that the USHCN switch is the cause, which is McIntyre-ese for “that is the cause but I’m not going to spend those 10 seconds verifying that Hansen isn’t the shyster that I perpetually make him out to be.”
Can anyone point me to a post on ClimateAudit that admits to Wegman’s plagierism, rather than attempting to deflect criticism by showing other plagierism? Can anyone point me to a post on ClimateAudit that admits that it was M&M who were mining the MBH algorithm for Hockey Sticks, and not Mann? Perhaps with a post called “McIntyre & McKitrick: Texas Sharpshooters?” Are there any posts titled “UAH – Adjusting the Adjustments”? Watts can post to ClimateAudit whenever he wants. Should DeepClimate ask for the same courtesy? Let’s see how chummy everyone is when professional malfeasence is the topic of discussion.
Of course there is a “thin green line.” There are so many weaklings to defend.
Sounds like any number of conflicts going back thousands of years… total joke
cce (Comment#64509) January 1st, 2011 at 10:39 am | Reply w/ Link
Can anyone point me to a post on ClimateAudit that admits to Wegman’s plagierism, rather than attempting to deflect criticism by showing other plagierism?
###############
I think its incombant on those making charges to detail what counts
as plagiarism. And then also to agree to judge other cases in the same
manner. WRT wegman. Whoever authored the parts referenced from bradley,
has a citation and copyright issue and not a plagiarism issue. That is the sources are cited but the citation practice could be more diligent. There is
also a copy right issue as some of the text should have been more liberally
quoted. Those issues are remedied much the same way NOAA remedied it’s
issue with Watt’s work. Ammend the report and note the change.
The SNA is more problematic as it has severe citation issues and on it’s face
purports to be “original” work.
The issue of raising bradley was motivated by a desire to get certain people
to take a principled stand on what counts as plagarism.
“Can anyone point me to a post on ClimateAudit that admits that it was M&M who were mining the MBH algorithm for Hockey Sticks, and not Mann? ”
Huh, that was the point of the whole excercise. The algorithm clearly mines for hockey sticks. Jeffid has shown this pretty convincingly as has McShane.
Calibrating in a time of rising temps will result in a supression of variance.
Everybody in the field knows this. And a supression of variance in the reconstruction period entails a flatter stick.
“Perhaps with a post called “McIntyre & McKitrick: Texas Sharpshooters?†Are there any posts titled “UAH – Adjusting the Adjustmentsâ€? Watts can post to ClimateAudit whenever he wants. Should DeepClimate ask for the same courtesy? Let’s see how chummy everyone is when professional malfeasence is the topic of discussion.”
I now of no evidence that would lead you to assert that Anthony has the right to post anything he wants any time he wants to CA. You are simply are mistaken with how posts go up on CA and on WUWT. Now theoretically a few people could post to CA anytime we want, but that is not how it works.
there are 2359 posts at CA
About 160 by John A.
about 70 by Anthony
a few dozen by gorish
a few dozen by roman M
The occassions on which Anthony posts are well constrained. There is a similar situation on WUWT. Theoretically, I could post anytime I want, but that’s not how it works.
I suppose DeepClimate can post to WUWT . All he has to do is send me a post and After Charles verifies that he in fact wrote it, which would require his name, I’m sure Anthony would post it. After all Tamino has an open invitation and does Mann and Gavin. Even you cce, go ahead.
“Of course there is a “thin green line.†There are so many weaklings to defend.”
That’s not the meaning of a thin green line. The thin green line is a reference to the thin blue line which references the thin red line. Heroic Highlanders.
So I don’t pick that metaphor lightly. You should not read it casually.
That the team saw themselves as a heroic embattled force is best captured by
Jones mail.. “the empire strikes back” although he funnily got the metaphor backwards.
Did you accuse webster of fraud and incompetence?
I’m not aware of steve accusing mann or jones of fraud. I am aware of him saying that they did not commit fraud. At the heartland conference. I am
aware of mann and others accusing Mc of fraud, to journalists and to potential
reviewers. This matter is especially bad since the claim was made in private and not correctable, until the mails were illegally copied. So yes, those
slanders were revealed by illegally copied mails.
” Did you put stupid cartoons of him on your web site? Perhaps you could give McIntyre a few tips. ”
I suppose you could link the stupid cartoon and then we could look at particulars like dates and then we could look at stupid cartoons passed between some climate scientists. If I were to give steve advice it would be this. If you want to to do a stupid cartoon of mann its best to do it in private like a chicken shit. Or if you want to call mann a fraud its best to do it in private like a gossiping old woman and not in the public sphere were a person could actually defend themselves. Or hide behind a moniker, like a douche bag.
“I notice it was all Manns fault with McIntyre, McInytre is, in fact, blameless. If it wasn’t for Mann, McIntyre would never have made a pun on anyone’s name, and he would be telling everyone that AGW is, in fact, based on sound scientific theory. It’s all Manns’ fault. Who would have guessed.”
Huh, I’m sorry but I would not hold steve “blameless.” For me there is no blame or no blame in this question. I think I put it to steve once that if it were any two other personalities involved it would not have gone down the way it did. Steve’s tenacity for one question. His attention to detail. His sarcastic wit. His skill at stats.Couple that with mann’s lack of honesty, sloppiness,self righteous victim mentality and self professed lack of statistical bone fides. whoa. that aint gunna end pretty, That will leave a mark. For me its just two human beings and I try to understand what lead to the final outcome. pretty funny actually.
SteveF (Comment#64507) January 1st, 2011 at 9:11 am
Bugs,
Please read Mann’s many email messages; they speak for themselves.
He comes off as an miserable, arrogant SOB (and not just to people outside the team!) with chip on his shoulder and a overriding political agenda. All your complaints about Steve McIntyre’s reaction to Mann’s antics will not change that.
I don’t know Mann personally, but I will accept for the sake of argument your claim that his is miserable and arrogant. So what?
Mosher says
His attention to detail. His sarcastic wit. His skill at stats.Couple that with mann’s lack of honesty, sloppiness,self righteous victim mentality and self professed lack of statistical bone fides. whoa. that aint gunna end pretty, That will leave a mark.
His professed attention to detail. I have already had a quick browse of some old topics he has put up. The attention to detail seems to be lacking. For example, the one where he beats up on Moberg.
He was so obsessing with the CRU data how it was wrong, that he completely missed analysing the actual satellite data, and finding out that CRU was right and the satellites were wrong. Where is the attention to detail there. Where did he do one even passing attempt at an ‘audit’ of the satellite data? It’s a fine myth, and one that he has sold very well, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Then, to top up the irony, he uses the satellite data to prove the hockey stick is broken. If you reject the incorrect satellite data, and use the CRU data, he actually ends up proving the hockey stick is right.
Bugs,
“I will accept for the sake of argument your claim that his is miserable and arrogant. So what?”
So he reacts very badly when anybody questions his work or that of his associates, or even expresses any doubt about high climate sensitivity. Mann is 100% counterproductive when dealing with people. He inhibits scientific progress, and inhibits resolution of scientific conflicts. He bullies and insults people (even other members of ‘the Team’) when they don’t do what he thinks they should. He is an intellectual coward, and will not engage anybody in public debate when he can’t control what is said by his opponents. The bottom line: he is very bad for climate science, and bad for the public image of science in general.
.
When you suggest that his personal issues with Steve McIntyre are all the fault of McIntyre, you just make people think you are disconnected from reality.
Happy new year to you Lucia & family.
thank you & all commentator’s i give a big hug (even bughug) for a great blog. look forward to the same next year 🙂
I have no problem calling Mann a fraud, he’s an outright agenda seeking political hack… no science
bugs:
Then, to top up the irony, he uses the satellite data to prove the hockey stick is broken. If you reject the incorrect satellite data, and use the CRU data, he actually ends up proving the hockey stick is right.
Even for you this is just a bizarre argument. It makes no sense at all.
Too much vodka?
The issues with Mann have to do with his attempts to paper over the “divergence issue” and the erroneous method he used for calibrating his proxies that led to his method producing red noise during the reconstruction period.
“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, it was a great play.”
Even for you this is just a bizarre argument. It makes no sense at all.
Did you read the link? Did you also notice that the CRU temperature record is assumed to be highly suspect, but the satellite record is not?
The issues with Mann have to do with his attempts to paper over the “divergence issue†and the erroneous method he used for calibrating his proxies that led to his method producing red noise during the reconstruction period.
I don’t think you are correct, but for the sake of argument, so what. A scientist progressed science, which has since progressed more. Spencer and Christy did pioneering work in creating a near surface temperature record from satellites. They screwed up, but the error has since been rectified. Where was McInytre thundering from the pulpit about that? Especially since their temperature record error led him to make an incorrect conclusion from their data.
“His professed attention to detail. I have already had a quick browse of some old topics he has put up. The attention to detail seems to be lacking.”
Suddenly Steve’s attention to detail, sarcastic wit and skill at stats are gone. He didn’t even notice the most obvious Loehle’s chronology screwups.
ds, your “striking” example of “McIntyres’ lack of attention to detail” is even more ridiculous than Bugs’. In the linked text McIntyre agrees with Julien Emile-Geay in his critique of Loehles and implicitely Mobergs proxy selection. Why is that a striking example of lack of attention to details?
Are you too lazy to find a posting by McIntyre where he celebrates Loehles reconstruction or…maybe it is not there?
“In the linked text McIntyre agrees with Julien Emile-Geay in his critique of Loehles and implicitely Mobergs proxy selection. Why is that a striking example of lack of attention to details?”
By the agreement, you mean his traditional “but Moberg! but MBH! but Wahl and Amman! but bristlecones!” mantra?
“Some nits are pointed out in Loehle methodology. I haven’t checked the correctness of these points.”
Why didn’t he? Why linking to Lubos Motl incorrect claims instead? Heck, we even have insinuations of plagiarism there. Steve, his wits and stat skills in a nutshell…
“Are you too lazy to find a posting by McIntyre where he celebrates Loehles reconstruction or…maybe it is not there?”
I didn’t say he celebrated it. He just glossed over its errors because, well, Loehle is on “his” side. It’s the same reason why so many “lukewarmers” refuse to criticize Watts or Monckton openly.
If it had been someone from the “Team”, making such silly mistakes as Loehle, we would have seen 3 years long Steve’s stream of consciousness on that very topic on CA.
ds (Comment#64540) January 2nd, 2011 at 10:56 am
Read the comments from that link and post from CA!
Bugs.
“I don’t know Mann personally, but I will accept for the sake of argument your claim that his is miserable and arrogant. So what?”
very simply. Mann had choices when he encountered steve’s requests for data and code.
1. simply give them.
2. deny them.
The bottom line is putting all the personalities and politics aside it was a mistake not to share the data and the code. Mann made a stupid mistake.
Further Mann had choices when steve persisted and went public with the
requests and the denials.
1. continue the denials
2. simply give them.
3. deny the data and code and impugn steve’s motives.
Mann made a stupid mistake. Even if one had concrete evidence of steve’s motives one is still better off sharing the data and code.
After Steve published Mann had yet another choice that involved CRU.
The offer was made to let CRU try to reconcile steve’s work and Mann’s work.
Again, stupidity reigned and this offer was denied.
You see bugs, I have no issue with mann be arrogant or sloppy or having an agenda. I have no issue with Mcintyre being sarcastic or whatever.
I do have an issue with people who believe in AGW being stupid. Making stupid PR mistakes that prolong a controversy and ELEVATE a critic, rather than taking the smart path of co-opting him. You see the same stupidity WRT o’donnell.
1st challenging him to write a paper
2nd: giving the paper 88 pages of grief.
what in god’s name were those idiots thinking and why doesnt somebody with an ounce of intelligence explain to them that you do not throw down a challenge to someone with Ryan’s skills and you do not write pages and pages of trivial objections. You should know that one of two things will result.
A. the paper will get published anyway and your obstructionist efforts
will be an epic fail.
B. the paper will not get published and your obstructionist efforts may
end up in the congressional record. a more epic fail.
don’t they understand the precautionary principle?
As long as you and others persist in the attacks on Mcintyre, you elevate him. you give him the status of folk hero to the people who follow him. the standards you use to judge his behavior are easily and readily turned back on the people you want to protect. You accentuate the memes that you really don’t want to. And you cannot help yourself.
The so what? the planet so what, your children so what, your grand children so what. BUT FOR the stupid behavior relative to Mc, you would have no climategate. BUT FOR climategate you arguably might have a different copenhagen and cancun.
So the issue is not who is right and who is wrong. Who was provoked and who was tweaked, who was arrogant and who was an ass. The issue is, the controversy elevated McIntyre. That’s a fact. You might not like it. you might try to deny it, but he was an IPCC reviewer. And the controversy was fueled by Mann’s choices. That’s unarguable. You look at all the editorials that briffa sent Jones in 2005. “hey Phil, the skeptics are getting a bunch of traction on this data denial issue.” And when you look at that press you tell me.
Did it make PRACTICAL SENSE for jones to follow Mann’s path. because that is what he did. Staring a pile of negative press about data denial, Jones changed his mind about sharing data and went down the mann path.
And now after climategate what do we see at AGU? sessions on transparency.
What do we see the Union of concerned scientists arguing for? transparency.
Yet, even while the practical outcome, more transparency, is praised, people like you cannot bring themselves to say. “maybe mann made a PR mistake when he refused to share data, maybe Jones made a mistake. ” No you can’t do that. You continue to defend the stupid. Mann wasnt stupid, steve was bad.
Guess what. Even IF steve was bad, Mann was stupid. The current progress toward more transparency shows that. Unless you want to call that stupid.
Your reading of the coverage of Loehle is most bizarre.
When Craig started to present his work the READERS of CA suggested
that he let us have a go at finding problems with it and playing the role
of ‘steve’ with craig. We challenged him and he was most gracious.
you wrote:
“I didn’t say [steve mc] celebrated it. He just glossed over its errors because, well, Loehle is on “his†side. It’s the same reason why so many “lukewarmers†refuse to criticize Watts or Monckton openly.”
I believe he linked to RC. praised gavin for his skills. All in all a pretty balanced presentation. Craig was working on a paper. the readers requested that we start a thread and do our best to find fault with craigs paper.
can I suggest that you read the entire history of an affair, all the comments .
Further. WRT Monckton and Anthony and the lukewarmers. There are a few
vocal people on the lukewarmer side. Its pretty safe to say that the self identified lukewarmers have no patience for monckton. In particular I’ve been very critical of him. WRT Anthony, I have plenty of issues WRT his positions
on certain scientific issues. I’ve made those criticisms clear over and over again. I’ve even done that on his blog. I think that most people criticize Anthony for the “science” he promotes on his site. Take for example, Goddard. My position here is pretty easy to understand. I would rather have blogs that display poor science, than mann’s climategatekeeping. That’s because I can read and think for myself. I frankly think Anthony’s editorial choices are nothing short of brilliant for his demographic. I would not say it is the best science or even good science or even science. It’s not.
The problem for those of us who believe in AGW is that we do not have people
with any imagination presenting the story. we have anonymous twerps like Tamino, and jerks like Romm and Lambert, and stuffy twits like Gavin. No sense of humor, no sense of audience. We might as well make a video of blowing school children up. Opps we did that.
get off my team. I don’t want people like you representing the belief in global warming.
It’s the same reason why so many “lukewarmers†refuse to criticize Watts or Monckton openly.
Talk about a statement so wrong! I can’t stop laughing.
I’ve got scads of posts tagged “Monckton”. I’ve criticized his “science”, his ad homs, his complaining about midwestern accents, his decision to complain about people’s looks, his invocation of hitler etc. See http://rankexploits.com/musings/tag/monckton/
Judith Curry now has a post, Blogospheric New Year’s resolution, on a code of conduct for effective rational discussion. Too little, too late.
“I will accept for the sake of argument your claim that his is miserable and arrogant. So what?â€
bugs,
To add my two cents on what others have said…
A more basic way of putting it would be that people’s arrogance sometimes prevents them from admitting that they are wrong or have made a mistake.
This kind of arrogance makes for bad science. Indeed, this kind of arrogance is one of the things that is considered childish behavior as opposed to mature/adult behavior.
Arrogance is a person’s incorrect idea of themselves. It’s an erroneous elevation of a person’s own sense of self. It’s not scientific. It interferes with honesty so, it matters.
Indeed. Well, not entirely. They have a sense of their current audience, but not of the wider audience they might have. It’s called preaching to the choir. Compare and contrast: Rush Limbaugh vs. anyone on Air America or Democracy Now. Ignore the politics and opinions and concentrate on the mechanics.
No, doesn’t remind me of that at all. Comical Ali lasted a few weeks, the IPCC is still here after 23 years, the temperature trend is up, the ice extent is down.
Comical Ali worked for Saddam, who as you might know was in power for 24 years. Another quote from Baghdad Bugs err Bob: “I have detailed information about the situation . . . which completely proves that what they allege are illusions . . . They lie every day.”
Lucia,
“his complaining about midwestern accents”
What?!? He should be drawn and quartered, in the best middle English tradition. Midwestern accents are nice.
@mosher
“I believe he linked to RC. praised gavin for his skills. All in all a pretty balanced presentation.”
Whining about RC pettiness? Insinuations of plagiarism? Fair and balanced, I get it.
Can you please point me to CA post where McIntyre acknowledges criticism from climate scientists AND he doesn’t include some snarks about beams in their own eye, etc?
“My position here is pretty easy to understand. I would rather have blogs that display poor science, than mann’s climategatekeeping. That’s because I can read and think for myself. I frankly think Anthony’s editorial choices are nothing short of brilliant for his demographic.”
So it’s ok Watts is feeding his demographic with poor science, since you personally know it’s a crap.
Geez.
@lucia
“Talk about a statement so wrong! I can’t stop laughing.
I’ve got scads of posts tagged “Monckton—.
I know what you’ve got. I also know I wrote “many”, not “all, and Lucia specifically”.
Show me scads of posts tagged “Monckton” on CA, the Air Vent, or other, self-proclaimed lukewormer blogs.
ds (Comment#64557),
FWIW:
I like Anthony, and have made a couple of guest posts at WUWT. However, I think that Anthony could do a better job of screening out the really crazy stuff. I don’t mind the (endless) discussions of possible solar influence, but posts on condensation of CO2 (as a solid phase) in Antartica are a bit much to take. Anthony would be well served to have a few people screen potential posts for obvious errors of fact.
mosher,
I missed your links to ClimateAudit refuting my assertions. It’s supposed to be the gold standard for statistical based criticism, right?
And I understand the reference completely. The “skeptics” are defending their ideology and (perhaps more importantly) the cottage industry that they have built for themselves. They also have egos no smaller than their usual targets.
The MBH algorithm especially mines for hockey sticks when you only keep the top 1% most-hockey-stick-like sticks as M&M did. Wegman did an admirable job rerunning their code and claming that he replicated those specific results. I missed the ClimateAudit post pointing this out, too. I’m sure that JeffID has done all manner of statistical tests showing what the NRC report and others have already shown. Can you show me where he criticizes M&M and Wegman for perpetuating their exaggerations of said flaws? There’s that line again. We’ll call it brown.
