120 thoughts on “Profero/Unsimplify Clarifies– sort of.”

1. The Profero authors appear to have figured out the people they identify as key players turning climategate into a story are loosely connected and display a diverse range of positions. Both absolutely true.

   Crap, 16 bucks and a few pages of reading my book and they would have seen this. Duh.

2. Thank goodness for the amazing breakthrough of “sense making” – how on earth has mankind got so far without this incredible concept?!

   I was trying to translate my “mental map” of blogland into a Profero diagram and all I could do was make what looked like old fashioned lists – you know sort of “for”, “against”, “neutral”: The type of views one might seek out in forming an opinion.

   Now I realise how much better it is to follow the dots that someone has already joined for you – I can see many significant benefits for us all as a result of this groundbreaking concept. And, as you say, such good value for money! Perhaps as good as hiring some critical minds?? 🙂

3. Lucia,

   PJMedia was an important key piece for us getting the book story promoted.

   This was toward the end of december and it was covered as “news that didnt get covered by the MSM.

   Patrick found you and me and jeffId.

   Now I feel kinda stupid about this but I contacted all of the following and got no joy back:

   NYT,Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Fox News.

   ( kinda in that order too ) I know Tom also contacted people in the MSM. Patrick asked me why I think the MSM didnt cover this.
   Its too easy to say liberal bias. I think the story is too damn hard.

   Everybody wants a simple takeaway, but there is no simple takeaway.

4. Sense making.

   HA. I used to study situational awareness. or SA and the OODA loop.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop

   My hero: John Boyd

   And of course the ever colorful Everest Riccioni ( he was quite the character ): In the end Riccioni and I ended up working together on the Y-F23. ( I did stats for him, fun)

   “With Colonel Everest Riccioni and Pierre Sprey, Boyd formed a small advocacy group within Headquarters USAF which dubbed itself the “Fighter Mafia”. Riccioni was an Air Force fighter pilot assigned to a staff position in Research and Development, while Sprey was a civilian statistician working in Systems Analysis. Together, they were the visionaries who conceived the LFX Lightweight Fighter program, which ultimately produced both the F-16 and F/A-18 Hornet, the latter a development of the YF-17 Light Weight Fighter.”

   opps. lost in nostalgia.

5. Lucia, keep your mind firmly fixed on the fact that this is UK focused.

6. I sent ’em an email this morning before work informing them of some errors.

   I read some title yesterday on a link called ‘harnessing the power of skeptic bloggers’- the title itself shows a lack of understanding of the environment. Nobody will harness Mosher’s power — I’ve never met Steve but try it, let me know how that works for you.

   The point is that the progressive movement is formed of a group of people driven by first response thinking – if you want poor to have more, take it from the rich and give it too them. The consequences of that act are almost never considered beyond that and when they are it quickly devolves into complex sophistry. Progressives want to save the environment they say, limit output. Never considering that the limitation will destroy lives and delay a real solution to the problems. It’s a shallow form of thinking in most cases.

   So seeing Oxfam look for ways to utilize blogland with issues like climategate to create more progressives, good friggin’ luck guys. Let me know how that works for you.

7. Now that I think of it it is a perfect example of the OODA LOOP.

   “Boyd’s key concept was that of the decision cycle or OODA Loop, the process by which an entity (either an individual or an organization) reacts to an event. According to this idea, the key to victory is to be able to create situations wherein one can make appropriate decisions more quickly than one’s opponent. The construct was originally a theory of achieving success in air-to-air combat, developed out of Boyd’s Energy-Maneuverability theory and his observations on air combat between MiGs and F-86s in Korea. Harry Hillaker (chief designer of the F-16) said of the OODA theory, “Time is the dominant parameter. The pilot who goes through the OODA cycle in the shortest time prevails because his opponent is caught responding to situations that have already changed.”

   Boyd hypothesized that all intelligent organisms and organizations undergo a continuous cycle of interaction with their environment. Boyd breaks this cycle down to four interrelated and overlapping processes through which one cycles continuously:

   * Observation: the collection of data by means of the senses
   * Orientation: the analysis and synthesis of data to form one’s current mental perspective
   * Decision: the determination of a course of action based on one’s current mental perspective
   * Action: the physical playing-out of decisions

   Of course, while this is taking place, the situation may be changing. It is sometimes necessary to cancel a planned action in order to meet the changes.

   This decision cycle is thus known as the OODA loop. Boyd emphasized that this decision cycle is the central mechanism enabling adaptation (apart from natural selection) and is therefore critical to survival.”

   I guess this stuff just got ingrained to me working with Riccioni and others. It was OODA loop this and ooda loop that. The key parameter is of course time. Getting inside the decision cycle of of your opponent. Disrupting his observations with stealth and misdirection. Over whelming his command and control. A lot of focus on the transient performance of systems ( see the F16 transient performance characteristics ) In this story, the
   other side had no ability to respond quickly to the stuff that was out there. They could only reply stupidly.

   Look, to make sense of the mails and speak intelligently about them you actually had to follow Mcintyre for years. For me reading the mails was filling in the blanks in a story I already knew pretty well. And of course willis and others knew this story as well. Anyways, our transient performance is our best asset.
   The biggest issue is Excess specific power for us.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy-Manueverability_theory

   The big machine moves slowly. and its moving now to make the story go away. And while our little swarm of bees had some success, my cynical self says that the story is running out of energy. A few more opportunities come up..

   Need to gear up for another push.

8. Oh Lucia.

   Charles and I were interviewed by the Wall Street journal in Late November ( I can dig up the exact date )

   We told the ENTIRE story to them. Whole thing. The guy ( I wont embarass him ) had the whole scoop on the mosher timeline.

   This was before I even decided to write the book. So when people ask me why did you write the book? Simple. I was effin pissed. I pass the story to Revkin. nothing. Charles and I do a WSJ interview. Nothing.

   Heck I went to northwestern. We had a name for the kids in the medill school of journalism. Medilldos.

9. Steve, Your OODA loop musings are like deja-vu all over again.:)

   http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/climategate-communication-network/#comment-38915

   I get the feeling that Harrywr2 is right and Oxfam are trying to get a handle on this elusive elixir that the bloggers have. Left of centre, progressive, call them what you will blogs have not been very successful in the UK, so their internet ‘action’ is often Twitter Mania.

   As noted above, the whole intelligent, inquisitive, co-operating free agents thing does not sit easily with their narrative.

10. Oh,

    I also emailed various UK publications and provided them with leads that were never followed up on. I have a very detailed mail from Mcintyre to a UK press person that goes into detail on the whole Wahl/briffa/jones affair. Analysis that nobody but steve would do. It’s a brilliant piece of detective work. I hope he publishes it. For now I just sit on it.

11. ha chuckles I missed that comment. Cool.

    It really is a good example of the OODA loop in action.
    I suppose we could also talk about network warfare as well.
    Also funny in this regard is Lucia being in on their phone call.
    Also the volunteer effort by watts. The mass FOIA.

12. Ya, one other thing. The guys in the UK had no clue what Mann and others were up against on the internet.

    So you have Mann whining and moaning about this conspiracy, internet enabled conspiracy. And to him it has to, absolutely has to, look like a conspiracy. he gets attacked by the conservative press and questioned by the liberal press and it all originates in the internet postings of this mining guy. Makes no sense. How do you make sense of that? How do you make sense of people in the press listening to this guy posting stuff on the internet? Easy. conspiracy. That’s a tidy one word explanation.

    And when Mann blathers on about the internet, the guys in the UK dont have any idea what he is talking about. Briffa mails Jones a huge list of news clipping with Mann as the focus.
    Jones get’s the meme. denies warwick hughes. the same day.
    He’s infected with the meme.

