In Why We Are Doomed, Keith Kloor raises one of my co-blogger Zeke’s comments about the futility of climate blogging above the fold, and then asks:
If the blogospheric debate is so thoroughly dominated by partisans and dogmatists who snipe at each other from opposite sides of the climate divide, then what is the way forward?
Or is there no way forward? Is Zeke correct when he suggests:
The lack of a basic foundation of agreement to argue upon has the unfortunate effect of making many blog discussions something of an exercise in futility.
I think Zeke is partly correct. I also think he is partly incorrect. I suspect Zeke will not be surprised that the extent to which I agree or disagree depends on what one means by “futile”.
Rather than focus on the futile aspects of blogging about climate, I’m going to discuss a non-futile aspects. I will begin by categorizing blog discussions; I follow with an example where blog discussions were not futile and then relate that back to the categories of blog discussions that are not futile.
So, what types of blog conversations exist?
All blog conversations have at least two distinct categories of content and two distinct forms of discussion. The two categories of content are a) posts by the bloggers and co-bloggers — which I will call “above the fold” or “top level” and b) the content in comments. The two categories of conversations those a) between bloggers who write above-the-fold posts and respond to above-the-fold at different blogs and b) between people participating in comments. Of course, these two conversations may intertwine.
My impression is that at least some times the conversations between bloggers at different blogs tend toward greater nuance and lack of futility. Some individual bloggers will, at least sometimes, find common ground on points of agreement while discussing points of disagreement. When a contention topic arises, it sometime happens that a critical mass of bloggers (as opposed to commenters) will agree that some aspect is important, and will also agree that the details need to be thrashed out. At that point, many bloggers will post on a topic. The blog conversation between top level bloggers will manage to achieve a level of “not futile”.
In fact, we can even witness some level of agreement on a previously contentious subject.
For those who doubt this can occur, I can think of a recent example: Discussions of the relative accuracy (or bogosity) of the surface temperature record.
There was a time, not so long ago, when above-the-fold content at some blogs was vehemently criticizing the surface temperature record in terms that suggested our collective ability to measure surface temperature or detect 0.7C or warming was so poor that we could not be confident the annual average surface temperature in 1900 was cooler than that in 2000. Or, possibly claims at the above the fold were less drastic and merely suggested the surface temperature record had some fairly large, difficult to quantify upward bias.
Meanwhile, the tone of some responses made it appear that every single uncertainty or question identified by anyone anywhere was utterly trivial, not worth discussion, and by gosh, the surface temperature record was dang near perfect and couldn’t even, hypothetically be biased upwards. (Disclaimers muttered under breath in a tone that suggested no one should bother their poor wee heads.) Often these “responses” were disconnected from the specific criticisms. The result is the criticism — whether valid or not– were left unaddressed at blogs.
At that time, there were few or no “neutral” blogger posting above the fold. Conversations during this period were truly futile.
Then, sometime near the end 2009, the discussions at these other blogs began to propagate out to comments at blogs which were not discussing the surface temperature record. Soon after, climate blogs experience a period of non-futility vis-a-vis surface temperature reconstructions.
To show more specifically what happened, tracing through my own blog– because that’s easier for me, we can see this:
In Nov. 2010, a comment alleging bogosity in the GISS temperature product appeared in my post About Judy Curry:
Peter (Comment#25176) November 28th, 2009 at 1:50 pm Edit This
Simon, False precision. That alone chases GISS to the ones place. They use instuments which measure to the ones, and then report to hundredths? High School students know better. Don’t need to get into the systematic bias demonstrated by the migration and dropout of thermometers, although unlike large positive water vapor feed-backs, these are documented.
Here you can see that someone is making a claim about GISS only being able to report global mean temperatures to within the “ones place”. In context, that meant to ±1C. If so, we would never be able to detect warming in the 20th century. This would mean that, for all practical purposes, GISTemp which reports monthly average surface temperatures to ±0.01C was bogus.
Some conversation ensued. I appear to have not been very attentive to that, and stuck to the topic of the top level blog post– Judy Curry.