McIntyre leaves Watts in charge when he’s gone. If the content of his posts is restricted, then I apologize.
I doubt DC would want to post to a site like WUWT. But if McIntyre let’s him, I’m sure he’d jump at the chance to post to CA. Of course it would have to include all the petulance that McIntyre is known for, except directed toward him. That would be a good test of your “all’s fair in love and skepticism” theory.
Show me scads of posts tagged “Monckton†on CA, the Air Vent, or other, self-proclaimed lukewormer blogs.
You said they “refuse” to criticize monckton. I don’t see any evidence of that. Mostly ignoring Monckton “above the fold” with unflattering statements about Monckton appearing in in comments, and visiting my blog to chuckle in my comments, hardly constitutes “refusing” to criticize the guy .
Mosher,
You’re a phony
Your whole ‘Lukewarmer’ business is rubbish. It’s simple Marketing.
You listed your rationale and all it boils down to is that you accept the IPCC position. You really have no issue over and above that your climate sensitivity lies within the IPCC bounds. Remember how Lucia used to title those posts ‘Falsifying the IPCC…’… Oh yeah, them wasthe days.
You claim that one reason you were convinced was that you saw a talk at the AGU about some Bayesian statisitics showing CS to be about 2. Yet for some reason you spend your time complaining about some nobody at AGU over at Watts’ place. Why didn’t you post about your climate sensitivity guy?
Then these endless dull complaints about how Mann is so terrible and oh woe he wouldn’t give McIntyre some data…
Tell us, who has been more successful at convincing the science community? Mann or McIntyre?
I know and me replying to the things you say implies that must be right… And yes, you are quite possibly correct about Climate Sensitivity. But that’s what the IPCC has been saying for ages.
cce (Comment#64562) January 2nd, 2011 at 8:05 pm | Reply w/ Link
mosher,
I missed your links to ClimateAudit refuting my assertions. It’s supposed to be the gold standard for statistical based criticism, right?
###
sorry I missed your assertions, could you detail them. It’s not my assertion that CA is the gold standard, but if u have some assertions to make I will answer them. I have no issue whatsoever criticizing steve.
Then you will apply the same standards to others.
(I suspect You on the other hand cant even criticize mann, even anonymously)
“McIntyre leaves Watts in charge when he’s gone.
##### WRONG AGAIN, stupid twit.
“I doubt DC would want to post to a site like WUWT. But if McIntyre let’s him, I’m sure he’d jump at the chance to post to CA. Of course it would have to include all the petulance that McIntyre is known for, except directed toward him. That would be a good test of your “all’s fair in love and skepticism†theory.”
Actually Steve did give a whole thread to a climate scientist who wanted to question steve’s motives. Lorax. But if DC sends me a post with the guarantee that he stands behind everything he says, then I cannot see why it would not go up at CA. As with WUWT a real name is required for posters.
Oh and Steve
“That’s the strategic advantage we have. The Team MUST PROTECT its weakest member. because they are a team. those outside the team have the freedom to attack each other, support each other,ignore each other.”
This is more ‘Marketing’. There is no need for “The Team” to do anything, because it doesn’t exist. It’s a hallucination of yours. It’s a method of demonizing and dehumanizing.
Why do you maintain these myths, when you actually agree with their findings?
There is nothing that real scientists enjoy more than demonstrating someone else wrong. This is something you’d understand if you actually worked with scientists or did any science.
Mosher
“sorry I missed your assertions, could you detail them. It’s not my assertion that CA is the gold standard, but if u have some assertions to make I will answer them. I have no issue whatsoever criticizing steve. ”
It was the a couple of paragraphs beneath… Go read his post again.
“Actually Steve did give a whole thread to a climate scientist who wanted to question steve’s motives. Lorax. But if DC sends me a post with the guarantee that he stands behind everything he says, then I cannot see why it would not go up at CA. As with WUWT a real name is required for posters.”
Lorax is his real name?
Nathan (Comment#64569) January 3rd, 2011 at 2:15 am | Reply w/ Link
Mosher,
You’re a phony
Your whole ‘Lukewarmer’ business is rubbish. It’s simple Marketing.
###########################
devastating. First, it’s not my Lukewarmer business. The term orignated on a CA thread in a debate between those of us who believe in AGW and those who don’t. A thread on Hurricanes. I believe david smith actually coined the term.
basically for people who would place there bets on the low end of the sensitivity range.
“You listed your rationale and all it boils down to is that you accept the IPCC position. You really have no issue over and above that your climate sensitivity lies within the IPCC bounds. Remember how Lucia used to title those posts ‘Falsifying the IPCC…’… Oh yeah, them wasthe days.”
1. There is nothing inconsistent with accepting the IPCC “projection” of 2C per century and presenting data to “falsify it” IF yu read those threads you will find me taking issue with the terminology “FALSIFICATION” since I don’t think that term rightly describes things. but god forbid you should actually read threads and comments. unfortunately for you I tend to remember nearly everything I read and write. a search on the term “disconfirmation” will yeild you results and discussions between Lucia and I on that matter.
2. The issue is simple. people conflate the wide range of views that believers and disbelievers have. Simply because I believe in AGW does not mean that I have to sign off on some of the crap that passes the lips of others who agree with those physics. I get to like McIntyre’s work AND agree with the IPCC.
“You claim that one reason you were convinced was that you saw a talk at the AGU about some Bayesian statisitics showing CS to be about 2. Yet for some reason you spend your time complaining about some nobody at AGU over at Watts’ place. Why didn’t you post about your climate sensitivity guy?”
1. I was an eye witness to a meltdown.
2. I saw some people I respect, disrespected
3. The Talk about climate sensitivity was not at AGU, u clueless dolt.
the talk was a video, available to anyone. I forewarded it to Lucia
to have a look at. I forwarded it to Willis and suggested that he write about it as well. I get to pick what I want to write about. I think that Lucia and Willis do a much better job than I can of taking material like that and turning it into posts. My choice is as follows: I choose to write technically about the stuff I know. That’s surface temps and metadata for surface temps. I restrict my technical posting to areas where I actually think I have a fair command
of the stuff I am writing about. When I choose to write about the sociology of science ( my other passion) I again choose to post about things where I think I have a fair command of things. Eyewitness to Craven was something that respected scientists could not even stomach. For me it was part of the fabric of the whole botched job folks have made of presenting the science to the public.
“Then these endless dull complaints about how Mann is so terrible and oh woe he wouldn’t give McIntyre some data…
Tell us, who has been more successful at convincing the science community? Mann or McIntyre?”
about what issue?
1. about the importance of data transparency? Mcintyre
2. about the importance of sharing code? Mcintyre
3. about the ascendancy of R? mcintyre
4. about the loss of varience? mcintyre, But briffa, osborn and others were already onto that flaw .. the were just scared off by politics.
5. About need to test new methods against synthetic data? Mcintyre
6. about the issues surrounding r2,ce and re? Mcintyre.
7. about the SIZE of the MWP? Mann is still more influential since steve has not published on this.
8. About the IMPORTANCE of the MWP? well, gavin now argues that it is scientifically un interesting, so you go figure. All the more reason for mann to understand that fighting the release of data was stupid beyond belief.
But this really ISNT about a scorecard between those two. Its rather about a way forward.
1 Lucia’s “Falsifying” posts were poor. That’s why she doesn’t claim to falsify anymore. That’s why I criticise the new style of post because they don’t go anywhere or claim anything.
2 This is everybody’s point of view, you are not special here. You are saying that there is this ‘TEAM’ – it’s garbage. The difference that you talk about here is one of your own creation. This is more Marketing.
3. So there was nothing worth writing about at AGU other than some guy having a meltdown? The problem I have Mosher is that you only focus on the rubbish. You spend your time shouting to the world all the things you think are bad with climate science, and then whisper… Yes, but I agree with their science. And it’s not like any of these ‘bad’ things are even important. You created a whole narrative about the climategate emails without even bothering to ask the people who wrote them. Not even attempting to find out the real story behind them you decided you’d just invent one.
This is why you are a phony.
“1. about the importance of data transparency? Mcintyre
2. about the importance of sharing code? Mcintyre
3. about the ascendancy of R? mcintyre
4. about the loss of varience? mcintyre, But briffa, osborn and others were already onto that flaw .. the were just scared off by politics.
5. About need to test new methods against synthetic data? Mcintyre
6. about the issues surrounding r2,ce and re? Mcintyre.”
What? so Mann creates a whole new branch of investigation, follows it up publishes a number of papers and has his findings supported by other uathors in the literature, and all you can say is that McIntyre made some comments about sharing code, using other software, and using different stats… Wow. And all that with his usual ‘pea and thimble’ terminology. He’s a real find.
“But this really ISNT about a scorecard between those two. Its rather about a way forward.”
Here here.
Tell us, who has been more successful at convincing the science community? Mann or McIntyre?â€
about what issue?
1. about the importance of data transparency? Mcintyre
2. about the importance of sharing code? Mcintyre
3. about the ascendancy of R? mcintyre
4. about the loss of varience? mcintyre, But briffa, osborn and others were already onto that flaw .. the were just scared off by politics.
5. About need to test new methods against synthetic data? Mcintyre
6. about the issues surrounding r2,ce and re? Mcintyre.
7. about the SIZE of the MWP? Mann is still more influential since steve has not published on this.
8. About the IMPORTANCE of the MWP? well, gavin now argues that it is scientifically un interesting, so you go figure. All the more reason for mann to understand that fighting the release of data was stupid beyond belief.
Hubris.
The Climategate scandal covered from beginning to end–from ‘Hide the Decline’ to the current day. Written by two authors who were on the scene–Steven Mosher and Tom Fuller–Climategate takes you behind that scene and shows what happened and why. For those who have heard that the emails were taken out of context–we provide that context and show it is worse when context is provided. For those who have heard that this is a tempest in a teacup–we show why it will swamp the conventional wisdom on climate change. And for those who have heard that this scandal is just ‘boys being boys’–well, boy. It’s as seamy as what happened on Wall Street.
.
Phony…
I get to like McIntyre’s work AND agree with the IPCC.
You don’t. McIntyre’s work has been entirely about creating a reason for the cheer squad to hate the IPCC. Don’t believe me? Read his blog, and his own words. Hansen is ‘rewriting history’. That’s about as subtle as a sledge hammer.
Yeesh. Looks like we’ll have to add another term to all the rest…
“Global Whining”.
Groupies! LOL
“There is no need for “The Team†to do anything, because it doesn’t exist.”
“Actually Steve did give a whole thread to a climate scientist who wanted to question steve’s motives. Lorax. But if DC sends me a post with the guarantee that he stands behind everything he says, then I cannot see why it would not go up at CA. As with WUWT a real name is required for posters.â€
Lorax is his real name?
Duh!!!
Let me type slowly so you get the meaning:
The last sentence says: WUWT requires a real name for posters.
Nathan
…then I cannot see why it would not go up at CA.
I don’t see why why Nathan being able to “see” something ought to be the criterion for CA accepting a guest post from someone. I have my criteria (which can evolve over time). SteveMc has his. WordPress.com has their criteria for letting people set up blogs.
If Nathan has a blog, he can invite DC.
FWIW: I haven’t read DC clamoring for permission to write a guest post at CA. If he’s never asked, Nathan’s concern about SteveMc somehow not letting DC guest post seems pretty silly. Nathan, to your knowledge, has DC requested a guest post at SteveMc.
The MBH algorithm especially mines for hockey sticks when you only keep the top 1% most-hockey-stick-like sticks as M&M did. Wegman did an admirable job rerunning their code and claming that he replicated those specific results.
Do you understand the MBH algorithms?
Exactly what “top” percentage of available proxies did the hockey team select to use in their marvelous mann machine? What exactly do you think they were doing by using only the proxies which displayed a “climate signal”? This was no different than selecting those time series consisting of random noise, but which also had a “signal” matching an increasing modern “temperature series”.
Yes, Wegman was asked to verify that what Steve had presented was properly done. Now, in my consulting experience, that would be to first ensure that the mathematics of the code was written correctly and that the code would generate results of the sort claimed. He did this.
However, you might not understand that re-running the code does NOT mean that you get the exact same sequences every time since the code involves the use of a random number generator. Each time you rerun the code you get different numerical results. What is necessary is to determine that the effect you are looking for reappears consistently when you generate the sequences. He did this.
In your vast mathematical experience. what do you think needed to be done that wasn’t? You really have to stop reading the junk put out be the clueless DC and actually start thinking for yourself.
bugs:
You don’t. McIntyre’s work has been entirely about creating a reason for the cheer squad to hate the IPCC. Don’t believe me? Read his blog, and his own words. Hansen is ‘rewriting history’. That’s about as subtle as a sledge hammer.
There’s bugs doing his Carnac the Magnificent impression again. Not a very impressive job.
As I’ve said before bugs has one standard for everybody else, a very high standard, and another for himself, a very low standard.
Not very impressive. Adults know better than to guess other people’s motives for why they post what they post.
If bugs has a specific problem with the technical content of anything McIntyre has said, he should address it. We know he is incapable of that, so like cce he spends most of his energy smearing people.
Steve Mosher is correct. As an exercise in political maneovering the AGW case-making has been one of monumental ineptitude. Monumental. I have never seen the like.
People can moan that scientists don’t have the skills etc. The point is this: tough shinizzle. Get the damn skills. Get someone on your side who has the skills. Change the approach. Do something. Do anything other than what you have been doing. People like to think they can think for themselves, and in many cases the AGW case is made in such a hectoring condescending manner that it just turns people off. People root for the underdog, and yet the warmists just plough on kicking that dog. People are cynical (rightly or wrongly) about power and authority and yet warminsts keep feeding that cynicism with their behaviour.
If I may draw a cooking analogy, my old chef used to tell me that most people eat with their eyes. So smarten the plate up. Wipe the jus off the rim and stop with the roughly chopped parsley and cayene pepper garnish. I want oven roasted duck fat crisps and julienned pickled lark’s tongue in aspic on that venison and I want it in 2 minutes. Yes chef!!!
I am an ignorant lukewarmer. And I am so because while I lack the time and knowledge to engage with the science properly, I find the lukewarmers to be the most reasonable group. I think that most people are like me. Like me they lack the knowledge and the time, but they respond to something reasonable.
The rabid sceptics come across as mad. The rabid warmists come across as arrogant. Be reasonable and engaging. Do not be defensive and haughty. The loons will soon out themselves. Let them speak. Liza, the floor is yours…
Nathan: “This is more ‘Marketing’. There is no need for “The Team†to do anything, because it doesn’t exist. It’s a hallucination of yours. It’s a method of demonizing and dehumanizing.”
bugger off mark! real scientists don’t play on the internet and most luckwarmers online don’t even have a science degree. i live with someone who does have a degree and know many more. agw science is a weak unproven theory pushed by government funded scientists and after all this time everyone is still arguing about FRACTIONS of one degree. sheesh
I just skimmed this thread that was introduced as a holiday greeting and turned immediately into a discussion of personalities. With the beginning of the new year is there any way that these threads can be terminated early. I see people coming, not to inform, but to bait and waste everyone’s time – and unfortunately they are all too successful.
Yes, Nathan and cce don’t seem to understand the real effect of using the modern temp correlations to cherry-pick the proxies for use in the procedure.
Actually, it might be an eye-opener for Mann and all to use that selection methodology on the artificial proxies which they included in their response to the Mc-Wy paper. The correlations between those artificial proxies and the model generated temperatures for the modern era have almost NO relationship to the correlation of those same proxies with the model temperatures from their pre-calibration era.
Using the correlation to select proxies simply reduces the number used. However the ones which have negative (or substantially lower positive) correlations in the pre-calibration era will just straighten the stick.
RomanM, it has been my experience in blogging on investment sites that some otherwise intelligent people do not understand the dangers of using and data snooping in-sample data to build an investment model. They simple cannot or will not distinguish between in-sample and out-of-sample data. Part of their problem is that they like the results that they can obtain from the in-sample data.
Then there is the problem that if you develop enough investment models, just by chance, a few are going to work. This becomes even more misleading when several people are constructing investment models, and, of course, there are winners and losers. The winners become geniuses and the loser are, well, losers – that is until the next round of model comparisons.
In one episode during the US stock market bubble an investment model picked enough winners to return a very high percentage. Most investments were tracked against the how the S&P 500 performed. When I commented that if the high return model did not do better than the S&P 500 for 800 years it would still have statistically significant better performance than the S&P 500 over that time period. I was attempting to point out that being lucky in the short term in a raging market did not suggest that that strategy would work going forward for those people just starting to invest in it – even though the developer (actually his progeny)could brag for 800 years that he outdid the market. A hero poster at the site, who was a physicist and did not appreciate the dangers of data snooping as everything to him was deterministic, came on to reply that I must have made a mistake in my calculations and later showed that indeed the outperformance would only last 750 years and what a dunce I must be.
If bugs has a specific problem with the technical content of anything McIntyre has said, he should address it. We know he is incapable of that, so like cce he spends most of his energy smearing people.
I have already stated at least twice a particular problem witht he technical content of a McIntyre claim. Everyone ignored it.
Replication and due diligence, Wegman style
[…]
That’s “some†PC1, all right. It was carefully selected from the top 100 upward bending PC1s, a mere 1% of all the PC1s.
[…]
Here is Wegman et al Fig 4-4 side by side with the resulting reproduction of the 12 hockey stick figure from the M&M script. They are clearly identical (although the Wegman et al version is not as dark for some reason).
[…]
Make no mistake – this strikes at the heart of Wegman et al’s findings, which held that the writing of Mann et al was “somewhat obscureâ€, while McIntyre and McKitrick’s “criticisms†were found to be “valid†and their arguments “compellingâ€. And yet the only “compelling illustration†offered by Wegman et al was the supposed consistent production of “hockey sticks†from low-correlation red noise by the Mann et al algorithm. But the M&M simulation turned out to be based on nothing of the kind, and, to top it all, showed only the top 1% of simulated “hockey stick†PC1s.
Although there is widespread agreement in the scientific community on including plagiarism as a major element of the PHS definition of scientific misconduct, there is some uncertainty about how the definition of plagiarism itself is applied in ORI cases.
As a general working definition, ORI considers plagiarism to include both the theft or misappropriation of intellectual property and the substantial unattributed textual copying of another’s work. It does not include authorship or credit disputes.
The theft or misappropriation of intellectual property includes the unauthorized use of ideas or unique methods obtained by a privileged communication, such as a grant or manuscript review.
Substantial unattributed textual copying of another’s work means the unattributed verbatim or nearly verbatim copying of sentences and paragraphs which materially mislead the ordinary reader regarding the contributions of the author. ORI generally does not pursue the limited use of identical or nearly-identical phrases which describe a commonly-used methodology or previous research because ORI does not consider such use as substantially misleading to the reader or of great significance.
“definition of scientific misconduct”
Look who’s the “expert”.
liza (Comment#64772) —
“definition of scientific misconductâ€
Look who’s the “expertâ€.
Definition of “Cleared of scientific miscinduct”: Wang, Mann and Jones, multiple times.
bugs:
I have already stated at least twice a particular problem witht he technical content of a McIntyre claim. Everyone ignored it.