    So they take this mindset of how the world operates ( bad industry, makum bad science, to preserve evil profit ) And they apply it to the internet. And they still get obliterated. Now they buy a report that’s sure to be a ghost shirt, and they will still be members of that famous lost tribe:fucowees

13. I think the key driver of the skeptical movement in blogland is technical curiosity sparked by the unsatisfactory portrayal of “settled science”. It is not a “top down” campaign, but rather bottom up investigation of issues. The so called network evolved through discussions and interactions of commenters and bloggers as their common understanding of issues and problems took shape. For a case in point, look back at Jeff Id’s first awkard and curious comments and questions on CA before he started his blog. Next thing you know he is churning out posts at his own blog on the flawed math behind “hockey sticks”.
    –
    IMO the only reason this movement has traction, is because of flawed math, lack of transparency in data and method, and the bizzare efforts by many scientists to disimiss (rather than engage) any attempts to poke holes in the foundations of climate science – the opposite of true science.

14. Yes Layman I agree. I think that Mosh’s OODA loop thing omits the essential element of “motivation”. Curiousity is a great motivator in seeking truth whereas “advocacy” risks blindsiding it. As an example I’d cite that DC chap’s critique of the Wegman Report where he took a look and all his observations did were lead him to more and more fantastical constructions of wrong doing.

    Or maybe it’s just about the order of the first two O’s in OODA… 🙂

15. I’d certainly echo Mosh’s point about the story being too difficult for the MSM. I’ve spoken to a couple of journalists who are very interested, but it has simply proven too difficult to get an angle that is simple enough for them.

16. If anyone pages through the blogroll of any of the non-consensus blogs (I start from WUWT each morning) it is incredibly easy to see that there is no central narrative. If you just look at what’s above the fold on a dozen websites or follow the agglomerators like Morano, none of the skeptics talk about the same thing on the same day. (Obviously there are exceptions.)

    The mental model of the skeptic community starts off with no observation and mistaken assumptions. It’s why they sound laughable when they pronounce on the ‘skeptic mindframe.’

    It would be easy and cheap to do it right. Doesn’t look like these guys did it the easy way, the cheap way nor do they seem to have gotten it right.

17. I don’t no where/how the oxfam guys would classify me either.

    Humour is a powerful.
    It is now safe to make jokes without getting called a deniar

    from the UK today..

    Bill Clinton can see which way the ‘wind’ is blowing, in the political ‘climate’ (sorry)

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7495834/Bill-Clinton-pokes-fun-at-Al-Gore-during-Gridiron-dinner.html

    “He also targeted Al Gore, noting that it was spring: “otherwise known to Al Gore as proof of global warming.”

    Popped the comment into the BBC’s environment blogs.
    It would be fantastic to steer the AGW bbc gatekeeper back to neutrality in the catastrophic AGW debate..

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/03/climate_ads_far_from_divine.html#comments

18. There is much irony in the protrayal of skeptics as ideologicaly driven. WUWT has an article posted about George Lakoff’s take on climate skeptics: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/23/brains-brains/
    –
    Gee, do you think there is any ideology in the green movement? In climate science? While I think it is true that most skeptics would not associate themselves with green politics, IMO when it comes to the technical side of the skeptics movement, the only real material relevance this has is a freedom from green “confirmation bias”.

19. Bishop.

    It fails the cute girl test. Try to explain it to a cute girl at the coffee shop.

    Except if that cutey was Lucia or Judith of course.

    Failed the mom test as well and I’m sure my newspaperman dad would have lost interest as well.

20. “I think the key driver of the skeptical movement in blogland is technical curiosity sparked by the unsatisfactory portrayal of “settled science”. It is not a “top down” campaign, but rather bottom up investigation of issues.”

    in terms of mental styles this is evident. I think I tried to explain this to shewonk once and she got all offended that I was explaining her mental style and why she couldnt see certain things.
    Top down: bottom up is one of the quick ways to classify a mental style. Also, the curiousity thing. Bender, bless his pool cleaning soul, first put me on to this particular similarity.

    bender, bender, bender ( lets see if he appears )

21. OODA loop and motivation?

    Survival.

    Now, there is an interesting thread to be written on survival and curiousity. We all know what killed the cat. We all know pioneers are the ones with arrows in their backs. I’d recommend Morse Peckham’s Power and explanation. There are essentially two modes of human behavior: a rage for chaos and a rage for order. A desire to make things predictable and actionable and a desire to disorient the senses. Its a great book about science, art, behavior and philosophy.

22. Layman,

    For nigh on 25 years I was an activist in the (UK) Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. CND attempted to be a democratic organisation with a partly elected and also representative National Council.

    In those years I interacted often with the likes of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. They were totally top down organisations where a self appointed ‘elite’ told people what issues they should concentrate on and how they should pay for it . Many, many people signed up for this, perhaps unaware of the irony that their green organisation was operating in much the same way as the ccompanies etc it was criticising. Even more ironic today is that many of those companies are now more transparent than either GP or FOE.

23. http://books.google.com/books?id=UFCNRZ-O7nwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=morse+peckham+explanation+and+power&source=bl&ots=z2jGTTW_yA&sig=0W0biVVxfQz79wYs3avXe4P-LN0&hl=en&ei=YSmpS97YOpOKswPXwch9&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

    Pg 155. with special attention on “sciencing” and the brains randomness.

    Great book

24. Mosh — you have to say his name three times *in front of a mirror*

25. Re: steven mosher (Mar 23 11:53),

    It really is a good example of the OODA loop in action.

    I’m not sure it is. The difficulty is that one “side” has a large group of people who aren’t in any way comparable to jet fighters. I for one am not trying to outmanover anyone. You sent me information on the zip files. I was curious. I thoughts “wow” and I blogged. That was pretty much it.

    I read the emails and blogged because I had the time and I was fascinated.

    Also funny in this regard is Lucia being in on their phone call.

    You mean the UN foundation project? I didn’t listen to that phonecall. I learned of it and posted that the group was having a conference to plot strategy on how to deal with skeptics. One of my readers read the post, listened to the phone call and reported back.

26. Steve, rather than the cute girl story, try elevator speech- what can be explained in an elevator ride. But that can not be done either; it really is too complicated.

    The PR guys would never do this, but giving their clients copies of Steve and Tom’s book, and The Hockey Stick Illusion, and maybe Peter Taylor’s “Chill” would let clients know the problem, just possibly, is on the AGW side, not the skeptic side. I suggest Chill because it was written by a long time enviornmentalist which would give it more credibility to some.

27. Tom Fuller (Comment#39057) March 23rd, 2010 at 1:19 pm

    “It would be easy and cheap to do it right. Doesn’t look like these guys did it the easy way, the cheap way nor do they seem to have gotten it right.”

    The easiest cheapest way to ‘do it right’ is to leak a ‘preliminary draft’ onto the internet and let the people who actually know what the hierarchy is rip the draft apart. 🙂

28. Lucia,

    OODA Loop pertains to all organisms and their effectiveness.

    Observe: whether these sensors or mechanical, electrical or physical, I characterise the system in terms of the speed with which
    it makes an observtaion and its effectiveness. the post was put up at CA in the morning also at RC. It wasnt noticed at CA, It was noticed at RC and CRU was alerted.

    Orient: The data is fit to a model. When I got the files I said Whistleblower and I wanted to act. Anthony thought “trap” and deleted the files from his laptop. Charles thought Virus and scanned them. A system can have a model that overfits incoming data so that Nothing mismatches, or it can be overwhelmed by what appears to make no sense. Steve Mc and I tried a few models to “fit” the data, to make sense of it. Again you have issues of model fit ( false alarms) and time to orient.

    Decide: deciding takes time. What was RC doing? what was CRU doing? cru was closing the barn door after the files escaped.
    That alerted me. At one point I contemplated getting other peoples opinions before the decision was made. eff that, turn it over to the internet, it will decide. No con calls, no press release.

    Act: how does your system actually carry out the decision. I put the same message into you and andrew revikin. Which system went through its own ooda loop the fastest and most effectively.

    So, When I suggest an OODA Loop analsysis its just this. Look at how the “alarmist” network, observes, orients, decides, and acts.
    Look at the time dimension and look at the mental model.

    They knew before we did. they had the time advantage. they had first move. but their ability to orient, decide and act is not equal to ours. OODA Loop is just a method of understanding how information gets turned into system effectiveness. So, you could have really really good sensors, good models, good decision, but have no legs. System optimization means looking at all elements of the system.