But what happens next? Roughly 2 weeks later, in December, Chad wrote a top-level post beginning with:
I was recently looking at some USHCN data and thought it was odd that the max/min temperatures were reported to the nearest degree (F). It reminded me of an off-topic discussion at Lucia’s about false precision. The criticism is that if temperature stations are reporting minimum and maximum temperatures to the nearest degree, then the mean can have no more precision than the two numbers that went into calculating it. Thus the mean ought to be rounded to the nearest degree as well. How can we say the planet is a fraction of a degree warmer now relative to some climatological norm if the data going into that calculation isn’t even that precise? I used this question as an excuse to take a break from two projects I’m working on.
Chad correctly finds this false precision notion doesn’t result in averaged data to have precision as low as that of individual measurements. Chad had a smaller readership, and so I posted. Not long after this, I post a few discussion of why some of the claimed “obvious flaws” in computation of GISS, HadCRUT and/or NOAA are not “obvious flaws”, and that, in some cases the method criticized is either “obviously right” or at least much better than the “better method” suggested by the critic. Some of these share a tag and are posted here. These posts span Dec. 2009 to March 2010.
During that time a number of things happened: People with more patience about computing surface temperatures began posting. These include (I think) Nick Barnes, Tamino,JeffId, Roman, Ron Broberg (white board), Zeke (at Yale Climate than at The Blackboard), Roy Spencer, Steve Mosher, and others. Because so many were posting, and cross linking, all shared the common ground of discussing the same nits without accusing each other of creating either the “denialist” or the “alarmist” temperature record.
We have now reached a point where nearly any specific nit-pick about a possible flaw in the computed temperature field is addressed by a blogger at the “top level”. The possible flaw is addressed fairly neutrally, and shown to either “matter” or “not matter”. More precisely, the magnitude of the possible impact is discussed, and the question of whether confirmation bias is driving choices are discussed in a fairly balanced way.
This is being done in a way that is accessible to people with modest technical skills and finite amounts of time to devote to reconstructing surface temperature records on their own.
In my opinion, this constitutes and instance where a climate blog conversation broke out of futility. I think there have been others– some of which have political overtones or are even mostly political. I’ll defer discussing these because I think we might have less agreement on whether the conversations between blogs resulted in something “not futile”. The “not futile” aspect of the discussion is that certain misconceptions (on either side) can eventually be addressed and put to bet.
Some might think this could happen in the academic literature. Sadly it cannot. The reason is that the academic literature is not the appropriate place to deal with nits. Things like “false precision” is well understood. It can be addressed in an undergraduate course, and is probably not even discussed in any currently used text book. It would be very difficult for anyone to craft an journal article rebutting the notion, and get the paper accepted to a journal. Most reviewers would reject it as both uninteresting and trivial.
But if the notion gets lodged “out there” on blogs, online forums, or even just the heads of individuals discussing notions over beer, the only place where the notion can be dislodged is at blogs.
So, I disagree with Zeke that blog conversations are futile: Some conversations have some utility. Oddly, I think his own contribution to the surface temperature discussions form part of the conversation that has been “not futile”.
Though I will not give examples of the futile conversations ( examples abound), I will point out some features that seem required for a blog conversation to break out of the cesspool of futility. These are:
1) The conversation must happen at the above the fold, it can’t remain buried in comments. It was only when Chad (or others) wrote a post above the fold that the issue was addressed.
2) The above-the-fold bloggers have to be willing to engage any and all of the nits that people bring up. False precision was a nit. In context of journal articles, it might be dismissed with a snide remark. But that doesn’t work at blogs; these sorts of responses ensure that the discussion will remain futile.
3) A critical mass of above-the-fold bloggers who will address the nits in exhaustive detail is required. These bloggers will be seen as the “neutral” on this particular topic. I think this mass needs to be greater than 2 above the fold “neutral” bloggers are required and at least one of those bloggers has to have sufficient readership to be noticed. Usually, this means a “non-futile” blog conversation will usually involve least 4 above the fold bloggers: at least one blogger who criticizes some conventional climate position, at least one blogger who defends climate position but who is perceived as not neutral and who might be perceived as not engaging the actual criticism of the critic.