J Bowers (Comment#64773) January 5th, 2011 at 6:37 am
Whatever. Government (welfare) scientists are just as hard to fire as any other government worker. I have a friend who was a manager at a post office and one of her employees pulled a gun out on everyone in a strange fit of emotion. It wasn’t loaded, so she didn’t get fired. LOL
Michael Mann, the climate scientist responsible for the notoriously misleading “hockey stick†graph who is also stuck up to his hips in the climategate scandal, is cashing in at the expense of the US taxpayer. To the tune of $500,000 from the TARP money. Guess that’s okay for J Bowers. Mann did such a great job the first time he needs to be funded again…. to help the economy . LOL
wait…edit…could be more then that. From a comment on another blog at the time:
“”””Actually, I think it may be much more than half a million. According to M. Mann’s CV, he received a multi-year grant this past spring from NSF totalling close to $2 million:
Quantifying the influence of environmental temperature on transmission of vector-borne
diseases, NSF-EF [Principal Investigator: M. Thomas; Co-Investigators: R.G. Crane, M.E.
Mann, A. Read, T. Scott (Penn State Univ.)] $1,884,991
Penn State receives 20% administrative overhead from each grant. I wonder how anyone can expect their investigation to be objective?”””
RomanM:Now, in my consulting experience, that would be to first ensure that the mathematics of the code was written correctly and that the code would generate results of the sort claimed. He did this.
.
The problem here is that if DC is factually correct, then it appears that Wegman did not even bother to read the code, much less “ensuring” anything about it.
.
Claiming a given process consistently produces a certain result “in every independent replication”, and then showing the 1% largest results from a different process is frowned upon in some circles.
liza —
To the tune of $500,000 from the TARP money. Guess that’s okay for J Bowers.
Care to break down how that money is spent? Here are a couple of reads that you obviously need.
Of course, you could always go looking at historical federal grants to Richard Lindzen, adjust for inflation over the years, and get a real idea of what “big bucks” really means 😉 Make sure you’re sitting down first.
Penn State receives 20% administrative overhead from each grant. I wonder how anyone can expect their investigation to be objective?
Easy. If it gets through peer review and cited a lot then it’s safe to say it’s good stuff and was as objective as can be. The amount of citations that a scientist gets (if not exclusively) is often reflected in the funding.
the climate scientist responsible for the notoriously misleading “hockey stick†graph
Hate to tell you this, but it almost feels like there’s a new hockey stick every month, from researchers completely independent of Mann et al.
Sorry for missing something out of the formatting above.
“If it gets through peer review and cited a lot then it’s safe to say it’s good stuff and was as objective as can be.”
Belief system on parade.
Andrew
Um did Richard Lindzen adjust data, hide and withhold data, or participate in rude and unprofessional email exchanges with fellow researchers? My husband had to stand up in front of his peers; in person; and argue his thesis (published twice… argued face to face twice!). So don’t give me your unexperienced opinion on the peer review process as if it means anything.
“A bag of ice cubes left on New Year’s Eve near an Iqaluit apartment’s front door was melting Jan. 4, as temperatures around South Baffin reached record highs as much as 20 degrees above normal.”
Brrrr…
“Be interesting to see if you can get his data from anywhere for those federally funded projects, though”
A Statistical Analysis of Multiple Temperature Proxies: Are Reconstructions of Surface Temperatures Over the Last 1000 Years Reliable? McShane & Wyner (Aug? 2010)
J Bowers– Ok. In interpreted you to mean something more than very local or small regions. That’s what I think of when people use the term “hockey stick”. I don’t include “hockey sticks” like http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/baby-name-ometery/
(Ok. At least yours is temperature…. 🙂 )
@ lucia
No, I’m not excluding regional, and yes, my examples are temperature.
liza (Comment#64796)
Sheesh. Ice melts in my fridge too.
There’s a reason for that…
What is the ideal temperature for a refrigerator?
[…]
The preferred temperature is somewhere between 35 and 38 degrees F (1.7 to 3.3 degrees C).
J Bowers what’s your purpose? You post a headline about “sweltering” temperatures in Russia melt ice on sidewalks and streets. Does UHI ever come into your head?
And your paper on that lake in Africa doesn’t prove AGW. It just suggests it. So I looked up some facts about that lake.
“The enormous depth and tropical location of the lake prevent ‘turnover’ of water masses, which means that much of the lower depths of the lake is so-called ‘fossil water’ and is anoxic (lacking oxygen).” Interesting. Also the lake was scene of two big WWI battles. Then I find this blog post…
Quote: Lake Tanganyika Warming – “Unprecedented” BS
It’s amazing how the “warmer†press and blogs latch on to silliness. They’ll hop on anything about global warming faster than the Lone Ranger jumps on his horse “Silver.†I did a Google search on “Africa’s Lake Tanganyika, Warming Fast Life Dying†the result shows as of now there are 66,600 search results on this headline and it hasn’t even been up but about 3 days. If it sounds like doom and gloom and it’s blamed upon global warming it really gets out there fast. What it really amounts to appears to be much ado about nothing, which is business as usual with the “warmer†crowd.
This is what happens when you send people from liberal Brown University, who conveniently come up with another scare-a-rama about global warming, in what appears to be another feeble “alarmist†attempt to counter climategate and all the other “gates†since. I originally found this article from Reuters about how Lake Tanganyika has warmed while perusing things on the net.
Then they quote the paper: The rise in temperature over the past 90 years was about 0.9 degrees Celsius and was accompanied by a drop in algae volumes.
Blog Post: Note, I’m not questioning the temperature rise, or the algae drop, but I do question what’s causing it and if it’s “unprecedented†or not. I find the next line interesting as it makes it obvious they don’t really know what’s causing it.
But the paper admits that other factors, like overfishing, may be doing more harm than any warming.
What I simply can’t fathom about some scientist is why they publish things and act like they have proof positive when the reality is they don’t have all the facts to back up what they’re stating? I really don’t have a problem with the facts of this paper, but I do have a big problem with them claiming it’s due to AGW. Now back to the “overfishing.â€
Yes, “overfishing†could be an excellent reason there’s less fish. Perhaps not the whole reason, but certainly a large factor, especially when you see the below on the population increase in the region over the previous 90 years, which explains why overfishing would be one of my top choices on why there are less fish.
Total populations today, per the World Bank (as of 2008) are, Congo: 6,425,635, Tanzania: 42,483,923, Malawi: 14,846,182, Zambia: 12,620,219, Burundi: 8,074,254. The total is: 84,450,213, roughly 77,450,000 more people in the region surrounding Lake Tanganyika in the past 90 years.
There’s more including a link to a similar study of another lake …but you get the idea! Holy cow.
J. Bowers-
No, I’m not excluding regional, and yes, my examples are temperature.
Ok… but then in my opinion, when responding to the person’s point you are either a) changing the subject (from a point about the “hockey stick wars which is about global temps) or b) equivocating (by using the same word– hockey stick– to discuss regional when it was previously being used in a global context.)
Of course, I would never suggest you are the only person to do this. Nor would I suggest you, or others who might do it– are necessarily doing it on purpose. Often, the person making the shift doesn’t think they are shifting at all. They think it’s “the same thing”. (And that can be a totally honest thought because there is some similarity.)
But these shifts in meaning are one of the reasons comment blocks often have people talking at cross purposes! Happens.
liza (Comment#64803)
J Bowers what’s your purpose? You post a headline about “sweltering†temperatures in Russia melt ice on sidewalks and streets. Does UHI ever come into your head?
It was Canada, and it was in response to your post of Russian ships being locked in Arctic ice in winter as if it’s significant. Greenland and Canada having such high temperature anomalies in winter is something to be surprised about. And no, UHI doesn’t come into my head because UHI efect doesn’t run to +20C above the norm to my knowledge.
And your paper on that lake in Africa doesn’t prove AGW. It just suggests it.
A good job science relies on weight of evidence, not on proof.
What I simply can’t fathom about some scientist is why they publish things and act like they have proof positive when the reality is they don’t have all the facts to back up what they’re stating?
Ok… but then in my opinion, when responding to the person’s point you are either a) changing the subject (from a point about the “hockey stick wars which is about global temps) or b) equivocating (by using the same word– hockey stick– to discuss regional when it was previously being used in a global context.)
Aren’t global hockey sticks the product of the analysis of localised records? co2science.org’s local cherry picked analyses constantly being used to attack global hockey sticks in the blogosphere are a good example of how local hockey sticks are very much in the frame. Perhaps an unintended result is I’m just applying some symmetry to the debate.
Carrick (Comment#64774) January 5th, 2011 at 6:48 am
bugs:
I have already stated at least twice a particular problem witht he technical content of a McIntyre claim. Everyone ignored it.
So you found one mistake on one post.
I’m floored.
I would expect an apology from McIntyre. Crowleys mistake was no worse. The mistake is also systemic. McIntyre did no investigation into the accuracy of the satellite data, he made no demands for the source code. He assumed, that because the CRU temperature record was wrong, that the satellite data was correct. There is a mythology about McInture, that he a man dedicated to the pursuit of the truth, no matter what it is, that he is objective and not interested in pursuing individuals, is laid bare here.
Look at the ‘apology’ topic.
“AusieDan
Posted Jan 4, 2011 at 9:09 PM | Permalink | Reply
This post speaks well of Tom Crowley and must have been hard to write.
Next I would like to note my admiration for: either Steve McIntyre’s faultness memory or his first class filing, indexing and data retrieval system OR perhaps both! It is an object lesson to everyone – take care when you challange Steve’s statements!”
That’s the myth, but it’s not a fact. I wonder if McI will publish his own apology for his own accusation, because that is exactly what he did. He did not just say that Marberg had made an error. He explicity said that Marburg used the CRU data because it suited is alarmist claims, when McIntyre used the satellite data because it suited his claims.
“To even contemplate use of Moberg, the Hockey Team has to rely entirely on the splice of CRU records,</b< rather than satellite records. Warwick Hughes and others have expressed concerns about how CRU have handled urban heat island effects and other issues. There are some very interesting issues in SST temperatures on how adjustments have been done for change-over from measuring temperatures in buckets to engine inlets, which I’ll post about some time.
A couple of years ago (before I had any notoriety), I asked Phil Jones for the data used in the UHI study published in Nature and relied upon by IPCC. Jones told me that it was on one of dozens of diskettes in his office and he couldn’t find it. I didn’t pursue the matter at the time. You may recall Phil Jones’ response to Warwick Hughes’ request for the underlying station data:
We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.
Phil Jones’ construction of temperature data sets has been financed by the U.S. Department of Energy. Whether the CRU data sets are right or wrong, they need to be audited. I don’t see why the Hockey Team should be exempt from audit standards."
Why should the satellite team be exempt from audit standards? It is a question that never even crosses his mind.
Using his own words, now that we have the satellite records altered.
You can see that the post-1980 satellite temperatures are high but not off the charts relative to Moberg’s reconstruction.
You can see that the post-1980 satellite temperatures are high and off the charts using Mobergs reconstruction.
Sounds very alarmist to me.
But thank you for responding to my point, Carrick, you are the only person to do so.
mosher,
CA is run by McIntyre, JohnA and Watts as you most certainly know.
Watts has all of the keys to the kingdom. They’re chums. Pals. Buddy, buddies. If the team mentions the hockey stick, McIntyre makes 10 posts slicing and dicing every word. Watts and his crew post total nonsense every day. Crickets. You said something about protecting the weakest link. They don’t get much weaker than Watts.
I accept the NRC panels findings, re: Mann. I accept that the “team” circles the wagons all too often. I also accept the fact that they both despise and stonewall the high profile skeptics. I don’t accept that “skeptics” are ego-less advocates of the scientific method and transparancy.
Roman,
Wegman reproduced the same “hockey sticks” that appeared in the M&M paper and in the supporting samples. They were identical. Despite repeated calls to release “their” code, Wegman et al have not. I seem to remember similar controversies except with different names.
And Carrick, please point out where I have “smeared” anyone. Subjecting people to their own supposed standards is not “smearing.” Mosher calls me a stupid twit for stating what is plainly true, while simultaneously defending the “we attack each other and are still friends” meme. Not particularly convincing. And, BTW, how long did it take for Roman to come to bat for Wegman?
I haven’t spent a lot of time at CA, but I did spend some time in this thread:
Some people don’t get the English sense of humor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUNfynI8bdA
But I would have thought it would have been nice to give the political wars a rest for one day.
At least the red button does not have the word “Easy” on it. See the Staples commercials with the “easy” button and the tag line: “That was Easy”
bugs:
And some people have no sense of humor.
Carrick, it’s a double bad day for em… Santa haters and that embarrassing ol’ red button…
Bugs: ” But I would have thought it would have been nice to give the political wars a rest for one day.”
Is that because you are losing?…
Losing? No, not at all, the IPCC has been consistent from day one, and there has been no change from it’s initial, core findings. If anything the arrival of the ‘luke warmers’ has confirmed it’s assesment. The only real debate, from day one, has been climate sensitivity.
Pound for pound, the English have the best sense of humour in the world. Bloody hell, it’s their only redeeming feature!
“Losing? No, not at all…”
-Baghdad Bugs 😉
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x404h2_baghdad-bob_fun
Andrew
P.S. If you stare at the Squiggly Lines too long, you miss out on other stuff.
@Andrew_KY
That mouthpiece in the video was called Comical Ali. If I may adopt one of his more famous lines for our purposes, “Deniers are committing suicide by the hundreds on the melting ice of the North Pole.”
sHx,
How about this one:
“I am not talking about the American people and the British people. I am talking about those Deniers. … They have started throwing those snow shovels, but they are not snow shovels, they are Denialist booby traps to kill the children.”
Andrew
Andrew_KY (Comment#64250) December 25th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
I think it is more a case of Baghdad Watts. He continually comes up with errors. Look at Goddards ice prediction of a ‘recovery’, for example. The UHI research that is never finished. His inability to decide if it’s even actually warming or not. As soon as he says it is, he says it’s not.
In today’s NYT Judah Cohen “explains” the cold winter in the US and Eurasia by global warming. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26cohen.html?ref=opinion
I feel that his logic is twisted at best but I am no climate scientist. Do these explanations make sense to anyone?
Thanks
“The only real debate, from day one, has been climate sensitivity.”
Masterful! English humour take note!…
bugs (Comment#64244)
December 25th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
“Losing? No, not at all,…”
Bugs – you are the Black Knight you are!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4
Jimmy Haigh (Comment#64273) December 26th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
bugs (Comment#64244)
December 25th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
“Losing? No, not at all,…â€
Bugs – you are the Black Knight you are!
The accepted science has only been refined over a century of research, the IPCC has not had to change it’s case for AGW, nor the fundamental science behind it over the course of it’s existence. Those who are against the IPCC have split into two camps now, the ‘lukewarmers’ and the ‘d****’. (can’t use the ‘d’ word here). The lukewarmers accept the fundamental science, as they must, but argue that the warming will be no more than 1-2C, the ‘d****’ can’t decide if it is even warming, or if the fundamental science is even correct, or, if it is warming, then that is a ‘good thing’.
bugs,
Do you think the refusal of the IPCC to change is a sign of its being correct or of its inability to conform to reality?
Your cosmology of belief over looks one vital fact: the predicted climate crisis ain’t happening. And every time you and yours try to claim that heavy cold winters are a sign of warming, or that the theory of global climate disruption is intact, the sound you hear is not people laughing with you, but at you.
bugs:
I wouldn’t say all the “luckwarmers” are “against” the IPCC.
Most “luckwarmers” accept IPCC physical science, they are just putting the sensitivity towards the lower end in terms of accepted range of values…with all that entails towards impact on climate from anthropogenic forcings… Most “warmingists” put it at the top end of the range, with similar implications of that choice.
Huh bugs.
I accept the IPCC almost completely. I object to two things.
1. A sentence in chapter 4 where Jones/Trenberth dismissed McKittricks work without referencing any know literature.
2. briffa’s choice of graphics in chapter 6.
If you like I will post a powerpoint of all the problems with models. Does repeating criticism of models made by the IPCC count as being a skeptic now?
Here is the problem you face with lukewarmers. we accept the science. we dont accept some of the behavior of a small number of scientists. We think the science can and does survive this behavior, so we have NO PROBLEM saying the behavior was not best practices.
Mosh, I admit I don’t take the WG2 or WG3 reports very seriously. Actually I take them about as seriously as a typical Joe Romm post.
No. You have a big problem saying the IPCC is mostly correct. McIntyre can’t bring himself to do so. He acts like he has OCD when it comes to pursuing individuals and maligning them, but he can’t let the words pass his lips “The IPCC is mostly correct, AGW is real”.
Next “Heartland” meeting, get up in front of them and read from the IPCC report and tell them it’s mostly correct. Tell them that a large number of scientists are actually observing best practice, despite a problem with a small number of scientists. (And I don’t think you are right, I’m just going along with your logic for the sake of this argument.)
Interesting post for bugs (and others) to read over at his favorite blog WUWT:
It is not that the simple law is false, just that there are a number of other simple laws opposing it. In the case of climate we don’t even know what some of these other laws are, so we can’t explain what we see. That is where we should be looking.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/28/simple-physics-in-reality-my-feather-blew-up-into-a-tree/#more-30345
Andrew
~Bugs Bunny (1953).
I take people who think climate sensitivity is 1C as seriously as I take people who think it is 6C.
bugs, I wouldn’t classify most people who attended Heartland as “lukewarmers”. Many of them still don’t think the earth has even warmed over the last century.
Stuck on stupid.
“Many of them still don’t think the earth has even warmed over the last century.”
How much are they supposed to believe “the earth has warmed” over the last century? .8C? What if they believed it was .45C? or .10C? or .0001C? Which is correct Rev. Carrick?
Andrew
“No. You have a big problem saying the IPCC is mostly correct. McIntyre can’t bring himself to do so. He acts like he has OCD when it comes to pursuing individuals and maligning them, but he can’t let the words pass his lips “The IPCC is mostly correct, AGW is realâ€.
Sorry you are wrong. When people have asked me on Judith’s blog what I would recommend after climategate it was simple.
1. delete a sentence in chapter 4
2. replace a graphic in chapter 6.
BUT, you and people like you have so little faith in the science that you seem to think that simple corrections will destroy the science. Or worse, you worry that this will give a PR victory to skeptics and you care more about that PR victory than you do about good science.