29. Lucia, phone call. I mis remembered, sorry.

30. Question for Steven Mosher, Thomas Fuller…

    Have you/did you contact the UK Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph..
    How did you try to contact them, in my experience you ‘may’ have had trouble getting through to the right people… especially a few months ago.

    James Delingpole, and Christopher Booker (sceptical for years)
    would I’m sure be very interested to talk to you….

    James delingpole apparently found out that someone at the Telegraph had prevented google, indexing the damming Christopher Booker expose (28th nov 2009:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6679082/Climate-change-this-is-the-worst-scientific-scandal-of-our-generation.html

    (1451 comments means a browser struggles to load it, I appear quite a lot in the comments section. It was the only place to comment at the time.)

    This was the ONLY MSM article that properly reported climategate, in the UK. He even refers to Harry_read_me.txt, at a time when i was jumping up and down at my keyboard, blogging furiously, forget the emails look at the code, look at ‘harry’

    James Delingpole will probably, be bowing at your feet. His blog has been nothing else but climategate, IPCC scandals for months now.

    He published this on Day 1: 20th Novemeber 2009
    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/

    (I now have a direct email for James, if you need it, I’ve had a bit of correspondence with him, and he quotes me for tipping him off, for some very strange bbc behaviour, I found on reported on Bishop Hill…

    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100027956/what-the-liberal-elite-feel-you-should-know-about-climate-change/

    I just read, yesterday both the Climategate: Crutape Letters, and Christopher Bookers: The Real Global Warming Scandal. His book published 2009, explains all the IPCC scandals, Steve Mcintyre battles with ‘the team’ in the build up to Copenhagen, George Monbiots (guardian) bitter enemy at the Telegraph (James is now included 😉 )

    Best Regards

    Barry Woods

31. Steve your description of OODA includes the implicit condition that you are at war with someone/something. Maybe that is overstating it (“in conflict with” perhaps?) but Lucia’s response shows that not every one is approaching things from that point of view – as she says, she was curious; investigating not competing.

    Thanks for the tip on Morse Peckham, I miss bender too – are you sure he hasn’t fallen in?! 🙂

    harrywr2 – maybe they did get best value for money after all! 🙂

32. In my perception it was more, much, much, more:

    Greenpeace and WWF did this by significantly influencing public perception of anthropogenic global warming by single-mindedly applying concerted and consistent pressure at critical junctures in the media ecology here in the UK and abroad.

33. sorry that should have been:

    Christopher Bookers: The Real Global Warming Disaster (Oct 2009)

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Global-Warming-Disaster-Scientific/dp/1441110526/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269380983&sr=8-1

34. Fascinating backstories.

    Lucia:
    Oxfam could have just asked Joe Romm for his enemies list. Quicker and cheaper and it has a conceptual coherence and simplicity: pure hate.

35. “Bender, bless his pool cleaning soul…”

    Mosh, are you saying that Bender has been negligent in his duties? C’mon, it’s spring. Don’t put up with his slack ass any longer. 😉

36. Curious,

    Yes, OODA loop tends to focus on things that are in conflict or an organism with a goal. I could take sometime to look at Lucia’s curiousity,

    you could think of two paradigms: search versus browse.

    In curious mode you have non directive behavior. you are browsing. You are not looking for anything in particular.
    Signals stream past you. nothing out of the ordinary.
    Then you get a spike. hmm curious. what is that.
    So you decide to investigate. then you act.

    The point is in curious mode if your sensor is set up too wide
    you get tons of curious things. Set your sensor too narrow, nthing gets through.

    When the post appeared at CA, bender ( mr curious ) investigated it. He saw it was a link to a rusian server. Bingo, his orientation said “danger”, he decided not to click.

    Lucia see a post from me. Trust. investigate.

    I’m pretty sure I can reduce all behavior to “sciencing” ( see peckham) and then cast that in a ooda loop framework.

    Top down: all behavior must fit my theory dammit!

37. I believe that most of the posts here are somewhat off target

    Profero is a PR-mass marketing analytical organisation. It neither knows nor cares about the off-mainstream and irrelevant (to now) individuals that comprise the audience of inquisitive climate blogs. Until November last, this relatively tiny and disparate audience simply did not matter to mass markets, including the mass market for simplistic information

    Oxfam’s particular angst here is quite pointed: “How did Climategate get into the MSM ?” As yet unspoken, but patent, is the corollary question: “How can this be prevented or mitigated in future ?”

    The leaked diagram from Profero (clearly unfinished) is an attempt to pinpoint the cross-over areas

38. Curious:

    I think Peckham would argue that an organism is always “in conflict” with its enviroment. Unless it’s dead or meditating.

    But Again on the curiousity thing. The word you want to look up is abduction. Or think, what does it mean to find something curious?
    think in terms of expectations and surprise. Think in terms if information theory and entropy. can you always be in a state of curiousity? why not. is the ordinary curious? how do you know what is ordinary? Why isnt noise curious? why is the same thing repeated over and over uninteresting. When does a signal become interesting?

39. I dunno. When you have to _hire_ someone to make sense out things, that should tell you something right there.
    .
    “Say Bob, what do you make of all this ClimateGate stuff that’s all over the interwebs?”
    .
    “I hate the interwebs, Steve. In my day, we had 3 channels on TV and we liked it!”
    .
    “Hahaha! I hear you Bob. Maybe we should hire a PR firm to make sense out of all this craziness for us.”
    .
    “Great idea, Steve. Let’s get the team together so we can strategize our next step. Are you free this Friday?”
    .
    “I’m in an all-day meeting this Friday, Bob. How about the first Thursday in December.”
    .
    “I’ll be out on Christmas vacation then, Steve. What about…”
    .
    … and 4 months later the PR team they paid a bazzilon dollars produces one badly formed chart.

40. ian,

    I think we are aware of that

41. To further Steve’s analogy.

    Lucia is a non-combatant.
    metaphorically she was just riding her bicycle to school and happened to notice a few tanks parked in the forest. Of course when she got to school she told everyone what she saw.

    This is a fundamental problem faced by anyone who attempts to control the flow of information. Non-combatants see and hear things and talk about it.

    Most Western Governments have freedom of information acts. Simply to prevent the foolish from attempting to hide things they cannot hide anyway.

42. On a related note, maybe Profero/Oxfam should as of today include the French government on the “evil” side of the divide. In an official communique [not a blog posting, mind you] Paris announced that it has decided to bury its proposed carbon tax [not the CO2 itself, just the tax] and focus on measures to make the French economy more productive…

43. Yet another ‘Pal of Joe Romm blog’.

    http://www.leftfootforward.org/about/biographies/
    “Will Straw – @wdjstraw – is Editor of Left Foot Forward and a Fellow at the Center for American Progress.”

44. Steve Mosher

    Undoutedly, some are aware

    If Profero can pinpoint the “renegade” MSM journalists/editors who allowed the cross-over, the game becomes dangerous for these people. There is a plethora of evidence for this statement (being sent to information-Coventry is likely the most favoured tool)

    I genuinely detest censorship of information by the MSM. Oxfam are attempting to find data sufficiently accurate to re-impose it. I suppose this is recognition; certainly, it has it’s own grim amusement

45. harrywr2 – pre climategate I’d have agreed with you re: FOI. But now it transpires (in the UK at least) it is window dressing only – and they are thinking of actually closing the curtains a bit further:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/theroyalfamily/7494188/Proposed-law-change-could-hide-interventions-by-Prince-of-Wales.html

    Steve – good analogy. I saw the link at Jeff’s and downloaded the zip. Wary of virus I put it to oneside to scan and check later but other stuff took over. Then the story started breaking so I left it to the guys who really know their stuff to make it available. Even so, I’m not convinced you can fit everything into an OODA model – I think it probably suits certain mindsets in certain situations.

    btw, that getting the emails into a public database is something that Profero’s study will never handle – as an observer of all this I’m constantly amazed at how out of nowhere, when an issue comes up, a new skilled bod appears with amazing input. I think this is something which distinguishes the process from your OODA model. Here in blogland it’s not a defined group with a known set of skills and tools, it’s an uncharted and unbounded skill and knowledge resource that people come and go from offering what they can when they can. Nor does it have a shared set of beliefs or values but there is a characteristic of calling out cr*p and seeking truth. So far as what would be the evidence to get me to change my mind, it’d be if SteveMc, Lucia, Jeff, whoever, came up with some discovery that said (for example) “yep, global temp will be up by 6degC in 10 years” and they didn’t blog it.