Because Keith’s post frames his discussion partly around the heretical status of Judy Curry, I’ll also close by mentioning that I have been reading (though not commenting) at Judy Curry’s blog. I note she is getting a lot of flak, and predict that she will continue to get flak. I think she’s got a tough hide and can take it. I also see signs her blog will achieve “non-futility”.
Understatement of the decade: “Examples abound.”
Tom–
Heck, I could have written “Examples involving my own participation abound.” But you know how I prefer brevity. . .
Unimportant, but you wrote 2010 when you meant 2009.
“near the end of 2010” “In Nov. 2010” (This is a mini-nit.)
The low calorie cherry sorbet piece was futile. (For me – still heavy.)
Your above-the-fold is definitely non-futile.
One of the dangers of the blog medium is how quickly one can dash off and publish oft-incomplete comments. It’s always fun to see said comment show up at a number of blogs the next day :p
I
When I said “The lack of a basic foundation of agreement to argue upon has the unfortunate effect of making many blog discussions something of an exercise in futility.” I wasn’t referring to all blogging being futile, just discussions in comment threads with folks who have such different basic premises that common ground is very difficult to find. The takeaway message was intended to be that the blogosphere should play a larger role in trying to establish some common ground, something that we both agree on.
As a bit of background, the comment in question was written immediately after reading the comment thread at http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/1019/Climate-change-fraud-letter-a-Martin-Luther-moment-in-science-history , which is something of a microcosm of blog invective.
Zeke,
Zeke– I totally agree that discussion in comment threads is very often futile– for many reasons. One of them is definitely the one you identify. Heck, in comment threads, some people are actually arguing about what we should argue about and discuss.
So, for example, there are those who want to divert any discussoin of the technical factors affecting the uncertainty in the surface temperature record to a discussion of relative merits of the persons of Hansens, Watts, Tamino, Schmidt, Phil Jones and etc.?
I think it would not be difficult for me to find comments like “Lucia, so when are you going to discuss how horrible ‘X’ is…” in comments on any number of posts. I frequently respond to these in comments. You are usually wiser and don’t.
Anyway, I don’t want to give the impression that I totally disagree with you. But Keith presented your comment in a different frame– which, I think, places the question of futility in a frame where maybe one is asking: So, is what Roger, Judy, Keith, you, I, Gavin, Jeff, Bart etc. doing futile? Or not?
So, the conversation did change frames– either because I moved it, or I perceived it as already having moved.
Zeke–
I have to say that Anthony’s post is precisely the sort where people aren’t even going to agree on what to argue about in comments. Do we argue about whether or not climate change is true? Whether APS’s process is sufficiently inclusive of the rank and file members? Whether Anthony’s comparison to Martin Luther is somewhat hyperbolic? ( In the analogy, who is Pope Leo X? Who is Clement VII? Are the satellites and models the St. Peter’s Basillica supported by the fund raised through indulgences?)
Skimming through, that thread is a classic in people not even agreeing on the topic to be argued!
I tend to think that there is not even overall futility in comments. The thing is, I think that people often have unrealistic expectations of what they can acheive. They might think that by posting a devastating comment that exposes the illogicality of their opposition that all of a sudden everyone reading it will ‘see the light’. And maybe that happens occassionally, but I have never seen it.
Human beliefs, while appearing to change suddenly (from my perspective, it appeared to me that I moved from one belief state on a topic other than climate change to the opposite belief state in an instant) actually what happens that instant is the culmination of thousands of thoughts, inputs, observations, interactions and so on.
So, I consider it a non-futile moment if an opponent in a discussion says, ‘I still don’t agree with you, but it was an interesting talk.’