As for McIntyre. You know his position. As a policy maker he would consider the IPCC to be the best science has to say today. his point: It needs to be better. As far as his position on lukewarming? he does not believe in numbers below lindzen. In my book anything below lindzen is a unsupportable position, sub luke warmer. The real question is Mc a warmist? (3C and above) he’s not an alarmist (6C)
I kind alike Boris’ approach
0 to 1C: :ignorati
1C to 3C :luke warmista
3C to 6C :warmista
6C + : alarmista
0 to 1C: :ignorati
1C to 3C :luke warmista
3C to 6C :warmista
6C + : alarmista
Thats a sublime range of beliefs, there. Whoda thunk less than 1C could separate stupidity from genius? 😉
Andrew
AndrewKY, what is genius really? People who spend a heck of a lot of time on a computer and an internet connection telling other people that their energy consumption is causing the planet to warm a fraction of one degree and there needs to be something done about it? lol
“AndrewKY, what is genius really?”
liza,
The warmers who comment here say it’s believing in unverified and adjusted sets of numbers. This doesn’t match the dictionary def, but evidently that’s what warmers have agreed it means. 😉
Andrew
Andrew_Ky, that’s weird; because my little sister has an official genius level IQ number; a MEASURE of intelligence and ability to understand complex issues and problems and she thinks just like we do about this issue. LOL! 😉
One can have genius level IQ as measured by standard tests and still be ignorant about a particular subject. Ignorance is a measure of knowledge, not intelligence. As such, ignorance is curable…
Wrong, wrong, wrong. If you read the IPCC reports and the blogs out there, there are scientists who are actively researching AGW, and former scientists, and they are actively debating the sensitivity and methods used to evaluate the models. It’s all interesting stuff, and it meand the IPCC report is going to be wrong in some more areas, and it doesn’t bother me at all. Well, it does bother me, because it means that there is a huge uncertainty, and that is a real problem. When the NH sea ice retreats at the rate the ‘alarmists’ would have predicted, then other ‘alarmist’ claims of above 6C start to have more credence.
I completely understand how Jones and Mann reacted, and any normal human being would have done the same. If you read the blogs of those who were ‘requesting’ information, they were doing exactly what Jones said they were doing, only looking for errors. That is all they were after. Scientists challenge each other all the time, that is clear and obvious. But they don’t try to destroy research, they try to advance it. The requests for data and the use it is put to are all over the blogs. Just look at the latest farce in New Zealand. The d***** are proclaiming utter nonense, that they have found errors in the temperature record, due entiryely to their hard work, and the the official record is no completely different. Utter fantasy. The record has been checked and it substantially the same.
A similar thing happened with McIntyre and the ‘Y2K’ error. Another example of an insignificant error blown out of all proportion. McIntyre milked it for all he was worth, using the error to attempt to humiliate scientists and denigrate them. If you don’t believe me, just look at who his ‘dog whistle’ tactics brought out, and read his blog. He knows what the audience wants, they want blood, and that’s what he feeds them. My guess, and it’s purely a guess, is that it’s all about him and his ego.
Look at the McLean paper on the lag between enso and the temperate record. Another paper that says one thing, and is used as a tool to attack climate science and climate scientists.
Annan took part in a paper with Michaels on the evaluation of models. The paper was rejected. He said he thinks it was because Michaels wasn’t prepared to just do what the paper was about, evaluate models, but pushed the politics too hard and was rejected on those grounds, as papers will be. He was quite prepared to go out there and challenge the way models are evaluated, but he knows you don’t go out there and turn a challenge into something more. Another paper he wrote himself that also challenged the evaulation of models was accepted. So, criticism is good, science is advanced, but push that criticism too hard, it will be rejected.
Dewitt Payne, I know that. That’s why there’s a winky at the end.
Having a sense of humor is also a sign of intelligence. Having a degree in and a vast knowledge of the Earth and is geological history and the data that supports it also helps in this subject. So did you look up the Global DSDP records yet or not?
DeWitt Payne (Comment#643810
“As such, ignorance is curable…”
.
At least for some people.
Bugs,
.
Please do remember that climate scientists can be influenced by political inclinations as well. The people who rejected the Michaels/Annan paper are (surprise) climate scientists, who could very well bring their own political agendas to the peer-review process.
.
You seem more than ready to suspect the motives of those who express doubt about extreme AGW predictions, yet seem to believe those who support extreme AGW are as pure as the driven snow. A more realistic position is that climate science is in reality dominated by people with very similar politics and philosophical views, and that alone is reason to hold a skeptical position about the validity of their work. It is the absence of political balance in climate science that is of concern to many, including me.
Re: bugs (Dec 28 15:58),
And if Jones and Mann were really good scientists they wouldn’t care, in fact, they’d welcome it. Finding errors is how science advances. Feynman argued that one should be most skeptical of one’s own work.
Your last sentence is incredibly naive as well. Scientists are human. Human beings take great pleasure in humiliating others. Otherwise no one at all would watch a movie like Borat and German wouldn’t have the word schadenfreude in the language.
Most IPCC scientists are enviro-wack-jobs/ substance abusers masquerading as scientists… we should all vote to entrust them with the world economy
Re: SteveF (Dec 28 16:33),
Speaking of which, have you read the comments at Judith Curry’s on the two radiative transfer threads? I really shouldn’t let myself get sucked into that sort of thing when the end result is so obvious.
The signal to noise ratio in the comments there seems to be very small. It’s approaching WUWT and RC level, unfortunately.
I think it has been conclusively demonstrated that you can’t do science by blog. The formal publishing process, for all it’s faults, is still superior.
Bugs,
“I think it has been conclusively demonstrated that you can’t do science by blog. The formal publishing process, for all it’s faults, is still superior.”
I have no idea where that came from.
Jeff Id, Steve Mc, and the two Ryans were pretty clear about their problems with the Steig et al Antarctica warming paper right from the start… and that was all laid out in blogs; the arguments in the final published paper may have been more polished and complete, but were essentially the same… too few principle components retained to generate a meaningful spacial represenation. The Yamal ‘dirty dozen’ was a clear corruption (or perhaps ‘deception’ would be better) of science, even though that was only made apparent in blogs. The doubts/problems with the ‘Hockey Stick’ reconstruction were endlessly belabored on blogs before McShane’s formal paper. Being technically correct has little to do with the forum or format, and even less to do with formal review and publishing.
I dunna what you’re talking about bugs, I’ve seen lots of good science discussion on blogs that wouldn’t have happened had it been left to the peer reviewed process.
In fact it’s just a silly argument that you are trying to advance that science only gets advanced by peer-reviewed pubs.
DeWitt Payne (Comment#64388)
I agree about Judith’s blog. Way too much noise, and yes, it is approaching WUWT and RC… too bad.
Carrick (Comment#64395)
Great minds post at the same time on the same subject.
MikeC (Comment#64387),
“Most IPCC scientists are enviro-wack-jobs/ substance abusers masquerading as scientists… ”
You mean, like Lindzen and Christy? OK, OK, maybe cigarettes count as ‘substance abuse’…. Mr. Obama, are you listening?
Steve, stop chasing the LSD with everclear
Re: SteveF (Dec 28 19:39),
Ya, not sure how to fix it.
Re: bugs (Dec 28 19:01),
“I think it has been conclusively demonstrated that you can’t do science by blog. The formal publishing process, for all it’s faults, is still superior.”
“doing science”
Doing science is what an author does before he writes the paper. The paper ADVERTISES the science.
what you meant to say
“I think it has been conclusively demonstrated that you can’t do science Publishing by blog. The formal publishing process, for all it’s faults, is still superior.”
with that clarification I would agree. However, properly, structured I believe the journals (or someone) could do a superior job by “blog” if they wanted to.
The structure would be the same but several things could be improved.
1. no need for constrictive word counts
2. Open anonymous review.
3 preservation of rejected papers.
I’d sell tickets. and adwords. very tight demographic.
a year costs 200 bucks.. 60,000 subscribers
figure if they let McIntrye publish and staged on online back and forth between him the team reviewers, you could sell tickets. not sure how many
but science as a blood sport. if they had virtual ring girls … a slam dunk
Re: DeWitt Payne (Comment#64388)
I took a look at the thread DeWitt mentioned at Curry’s blog. It is a mess indeed. I think bugs’ comment needs to be read in this context.
For a scientific conversation (as any other conversation) to get anywhere, the people involved have to first agree implicitly on certain basic beliefs that will serve as the foundation of everything that follows. You cannot have a serious talk with somebody who systematically keeps questioning the evidence for everything you say.
Scientific journals avoid this problem by rejecting summarily any papers that try to pull that type of trick, when the paper’s thesis is obviously nonsense: alternatives to Einstein’s theory of relativity or perpetual motion machines, for instance. There are always borderline areas (such as cold fusion), but in general the message is clear, and necessary. It sets up a bar; it tells the prospective author “if you want to talk to this audience, you need to accept these basic, well-established facts as at least true to an excellent approximation, and then move on from there.”
To avoid turning into a madhouse, a popular blog like Curry’s may have to end up resorting to this kind of moderation. She would just have to come out and say that discussion of basic radiative physics (for instance) is off-limits, and that anybody who does not accept the basic greenhouse effect, as it is currently accepted by every scientist from Lindzen to Hansen, for (say) a hypothetical planet without water vapor should go debate his (mis)understanding of physics elsewhere. This is not really a very high bar, and Curry, as a physical scientist, is better qualified than most bloggers out there to set and enforce this kind of rule.
MikeC (Comment#64406),
I have no idea what ‘everclear’ is. Never used LSD. Maybe you could bring yourself to make a substative comment… or maybe not.
H Julio,
.
I agree that restricting comments to those based on acceptance of well confirmed basic physical science would reduce the noise level a lot. But I think there are three problems:
1. This eliminates the possibility that someone who really does not understand something, but wants to learn, will have their misunderstanding explained. (Some might argue that this is so rare a case that it makes no difference; I am not certain either way.)
2. It requires a huge effort in terms of moderation, and that moderation needs to be both prompt and politically neutral; not easy to achieve. Outright banning of repeat offenders to avoid the need for constant moderation is not so simple… changing ‘handles’ and IP addresses can get around efforts to ban certain individuals.
3. The temptation to use moderation as a means to suppress technically meaningful comments the moderator does not like for political reasons is always present (see RealClimate, Tamino, and a host of others).
I don’t see any simple solutions, especially at high traffic blogs.
Maybe a ‘membership account’ for each person who wants to comment (say $5 up front) and an associated password for each account would work: any comment that violates the blog rules would result in loss of $1 from the commenter’s account.. reach zero balance and your password expires. Money has a way of focusing minds. Make only comments within the rules and your $5 would last forever. Reading the blog would be free for everyone.
I think a lot of the kooks hang out at Judy’s because they imagine she is reading everything they write. And they take her silence at their nonsense as consent to the nonsense.
She clearly likes a free wheeling debate. thats good. But the s/n is suffering. There are certain pairs of people who should just get a room.
Basically her blog needs a moshpit. when 2 or three people get into it and stray off topic, they need to be directed to take there fight to the moshpit or thunderdome. A permanent thread where the clueless beclown themselves
She simply tells them to take their fight to the thunderdome thread. Same for Oliver Manual posts. Thunderdome or the MoshPit(tm).
A good moderator could also do that. That way people get to talk and display their stupidity and we are provided entertainment
SteveF (Comment#64415) December 29th, 2010 at 9:27 am | Reply w/ Link
MikeC (Comment#64406),
I have no idea what ‘everclear’ is.
180 proof. grain alcohol. nasty stuff to put in the sunday school punch bowl.
SteveF… you know what they say, you cannot solve the problem until you admitt… but when I say “most IPCC scientists”… you infer that to mean former IPCC scientists, I’d say substance abuse is most likely your problem…
Mosher… proof that you have absolutely no redneck in your blood… real everclear is 190… although I prefer to cook it down to about 175 or so and add a little fresh fruit (berries are best)… takes that yucky zing off of it
MickC,
“I’d say substance abuse is most likely your problem…”
And I ‘d say disconnection from reality is most likely yours.
How about AGC?
Anthropogenic Global Cooling?
0 to -1C?
-1 to -3C
-3 to -6C?
> -6C?
Please discuss…
awwwwwww…. does the po po need a tissue?
… or a crack pipe cleaner?
Re: SteveF (Comment#64416)
Hi Steve,
I agree it is difficult and time-consuming, but I think the blog owner needs to be proactive at nipping those sorts of zombie threads in the bud, or else the blog becomes unusable. When a totally clueless person makes their first outrageous post, it’s OK to spend a little time trying to educate them, but after that, if they are not really willing to listen, there is no point to continue.
Perhaps at that point the blog owner should simply intervene and declare that no more replies to that particular post will be allowed. That way you do not actually censor the kooks, you just save a lot of other people the time they would have wasted trying to reason with them.
(I’m not sure I like the idea of having to pay to post. I know it *would* deter a lot of people–including me!)
And yes, I agree that the moderation policies at those sites you mention are rather obnoxious. I have always thought, in particular, that Tamino’s blog’s title was a sad joke. But there is also such a thing as having your mind so open that your brains fall out, and I would not want that to become a description of Curry’s blog.
Julio,
“I’m not sure I like the idea of having to pay to post. I know it *would* deter a lot of people–including me!”
I doubt you would ever pay for a post… only people making off-the-wall comments would be paying! If you didn’t want to pony up $5 to get started, I would be happy to pay $5 on your behalf; one more voice of reason is worth that much at least. 😉
Well, thanks, Steve! (What can I say–I’m a tightwad, really.)
Julio,
In Portuguese: Mao de vaca…. so tight-fisted that your hand resembles that of a cow! Perhaps Spanish has a similar expression?
Re: SteveF (Comment#64433)
“Mao de vaca”! Really? No, I can’t think of anything equivalent in Spanish. We do have “agarrado”, which comes from “agarrar”, to hold tightly to something. But nothing nearly as fanciful as a cow’s hand!
Scientists care, but they are also human. But that is not what I was talking about. You don’t have to look to far even here to see people who don’t want to correct errors, but believe AGW is a complete hoax by a bunch of frauds that is designed to bring down western civilisation. I would see why scientists would want to have nothing to do with them. McIntyre is portrayed as someone who wants to make sure the science is right, but when has he ever gone out there and said that it is substantially correct, that they fundamentals are correct? The song and dance over a Y2K bug was cheered long and hard by the fans, I can guess someone called it the “final nail in the coffin of AGW”, it amounted to very little at all. The temperature record is still fundamentally correct, it’s still warming. When does he ever gravely tell us that? The latest paper from his ‘team’ tells us that there is no AGW warming, it’s just UHI.
bugs (Comment#64435),
“You don’t have to look to far even here to see people who don’t want to correct errors, but believe AGW is a complete hoax by a bunch of frauds that is designed to bring down western civilisation.”
I suggest you don’t engage those people, but do engage people who are focused on getting the science right… with cogent technical arguments.
“The latest paper from his ‘team’ tells us that there is no AGW warming, it’s just UHI.”
I don’t think that is a fair description. They do suggest that there is a significant UHI effect; that is not the same as suggesting that the earth as a whole has not warmed. The ocean surface has warmed, and there is no UHI over the ocean.
My Colomobiana, the lovely Mrs. hunter, says the term you are looking for in espanol is ‘codo’, irt an equivalent for ‘mao de vaca’.
bugs now admits the IPCC is getting stuff wrong, which is 180o off of what he and the rest of the believers were asserting just over a year ago, with claims of ‘gold standard’ etc.
But it is still the wicked skeptics who are at fault.
Believers need it to be all ways for their faith to work.
Steve Mosher,
A a question if I may: when you and Tom Fuller laid out what climategate e-mails revealed in your excellent book, where di you think the discussion would go? Since so little honest discussion of the e-mails was carried out in in the public square, I for one am not surprised that wilder and wilder speculations about what is going on has occurred.
Until a deep critical and credible review of climategate and cliamte science takes place, I think the public square is going to have a lot of noise in the signal.
Since that day seems far away, what is happening at Dr. Curry’s is going to be fairly common.
SteveF:
Then again, nobody has ever accused bugs of being fair in his descriptions. He just expects everybody else to be fair, but apparently gets his own set of rules.
I personally don’t agree that UHI can be a significant player (I think at most it accounts for about 10% of the warming on land since 1950, or 3% of global). For one thing, there is an inconsistency of the latitudinal pattern of global warming (peaks around 65°N) seen in the data versus the latitudinal population distribution (peaks around 30*N).
Somehow remote, rural areas have all of the warming and the large urban areas that Goddard claims are important show a lower rate of warming.
Steve Mosher,
A a question if I may: when you and Tom Fuller laid out what climategate e-mails revealed in your excellent book, where di you think the discussion would go? Since so little honest discussion of the e-mails was carried out in in the public square, I for one am not surprised that wilder and wilder speculations about what is going on has occurred.
########
I will try to recall this as best I can. We certainly had no hope that certain skeptics would stop their braying about “frauds” In fact, there mischarging of the case is PART of the reason why the independent reviews had such an easy time avoiding the real issues. It’s like this. A couple of guys were guilty of tax evasion. The skeptics charged the whole community with mass murder. So the defenders were given an easy job of it. defend against the murder case.
Our sense of how the community would respond was probably a bit off the mark. We ruled out a sacking for Jones or Mann. That was not in the cards and not justifiable. I think we thought Jones might retire after a suitable period or be given some kind of post outside of doing direct research. Mann, we thought, would soldier on. We did not rule out counter attacks against skeptics, since they had already played that hand. We anticipated a retrenchment on both sides and not much movement in the battlelines. Our hope, the chapter I outlined but never wrote, was our view of a science going forward. Judith curry was a model of what we wanted to see.
I certainly expected more journalists to get on the FOIA trail, but sadly they seemed content to cover the overcharging of the skeptic case and the defense against that. On reading the book a week after finishing it, I thought. This is way to effing hard to get. too nuanced, not sound bitable. I thought “noble cause corruption” would get more traction but given the battlelines that were drawn, that view of things just hasnt resonated. Credit for that metaphor is due to steve Mc. I interviewed him and Anthony for the book and steve really struggled to make sense of the scientist behavior. “what were they thinking!”
we knew it wasnt fraud. They actually BELIEVED in the rightness of what they were doing. I still think noble cause corruption is the correct rubric to class the behavior under. and we knew that one side would complain it wasnt noble and the other would claim it wasnt corrupt and that we should not give up our day jobs.
Nutshell: we probably expected that a few more AGW believers would climb out on a limb with us and toss someone or something under the bus. wishful thinking. coralling skeptic responses into a FOCUSED attack on the weakest points ( The FOIA and ch 6) was a lost cause. Not to say I havent tried.
thats about it
despite the strategy to frame the debate, change the subject… as well as the usual druggie rhetoric… Cancun results in nothing but a few more tons of GHG’s created by all of the luxury jets flying the dopers there n back… the planet would have been better off had they stayed home and engineered some new mushroom genes
The evidence of harrassing FOI requests is on McIntyres own blog. The FOI officer was quickly convinced that the FOI requests were harrassment after a short perusal of his blog. That’s the best you have got. I wonder what makes McIntyre run with the whole “I’m just in it to ensure the correctness of the science” claim, while doing nothing to say “the science is correct”. It wouldn’t be too hard to do, now would it? At the same time, there has been a continual stream of suggestions that fraud and deception are behind the IPCC and the science of AGW. The audience knows what it is there for. And what is ‘audited’ is cherry picking of the leading edge science, which is continually being re-assesed and refined, while ignoring the bleeding obvious. Where is the questioning of the fraud behind the Arctic ice extent?