    (er, they haven’t have they?..OMGIWTIT! :))

46. [quote ianl8888 (Comment#39098) March 23rd, 2010 at 5:38 pm]
    If Profero can pinpoint the “renegade” MSM journalists/editors who allowed the cross-over
    [/quote]
    What crossover? The MSM to this day doesn’t talk about Climategate.
    .

47. Thank you Lucia for this great thread! But come on guys, the graph is an attempt to hoax, it makes no sense at all. The great divide is IPCC/Pielke Jr./TimesOnline with the Honest Broker in the center? LMAO but I hope I am wrong.

48. [quote harold (Comment#39101) March 23rd, 2010 at 6:00 pm]
    Thank you Lucia for this great thread! But come on, the graph is an attempt to hoax, it makes no sense at all.
    [/quote]
    I don’t think it’s a hoax. I think this is the kind of stuff that actually gets produced when corporate drones try to think.

49. [quote harold (Comment#39101) March 23rd, 2010 at 6:00 pm]
    Thank you Lucia for this great thread! But come on, the graph is an attempt to hoax, it makes no sense at all.
    [/quote]

    The left foot forward blog is run by a ‘fellow’ at the Center for American Progress. Joe Romm of ‘Climate Progress’ is also a ‘fellow’ at the Center of American Progress. Strangely enough the Climate Progress blog is left off the chart.

50. Layman Lurker (Comment#39086) March 23rd, 2010 at 4:02 pm

    Mosh, are you saying that Bender has been negligent in his duties? C’mon, it’s spring. Don’t put up with his slack ass any longer. 😉

    Perhaps he is still recovering from the party. Or maybe Steve forgot to rub the magic lantern during the incantation.

51. Their analysis is as bad as their client’s science. It wasn’t a PR coup, it was the exposure of a scandal. It’s the way a free society works. The skeptics were like a trade group; a group of competitors who have joined together to fight and lobby against a piece of legislation which harms each of them. Each maintained that competitive spirit… wrote about what they thought was the most important angle.

52. arrg. duplicate comment error

    Curious:

    I think Peckham would argue that an organism is always “in conflict” with its enviroment. Unless it’s dead or meditating.

    But Again on the curiousity thing. The word you want to look up is abduction. Or think, what does it mean to find something curious?
    think in terms of expectations and surprise. Think in terms if information theory and entropy. can you always be in a state of curiousity? why not. is the ordinary curious? how do you know what is ordinary? Why isnt noise curious? why is the same thing repeated over and over uninteresting. When does a signal become interesting?

53. bender bender bender.

    Oh, met leif s @ charles Bday party. and Mrs Leif!

    neat guy

54. curious (Comment#39099) March 23rd, 2010 at 5:52 pm

    I have little doubt that there is some behavior that doesnt follow
    an “observe, orient, decide, act” model.

    Contemplation. Where one just observes and orients and decides to do nothing. But I’m also of a mind to say that all behavior ( action)

    has to at least have, by definition, an action stage. Prior to the action, there is a decision. That decision may be conscious, unconscious, but there is a “choice” made by the system. A knee jerk reaction? No so sure, On the observe, orient, phase the notion is this: there is no such thing as observation without orientation. perhaps in pure bewilderment. The argument would go that any time there is a perception there is a process of “orientation” or categorization. A process of fitting the data to a model. To be sure if the organism is in bewilderment or hallucinating it is not fitting data to a model. Not seeing the token as the instance of a type. And their also may be pathologies wherein decision and actions are not taken; catanonia. But basically if an an organism is acting ( behaving) then you can analyze its effectiveness by breaking down its OODA loop. did it sense things, how accurately how quickly. Did it CATEGORIZE or orient. Or was it bewildered. or did it say, oh thats an illusion or a fluke ( still a categorization) then how did it decide, then act. So breaking down the OODA loop is a way to understand and quantify the behavior.

    NOW, if I am in conflict with YOU, then I want to get inside your OODA loop. I want to act to change the reality you face before you can change your decision. We call this getting inside your decision cycle. Like with releasing the files on thursday. That was genius.
    ( it was also total accident, I didn’t even think about that )
    That meant ( as others pointed out ) they could not respond with the BIG MACHINE until a week after the following monday at the earliest. Its why you bury bad news on friday. Coverage on the internet is not limited to the mon/tue release cycle. So a thursday/friday release on the internet means the MSM is out of commission for over a week.

55. If Profero can pinpoint the “renegade” MSM journalists/editors who allowed the cross-over, the game becomes dangerous for these people. There is a plethora of evidence for this statement (being sent to information-Coventry is likely the most favoured tool)

    Yes. Doubtless they will figure out who the first to break it in the MSM was. But we can do that ourselves.
    I know some guys ( not saying who) who asked me for help and then I gave them stories to run with, so that I could focus on other things. Without exception this stuff wasnt touched.
    maybe it wasnt a good story, but column inches is column inches

    Of the people in their diagram, who covered it first?

    In the UK, I was told that the majors had to cover it to prevent the tabloids from going crazy on it. hmm.

56. @steven mosher (Comment#39114)

    Yes, that’s what I believe is behind this. Although the leaked diagram is a nonsense, it is unlikely to be the finished product

    For example,which Editor on Fox News decided to run the hour-long story ? It was quite good in its’ attempt to cover the issue accurately. I watched it with my wife – it was the 1st time she had really been presented with the issue in all its’ glory. Although I think she leans towards AGW (at least as one polluting mechanism), she was horrified at the corruption of objective scientific method

    If Oxfam wants all that lovely free loot to be re-distributed to developing countries of their choice, they had better stop the broadcasting of stories like that to large audiences

57. In the UK, the last year we have had major political scandal, that encompassed ALL parties..

    MP’s expenses scandal. we are also weeks away from a general Election. The UK is in massive debt, budgets will be cut, strikes are starting, it isgoing tobe a bitter, acrimonouse election..

    I also think the papaers are scared to be the first to go with it, so is the political/finacial vested interests.

    The journalists, like Christopher Booker know full well the whole story, has been writing about it for years.

    After the general election, the floodgates will open, I believe…

    The mp’s expense was a hack/leak, the public will be furious, about the media cover up of climategate…

    The mp’s tried the catch the hacker/leaker prosecute, nothing to see, just a few expenses…
    Over a year on (this story has lasted that long)
    200 MP’s or more will NOT be seeking reelection

    The Sunday Telegraph, splashed the expenses scandal.

    I am sure Christopher Booke, James Delingple and other, have the story ready to go.

58. Lots of speculation about motive here. I’d be interested to know how Oxfam could ‘re-impose censorship’.

    To add a speculation of my own, perhaps the research is to “help Oxfam’s campaigns team make sense of key online conversations and news generators around climate change and international development issues and their dynamics in order that they might question, revise or support their existing mental models for campaigning and to support decision making and facilitate a culture of inquiry and curiosity amongst the campaign team.” On the face of it, which is all we really have to go on without slipping into conspiracy mode, its a genuine exercise in self-reflection.

59. steven mosher (Comment#39113) – all well and good but it still misses the impact of motivation. Same situation, same sensors, same sensitivity, same information, different motivations = different responses. I only skim a lot of stuff so I could have missed it but it seems to me OODA is founded on a conflict model and I don’t think this is a universal state.

    On the bigger picture: I think in the context or what has gone on in climate science, from the comments of yours I have seen, we have little to disagree on. For future explorations I think the simple motivation of curiousity rather than competition has a lot to offer – from comments you left at the Left Foot blog I think we are in agreement on that also.