Of course, in a recent thread at WUWT, I considered it a non-futile moment when an opponent accepted my assurance that I did not want to kill them, so the threshold for non-futility may vary. 😉
I will add that that particular thread had me feeling very depressed afterwards about the whole deal, but I am a long-term optimist and in hindsight managed to see some good things. 🙂
Re: David Gould,
I’m not sure I’ve ever witnessed this result in blog comments.
Well… yes. That’s why examples of what constitutes “non-futility” are useful.
Actually, I think in some conversations, people realizing that those who disagree with them don’t want to kill them is an accomplishment. Some blog comments really do convey the impression that party A wants to kill party B for merely disagreeing (and, whoever you think might be A and B, add “vice-versa”.)
I think that there are far more momentous blog accomplishments to discuss. Watts’ revelations about the massive failure of the surface stations to meet basic scientific standards made an enormous difference. Even the alarmists who tried to minimize his work were forced to address the issue and backtrack.
McIntyre has caused significant changes in the field and even his most vociferous critics have eventually had to admit he was right (although they now claim it doesn’t matter).
The importance of blogs doesn’t have to be the quality of the conversation which results from any particular post. The importance is that a wide range of people can be exposed to new ways to think about issues. The response may be delayed and may never even be typed on the original blog.
Ideas swirl and influence. They don’t always create instantly productive conversations in the comment threads or even on other blogs.
lucia,
Agreed: understanding that someone who disagrees with you is not an archvillain can be a huge victory. This is why I think politeness and reasonableness is important, although I often fail at it and I have been accused of using ‘faux reasonableness’ as some kind of trick, so even that can be misinterpreted (as can all emotions on the internet).
The non-futility cuts both ways, I think: talking with people who disagree with you, even in ways that you consider unreasonable, can teach one a lot about people … provided that you are prepared to make the assumption that, even though they may *appear* unreasonable, they are basically reasonable. (and to remember that the internet magnifies unreasonableness to a large degree, as people feel relatively safe from physical harm)
The problem is that there is no starting point. Nobody wants to start with the fact that we don’t have much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to begin with. 1,000 ppm is a signifcant amount of co2. When the earth hits those levels, then we can analyze the impact of co2.
Shoosh:
Most people with a Ph.D. and a science background disagree with you on this of course. Even 10 ppm CO2 is interesting in terms of impact on climate.
And after 10%, decreasingly interesting.
Arguing about that is futile! 😉
Progress is possible where censorship of ideas is not taking place.
If the only rules enforced are those of civility, then civility and true discussion will occur.
Here, Dr. Curry’s, WUWT (with some exceptions), solarcycle24, sciguy blog, all permit free wheeling discussions.
The specific progress Lucia points out is significant. There are other examples.
stan (Comment#56988)
October 27th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
They already knew that, hence the allowances for quality problems.
No, he is now a ‘warmist’. The IPCC hasn’t changed it’s stance at all.
bugs:
Even wrt the Himalayan Glaciers claims? There are a number of other substantive errors too.
Don’t whitewash errors, that’s why the IPCC’s credibility is tanking.
David Gould:
Except the science says what it says. There are somethings that just speaks to science illiteracy, claims of no impact from CO2 gas is one of them.
Carrick,
Understood – just referring back to the topic of the OP. 🙂
A number of commenters here have mentioned the civility factor and also the tendency to personalize. Over at my site, Jonathan Gilligan wrote something on a related note that I think everyone can agree with (one hopes):
http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/10/27/why-were-doomed/#comment-24093
Let’s be careful how we kick around this notion, futility. The unsophisticated, like me, sometimes gain insights even from below the fold. I am also certain that stuff I read below the fold can lead me to search out new points and facts using Google – points to be unload at future times. Most recently this was an article in sciencedaily.com about measuring earth’s albedo by observing earth-shine seen on the crescent moon (at big bear solar observatory) – just as Da Vinci had first done sometime in the early 16th century. This lead to further reading of a few paragraphs of a preview over at Amazon and learning that Arrhennius used Langley’s low angle moon observations to estimate IR absorption by the atmosphere. Just an hour or so ago I read below the fold somewhere that IR radiation does not penetrate liquid water more than a molecule or so and instead contributes to energy involved in evaporation. This is something I will store away and in the next days or weeks will be looking for things that further confirm or contradict it. Also I sometimes encounter people (below the fold) who will give direct guidance on specific points that are enlightening. I can remember having my eyes opened on not needing absolute precision when working with trends in data by a kindly below-the-folder.