Where is the audit of Smith? He still can’t seem to get his head around anomalies. The “Y2K” error? He still can’t get over that? The “everchanging” adjustments? Yes, they adjust, and they refine. Why frame it like that, like it is Hansen comitting fraud?
bugs (Comment#64444) – the UK ICO does not agree with your myopic assessment of the UEA’s failure wrt FOI:
http://www.ico.gov.uk/what_we_cover/promoting_openness/~/media/documents/library/Freedom_of_Information/Notices/uea_foi_undertaking.ashx
Steve,
Thanks. That is an excellent explanation of what you are trying to do.
I think you and Tom were far too optimistic and went way too far to allow for good will in the climate catastrophe movement.
Think on this:
The problem of noble cause corruption is not the noble cause, it is the corruption.
Look at the drivel bugs comes up with to defend the FOIA evasion by Jones for a micro demonstration of this. Think on the deliberate strategy to not actually investigate by the investigators. Consider the money train that is flowing regularly through every level of the climate catastrophe promotion industry.
How about this.
http://climateaudit.org/2005/04/23/moberg-satellite/
How did that satellite vs CRU (and other surface based temperature records issue resolve)? The satellites were wrong, Moberg was right. So in McIntyres own words, the actual temperature record is ‘off the charts’, and we have a hockey stick.
McIntyre in this post links to some data.
http://climateaudit.org/2005/02/22/jones-and-mann-2-new-wdcp-archive/
Where is it? Isn’t it his responsibility to archive it? No, he just links to another website, which is now gone. According to the McIntyre logic, that’s his fault.
In this post, he starts to make accusations of fraud, which TCO picks up on. But when you click on more, it leads to nowhere. What standard of record keeping are these auditors using? Don’t auditors have to have even higher standards than those of the people they are auditing. Poke around some more. There are plenty more dead links and missing data.
The scientists worked with the FOI officer, and were concerned that the requests were not genuine, but harassment and vexatious, which, if you read the websites, would appear to be the case. If the error was made by the FOI officer, then that can be rectified. The idea that it was all done in secret by the scientists is wrong.
“braying about “frauds†In fact, there mischarging of the case is PART of the reason why the independent reviews had such an easy time avoiding the real issues. It’s like this. A couple of guys were guilty of tax evasion. The skeptics charged the whole community with mass murder. So the defenders were given an easy job of it. defend against the murder case.”
What a bunch of BOLOGNA.
Re: hunter (Comment#64437)
Thanks! Where I come from, a “codo” is just an elbow, but I see from the Diccionario de la Real Academia that the word can be used to mean “stingy, miser” in parts of Latin America. (Who would have thought? You learn something new every day!)
bugs – I followed it at the time and your attempts to revise UEA’s response to the FOI requests as anything other than obstructive are pathetic. A proper, full and professional response to the orignal requests would have put the issue to bed. However, as we now know, not only was there no desire to meet FOI/EIR requests, CRU’s data management and archive practices meant it was not possible.
As far as your claim that it was “all done in secret” is “wrong” is concerned, it was only through the release of the CRU emails that the full reality behind their obstuctive behaviour was revealed.
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/
Steven Mosher knows there is deception involved in Climategate.
Deception = fraud
He just won’t say ‘fraud’ because he doesn’t have the fortitude.
Andrew
bugs:
Actually it appeared to me that the FOI officer colluded with Jones to prevent the release of data that the law required to be released.
If you want people to decry Smith’s nonsense (that hardly seems necessary, mostly he’s his own worst spokesman), you could start by being a bit more honest about situations like this.
Some of the science is right on, other portions (paleoclimate, much of the impact of climate change) have been subject to heavily politicalization and distortion. This has in fact been far more over the top than any abuse you perceive McIntyre to have done, if for no other reason that it gets rehashed almost daily in the scaremongering media.
You could admit that too in a more direct way than “the scientists are human too.”
I think Lucia should do a post on the (Global Warming-Caused?) Earthquake we had this morning.
“The epicenter is “highly irregular, extremely rare, unprecedented,†John Steinmetz, director of the Indiana Geological Survey at Indiana University, told the Star Press at Muncie.”
http://www.indystar.com/article/20101230/LOCAL/101230007/4-2-earthquake-hits-north-central-Indiana?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CIndyStar.com
Andrew
Andrew_KY:
I blame it on the neutrinos.
Carrick,
I’m ain’t buying anything with neutrinos in it anymore. Not even Gatorade. 😉
Andrew
Bugs said:
requests were not genuine, but harassment and vexatious,
Ahem. Is there a written exception from the FOIA rules for “not genuine” requests? Are there clear criteria given for recognizing requests as such?
Steve Mosher said:
we knew it wasn’t fraud. They actually BELIEVED in the rightness of what they were doing. I still think noble cause corruption is the correct rubric to class the behavior under.
Steve, to me the fact, that they believed in their own rightness is worse than fraud. It frightens me.
Somewhere I’ve read that the worst atrocities are best performed with the noblest aims on mind…
Bugs,
You are woefully unaware of the facts:
“The evidence of harrassing FOI requests is on McIntyres own blog. The FOI officer was quickly convinced that the FOI requests were harrassment after a short perusal of his blog. That’s the best you have got. ”
WRONG.
“From: Phil Jones
To: santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Tom Wigley
Subject: Re: Schles suggestion
Date: Wed Dec 3 13:57:09 2008
Cc: mann , Gavin Schmidt , Karl Taylor , peter gleckler
“Ben,
When the FOI requests began here, the FOI person said we had to abide
by the requests. It took a couple of half hour sessions – one at a screen, to convince them otherwise showing them what CA was all about. Once they became aware of the types of people we were dealing with, everyone at UEA (in the registry and in the Environmental Sciences school – the head of school and a few others) became very supportive. ”
This was written in 2008. Lets see what Jones was referring to.
1. “when the FOI requests began here [cru] That would be 2007.
In 2007 the records at CRU indicate that there were
TWO requests. One from willis eschenbach and one from Steve.
2. These were not harassing. CRU answered them and delivered a portion
of the information UNDER the 18 hour time constraint.
3. The investigations found that CRUs behavior in answering these was not
helpful ( cru delayed and delayed before finally relenting in part) This behavior was admosnished.
4. The FOI people saw no evidence of harassment, what they saw was the
‘kind of people” these are.
“I wonder what makes McIntyre run with the whole “I’m just in it to ensure the correctness of the science†claim, while doing nothing to say “the science is correctâ€. It wouldn’t be too hard to do, now would it? ”
Because one can never say the the science is correct. One can just say it has not been proven incorrect. which part of popper dont you get?
“At the same time, there has been a continual stream of suggestions that fraud and deception are behind the IPCC and the science of AGW. The audience knows what it is there for. And what is ‘audited’ is cherry picking of the leading edge science, which is continually being re-assesed and refined, while ignoring the bleeding obvious. Where is the questioning of the fraud behind the Arctic ice extent?”
I love this logic. ‘at the same time there has been a stream”
If you want to talk about INDIVIDUAL WRONG DOING then name the individuals and we can discuss that. Steve Audits what he chooses to audit. That is called specialization. And yes recons are the leading edge. ALL THE MORE REASON to understand the uncertainty. all the more reason NOT to make an icon of the hockey stick. mcintyre didnt do that.
EW (Comment#64463) December 30th, 2010 at 12:32 pm | Reply w/ Link
Bugs said:
requests were not genuine, but harassment and vexatious,
Ahem. Is there a written exception from the FOIA rules for “not genuine†requests? Are there clear criteria given for recognizing requests as such?
######
the requests were not vexatious. HAD THEY BEEN, the officer could have denied them. Instead The requests were:
1. combined into one request ( as allowed by guidelines)
2. processed and responded to in 18 hours or less.
3. Jones wrote a 1200 word response and posted 4 agreements.
The notion that the requests were harassing and vexacious was not supported by any of the investigations. The investigations found that CRUs behavior was in violation of the law, and that their behavior caused them more trouble than compliance with the law would have.
Basically it goes like this. IF you make a vexacious request you get a nice letter from Palmer saying so. If you make a request that will take MORE THAN 18 hours ( in their estimation) you get a denial. ( I got one of those )
So, 50 or so requests were made. The officer “combined” them into one request. he determined that the one request could be answered in less than 18 hours. Jones answered it in less than 18 hours.
What consumed their time was trying to figure out ways to object to requests, rather than simply fulfilling them. As the investigations noted. Cru brought the trouble on themselves.
Andrew_KY (Comment#64455) December 30th, 2010 at 7:49 am | Reply w/ Link
Steven Mosher knows there is deception involved in Climategate.
Deception = fraud
He just won’t say ‘fraud’ because he doesn’t have the fortitude.
#####
You don’t believe that. you believe every word I say but you don’t have the fortitude to say it. I convinced you long ago that I was right about this, but you are just afraid of saying you are wrong.
you’re not the only one with ESP.
bugs (Comment#64445) December 30th, 2010 at 2:32 am | Reply w/ Link
I don’t feel hugely energetic right now in terms of writing anything very complicated. As a simple exercise, I decided to quickly revisit the everchanging Hansen adjustments, a topic commented on acidly by E.M. Smith (Chiefio) in many posts – also see his interesting comments in the thread at a guest post at Anthony‘s, a post which revisited the race between 1934 and 1998 – an issue first raised at Climate Audit in 2007 in connection with Hansen’s Y2K error.
Where is the audit of Smith? He still can’t seem to get his head around anomalies. The “Y2K†error? He still can’t get over that? The “everchanging†adjustments? Yes, they adjust, and they refine. Why frame it like that, like it is Hansen comitting fraud?
###########
Funny Smith is a friend of mine and he allows me to post criticisms of him on his web site. And Anthony allowed zeke and I and Nick to post a critical artcile of McKittrick ( and smith and anthonys SPPI article) on his web site.
You see bugs because we have no consensus to defend we get to attack each other and still be friends.
Unlike the Team there is no thin green line to defend. Heck, I think I even agreed with a criticism that deep climate made of SteveMc.
That’s the strategic advantage we have. The Team MUST PROTECT its weakest member. because they are a team. those outside the team have the freedom to attack each other, support each other,ignore each other.
You should study warfare
“you’re not the only one with ESP.”
Steven, I don’t need ESP. I just observe nobody writes books called “Climategate” unless there’s a good reason to. All The Global Warming Scientific Elite just happen to be accidentally incompetent together at the same time about the same subject. Suuuuuuure…. It’s Harmonic Convergence.
Remind me again, you think you’re a Scientist, right?
Andrew
Andrew_KY (Comment#64469) December 30th, 2010 at 3:23 pm | Reply w/ Link
“you’re not the only one with ESP.â€
Steven, I don’t need ESP. I just observe nobody writes books called “Climategate†unless there’s a good reason to. All The Global Warming Scientific Elite just happen to be accidentally incompetent together at the same time about the same subject. Suuuuuuure…. It’s Harmonic Convergence.
Remind me again, you think you’re a Scientist, right?
Andrew
##########
Huh. I explained very clearly what motivated me to write the book on Judith’s blog when some idiot suggested that I did it for profit.
I watched the media between nov 19th and the 29th to see if anybody would follow the FOIA. ( on the 19th I told andrew revkin that was the storyline.
I saw the skeptics saying all sorts of stupid things. Especially about hide the decline and the harryreadme. i saw the media focusing on the charges of fraud. i saw everybody missing the story.
On the 26th of november, Tom asked me how I would frame things.
I wrote
“These emails reveal what many suspected. The behavior of scientists behind closed doors does
not comport with the high standards we demand of them. Their integrity is vital to public trust
and public trust is key to taking effective action. Words and PR can only go so far and as we have seen they can backfire. Nothing establishes trust like right action. What’s the next right action to take.
On the 29th, he asked me if I would write a book, by the 30th the outline was done. The focus was the last chapters. What should change going forward?
Since I saw it basically as a trust issue I suggested the following.
free the data; free the code; open then debate.
I will have to say after attending AGU that I saw a bunch of focus on data availability. I also saw a focus on communicating with the public better. I know of two new efforts to redo the surface record ( one of our recommendations) and more attention to the problem of uncertainty.
Tim Palmer gets the message. Trust has been eroded, like it or not. Now is the community and government doing everything in its power to reduce uncertainty?
So, if you asked me what i wanted out of writing the book I would say this.
Commitment to open data and code.
Participation by more stats guys in paleo and GCM work.
A ground up revision of the temp series.
A few lessons learned in PR and compliance with regulations.
Steve Mosher,
Thanks for that summary.
I do wonder a bit though. In reading the emails, is is clear that those involved are very ‘human’, with all the normal human failings and foibles people are subject to.
What I struggle with is the failure of any of those involved to stand up and demand more. More integrity from themselves and their associates. More consideration of uncertainty. More sense of noblesse oblige (or even common decency) to people requesting data. And most of all, more humility in their evaluation of their own work.
Is it, as Jeff Id has suggested, a failure due to lack of maturity/experience; a lack of education in the school of hard knocks?
I do not pretend to know, but I do know that the tone and content of the UEA email messages continue to bother me, no matter how many times I read them. I wonder if the public disclosure of these messages has given those involved a measure of perspective/introspection, or if it has made any impression at all.
I hope that it has, but I fear it has not.
Fortunately, none of the doper scientists listen to Mosher and continue to make the same ol ridiculous mistakes… thus, hide the decline and missing heat remain the order of the day
The scientists I have read seem to see it the way I do, there is a concerted attack on science, similar to that by the creationists. They have no problem disclosing data, it’s the act of taking data and using it to personally denigrate scientists for incompetence and corruption that is the problem. Read the link to CA link I gave. McIntyre is asked by TCO is he is implying corruption, and no wonder. The audience knows what he means. The inference is always there. The irony is that McI is using the incorrect satellite data to do so, accusing the CRU of getting it wrong, and in the process using language that, when the correct satellite data is used, disproves his accusations. At the same time he is using data he only links to, which is now a dead link. Piling up the irony on the irony. Where is the data? What is he trying to hide? Doesn’t he know about audit integrity, the standards the public should not only expect, but demand? Is it because he is in the pay of big oil? I’m not saying he is in the pay of big oil. No, not at all, but when you see such shoddy scientific practice, the question must be asked. I could go on for as long as he does, but you get the picture.
MikeC (Comment#64472) December 30th, 2010 at 9:05 pm
So far, the science has been mostly correct, which is amazing when you consider the complexity of the problem they are addressing.
… if you say so bugs…
… care to give me your latest on bigfoot, pyramid power and Nessie?
No such thing, no such thing and no such thing.
… you mean they didn’t vanish due to global warming?
Comment#64470
Mosher must be doing something right to draw hits from such disparate commenters.
The Climategate revelations seemed at the time to represent the ‘bugsification’ of climate science such that the science, the particular policy goals that brought so much new funding to the science, the wider ideological context of those policies and the careers and egos of the anointed became so intertwined that any criticism or any kind on any aspect of the enterprise was deemed an assault on the whole. Circling the wagons became a major feature of AGW.
A number of articulate warmists have made the entirely reasonable point that AGW does not depend on the Hockey Stick thus any flaws in Prof. Mann’s methodology don’t change the substance of the debate. A fair point which only serves to make the ferocious wagon-circling more curious.
It is not as if the siege mentality has dissipated after Climategate either. Markedly non-dogmatic figures like Judith Curry, Roger Pielke Jr or Mike Hulme (or lucia or Mosher for that matter) still get cast as heretics and radical threats to The Consensus.
I note that bugs continues the mythic struggle against Steve M in fresh comments above. Because bugs is theologically barred from considering the possibility that there is any objective weakness in the Hockey Stick oeuvre, he always faithfully returns to the theme of malice and dark motives by those who examine that work critically.
I used McIntyres own logic to prove the hockey stick. When he discards the CRU temperature record, which he scorns, in favor of he satellite record. In fact, the satellite record he used was in error, CRU has been demonstrated to be more correct.
The absurd conspiracy theory that always lurks just beneath the surface. Climate is always researched, no matter if AGW is true or not. There is no conspiracy.
SteveF (Comment#64471) December 30th, 2010 at 7:31 pm | Reply w/ Link
Steve Mosher,
Thanks for that summary.
I do wonder a bit though. In reading the emails, is is clear that those involved are very ‘human’, with all the normal human failings and foibles people are subject to.
What I struggle with is the failure of any of those involved to stand up and demand more. More integrity from themselves and their associates.
#########
Mc and I discussed this at length.. and we kinda agree with Jeff
“Is it, as Jeff Id has suggested, a failure due to lack of maturity/experience; a lack of education in the school of hard knocks? ”
From my own experience you were always expected to put your material to the acid test of your worst critics. murder boards. And releasing adverse results was a badge of honor. People who gave crafty answers were called to account and demoted. First time I saw that happen I was greatly impressed.
The other thing was the utter lack of any notion of selling a customer.
These of course are gross generalizations from very limited data. Trying to make some sort of sense of the behavior. The whole notion of withholding data was foriegn to me. I mean you get a great deal of joy plopping a 600 page report on your opponents desk and saying ” find a mistake, if you can.”
That’s why I found it so funny when they challenged Odonnel et al to publish a paper. christ, that’s asking for a beating.
I also dont get the whole team concept. Every R&D team I worked on in industry was designed to have people with radically different views of things.
kind of a darwinian approach to idea generation. shrugs.
At its heart I think there is a bit of the culture clash between engineers/scientists going on. a bit of that to be sure…
You act as if it’s a battle between CRU and the rest of the world, with Michael Mann and a couple of assorted hangers on. The CRU had three full time staff. That’s it. There are research centers around the globe, with hundreds of scientists actively researching and publishing papers. They don’t really care about you, if they even know you exist, or what you think. They have work to do, and they are concentrating on that.
A lack of maturity? Honestly?
What is McI saying now?
Re-writing history. He’s close to scraping the bottom of the barrel, He hasn’t called them Nazi’s yet, but if I was a scientist, I wouldn’t give him the time of day.
Bugs, isn’t McIntyre right that some of the changes to historical data are quite astonishing? Even 1934 data are not settled yet.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/files/documents/2010/783_NASA_docs-2.pdf
Niels A Nielsen (Comment#64484) December 31st, 2010 at 4:48 am
The data were settled when they were taken, including long ago in 1934. McIntyre is a statistician, he knows that. Taking raw data with flaws and errors is finding the best way to adjust for those errors is an ongoing process. He also knows that. The Y2K error was insignificant for the global average. Ditto. Revising the data and detecting errors is ‘rewriting history’ if Hansen does it, but when McIntyre does it, it is a noble and fearless pursuit of the truth. It is truly amazing how his framing of the issue is so readily accepted.
Look at that McIntyre, he’s continually trying to get the temperature record lower, does that mean he is a Nazi. I’m not saying he is, but the question must be asked, for the good of statitics and the honor of the professionalism of statisticians everywhere. Don’t mention the war.
Bugs, the surface temperature record is GISSTEMP, HADCRU etc. Those are the data used by me you and others to represent temperature trends. And they are the numbers used in other research. (It must be frustrating to be researcher and user of these everchanging data)
“the figure also shows (black) remarkable re-writing of past history since August 2007 – a rewriting of history that has increased the 2000-6 relative to the 1930s by about 0.3 deg C.”