60. Re: Mark (Mar 24 03:12),

    On the face of it, which is all we really have to go on without slipping into conspiracy mode, its a genuine exercise in self-reflection

    I agree. But the self-reflection is coupled with a recognition that to better achieve their goals, PR people need to better understand those outside Oxfam so Oxfam can figure out how to better persuade the external audience.

    Oxfam is trying to identify problems with their “mental model”. (It says revise or support, I think it’s clearly revise.) They need to do this because right now, they don’t know how to interpret events as they materialize. Basically: The first climategate post was Nov. 19. The posts appear on smallish (not major news media) blogs that people on Oxfam’s “side” don’t pay any attention to. Yet, the actors on Oxfam’s “side” clearly have tons of money for PR, advertising etc. They spend it on commercials, displays etc.

    So given all the people paid big $$ to do PR on Oxfam’s “side”, why did no one on the Oxfam sees as on its “side” figure out they needed some sort of effective response to climategate? The only person even trying was Gavin!

    Given how did the story that was of interest to fairly small, unfunded blogs jump to the mainstream media where the general public could become aware of it?

    There are important questions to anyone in advertising in PR. I suspect if Oxfam didn’t fund the effort, someone would be doing it for free as an internal project. Greenpeace, Oxfam and all groups spend a lot of money to get their stories to the public. I’m sure they’d love to figure out how to imitate whatever it was that happened almost accidentally with climategate.

61. The most interesting thing in this for me is to read Steve Mosher’s posts about how many times he sent the story out to the media of all sorts, only to have them ignore it.
    Nothing spells intellectual dead end like reading how organizations that allegedly exist to tell people about new stuff, decline to tell people about new stuff.

62. Lucia,

    “I agree. But the self-reflection is coupled with a recognition that to better achieve their goals, PR people need to better understand those outside Oxfam so Oxfam can figure out how to better persuade the external audience.”

    I agree with all of that. If the little blurb I quoted is accurate, it may be inaccurate to focus on climategate, since it (c-gate) could be one of a number of examples of the efficacy of the blogosphere. In other words, climategate might be the exemplar but not the focus. And if that is the case I can’t see any problem with commissioning the research. I guess we’ll see.

    “Oxfam is trying to identify problems with their “mental model”. (It says revise or support, I think it’s clearly revise.) They need to do this because right now, they don’t know how to interpret events as they materialize. Basically: The first climategate post was Nov. 19. The posts appear on smallish (not major news media) blogs that people on Oxfam’s “side” don’t pay any attention to. Yet, the actors on Oxfam’s “side” clearly have tons of money for PR, advertising etc. They spend it on commercials, displays etc.”

    Yeah, I’m a bit unclear as to what ‘mental model’ refers to. Does it refer to their understanding of the climate debate or to their mode of engaging in the debate? The terms ‘model’ sugggests the former to me, but that’s idle speculation.

    I do find the speed, or lack thereof, of the ‘pro’ response baffling and slightly amusing. My personal narrative is one of wavering, from initial sceptic, to reserved supporter post AR4, to confused semi-sceptic post-climategate, and on to lukewarmer. I’ve drawn some broad lessons an conclusions from whole phenomenon but the sceptics are starting to lose me thanks to the level of nonsense that permeates so much of the commentary. WUWT is totally unreadable.

    Broadly speaking I’m irritated by both ‘sides’ inability/unwillingness to turn their scepticism towards their ‘peers’. I think that many sceptics risk overplaying their hand.

    I’ll stick to tav, the Blackboard and Science of Doom for my climate blog fix. I can’t stomach the rest of it.

63. As a counterfactual, what would a Skepticgate scandal of similar magnitude and type have looked like?

    We could suppose that an engineer at McIntyre’s ISP had become dismayed on encountering emails between McIntyre and Peabody Coal’s management, evidence of payments from them to McIntyre for services rendered, drafts of M&M 03 ghost-written by Chamber of Commerce staffers, brainstorming back-and-forth correspondence between Watts and journal editors about how to block Schmidt and Hansen from the peer-reviewed literature… So, said engineer had assembled the evidence into a .zip file and uploaded it to a Russian server, with links posted to ClimateAudit and RealClimate.

    That would seem within the comfort zone of the AGW Consensus activist community. (As it is, Mike Mann focuses on an anti-environment conspiracy as the source of his woes, Deep Climate recently penned a massive two-part series on McIntyre’s nefarious connections to the Fossil Fuel Combine.)

    Would the development of this Skepticgate have proceeded as Climategate actually did, only with the identities of the main actors reversed? Or, is Oxfam’s OODA loop constructed differently? Maybe (1) Set up an invitation-only conference call, (2) Decide on strategy, (3) Apportion roles (4) Distribute talking points, (5) Bring in trustworthy MSM actors, (6) Target the Sunday morning news shows, (7) Encourage friendly bloggers to play free-lance supporting roles.

    I dunno, just speculating idly.

    But perhaps Oxfam’s senior management implicitly believes that this is how a scandal is brought to the public’s attention. “If we were the bad guys, that’s what we would have tried to do.” That mindset would make Climategate into something of a head-scratcher. Maybe a top-notch PR firm can sort out this puzzle for us?

64. @Amac,

    ‘top-notch PR firm’

    You’re funny, most amusing. A modern Diogenes quest perhaps?

65. “WUWT is totally unreadable.”

    Mark,

    I know the above quote is hyperbole, but come on.

    It isn’t unreadable. It’s very readable. The main posts are thought-provoking, wether you agree with them or not, and there is humor there (the comments are often quite funny, too), which is very refreshing when the established climate science culture is regurgitiating monotonous and humorless AGW propaganda 24/7/365.

    Andrew

66. Re: Mark (Mar 24 06:56),

    climategate might be the exemplar but not the focus

    Agreed.

    I’m a bit unclear as to what ‘mental model’ refers to.

    Having done extensive research read the wikipedia page, I think a mental model is the way you view the world so that you can act on information you become aware of it. If you ever live in a foreign country for a year, you’ll recognize that your mental model is sometimes at variance with how things are.

    For example, I was an exchange student junior year. At one point, I needed to buy pins, needles and thread. I saw a fabric store, went in. I ask where the pins, needles and thread. The clerk at the store looked at my like I’d sprouted a second head, but politely told me to walk two blocks to the mercerie. In the US, all or nearly all fabric stores also carry pins, needles. thread, interfacing etc. This was not so in France in the 80s. There was a “fashion fabric” / “utility items” distinction at many stores.

    I needed pins.

    My mental model lead to this OODA:
    Observe: Fabric store is 5 blocks from school.
    Orientation: Remember I need pins, think fabric stores have pins, I’ve located a place where I can get pins.
    Decision: Stroll over to fabric store with money to buy pins.
    Action: Take said stroll, enter store, look for pins. Unable to find pins. Thwarted.

    I then enter a new OODA loop, which starts with observe clerk.

    In the US, my mental model would have found me pins right away. In France, I did find pins that afternoon, but it took longer.

    Does it refer to their understanding of the climate debate or to their mode of engaging in the debate?

    I don’t think we can know based on what Profero has told us. It might not have much to do with climate. It may be their mental model of how stories can hit the main stream. It may be that the Oxfam mental model for how any PR stories (including Oxfam’s own) get coverage is a think-tank like Center for American Progress has their PR people write press-releases, publish an article and then uses their rolodex to shop the thing around their favorite journalist. Or PR people get an organizer to announce a parade in DC. Or a group like greenpeace gets a couple of people to break into a nuclear power facility and so something visible to attract the local news.

    The idea that the story leaps quickly from smallish blogs to the media maybe strikes them as new? It shoudn’t have struck them as new. A similar jump happened with Dan Rather. Also, ‘gossipy’ things often move from blogs to the mainstream press. A slower jump happened with Monica Lewinski and Drudge. Maybe they didn’t know which type of blogs can cause the story to move? (I’d guess blogs with lots of active comments.)

    Anyway, I hope to read the Profero report!

67. Oxfam has a couple of issues to sort thru.

    The easiest one is how to better respond to unforseen ‘media eruptions’.

    All corporate entities PR efforts involve associating with great and good causes. Big Tobacco sponsors sporting events of all things.