Has anyone explained the change of data that Mcintyre observed? The change is no doubt documented somewhere, right Bugs? So, please explain to us what is going on?
As McIntyre phrases the question:
“The changes in the GISS US temperature adjustments since August 2007 are very large (~0.3 deg C) relative to the size of the trend in the most studied and measured area of the globe. Surely that deserves to be noticed and explained regardless of the direction. The size of the change is surely very surprising regardless of the direction.
Hansen et al 2010 is a very recent publication on GISS methodology, but did not contain a reconciliation of why the new adjustments differ so remarkably from adjustments believed to be satisfactory at the time of AR4. It is surely Hansen’s job to present a mathematical rationale for why these new adjustments are correct relative to the former adjustments. Why didn’t the peer reviewers ask Hansen for such a reconciliation? At present, I don’t know whether the changes arise in modifications at GISS or at USHCN or both. If people critical of my merely noting the new adjustments can clarify this point, I’m sure that readers would appreciate such a reconciliation.”
Bugs’ desperation here reminds me of Comical Ali: “Today, the tide has turned, we are destroying them. “
I’m desperate! My thermometer says 1 degree C this morning in Southern California ! Maybe it’s really 0, .6 or .8 or .4 or .3 outside because the temperature collecting device is too close to the house! Help me!
😉
“I also saw a focus on communicating with the public better.”
Steven,
Did this include beginning to be honest?
Andrew
liza,
And all the snow we had on the ground the last 2 weeks is gone. I guess I have believe in Global Warming now. Except for there are piles of snow that haven’t melted. The earthquake must’ve had something to do with it, and the neutrinos. It’s very confusing. 😉
Andrew
No, doesn’t remind me of that at all. Comical Ali lasted a few weeks, the IPCC is still here after 23 years, the temperature trend is up, the ice extent is down.
Andrew_KY (Comment#64492) December 31st, 2010 at 7:59 am
It is confusing. But they’ve got people like Bugs and The United Nations (both have such a great reputation) to help spread the enlightenment. 😉
Who said that they thought they were satisfactory? Every research group that puts out a temperature record comes up with a slightly different answer. Zeke has put up some of his own, and explained how and why he came up with the answer he got. The records all come up with the same conclusion, it’s getting warmer, even allowing for slightly different methodologies. Science is a process of continually revising and refining research. It takes McIntyre to spin that into a conspiracy theory.
PLANET EARTH
Eight Botched Environmental Forecasts
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/12/30/botched-environmental-forecasts/?test=faces
” It’s getting warmer Thank goodness! We prayed it would.”
Quote heard round the world after The Little Ice Age.
I also like the way McIntyre uses WUWT. WUWT has no qualms about making any number of nutty conspiracy theory claims and repeated and blatant accusations of deliberate fraud. McIntyre is too classy for that, so he just links to WUWT, and commends them on their fine work. How to have your cake, and eat it too.
Sheesh bugs, if hiding, adjusting, suppressing data (and opinions that don’t agree) or ignoring official codes of conduct and conflicts of intrest don’t discredit these men; tell us what will? how many ways can you say climate scientists can’t do anything wrong?
steven mosher (Comment#64481),
In industry, I have found that there usually is a lot of give-and-take and friction between people with different views of a technical issue. What I saw only rarely (fortunately) was corruption of the process via political means (efforts to “pull the plug” on research someone did not agree with, behind the scenes suppression of “undesirable” information, even efforts to get someone demoted or fired). In every case, this was someone with a very questionable technical position but a lot of influence higher up in the organization. Obscene. The circling of the wagons by the ‘Team’ suggests to me that the there was a lot of weakness in the science.
Have a Festive New Year is lucia’s message at the top. From this morning’s WSJ, “In the Chinese calendar, 2011 is the Year of the Rabbit, which is predicted to be a peaceful year, conducive to artistic pursuits.” Maybe this applies:
If BS were music, bugs would be the Philadelphia Philharmonic.
(Oops. Inappropriate ad hom. Sorry.) 🙂
bugs (Comment#64493)
December 31st, 2010 at 8:29 am
“… the IPCC is still here after 23 years, the temperature trend is up, the ice extent is down.”
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA… I’m gonna have an extra few tonight just for you
Happy New Years all
It is worth revisiting the Soon and Balyunis paper. From Wikipedia.
She is associated with the extremely nutty (read their web site if you don’t believe me) OISM, which has taken a very activist political position on AGW and a distinctly fraudulent and anti science one at that. She is an astrophysicist, not a specialist in climate research. She came up withthe highly controversial, and counter to accepted science, idea that increasing CO2 content in the atmosphere will warm the climate, instead saying that all the climate variations were due to the sun and could be correlated to solar sun spots.
Guess what she was wrong. The solar cycle has been extremely quiet, the temperature is rising. The temperature has been rising, and she denied even that was happening, using the same erroneous sattelite data that lead McIntyre to inadvertently prove the hockey stick is true. That an astrophysicist could publish such a paper led to a revolt of the board of the journal that published that paper, because the process of publishing it was politically corrupted in the first place. People accuse the CRU of being politically corrupt, they were forced into a position of having to deal the the political machinations of others who were subverting the publishing system to come out with a paper that effectively denied that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that will warm the atmosphere when it’s concentration is increased. Time has vindicated them, the Soon and Baliunas paper was completely wrong, and in denying even the CO2 greenhouse effect, going against the fundamental science that is known to be right. They have disappeared, since their research was proven to be wrong in only a few short years, back to what they hopefully know something about, astrophysics. Their findings, however, will still be remembered and quoted by ‘skeptics’ around the world as being one more nail in the coffin of AGW.
Andrew
““I also saw a focus on communicating with the public better.â€
Steven,
Did this include beginning to be honest?
Andrew”
seriously andrew, Go walk the floor at AGU. listen to people talk, engage them. Mann is not the sum total of AGW. I had lunch with peter webster and we talked about ICOADS. there wasnt any spin, just good honest communication.
Write to a few scientists and ask them for help with data. You’ll see that almost all will be of help. Rasmus Benestad even answers my mails. I work with a climate scientist on code. He gives me credit. My point about getting to the PARTICULARS in this matter is to avoid the kind of obtuse things that bugs says. To avoid painting all climate science with a broad brush. That was Mann’s mistake with Mcintyre.
Bugs:
“You act as if it’s a battle between CRU and the rest of the world, with Michael Mann and a couple of assorted hangers on. The CRU had three full time staff. That’s it. There are research centers around the globe, with hundreds of scientists actively researching and publishing papers. They don’t really care about you, if they even know you exist, or what you think. They have work to do, and they are concentrating on that.”
Jones, melvin,obsborn, briffa, I think when I counted there were 13. But when I speak of the “team” its much broader than CRU. Futher you miss the point. Before McIntyre wrote his paper in 2003 the mails show that Briffa and Osborn were planning a similar attack. In fact Osborne asked for the same data that Mc requested for exactly the same reason. Read the mails were mann chastises briffa. Jones was caught in the middle. So was ed cook. Cook in fact decided to stop working yn that feild be cause he caught it from both sides. Dissent was not tolerated. the thin green line. Briffa and Osborn dropped their paper. If you read the mails you will see the pressure put on briffa. you will see mann putting the screws to Jones and others. hold the party line.
Did you accuse webster of fraud and incompetence? Did say “Webster rhymes with dumpster”? Did you put stupid cartoons of him on your web site? Perhaps you could give McIntyre a few tips. I notice it was all Manns fault with McIntyre, McInytre is, in fact, blameless. If it wasn’t for Mann, McIntyre would never have made a pun on anyone’s name, and he would be telling everyone that AGW is, in fact, based on sound scientific theory. It’s all Manns’ fault. Who would have guessed.
Bugs,
Please read Mann’s many email messages; they speak for themselves.
He comes off as an miserable, arrogant SOB (and not just to people outside the team!) with chip on his shoulder and a overriding political agenda. All your complaints about Steve McIntyre’s reaction to Mann’s antics will not change that.
The change that McIntyre is talking about is obvious to anyone who has spent 10 seconds looking at these issues. The change occurred only to the US48. Or, more specifically, it was primarily TOB adjustments not present in the rest of the world.
In his Dec 26 update, McIntyre coyly says that it is “entirely possbile” that the USHCN switch is the cause, which is McIntyre-ese for “that is the cause but I’m not going to spend those 10 seconds verifying that Hansen isn’t the shyster that I perpetually make him out to be.”
Can anyone point me to a post on ClimateAudit that admits to Wegman’s plagierism, rather than attempting to deflect criticism by showing other plagierism? Can anyone point me to a post on ClimateAudit that admits that it was M&M who were mining the MBH algorithm for Hockey Sticks, and not Mann? Perhaps with a post called “McIntyre & McKitrick: Texas Sharpshooters?” Are there any posts titled “UAH – Adjusting the Adjustments”? Watts can post to ClimateAudit whenever he wants. Should DeepClimate ask for the same courtesy? Let’s see how chummy everyone is when professional malfeasence is the topic of discussion.
Of course there is a “thin green line.” There are so many weaklings to defend.
Sounds like any number of conflicts going back thousands of years… total joke
cce (Comment#64509) January 1st, 2011 at 10:39 am | Reply w/ Link
Can anyone point me to a post on ClimateAudit that admits to Wegman’s plagierism, rather than attempting to deflect criticism by showing other plagierism?
###############
I think its incombant on those making charges to detail what counts
as plagiarism. And then also to agree to judge other cases in the same
manner. WRT wegman. Whoever authored the parts referenced from bradley,
has a citation and copyright issue and not a plagiarism issue. That is the sources are cited but the citation practice could be more diligent. There is
also a copy right issue as some of the text should have been more liberally
quoted. Those issues are remedied much the same way NOAA remedied it’s
issue with Watt’s work. Ammend the report and note the change.
The SNA is more problematic as it has severe citation issues and on it’s face
purports to be “original” work.
The issue of raising bradley was motivated by a desire to get certain people
to take a principled stand on what counts as plagarism.
“Can anyone point me to a post on ClimateAudit that admits that it was M&M who were mining the MBH algorithm for Hockey Sticks, and not Mann? ”
Huh, that was the point of the whole excercise. The algorithm clearly mines for hockey sticks. Jeffid has shown this pretty convincingly as has McShane.
Calibrating in a time of rising temps will result in a supression of variance.
Everybody in the field knows this. And a supression of variance in the reconstruction period entails a flatter stick.
“Perhaps with a post called “McIntyre & McKitrick: Texas Sharpshooters?†Are there any posts titled “UAH – Adjusting the Adjustmentsâ€? Watts can post to ClimateAudit whenever he wants. Should DeepClimate ask for the same courtesy? Let’s see how chummy everyone is when professional malfeasence is the topic of discussion.”
I now of no evidence that would lead you to assert that Anthony has the right to post anything he wants any time he wants to CA. You are simply are mistaken with how posts go up on CA and on WUWT. Now theoretically a few people could post to CA anytime we want, but that is not how it works.
there are 2359 posts at CA
About 160 by John A.
about 70 by Anthony
a few dozen by gorish
a few dozen by roman M
The occassions on which Anthony posts are well constrained. There is a similar situation on WUWT. Theoretically, I could post anytime I want, but that’s not how it works.
I suppose DeepClimate can post to WUWT . All he has to do is send me a post and After Charles verifies that he in fact wrote it, which would require his name, I’m sure Anthony would post it. After all Tamino has an open invitation and does Mann and Gavin. Even you cce, go ahead.
“Of course there is a “thin green line.†There are so many weaklings to defend.”
That’s not the meaning of a thin green line. The thin green line is a reference to the thin blue line which references the thin red line. Heroic Highlanders.
So I don’t pick that metaphor lightly. You should not read it casually.
That the team saw themselves as a heroic embattled force is best captured by
Jones mail.. “the empire strikes back” although he funnily got the metaphor backwards.
Did you accuse webster of fraud and incompetence?
I’m not aware of steve accusing mann or jones of fraud. I am aware of him saying that they did not commit fraud. At the heartland conference. I am
aware of mann and others accusing Mc of fraud, to journalists and to potential
reviewers. This matter is especially bad since the claim was made in private and not correctable, until the mails were illegally copied. So yes, those
slanders were revealed by illegally copied mails.
” Did you put stupid cartoons of him on your web site? Perhaps you could give McIntyre a few tips. ”
I suppose you could link the stupid cartoon and then we could look at particulars like dates and then we could look at stupid cartoons passed between some climate scientists. If I were to give steve advice it would be this. If you want to to do a stupid cartoon of mann its best to do it in private like a chicken shit. Or if you want to call mann a fraud its best to do it in private like a gossiping old woman and not in the public sphere were a person could actually defend themselves. Or hide behind a moniker, like a douche bag.
“I notice it was all Manns fault with McIntyre, McInytre is, in fact, blameless. If it wasn’t for Mann, McIntyre would never have made a pun on anyone’s name, and he would be telling everyone that AGW is, in fact, based on sound scientific theory. It’s all Manns’ fault. Who would have guessed.”
Huh, I’m sorry but I would not hold steve “blameless.” For me there is no blame or no blame in this question. I think I put it to steve once that if it were any two other personalities involved it would not have gone down the way it did. Steve’s tenacity for one question. His attention to detail. His sarcastic wit. His skill at stats.Couple that with mann’s lack of honesty, sloppiness,self righteous victim mentality and self professed lack of statistical bone fides. whoa. that aint gunna end pretty, That will leave a mark. For me its just two human beings and I try to understand what lead to the final outcome. pretty funny actually.
I don’t know Mann personally, but I will accept for the sake of argument your claim that his is miserable and arrogant. So what?
Mosher says
His professed attention to detail. I have already had a quick browse of some old topics he has put up. The attention to detail seems to be lacking. For example, the one where he beats up on Moberg.
http://climateaudit.org/2005/04/23/moberg-satellite/
He was so obsessing with the CRU data how it was wrong, that he completely missed analysing the actual satellite data, and finding out that CRU was right and the satellites were wrong. Where is the attention to detail there. Where did he do one even passing attempt at an ‘audit’ of the satellite data? It’s a fine myth, and one that he has sold very well, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Then, to top up the irony, he uses the satellite data to prove the hockey stick is broken. If you reject the incorrect satellite data, and use the CRU data, he actually ends up proving the hockey stick is right.
Bugs,
“I will accept for the sake of argument your claim that his is miserable and arrogant. So what?”
So he reacts very badly when anybody questions his work or that of his associates, or even expresses any doubt about high climate sensitivity. Mann is 100% counterproductive when dealing with people. He inhibits scientific progress, and inhibits resolution of scientific conflicts. He bullies and insults people (even other members of ‘the Team’) when they don’t do what he thinks they should. He is an intellectual coward, and will not engage anybody in public debate when he can’t control what is said by his opponents. The bottom line: he is very bad for climate science, and bad for the public image of science in general.
.
When you suggest that his personal issues with Steve McIntyre are all the fault of McIntyre, you just make people think you are disconnected from reality.
Happy new year to you Lucia & family.
thank you & all commentator’s i give a big hug (even bughug) for a great blog. look forward to the same next year 🙂
I have no problem calling Mann a fraud, he’s an outright agenda seeking political hack… no science
bugs:
Even for you this is just a bizarre argument. It makes no sense at all.
Too much vodka?
The issues with Mann have to do with his attempts to paper over the “divergence issue” and the erroneous method he used for calibrating his proxies that led to his method producing red noise during the reconstruction period.
“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, it was a great play.”
Did you read the link? Did you also notice that the CRU temperature record is assumed to be highly suspect, but the satellite record is not?
I don’t think you are correct, but for the sake of argument, so what. A scientist progressed science, which has since progressed more. Spencer and Christy did pioneering work in creating a near surface temperature record from satellites. They screwed up, but the error has since been rectified. Where was McInytre thundering from the pulpit about that? Especially since their temperature record error led him to make an incorrect conclusion from their data.
“His professed attention to detail. I have already had a quick browse of some old topics he has put up. The attention to detail seems to be lacking.”
This example is even more striking:
http://climateaudit.org/2007/11/19/loehle-and-moberg/
Suddenly Steve’s attention to detail, sarcastic wit and skill at stats are gone. He didn’t even notice the most obvious Loehle’s chronology screwups.
ds, your “striking” example of “McIntyres’ lack of attention to detail” is even more ridiculous than Bugs’. In the linked text McIntyre agrees with Julien Emile-Geay in his critique of Loehles and implicitely Mobergs proxy selection. Why is that a striking example of lack of attention to details?
Are you too lazy to find a posting by McIntyre where he celebrates Loehles reconstruction or…maybe it is not there?
“In the linked text McIntyre agrees with Julien Emile-Geay in his critique of Loehles and implicitely Mobergs proxy selection. Why is that a striking example of lack of attention to details?”
By the agreement, you mean his traditional “but Moberg! but MBH! but Wahl and Amman! but bristlecones!” mantra?
This later gem is even better in that regard:
http://climateaudit.org/2007/12/07/realclimate-on-loehle/
“Some nits are pointed out in Loehle methodology. I haven’t checked the correctness of these points.”
Why didn’t he? Why linking to Lubos Motl incorrect claims instead? Heck, we even have insinuations of plagiarism there. Steve, his wits and stat skills in a nutshell…
“Are you too lazy to find a posting by McIntyre where he celebrates Loehles reconstruction or…maybe it is not there?”
I didn’t say he celebrated it. He just glossed over its errors because, well, Loehle is on “his” side. It’s the same reason why so many “lukewarmers” refuse to criticize Watts or Monckton openly.
If it had been someone from the “Team”, making such silly mistakes as Loehle, we would have seen 3 years long Steve’s stream of consciousness on that very topic on CA.
ds (Comment#64540) January 2nd, 2011 at 10:56 am
Read the comments from that link and post from CA!
Bugs.
“I don’t know Mann personally, but I will accept for the sake of argument your claim that his is miserable and arrogant. So what?”
very simply. Mann had choices when he encountered steve’s requests for data and code.
1. simply give them.
2. deny them.
The bottom line is putting all the personalities and politics aside it was a mistake not to share the data and the code. Mann made a stupid mistake.
Further Mann had choices when steve persisted and went public with the
requests and the denials.
1. continue the denials
2. simply give them.
3. deny the data and code and impugn steve’s motives.
Mann made a stupid mistake. Even if one had concrete evidence of steve’s motives one is still better off sharing the data and code.
After Steve published Mann had yet another choice that involved CRU.
The offer was made to let CRU try to reconcile steve’s work and Mann’s work.
Again, stupidity reigned and this offer was denied.
You see bugs, I have no issue with mann be arrogant or sloppy or having an agenda. I have no issue with Mcintyre being sarcastic or whatever.
I do have an issue with people who believe in AGW being stupid. Making stupid PR mistakes that prolong a controversy and ELEVATE a critic, rather than taking the smart path of co-opting him. You see the same stupidity WRT o’donnell.
1st challenging him to write a paper
2nd: giving the paper 88 pages of grief.
what in god’s name were those idiots thinking and why doesnt somebody with an ounce of intelligence explain to them that you do not throw down a challenge to someone with Ryan’s skills and you do not write pages and pages of trivial objections. You should know that one of two things will result.