    If a great and good cause becomes tainted by scandal however, guilt by association taints all those associated with it.

68. One “mental model” you could look at is the Chicago Climate Exchange. Even President O has had his fingers in it’s creation. Obama was a member of the board from 1998 to 2001 according to “Source Watch”. Google Chicago Climate Exchange, Obama, Al Gore and Maurice Strong.

    Wikipedia:
    ““the world’s first and North America’s only legally binding greenhouse gas emission registry reduction system for emission sources and offset projects in North America and Brazil.”

    http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/index.jsf

69. Curious:

    steven mosher (Comment#39113) – all well and good but it still misses the impact of motivation. Same situation, same sensors, same sensitivity, same information, different motivations = different responses. I only skim a lot of stuff so I could have missed it but it seems to me OODA is founded on a conflict model and I don’t think this is a universal state.”

    Not an issue. In fact, this is exactly what you want to use the analysis approach to understand.

    Think of it this way: If you want to understand ( analyze) the organisms behavior or design an organism, look at the OODA loop.

    The response to the sign is not inherent in the sign, of course. And motivation matters, in fact motivation plays a role in orientation. We both see a stop sign. I blow through, you stop.
    In quantifying and understanding that behavior, all the OODAloopist would say is break things down into 4 steps to understand the performance of the thing. you saw it, realized it was a stop sign, and stopped. I blew through? did I see it? or decide to blow through, etc etc

70. Re: steven mosher (Mar 24 09:12),
    I think the confusion is you first brought it up in the context of jet fighters, and one combatant winning by going through the OODA loop faster than the other. So, I know I focussed on the combatant aspect of what you were telling us.

    But, I do now see that OODA is broader. In France, because of my poor mental model of the relationship between what’s shown in a store window (i.e. fabric) and what else they would stock (i.e. pins), I wasted time finding pins. My OODA was suboptimal because the mental model I used during the “orientation” phase was wrong in 1980 France. That lead to my sub-optimal decision and action. (Fortunately, my next “OODA” loop worked fine. I observed a clerk, thought “the clerk will know”, asked and got direction to the mercerie.)

    Unlike the jet fighter, I wasn’t trying to beat anyone, shoot down anyone. I was just trying to achieve my own goal independent of anyone else’s. I was window shopping anyway, so it didn’t cause me a problem. But still I wouldn’t have looked for pins in the fabric store if I’d known that I needed to find a mercerie. (I might have just gone directly to the clerk and asked directions to the mercerie. I would have figured that the clerk know where those things were sold– and she did.)

71. so where has Bender been? He’s become one of my favorite mysterious characters and I miss him.

    I don’t want to start any rumors but I’m pretty sure that Bender is not only Dr. Keith Briffa’s barely contained Mr. Hyde but also the man behind the curtain pulling all of the strings.

    On another note, it would be very interesting to know if Oxfam and/or Profero is reading this thread. It would benefit them greatly.

    Just in case they are, I suggest (and I am not the first to do so) that moreBetter PR is not what is called for here. Quality and transparency of scientific process is what is called for. Once that is in place the rest will return to the standard political noise that serious people can ignore. Right now issues with they way climate issues are pursued and hyped are such that serious people cannot ignore them.

    To preserve its credibility Oxfam should moderate their advocacy of warmist position. There are plenty of other worthy and related causes they could take up.

72. For all we know Oxfam could be considering following the London Science Museum

    http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE62N0ZH20100324?type=marketsNews

    “LONDON, March 24 (Reuters Life!) – A new climate gallery at London’s Science Museum, sponsored by Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L), will step back from pushing evidence of man-made climate change to adopt a more neutral position.”

73. Eric,

    On another note, it would be very interesting to know if Oxfam and/or Profero is reading this thread. It would benefit them greatly.

    Who knows? We can’t be sure what either groups goals really are, so we don’t know if it the thread would benefit them. 🙂

    To preserve its credibility Oxfam should moderate their advocacy of warmist position. There are plenty of other worthy and related causes they could take up.

    Well… credibility with whom? Donors? Most charitable organizations draw from a subgroup anyway. There are other groups that work to relieve poverty. Some are religious charities etc.

74. Lucia,

    Assuming that the goal of the Profero project is as they stated.

    “make sense of key online conversations and news generators around climate change and international development issues and their dynamics in order that they might question, revise or support their existing mental models for campaigning and to support decision making and facilitate a culture of inquiry and curiosity amongst the campaign team.”

    I think that reading this thread would benefit their advancement toward this worthy goal.

    Regarding your second point… credibility with me of course 🙂

    But I do think that as the warmist position has recently become more controversial, especially in the UK (or so it seems from here in the US) strong advocacy of that position is likely, on balance, to cost Oxfam donations. But I do not really understand all of the dynamics of how these things can work. Ultimately it is marketing and companies successfully segment markets to manage conflicting brands all of the time.

75. Re: curious (Mar 24 05:10), “it seems to me OODA is founded on a conflict model”

    No, OODA is founded on a reaction model. It was promulgated by conflict artists (i.e., fighter pilots) because they believed tightening up the reactions (i.e., getting inside their adversary’s OODA loop) would win conflicts but OODA can be applied to any decision making process. Can you respond to natural disasters in time to minimize loss of lives? Well, is your OODA cycle tighter than the time it will take for the disaster to take effect? If not, can you tighten one or more segments so your actions take effect before the disaster does?

    In this case, mosher is noting the MSM OODA loop is at least 4 days and time dependent on the action taking place on Sunday so release on a Thursday got inside the MSM AGW proponents’ cycle whereas the blogs seem to have a 1-2 day OODA cycle.

76. steven mosher (Comment#39111)

    OK, I’m finding this OODA discussion enlightening, as I did the CRUTape Letters, but just how in heck did Mosher snag an invite to the party of the year and get to hobnob with the likes of Dr. S? Don’t give me that room-mate bushwa…. in a fair world it wouldn’t count.

    Hmmm…. if you can remember the party, it must not have been that memorable….

77. In addition to the social aspects of the blogger networks (and I see that on both sides), I think a lot of traffic and interest comes more from drama than from content. You have a several year tease with McIs analyses. You have Lucia still struggling with the basic issue (nature of the noise) that was brought up to her years ago (and that, at least at the time, she was slow in coming to grips with). You have a lot of posts about TV shows and the like. You have a lot of “cliffhanger style” postings (many of which never move to good resolutions).

    In contrast, I see people like Von Storch or Zorita as really trying to grapple with issues. To summarize effectively. To differentiate what is known, non known. And to be more interested in the most efficient sharing of information so that real questions can be moved forward. The blogosphere on the other hand, seems a lot of drama-mongering.

    Drama is fun, no doubt. But after years? Its like listening to Hannity or Limbaugh. They just say the same stuff…and waste a huge amount of time. unfortunately, there are not Friedmans or Buckleys on the radio. Well…at least on the net, I can get VC.

78. Hmmm? I’ve been memorable at many parties I don’t remember!

    (or so I’ve been told. . .)

79. And I am so sick of the OODA discussion and Boyle luv. See that stuff too much in Proceedings. Is the process of reaction in a dogfight really the best analogy for things involving much slower processes?

80. steven mosher (Comment#39111)
    OK, I’m finding this OODA discussion enlightening, as I did the CRUTape Letters, but just how in heck did Mosher snag an invite to the party of the year and get to hobnob with the likes of Dr. S? Don’t give me that room-mate bushwa…. in a fair world it wouldn’t count.
    Hmmm…. if you can remember the party, it must not have been that memorable….

    I think Charles put out an invitation out on WUWT.
    The party was a blast. I tended bar and made 100 bucks in tips.
    and lived to talk about it.

81. Lucia et al, sorry for the OT (or maybe not?) have you seen this very interesting discussion (752 messages until niow!)? Seems VS is on to something:
    http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/global-average-temperature-increase-giss-hadcru-and-ncdc-compared/

82. Compugeek has it right.

    If you read Boyd you’ll see the process analysis tool can be applied to any organism or system that reacts to its enviroment. It’s especially adept in areas where you have systems in conflict of course.