A. the paper will get published anyway and your obstructionist efforts
will be an epic fail.
B. the paper will not get published and your obstructionist efforts may
end up in the congressional record. a more epic fail.
don’t they understand the precautionary principle?
As long as you and others persist in the attacks on Mcintyre, you elevate him. you give him the status of folk hero to the people who follow him. the standards you use to judge his behavior are easily and readily turned back on the people you want to protect. You accentuate the memes that you really don’t want to. And you cannot help yourself.
The so what? the planet so what, your children so what, your grand children so what. BUT FOR the stupid behavior relative to Mc, you would have no climategate. BUT FOR climategate you arguably might have a different copenhagen and cancun.
So the issue is not who is right and who is wrong. Who was provoked and who was tweaked, who was arrogant and who was an ass. The issue is, the controversy elevated McIntyre. That’s a fact. You might not like it. you might try to deny it, but he was an IPCC reviewer. And the controversy was fueled by Mann’s choices. That’s unarguable. You look at all the editorials that briffa sent Jones in 2005. “hey Phil, the skeptics are getting a bunch of traction on this data denial issue.” And when you look at that press you tell me.
Did it make PRACTICAL SENSE for jones to follow Mann’s path. because that is what he did. Staring a pile of negative press about data denial, Jones changed his mind about sharing data and went down the mann path.
And now after climategate what do we see at AGU? sessions on transparency.
What do we see the Union of concerned scientists arguing for? transparency.
Yet, even while the practical outcome, more transparency, is praised, people like you cannot bring themselves to say. “maybe mann made a PR mistake when he refused to share data, maybe Jones made a mistake. ” No you can’t do that. You continue to defend the stupid. Mann wasnt stupid, steve was bad.
Guess what. Even IF steve was bad, Mann was stupid. The current progress toward more transparency shows that. Unless you want to call that stupid.
Re: ds (Jan 2 10:56),
Your reading of the coverage of Loehle is most bizarre.
When Craig started to present his work the READERS of CA suggested
that he let us have a go at finding problems with it and playing the role
of ‘steve’ with craig. We challenged him and he was most gracious.
you wrote:
“I didn’t say [steve mc] celebrated it. He just glossed over its errors because, well, Loehle is on “his†side. It’s the same reason why so many “lukewarmers†refuse to criticize Watts or Monckton openly.”
I believe he linked to RC. praised gavin for his skills. All in all a pretty balanced presentation. Craig was working on a paper. the readers requested that we start a thread and do our best to find fault with craigs paper.
http://climateaudit.org/2007/11/15/craig-loehle-reconstruction/#comment-117907
can I suggest that you read the entire history of an affair, all the comments .
Further. WRT Monckton and Anthony and the lukewarmers. There are a few
vocal people on the lukewarmer side. Its pretty safe to say that the self identified lukewarmers have no patience for monckton. In particular I’ve been very critical of him. WRT Anthony, I have plenty of issues WRT his positions
on certain scientific issues. I’ve made those criticisms clear over and over again. I’ve even done that on his blog. I think that most people criticize Anthony for the “science” he promotes on his site. Take for example, Goddard. My position here is pretty easy to understand. I would rather have blogs that display poor science, than mann’s climategatekeeping. That’s because I can read and think for myself. I frankly think Anthony’s editorial choices are nothing short of brilliant for his demographic. I would not say it is the best science or even good science or even science. It’s not.
The problem for those of us who believe in AGW is that we do not have people
with any imagination presenting the story. we have anonymous twerps like Tamino, and jerks like Romm and Lambert, and stuffy twits like Gavin. No sense of humor, no sense of audience. We might as well make a video of blowing school children up. Opps we did that.
get off my team. I don’t want people like you representing the belief in global warming.
Talk about a statement so wrong! I can’t stop laughing.
I’ve got scads of posts tagged “Monckton”. I’ve criticized his “science”, his ad homs, his complaining about midwestern accents, his decision to complain about people’s looks, his invocation of hitler etc. See http://rankexploits.com/musings/tag/monckton/
Judith Curry now has a post, Blogospheric New Year’s resolution, on a code of conduct for effective rational discussion. Too little, too late.
“I will accept for the sake of argument your claim that his is miserable and arrogant. So what?â€
bugs,
To add my two cents on what others have said…
A more basic way of putting it would be that people’s arrogance sometimes prevents them from admitting that they are wrong or have made a mistake.
This kind of arrogance makes for bad science. Indeed, this kind of arrogance is one of the things that is considered childish behavior as opposed to mature/adult behavior.
Arrogance is a person’s incorrect idea of themselves. It’s an erroneous elevation of a person’s own sense of self. It’s not scientific. It interferes with honesty so, it matters.
Andrew
Re: steven mosher (Jan 2 15:55),
Indeed. Well, not entirely. They have a sense of their current audience, but not of the wider audience they might have. It’s called preaching to the choir. Compare and contrast: Rush Limbaugh vs. anyone on Air America or Democracy Now. Ignore the politics and opinions and concentrate on the mechanics.
Comical Ali worked for Saddam, who as you might know was in power for 24 years. Another quote from Baghdad Bugs err Bob: “I have detailed information about the situation . . . which completely proves that what they allege are illusions . . . They lie every day.”
Lucia,
“his complaining about midwestern accents”
What?!? He should be drawn and quartered, in the best middle English tradition. Midwestern accents are nice.
@mosher
“I believe he linked to RC. praised gavin for his skills. All in all a pretty balanced presentation.”
Whining about RC pettiness? Insinuations of plagiarism? Fair and balanced, I get it.
Can you please point me to CA post where McIntyre acknowledges criticism from climate scientists AND he doesn’t include some snarks about beams in their own eye, etc?
“My position here is pretty easy to understand. I would rather have blogs that display poor science, than mann’s climategatekeeping. That’s because I can read and think for myself. I frankly think Anthony’s editorial choices are nothing short of brilliant for his demographic.”
So it’s ok Watts is feeding his demographic with poor science, since you personally know it’s a crap.
Geez.
@lucia
“Talk about a statement so wrong! I can’t stop laughing.
I’ve got scads of posts tagged “Monckton—.
I know what you’ve got. I also know I wrote “many”, not “all, and Lucia specifically”.
Show me scads of posts tagged “Monckton” on CA, the Air Vent, or other, self-proclaimed lukewormer blogs.
ds (Comment#64557),
FWIW:
I like Anthony, and have made a couple of guest posts at WUWT. However, I think that Anthony could do a better job of screening out the really crazy stuff. I don’t mind the (endless) discussions of possible solar influence, but posts on condensation of CO2 (as a solid phase) in Antartica are a bit much to take. Anthony would be well served to have a few people screen potential posts for obvious errors of fact.
mosher,
I missed your links to ClimateAudit refuting my assertions. It’s supposed to be the gold standard for statistical based criticism, right?
And I understand the reference completely. The “skeptics” are defending their ideology and (perhaps more importantly) the cottage industry that they have built for themselves. They also have egos no smaller than their usual targets.
The MBH algorithm especially mines for hockey sticks when you only keep the top 1% most-hockey-stick-like sticks as M&M did. Wegman did an admirable job rerunning their code and claming that he replicated those specific results. I missed the ClimateAudit post pointing this out, too. I’m sure that JeffID has done all manner of statistical tests showing what the NRC report and others have already shown. Can you show me where he criticizes M&M and Wegman for perpetuating their exaggerations of said flaws? There’s that line again. We’ll call it brown.
McIntyre leaves Watts in charge when he’s gone. If the content of his posts is restricted, then I apologize.
I doubt DC would want to post to a site like WUWT. But if McIntyre let’s him, I’m sure he’d jump at the chance to post to CA. Of course it would have to include all the petulance that McIntyre is known for, except directed toward him. That would be a good test of your “all’s fair in love and skepticism” theory.
You said they “refuse” to criticize monckton. I don’t see any evidence of that. Mostly ignoring Monckton “above the fold” with unflattering statements about Monckton appearing in in comments, and visiting my blog to chuckle in my comments, hardly constitutes “refusing” to criticize the guy .
Mosher,
You’re a phony
Your whole ‘Lukewarmer’ business is rubbish. It’s simple Marketing.
You listed your rationale and all it boils down to is that you accept the IPCC position. You really have no issue over and above that your climate sensitivity lies within the IPCC bounds. Remember how Lucia used to title those posts ‘Falsifying the IPCC…’… Oh yeah, them wasthe days.
You claim that one reason you were convinced was that you saw a talk at the AGU about some Bayesian statisitics showing CS to be about 2. Yet for some reason you spend your time complaining about some nobody at AGU over at Watts’ place. Why didn’t you post about your climate sensitivity guy?
Then these endless dull complaints about how Mann is so terrible and oh woe he wouldn’t give McIntyre some data…
Tell us, who has been more successful at convincing the science community? Mann or McIntyre?
I know and me replying to the things you say implies that must be right… And yes, you are quite possibly correct about Climate Sensitivity. But that’s what the IPCC has been saying for ages.
cce (Comment#64562) January 2nd, 2011 at 8:05 pm | Reply w/ Link
mosher,
I missed your links to ClimateAudit refuting my assertions. It’s supposed to be the gold standard for statistical based criticism, right?
###
sorry I missed your assertions, could you detail them. It’s not my assertion that CA is the gold standard, but if u have some assertions to make I will answer them. I have no issue whatsoever criticizing steve.
Then you will apply the same standards to others.
(I suspect You on the other hand cant even criticize mann, even anonymously)
“McIntyre leaves Watts in charge when he’s gone.
##### WRONG AGAIN, stupid twit.
“I doubt DC would want to post to a site like WUWT. But if McIntyre let’s him, I’m sure he’d jump at the chance to post to CA. Of course it would have to include all the petulance that McIntyre is known for, except directed toward him. That would be a good test of your “all’s fair in love and skepticism†theory.”
Actually Steve did give a whole thread to a climate scientist who wanted to question steve’s motives. Lorax. But if DC sends me a post with the guarantee that he stands behind everything he says, then I cannot see why it would not go up at CA. As with WUWT a real name is required for posters.
Oh and Steve
“That’s the strategic advantage we have. The Team MUST PROTECT its weakest member. because they are a team. those outside the team have the freedom to attack each other, support each other,ignore each other.”
This is more ‘Marketing’. There is no need for “The Team” to do anything, because it doesn’t exist. It’s a hallucination of yours. It’s a method of demonizing and dehumanizing.
Why do you maintain these myths, when you actually agree with their findings?
There is nothing that real scientists enjoy more than demonstrating someone else wrong. This is something you’d understand if you actually worked with scientists or did any science.
Mosher
“sorry I missed your assertions, could you detail them. It’s not my assertion that CA is the gold standard, but if u have some assertions to make I will answer them. I have no issue whatsoever criticizing steve. ”
It was the a couple of paragraphs beneath… Go read his post again.
“Actually Steve did give a whole thread to a climate scientist who wanted to question steve’s motives. Lorax. But if DC sends me a post with the guarantee that he stands behind everything he says, then I cannot see why it would not go up at CA. As with WUWT a real name is required for posters.”
Lorax is his real name?
Nathan (Comment#64569) January 3rd, 2011 at 2:15 am | Reply w/ Link
Mosher,
You’re a phony
Your whole ‘Lukewarmer’ business is rubbish. It’s simple Marketing.
###########################
devastating. First, it’s not my Lukewarmer business. The term orignated on a CA thread in a debate between those of us who believe in AGW and those who don’t. A thread on Hurricanes. I believe david smith actually coined the term.
basically for people who would place there bets on the low end of the sensitivity range.
“You listed your rationale and all it boils down to is that you accept the IPCC position. You really have no issue over and above that your climate sensitivity lies within the IPCC bounds. Remember how Lucia used to title those posts ‘Falsifying the IPCC…’… Oh yeah, them wasthe days.”
1. There is nothing inconsistent with accepting the IPCC “projection” of 2C per century and presenting data to “falsify it” IF yu read those threads you will find me taking issue with the terminology “FALSIFICATION” since I don’t think that term rightly describes things. but god forbid you should actually read threads and comments. unfortunately for you I tend to remember nearly everything I read and write. a search on the term “disconfirmation” will yeild you results and discussions between Lucia and I on that matter.
2. The issue is simple. people conflate the wide range of views that believers and disbelievers have. Simply because I believe in AGW does not mean that I have to sign off on some of the crap that passes the lips of others who agree with those physics. I get to like McIntyre’s work AND agree with the IPCC.
“You claim that one reason you were convinced was that you saw a talk at the AGU about some Bayesian statisitics showing CS to be about 2. Yet for some reason you spend your time complaining about some nobody at AGU over at Watts’ place. Why didn’t you post about your climate sensitivity guy?”
1. I was an eye witness to a meltdown.
2. I saw some people I respect, disrespected
3. The Talk about climate sensitivity was not at AGU, u clueless dolt.
the talk was a video, available to anyone. I forewarded it to Lucia
to have a look at. I forwarded it to Willis and suggested that he write about it as well. I get to pick what I want to write about. I think that Lucia and Willis do a much better job than I can of taking material like that and turning it into posts. My choice is as follows: I choose to write technically about the stuff I know. That’s surface temps and metadata for surface temps. I restrict my technical posting to areas where I actually think I have a fair command
of the stuff I am writing about. When I choose to write about the sociology of science ( my other passion) I again choose to post about things where I think I have a fair command of things. Eyewitness to Craven was something that respected scientists could not even stomach. For me it was part of the fabric of the whole botched job folks have made of presenting the science to the public.
“Then these endless dull complaints about how Mann is so terrible and oh woe he wouldn’t give McIntyre some data…
Tell us, who has been more successful at convincing the science community? Mann or McIntyre?”
about what issue?
1. about the importance of data transparency? Mcintyre
2. about the importance of sharing code? Mcintyre
3. about the ascendancy of R? mcintyre
4. about the loss of varience? mcintyre, But briffa, osborn and others were already onto that flaw .. the were just scared off by politics.
5. About need to test new methods against synthetic data? Mcintyre
6. about the issues surrounding r2,ce and re? Mcintyre.
7. about the SIZE of the MWP? Mann is still more influential since steve has not published on this.
8. About the IMPORTANCE of the MWP? well, gavin now argues that it is scientifically un interesting, so you go figure. All the more reason for mann to understand that fighting the release of data was stupid beyond belief.
But this really ISNT about a scorecard between those two. Its rather about a way forward.
1 Lucia’s “Falsifying” posts were poor. That’s why she doesn’t claim to falsify anymore. That’s why I criticise the new style of post because they don’t go anywhere or claim anything.
2 This is everybody’s point of view, you are not special here. You are saying that there is this ‘TEAM’ – it’s garbage. The difference that you talk about here is one of your own creation. This is more Marketing.
3. So there was nothing worth writing about at AGU other than some guy having a meltdown? The problem I have Mosher is that you only focus on the rubbish. You spend your time shouting to the world all the things you think are bad with climate science, and then whisper… Yes, but I agree with their science. And it’s not like any of these ‘bad’ things are even important. You created a whole narrative about the climategate emails without even bothering to ask the people who wrote them. Not even attempting to find out the real story behind them you decided you’d just invent one.
This is why you are a phony.
“1. about the importance of data transparency? Mcintyre
2. about the importance of sharing code? Mcintyre
3. about the ascendancy of R? mcintyre
4. about the loss of varience? mcintyre, But briffa, osborn and others were already onto that flaw .. the were just scared off by politics.
5. About need to test new methods against synthetic data? Mcintyre
6. about the issues surrounding r2,ce and re? Mcintyre.”
What? so Mann creates a whole new branch of investigation, follows it up publishes a number of papers and has his findings supported by other uathors in the literature, and all you can say is that McIntyre made some comments about sharing code, using other software, and using different stats… Wow. And all that with his usual ‘pea and thimble’ terminology. He’s a real find.
“But this really ISNT about a scorecard between those two. Its rather about a way forward.”
Here here.
Hubris.
The Climategate scandal covered from beginning to end–from ‘Hide the Decline’ to the current day. Written by two authors who were on the scene–Steven Mosher and Tom Fuller–Climategate takes you behind that scene and shows what happened and why. For those who have heard that the emails were taken out of context–we provide that context and show it is worse when context is provided. For those who have heard that this is a tempest in a teacup–we show why it will swamp the conventional wisdom on climate change. And for those who have heard that this scandal is just ‘boys being boys’–well, boy. It’s as seamy as what happened on Wall Street.
.
Phony…
You don’t. McIntyre’s work has been entirely about creating a reason for the cheer squad to hate the IPCC. Don’t believe me? Read his blog, and his own words. Hansen is ‘rewriting history’. That’s about as subtle as a sledge hammer.
Yeesh. Looks like we’ll have to add another term to all the rest…
“Global Whining”.
Groupies! LOL
“There is no need for “The Team†to do anything, because it doesn’t exist.”
Baghdad Bugs has a Sidekick.
Not Nervous Nathan. 😉
Andrew
Nathan– Your attempts at mind reading are feeble.
Nathan (Comment#64572)
Duh!!!
Let me type slowly so you get the meaning:
The last sentence says: WUWT requires a real name for posters.
Nathan
I don’t see why why Nathan being able to “see” something ought to be the criterion for CA accepting a guest post from someone. I have my criteria (which can evolve over time). SteveMc has his. WordPress.com has their criteria for letting people set up blogs.
If Nathan has a blog, he can invite DC.
FWIW: I haven’t read DC clamoring for permission to write a guest post at CA. If he’s never asked, Nathan’s concern about SteveMc somehow not letting DC guest post seems pretty silly. Nathan, to your knowledge, has DC requested a guest post at SteveMc.
Re: cce (Jan 2 20:05),
Do you understand the MBH algorithms?
Exactly what “top” percentage of available proxies did the hockey team select to use in their marvelous mann machine? What exactly do you think they were doing by using only the proxies which displayed a “climate signal”? This was no different than selecting those time series consisting of random noise, but which also had a “signal” matching an increasing modern “temperature series”.
Yes, Wegman was asked to verify that what Steve had presented was properly done. Now, in my consulting experience, that would be to first ensure that the mathematics of the code was written correctly and that the code would generate results of the sort claimed. He did this.
However, you might not understand that re-running the code does NOT mean that you get the exact same sequences every time since the code involves the use of a random number generator. Each time you rerun the code you get different numerical results. What is necessary is to determine that the effect you are looking for reappears consistently when you generate the sequences. He did this.
In your vast mathematical experience. what do you think needed to be done that wasn’t? You really have to stop reading the junk put out be the clueless DC and actually start thinking for yourself.
bugs:
There’s bugs doing his Carnac the Magnificent impression again. Not a very impressive job.
As I’ve said before bugs has one standard for everybody else, a very high standard, and another for himself, a very low standard.
Not very impressive. Adults know better than to guess other people’s motives for why they post what they post.
If bugs has a specific problem with the technical content of anything McIntyre has said, he should address it. We know he is incapable of that, so like cce he spends most of his energy smearing people.
RomanM, I really like This post of Jeff’s.
This image is particularly amusing.