    Yes, Lucia sorry about that confusion.

83. Worth quoting the bishop hill:

    Chris Rapley used to be the director of the British Antarctic Survey, a position he used to great effect as part of the campaign to scare us all into believing in global warming.

    “The Science Museum is revising the contents of its new climate science gallery to reflect the wave of scepticism that has engulfed the issue in recent months.

    The decision by the 100-year-old London museum reveals how deeply scientific institutions have been shaken by the public’s reaction to revelations of malpractice by climate scientists.

    The museum is abandoning its previous practice of trying to persuade visitors of the dangers of global warming. It is instead adopting a neutral position, acknowledging that there are legitimate doubts about the impact of man-made emissions on the climate.”

    I don’t know if you were aware here, that the media in the UK were puzzling over the opinions polls/research recently.
    Totally bemused by why after years of the green agw message, belief in man made global warming, amongst the general public had gone down,

    Great link from bishop hill on BBC and media groupthink repsonse to this a while ago..

    How to report Climate Change after Climategate
    http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/2/27/how-to-report-climate-change-after-climategate.html

    Richard Black (BBC) will probably regret this response in a while:

    FH: FT readers are versed in risk and probability which are difficult to communicate in the rest of the media. Climate scientists aren’t generally newsworthy; sceptics, IPCC problems and emails are making the news. “Climate – guess what? Still changing” is an unlikely headline. A short-term disaster is needed to guarantee coverage as people aren’t good at processing information about there being no ice at the poles in 30 years. Or get David Attenborough as the front man because everyone trusts him.

    Richard Black: I agree that a short term disaster would be effective in persuading people.”

    sorry for the long post, I’ll try to things shorter..

84. Sorry, wrong thread, I meant to put that in Climate communications network.

85. Hoi Polloi thanks for that link. That is an epic thread.

86. Mosher: You may have not precisely articulated a key part of your own point. OODA is used by all organisms whether they know it or not. Many do not use it effectively and at critical times suffer consequences. Successful organisms use it (with or with out conscious knowledge of *it*) most effectively. Also, action can also mean do nothing (my personal favorite AGW response for the time being).

    WRT CRU-Gate, it bubbled to the surface because it was factual NEWS. Much of the AGW hysteria is manufactured PR that gets out, however, lacks sustained traction because the general public iteratively applies OODA and their BS detectors eventually start flashing.

87. Re: Hoi Polloi (Mar 24 14:31),
    It seems to me that VS needs to write up what he thinks in a thread at the top of a blog post.

    For my part, I’m not included to treat “random walk” as a null hypothesis. If VS is relying on “failed to reject null” then to convince me, he has to show that the power of his test is 95%, and also show that his test wouldn’t be confused by features we all think the data does exhibit (like a real trend.)

88. Mosher
    I think Phelim McAleer’s ‘mom working in a coal plant, who drives up to Al Gore’s house to hand-deliver a pleading letter’ passes the ‘mom test’ with flying colors.

    The Great Global Warming Swindle passes the test too.

    The media would have picked on the story if there was clearer evidence of malfeasance on the part of Climategate’s principals.

    If only there were more leaks in the pipeline…

89. Lucia,

    I think you are dismissing VS rather lightly. For a start, his comments are not really about “random walk” at all, but about the presence of a unit root in the modern temperature data. The use of random walk was only as an illustration of one case where a unit root applies. VS appears to be a very capable statistician and he mounts a powerful argument.

    The thrust of his argument is to support the draft paper by Beenstock and Reingewertz here: http://economics.huji.ac.il/facultye/beenstock/Nature_Paper091209.pdf. B&R conclude that a time series of CO2 levels is I(2) while time series of temperature is I(1), thus polynomial cointegration is the appropriate analysis tool to determine whether they are dependent. B&R conclude that CO2 and temperature are not correlated, but delta CO2 and temperature are, so change in the rate of increase of CO2 could lead to change in temperature.

    Tamino also bought into this argument here: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/not-a-random-walk/ and here: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/still-not/, while David Stockwell produced a supporting analysis here: http://landshape.org/enm/testing-beenstock/ and here: http://landshape.org/enm/orders-of-integration/, following up from a series he did on cointegration and explaining what B&R was about here: http://landshape.org/enm/cointegration-primer/.

    You may not have the time to read it all, but it is an intriguing exchange on all sides, with important ramifications. If B&R are correct, the whole basis of AGW theory changes. (Surely the mention of Tamino’s involvement should tempt you!)

90. Alex–
    I don’t have time to read it all. VS may well be a talented statistician, but his argument is strung over a series of over 700 comments. I’m not sure what his main argument is and I admit I not going to take the time to try to hunt it down within a long comment thread.

91. “B&R conclude that a time series of CO2 levels is I(2) while time series of temperature is I(1)”
    B&R, VS and others are rightly criticised for their omission of very obvious physical considerations in this purely observational approach to time series. But it fails as observation too.

    When you say that something is I(1) or I(2), that’s deduced from analysing a finite data sequence with apparent randomness. Any such deduction could have been a fluke. You have to quantify your confidence in such statements. That’s very basic stats. The statement means nothing without that level of confidence.

    Not only to B&R not give any level of confidence – their statement about temperature is not even backed up by test results from which at least some estimate of confidence might be guessed. It’s just a bald statement – temperature is I(1)!

92. steven mosher (Comment#39152)
    March 24th, 2010 at 2:24 pm

    “I think Charles put out an invitation out on WUWT.
    The party was a blast. I tended bar and made 100 bucks in tips.
    and lived to talk about it.”

    Ahhh, Democracy in action.

93. NIck, I agree with what you say about B&R not looking at confidence levels – that is the most obvious failing of their paper. (I don’t regard ignoring physical considerations as being an obvious failing – temperature data and CO2 data are physical considerations!)

    However, my reading of what VS has done over at Bart’s is that he has addressed the issue of confidence at some length. Maybe you have not read the whole thread?

94. Alex Hayworth:

    I don’t regard ignoring physical considerations as being an obvious failing – temperature data and CO2 data are physical considerations!

    As I understand it they did a straight correlational measure between CO2 and temperature.

    If so, that is ignoring physical considerations, the models don’t predict any such 1-1 relationship (at the least include all forcings, for an improvement use a simplified model to describe how temperature responds to changes in CO2 forcings).

95. Cerrick

    You seem to have jumped to models rather quickly. However, IRT what you say, yes, what they have falsified is somewhat of a caricature of AGW theory. In fact, you have raised an important issue. There is no single AGW theory – each model implicitly incorporates a different theory, in that they vary in what forcings they include and the weighting given to each. Of course, this means that Lucia should be looking at each model in isolation, and falsifying them one by one (shouldn’t be too hard to narrow the field down rather quickly).

    It is understandable, however, for outsiders to not understand these subtleties, given that the modeling community is all to willing generally to go along with the idea that there is only one AGW theory.

    (BTW, I’ll call you Carrick if you call me Heyworth :))

96. Alex, the physics is the physics, and if you are ignoring it, then that is all you are doing. There is only one version of the underlying physics, regardless of how many different models there are, the models are all solving some approximation of that underlying physics.

    If you want to test against a star trek sci fi version of climate by all means do so, but you can’t make up your own universe, falsify it then claim you have said a lick about the climate science predictions.

    Whether you like them or not, if you are trying to disprove them, you have to run against what they say, not what you make up in your head.

97. Carrick,

    I don’t disagree with what you say, but I don’t think you address my comment.

98. Oxfam’s interest in trying to shore up the Maginot Line is pretty funny. They clearly do not understand the nature of the “Army of Davids” which the internet has empowered. The biggest problem with their analysis is the assumption that coverage by the MSM is essential to get a story to the general public. That certainly was the old paradigm, but it has not been the case in the US for some time. Look at the rise of the tea parties. Or the Swiftboat Vets. Or the Obama nominees with extreme left-wing backgrounds whose nominations were withdrawn in a firestorm of protest without the stories ever getting any MSM coverage. It is now standard practice for the NY Times to first mention an issue when they have to report that the nomination has been withdrawn. [‘Due to the massive controversy swirling in DC the last two weeks which we have never mentioned before, the president has withdrawn the nomination of X ….’] Anyone who uses the MSM as a source of information can be weeks, months or years behind a story. [insert Mosher’s OODA loop discussion here] Perhaps a better analogy would be to compare Oxfam to battleship admirals trying to understand how those itty bitty airplanes are kicking their slow, ponderous asses.