And this was Mann 08, which was an “improvement” on MBH.
Re: the “top 1%” claim cce made above…
I’d seen the same claim at WUWT from someone else who came running over from DC’s blog, hot-to-trot.
When I asked him to carefully study Figure 2 of the attached, he went away.
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2005/09/mcintyre.grl.2005.pdf
Steve Mosher is correct. As an exercise in political maneovering the AGW case-making has been one of monumental ineptitude. Monumental. I have never seen the like.
People can moan that scientists don’t have the skills etc. The point is this: tough shinizzle. Get the damn skills. Get someone on your side who has the skills. Change the approach. Do something. Do anything other than what you have been doing. People like to think they can think for themselves, and in many cases the AGW case is made in such a hectoring condescending manner that it just turns people off. People root for the underdog, and yet the warmists just plough on kicking that dog. People are cynical (rightly or wrongly) about power and authority and yet warminsts keep feeding that cynicism with their behaviour.
If I may draw a cooking analogy, my old chef used to tell me that most people eat with their eyes. So smarten the plate up. Wipe the jus off the rim and stop with the roughly chopped parsley and cayene pepper garnish. I want oven roasted duck fat crisps and julienned pickled lark’s tongue in aspic on that venison and I want it in 2 minutes. Yes chef!!!
I am an ignorant lukewarmer. And I am so because while I lack the time and knowledge to engage with the science properly, I find the lukewarmers to be the most reasonable group. I think that most people are like me. Like me they lack the knowledge and the time, but they respond to something reasonable.
The rabid sceptics come across as mad. The rabid warmists come across as arrogant. Be reasonable and engaging. Do not be defensive and haughty. The loons will soon out themselves. Let them speak. Liza, the floor is yours…
Nathan: “This is more ‘Marketing’. There is no need for “The Team†to do anything, because it doesn’t exist. It’s a hallucination of yours. It’s a method of demonizing and dehumanizing.”
To wit, read this:
http://climateaudit.org/2006/03/06/the-origin-of-the-term-hockey-team/
bugger off mark! real scientists don’t play on the internet and most luckwarmers online don’t even have a science degree. i live with someone who does have a degree and know many more. agw science is a weak unproven theory pushed by government funded scientists and after all this time everyone is still arguing about FRACTIONS of one degree. sheesh
I just skimmed this thread that was introduced as a holiday greeting and turned immediately into a discussion of personalities. With the beginning of the new year is there any way that these threads can be terminated early. I see people coming, not to inform, but to bait and waste everyone’s time – and unfortunately they are all too successful.
Re: Carrick (Jan 3 10:22),
Yes, Nathan and cce don’t seem to understand the real effect of using the modern temp correlations to cherry-pick the proxies for use in the procedure.
Actually, it might be an eye-opener for Mann and all to use that selection methodology on the artificial proxies which they included in their response to the Mc-Wy paper. The correlations between those artificial proxies and the model generated temperatures for the modern era have almost NO relationship to the correlation of those same proxies with the model temperatures from their pre-calibration era.
Using the correlation to select proxies simply reduces the number used. However the ones which have negative (or substantially lower positive) correlations in the pre-calibration era will just straighten the stick.
RomanM, it has been my experience in blogging on investment sites that some otherwise intelligent people do not understand the dangers of using and data snooping in-sample data to build an investment model. They simple cannot or will not distinguish between in-sample and out-of-sample data. Part of their problem is that they like the results that they can obtain from the in-sample data.
Then there is the problem that if you develop enough investment models, just by chance, a few are going to work. This becomes even more misleading when several people are constructing investment models, and, of course, there are winners and losers. The winners become geniuses and the loser are, well, losers – that is until the next round of model comparisons.
In one episode during the US stock market bubble an investment model picked enough winners to return a very high percentage. Most investments were tracked against the how the S&P 500 performed. When I commented that if the high return model did not do better than the S&P 500 for 800 years it would still have statistically significant better performance than the S&P 500 over that time period. I was attempting to point out that being lucky in the short term in a raging market did not suggest that that strategy would work going forward for those people just starting to invest in it – even though the developer (actually his progeny)could brag for 800 years that he outdid the market. A hero poster at the site, who was a physicist and did not appreciate the dangers of data snooping as everything to him was deterministic, came on to reply that I must have made a mistake in my calculations and later showed that indeed the outperformance would only last 750 years and what a dunce I must be.
I have already stated at least twice a particular problem witht he technical content of a McIntyre claim. Everyone ignored it.
http://climateaudit.org/2005/04/23/moberg-satellite/
Steven Mosher (Comment#64522) —
You mean when done by Wegman, McIntyre & McKitrick? 😉
http://deepclimate.org/2010/11/16/replication-and-due-diligence-wegman-style/
And as for a defintion of plagiarism, Steven, you need look no further than the NIH Office of Research Integrity Policy on Plagiarism. Eli has more:
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/10/dummys-guide-to-strange-scholarship-in.html
“definition of scientific misconduct”
Look who’s the “expert”.
liza (Comment#64772) —
Definition of “Cleared of scientific miscinduct”: Wang, Mann and Jones, multiple times.
bugs:
So you found one mistake on one post.
I’m floored.
NASA is still working on those climate models…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/08/new_model_doubled_co2_sub_2_degrees_warming/
J Bowers (Comment#64773) January 5th, 2011 at 6:37 am
Whatever. Government (welfare) scientists are just as hard to fire as any other government worker. I have a friend who was a manager at a post office and one of her employees pulled a gun out on everyone in a strange fit of emotion. It wasn’t loaded, so she didn’t get fired. LOL
And how about the guy on the California Air Board who had a fake online degree who’s “research” GW legislation was based on? Still works there. LOL
link to story: http://web.signonsandiego.com/weblogs/americas-finest/2009/apr/30/thornhill-university-where-the-air-boards-diesel-e/
Michael Mann, the climate scientist responsible for the notoriously misleading “hockey stick†graph who is also stuck up to his hips in the climategate scandal, is cashing in at the expense of the US taxpayer. To the tune of $500,000 from the TARP money. Guess that’s okay for J Bowers. Mann did such a great job the first time he needs to be funded again…. to help the economy . LOL
wait…edit…could be more then that. From a comment on another blog at the time:
“”””Actually, I think it may be much more than half a million. According to M. Mann’s CV, he received a multi-year grant this past spring from NSF totalling close to $2 million:
Quantifying the influence of environmental temperature on transmission of vector-borne
diseases, NSF-EF [Principal Investigator: M. Thomas; Co-Investigators: R.G. Crane, M.E.
Mann, A. Read, T. Scott (Penn State Univ.)] $1,884,991
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/cv/cv_pdf.pdf
Penn State receives 20% administrative overhead from each grant. I wonder how anyone can expect their investigation to be objective?”””
RomanM: Now, in my consulting experience, that would be to first ensure that the mathematics of the code was written correctly and that the code would generate results of the sort claimed. He did this.
.
The problem here is that if DC is factually correct, then it appears that Wegman did not even bother to read the code, much less “ensuring” anything about it.
.
Claiming a given process consistently produces a certain result “in every independent replication”, and then showing the 1% largest results from a different process is frowned upon in some circles.
liza —
Care to break down how that money is spent? Here are a couple of reads that you obviously need.
Taking the Money for Grant(ed) – Part I
http://profmandia.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/taking-the-money-for-granted-%E2%80%93-part-i/
Taking the Money for Grant(ed) – Part II
http://profmandia.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/taking-the-money-for-granted-%E2%80%93-part-ii/
Of course, you could always go looking at historical federal grants to Richard Lindzen, adjust for inflation over the years, and get a real idea of what “big bucks” really means 😉 Make sure you’re sitting down first.
Easy. If it gets through peer review and cited a lot then it’s safe to say it’s good stuff and was as objective as can be. The amount of citations that a scientist gets (if not exclusively) is often reflected in the funding.
Hate to tell you this, but it almost feels like there’s a new hockey stick every month, from researchers completely independent of Mann et al.
Sorry for missing something out of the formatting above.
“If it gets through peer review and cited a lot then it’s safe to say it’s good stuff and was as objective as can be.”
Belief system on parade.
Andrew
Um did Richard Lindzen adjust data, hide and withhold data, or participate in rude and unprofessional email exchanges with fellow researchers? My husband had to stand up in front of his peers; in person; and argue his thesis (published twice… argued face to face twice!). So don’t give me your unexperienced opinion on the peer review process as if it means anything.
Russian vessels trapped in ice prison! Global Warming! 😉
http://itn.co.uk/44d8e06e13d98f3d09830934301e9d77.html
J Bowers
Well… that’s a gross exaggeration. . .
liza (Comment#64784) —
Try a FOIA request and find out. Be interesting to see if you can get his data from anywhere for those federally funded projects, though.
Steal his emails and find out. Seems a perfectly legitimate practice to you going by the way you mention the ones stolen from UEA.
South Baffin swelters in winter heat wave
http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/98789_south_baffin_swelters_in_winter_heat_wave/
Brrrr…
“Be interesting to see if you can get his data from anywhere for those federally funded projects, though”
http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/PRODOCS/erbe/table_erbe.html
“Seems a perfectly legitimate practice to you going by the way you mention the ones stolen from UEA.”
Thank goodness they were. Too bad for your belief!
“South Baffin swelters in winter heat wave ”
Sheesh. Ice melts in my fridge too.
lucia (Comment#64788)
Is it? Maybe, but not gross. I did say it almost seems like…
Twentieth century warming in deep waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence: A unique feature of the last millennium. Thibodeau et al (Sep 2010)
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010GL044771.shtml
Ammonium concentration in ice cores: A new proxy for regional temperature reconstruction? Kellerhals et al (Aug 2010)
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009JD012603.pdf
A new reconstruction of temperature variability in the extra-tropical northern hemisphere during the last two millenia. (Ljungqvist 2010)
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/vindication/
Late-twentieth-century warming in Lake Tanganyika unprecedented since AD 500. Tierney et al (May 2010)
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n6/full/ngeo865.html
And last but not least…
A Statistical Analysis of Multiple Temperature Proxies: Are Reconstructions of Surface Temperatures Over the Last 1000 Years Reliable? McShane & Wyner (Aug? 2010)
J Bowers– Ok. In interpreted you to mean something more than very local or small regions. That’s what I think of when people use the term “hockey stick”. I don’t include “hockey sticks” like
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/baby-name-ometery/
(Ok. At least yours is temperature…. 🙂 )
@ lucia
No, I’m not excluding regional, and yes, my examples are temperature.
liza (Comment#64796)
There’s a reason for that…
http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/home/question121.htm
Try putting it in the other bit called ‘Freezer’.
J Bowers what’s your purpose? You post a headline about “sweltering” temperatures in Russia melt ice on sidewalks and streets. Does UHI ever come into your head?
And your paper on that lake in Africa doesn’t prove AGW. It just suggests it. So I looked up some facts about that lake.
“The enormous depth and tropical location of the lake prevent ‘turnover’ of water masses, which means that much of the lower depths of the lake is so-called ‘fossil water’ and is anoxic (lacking oxygen).” Interesting. Also the lake was scene of two big WWI battles. Then I find this blog post…
Quote: Lake Tanganyika Warming – “Unprecedented” BS
It’s amazing how the “warmer†press and blogs latch on to silliness. They’ll hop on anything about global warming faster than the Lone Ranger jumps on his horse “Silver.†I did a Google search on “Africa’s Lake Tanganyika, Warming Fast Life Dying†the result shows as of now there are 66,600 search results on this headline and it hasn’t even been up but about 3 days. If it sounds like doom and gloom and it’s blamed upon global warming it really gets out there fast. What it really amounts to appears to be much ado about nothing, which is business as usual with the “warmer†crowd.
This is what happens when you send people from liberal Brown University, who conveniently come up with another scare-a-rama about global warming, in what appears to be another feeble “alarmist†attempt to counter climategate and all the other “gates†since. I originally found this article from Reuters about how Lake Tanganyika has warmed while perusing things on the net.
Then they quote the paper: The rise in temperature over the past 90 years was about 0.9 degrees Celsius and was accompanied by a drop in algae volumes.
Blog Post: Note, I’m not questioning the temperature rise, or the algae drop, but I do question what’s causing it and if it’s “unprecedented†or not. I find the next line interesting as it makes it obvious they don’t really know what’s causing it.
But the paper admits that other factors, like overfishing, may be doing more harm than any warming.
What I simply can’t fathom about some scientist is why they publish things and act like they have proof positive when the reality is they don’t have all the facts to back up what they’re stating? I really don’t have a problem with the facts of this paper, but I do have a big problem with them claiming it’s due to AGW. Now back to the “overfishing.â€
Yes, “overfishing†could be an excellent reason there’s less fish. Perhaps not the whole reason, but certainly a large factor, especially when you see the below on the population increase in the region over the previous 90 years, which explains why overfishing would be one of my top choices on why there are less fish.
Total populations today, per the World Bank (as of 2008) are, Congo: 6,425,635, Tanzania: 42,483,923, Malawi: 14,846,182, Zambia: 12,620,219, Burundi: 8,074,254. The total is: 84,450,213, roughly 77,450,000 more people in the region surrounding Lake Tanganyika in the past 90 years.
http://co2insanity.com/2010/05/18/lake-tanganyika-unprecedented-bs/
There’s more including a link to a similar study of another lake …but you get the idea! Holy cow.
J. Bowers-
Ok… but then in my opinion, when responding to the person’s point you are either a) changing the subject (from a point about the “hockey stick wars which is about global temps) or b) equivocating (by using the same word– hockey stick– to discuss regional when it was previously being used in a global context.)
Of course, I would never suggest you are the only person to do this. Nor would I suggest you, or others who might do it– are necessarily doing it on purpose. Often, the person making the shift doesn’t think they are shifting at all. They think it’s “the same thing”. (And that can be a totally honest thought because there is some similarity.)
But these shifts in meaning are one of the reasons comment blocks often have people talking at cross purposes! Happens.
liza (Comment#64803)
It was Canada, and it was in response to your post of Russian ships being locked in Arctic ice in winter as if it’s significant. Greenland and Canada having such high temperature anomalies in winter is something to be surprised about. And no, UHI doesn’t come into my head because UHI efect doesn’t run to +20C above the norm to my knowledge.
A good job science relies on weight of evidence, not on proof.
Do they?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/unsettled-science/
lucia (Comment#64808)
Aren’t global hockey sticks the product of the analysis of localised records? co2science.org’s local cherry picked analyses constantly being used to attack global hockey sticks in the blogosphere are a good example of how local hockey sticks are very much in the frame. Perhaps an unintended result is I’m just applying some symmetry to the debate.
Carrick (Comment#64774) January 5th, 2011 at 6:48 am
I would expect an apology from McIntyre. Crowleys mistake was no worse. The mistake is also systemic. McIntyre did no investigation into the accuracy of the satellite data, he made no demands for the source code. He assumed, that because the CRU temperature record was wrong, that the satellite data was correct. There is a mythology about McInture, that he a man dedicated to the pursuit of the truth, no matter what it is, that he is objective and not interested in pursuing individuals, is laid bare here.
Look at the ‘apology’ topic.
“AusieDan
Posted Jan 4, 2011 at 9:09 PM | Permalink | Reply
This post speaks well of Tom Crowley and must have been hard to write.
Next I would like to note my admiration for: either Steve McIntyre’s faultness memory or his first class filing, indexing and data retrieval system OR perhaps both! It is an object lesson to everyone – take care when you challange Steve’s statements!”
That’s the myth, but it’s not a fact. I wonder if McI will publish his own apology for his own accusation, because that is exactly what he did. He did not just say that Marberg had made an error. He explicity said that Marburg used the CRU data because it suited is alarmist claims, when McIntyre used the satellite data because it suited his claims.
http://climateaudit.org/2005/04/23/moberg-satellite/
“To even contemplate use of Moberg, the Hockey Team has to rely entirely on the splice of CRU records,</b< rather than satellite records. Warwick Hughes and others have expressed concerns about how CRU have handled urban heat island effects and other issues. There are some very interesting issues in SST temperatures on how adjustments have been done for change-over from measuring temperatures in buckets to engine inlets, which I’ll post about some time.
A couple of years ago (before I had any notoriety), I asked Phil Jones for the data used in the UHI study published in Nature and relied upon by IPCC. Jones told me that it was on one of dozens of diskettes in his office and he couldn’t find it. I didn’t pursue the matter at the time. You may recall Phil Jones’ response to Warwick Hughes’ request for the underlying station data:
We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.
Phil Jones’ construction of temperature data sets has been financed by the U.S. Department of Energy. Whether the CRU data sets are right or wrong, they need to be audited. I don’t see why the Hockey Team should be exempt from audit standards."
Why should the satellite team be exempt from audit standards? It is a question that never even crosses his mind.
Using his own words, now that we have the satellite records altered.
You can see that the post-1980 satellite temperatures are high and off the charts using Mobergs reconstruction.
Sounds very alarmist to me.
But thank you for responding to my point, Carrick, you are the only person to do so.
mosher,
CA is run by McIntyre, JohnA and Watts as you most certainly know.
Here’s Watts creating an unthreaded post while Steve is gone
http://climateaudit.org/2009/03/19/unthreaded-n1/
Here’s Watts posting on behalf of JeffID while Steve is gone.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/08/19/signal-to-noise-ratio-estimates-of-mann08-temperature-proxy-data/
Here’s Watt’s building new CA servers:
http://climateaudit.org/2009/03/09/the-climate-audit-system-upgrade-help-needed/
http://climateaudit.org/2009/03/18/the-new-ca-server-has-arrived/
Here’s Watt’s moving CA to WordPress:
http://climateaudit.org/2009/11/20/hello-world/
Has Hu or Roman done any of these things?
Watts has all of the keys to the kingdom. They’re chums. Pals. Buddy, buddies. If the team mentions the hockey stick, McIntyre makes 10 posts slicing and dicing every word. Watts and his crew post total nonsense every day. Crickets. You said something about protecting the weakest link. They don’t get much weaker than Watts.
I accept the NRC panels findings, re: Mann. I accept that the “team” circles the wagons all too often. I also accept the fact that they both despise and stonewall the high profile skeptics. I don’t accept that “skeptics” are ego-less advocates of the scientific method and transparancy.
Roman,
Wegman reproduced the same “hockey sticks” that appeared in the M&M paper and in the supporting samples. They were identical. Despite repeated calls to release “their” code, Wegman et al have not. I seem to remember similar controversies except with different names.
And Carrick, please point out where I have “smeared” anyone. Subjecting people to their own supposed standards is not “smearing.” Mosher calls me a stupid twit for stating what is plainly true, while simultaneously defending the “we attack each other and are still friends” meme. Not particularly convincing. And, BTW, how long did it take for Roman to come to bat for Wegman?
I haven’t spent a lot of time at CA, but I did spend some time in this thread:
http://climateaudit.org/2008/12/28/gavin-and-the-big-red-dog/
Now, a question for anyone still reading. Do those UAH and RSS temperature maps represent what McIntyre thinks they represent?
[Crickets.]
Willard–
Huh?
Chirp, chirp, chirp…