    Libertarians and conservatives in the US stopped paying attention to the MSM years ago. It is simply irrelevant in their lives. All the sources that sprang up to give them political news can also be used to access global warming news.

    If Oxfam wants to understand the flow of information in the internet age, they should just buy a copy of “Army of Davids”. The MSM is a ponderous, sclerotic, arthritic beast which has suffered one stroke too many.

99. “Alex, the physics is the physics, and if you are ignoring it, then that is all you are doing.”
    Carrick you (and Lucia) really need to read the whole thread, even it’ll cost you some time, otherwise it’s useless to diss this with a handwave..
    VS is not ignoring physics, he is objectively statistically testing the global temperature anomaly data. It’s about validation process and the significance and direction of claimed effects. Statistics and econometrics are tools to reframe what we’re looking at.

    VS writes:

    IMPORTANT:

    **I’m not ‘disproving’ AGWH here.
    **I’m not claiming that temperatures are a random walk.
    **I’m not ‘denying’ the laws of physics.

    *****These are all strawmen, posted by Tamino’s (admittedly statistically illiterate) ‘fan base’ here, in an effort to dillute my argument, and make my contributions unreadable.

    All that I am doing is establishing the presence of a unit root in the instrumental record. The presence of a unit root renders regular OLS inference invalid. Put differently, you cannot simply calculate confidence intervals assuming a trend-stationary process, because the temperature series is shown to be non-stationary (i.e. contains a unit root).

100. For a quick rundown of VS’ argument, just check some of his latest comments at http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/global-average-temperature-increase-giss-hadcru-and-ncdc-compared/ where he often links back to older comments of himself.

     I think some people seem a little too eager to jump to conclusions about the significance/relevance of his argument. There are physical considerations that seem to be snowed under; I summarized my thoughts on that here: http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/the-relevance-of-rooting-for-a-unit-root/

101. I think the point is that just because he says he’s not ignoring the physics it doesn’t mean that he isn’t. It remains to be seen.

102. Hoi Polloi

     Put differently, you cannot simply calculate confidence intervals assuming a trend-stationary process, because the temperature series is shown to be non-stationary (i.e. contains a unit root).

     But

     everything

     with a deterministic trend is non-stationary by definition. So, clearly, showing a series with a trend is non-stationary doesn’t mean we can’t calculate confidence intervals on a trend.

     On VS’s posts– I’m not going to try to read the conversation in comments backwards tracing back to previous comments. This isn’t dissing VS or assuming he’s wrong. It’s just that I’m going to wait until VS write a blog post or something so I can read the argument in the forward, not backward direction.

     I’m reading some of DaveStockwell’s stuff, and the paper. Some claims strike me as simply not true– or at least not true in the sense of contradicting what we mean when we say ghg’s cause warming and cause a permanent rise.

103. “I’m reading some of DaveStockwell’s stuff, and the paper. Some claims strike me as simply not true– or at least not true in the sense of contradicting what we mean when we say ghg’s cause warming and cause a permanent rise.”

     Why not join the discussion? I’m sure VS and Dave will welcome your contribution in the context of open science.

104. Hoi–
     I’m writing something. It’s going to be mostly questions.

105. Lucia,

     I think you have VS wrong. Its not about a “random walk” its about a unit root test. Random walks have unit roots, but not all unit roots are a random walk. The presence of a unit root, on my understanding, simply changes the way one does trend testing.

     There is alos the issue of cointegration. My suggestion, blocked over at Tamino, was that somebody should look at the output of a GCM and test for Unit root there and also look at Cointegration. Since in a GCM the output is caused by the forcings, the Cointegration study should be enlightening.

106. VS should Guest post over here rather than be stuck in comments.

107. Ah I see Bart here.

     here is a thought Bart. Let VS do a Guest post on Unit roots.

108. B&R was unphysical junk.

     The technical questions on the table are

     1. Is there a unit root in the temperature series:

     A. What’s your confidence in that (length of the observations)
     B. The temperature series is a filtered, adjusted, averaged,
     result. Does any of that matter.
     C. How does this Impact trend testing.

     2. What can Cointegration tell us.

     Here’s what this stuff can’t tell us. This stuff can’t tell us that
     the physics is wrong. When it says the physics is wrong, then there is something wrong with it.

     Nevertheless, It would be interesting to see what the CIs look like under the assumption of a unit root. What in the end are we arguing about.

109. here Lucia:

     This is a good one:

     http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/global-average-temperature-increase-giss-hadcru-and-ncdc-compared/#comment-2550

110. bender, bender bender!

     http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/6674/deterministicvsstochast.gif
     
     I think maybe unit root is an important thingy.

111. Hoi Polloi, there seems to be some confusion here.

     What I was commenting specifically about was directly correlating CO2 to temperature. While that is a statistical test, but it is a nonsensical one because it is unphysical to assume that CO2 should directly correlate with temperature.

     I don’t know that VS did this, it is just my understanding of what he did. I certainly know other people have done this (this link is from Arthur Smith, an AGW activist).

     It’s still junk science, no matter who does it.

     (At the least, add up the various forcings then correlate to a lagged version of that.)

112. Re: steven mosher (Mar 25 10:36),
     I very well may not understand what VS is saying. I’m not going to try to back the main cliams out of details scattered over 761 comments.

     On the one hand, I’d invite VS to write a post. On the other hand, I think I’ve just created a policy that I won’t invite anonymous people who have never commented here to go into the admin area of my blog. Too risky.

113. Carrick wrote: “At the least, add up the various forcings then correlate to a lagged version of that.)”

     Indeed.
     I’ve repeatedly made the point that it’s better to use the net forcings, or even better, the expected response to those net forcings, as a default for the underlying trend (rather than a linear trend or only CO2). Then there’s internal variability which caused swings in temp, such as ENSO etc.

114. Steven,

     Over at Tamino’s a commenter reported having checked GCM output (GISS modelE) and found a unit root indeed.
     http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/still-not/#comment-41056
     “the annual global mean temps simulated by GISS ModelE contain a unit root, according to the same tests that VS has been using.”

115. I wouldn’t trust them as far as I can throw them. The advocacy movement is getting to know their enemy, ultimately to try and defeat them. This thing’s not over, not by a long stretch.

116. Bart V,

     “I’ve repeatedly made the point that it’s better to use the net forcings, or even better, the expected response to those net forcings, as a default for the underlying trend (rather than a linear trend or only CO2). Then there’s internal variability which caused swings in temp, such as ENSO etc.”

     But, don’t you need to KNOW what all the forcings are and their magnitudes/signs to do that?? When were the results on forcings finalised?? The modellers are still adjusting/guessing.

117. Re: kuhnkat (Mar 26 01:23),
     I think it’s still worth testing in with an estimate for the forcings. Why not use GISS forcings and see?

     The tests can be run and someone can decide what they think that means. It can give insight into the characteristics of the system. People can still point out that the forcings used were estimates. So, depending on what question you ask, one result or the other might be more useful.

118. kuhnkat,
     We need a decent estimate of the forcings, which there is. Of course they’re never ‘finalized’; science progresses. Don’t confuse uncertainty with knowing nothing though.

119. Re: unsimplify

     I worked with one these guys before they were unsimplify

     One of them was at Saatchi and Saatchi and worked with Greenpeace too (!) and there’s another one now was quite high up at Merril Lynch

     They have a very very unorthodox way of looking at things

     They will have studied and modelled the way you look at things & gone from there

     Oxfam must have some imagination to hire them

     Bet nothing here happened by accident

     Wouldn’t surprise me if there never was a report in the first place

120. Gerry

     Bet nothing here happened by accident

     Wouldn’t surprise me if there never was a report in the first place

     I’m tempted to believe that. 🙂

Comments are closed.