I never have done well with the authoritarian model of education so for me all the hullabaloo of the blog-o-sphere stimulates self education. (To say nothing of improving my spelling and understanding of sentence structure.) It’s just not all that hard to read around the pissing matches to glean useful factoids and insights and make judgments on the style and soundness of participants. So please be careful about throwing around the F, for futility, word. Some of us unsophisticated are out here reading through the material looking for tidbits and organizing and refining our thoughts about the much discussed topic of the climate. Slowly accessing what it all amounts to – where the bs is and where the solid info is. For me the value is about 50/50 above the fold versus below the fold together with a measure of other material sought and found using this wonderful thing called Google.
Carrick (Comment#57012) October 27th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
The WGII screwed up with the glaciers. The WGI report is fundamentally correct, as it is based on sound scientific knowledge. The fundamental science has not changed over the course of four reports. The only debate, which is what we should have been arguing for the past twenty years, is what will be the climate sensitivity. Instead most of that time has been wasted on crazy conspiracy theories, (which still surface today), utter nonsense such as Gerlich and Tseuchener, Miskolczi and the rest of the nutters, and nit picking which completely ignores the big picture. The ‘skeptics’ with any brains are now the ‘luke warmers’. That’s taken how long?
One problem in the blog conversations is when one blog ignores the existence of another with a different view. Thus the dialogue becomes very stilted.
You suggest a “non-futile” discussion requires at least 4 different above fold contributors. The linking between blogs means that by the time there are 4 above fold contributions it is highly unlikely that a contribution to the converstation can be ignored.
Two above fold contributors can probably generate a “non-futile” discussion if they are willing to engage with the opposing viewpoint.
I think that the most interesting posts are those that actually try to discuss above fold contributions or comments that have appeared in the press or scientific literature.
Bugs: “The only debate, which is what we should have been arguing for the past twenty years, is what will be the climate sensitivity.”
.
So, there’s only one debate worthwhile and anyone debating other things in relation to AGW is wasting their time? You must be a very frustrated person, bugs. You are completely surrounded by nutters who think that other things matter too.
.
Bugs: “The ‘skeptics’ with any brains are now the ‘luke warmers’. That’s taken how long?”
.
Oh bugs, you seem to recognize that someone not quite agreeing with you on these matters might have at least some brains? That’s progress. Isn’t is Mosher?
Not me, the scientific evidence. Don’t agree with me.
Lucia:
As a matter of common English parlance “nit” normally refers to a fool or idiot, there being so many about and much need for this usage.
It gave your post and interesting twist for a moment.
“Because so many were posting, and cross linking, all shared the common ground of discussing the same “IDIOTS” without accusing each other of creating either the “denialist†or the “alarmist†temperature record.
Alex
To be blunt, I think Zeke is frustrated that Global Warming is not as easy to sell as it used to be. It doesn’t take an egghead to undertstand that the art of making the Global Warming squiggly lines is full of holes.
Anyone who has ever had a job or was asked to perform a routine of some kind, can see that the processes that Climate Science uses aren’t very good.
Andrew
Andrew_KY– I don’t think Zeke is frustrated that AGW is not as easy to sell as it used to be!
Lucia,
On what evidence to you base your opinion?
He’s a Global Warming salesman. Why wouldn’t he be frustrated? The market has gone down. 😉
Andrew
If he was a salesman, he would be trying to sell you something so he gains something back from you in exchange. What would that be? I can’t see that as a salesman, he personally gets anything if you agree that AGW is real.
Alexander
I’ve never heard the word nit used that way.
Literal: Nits are lice eggs. Nitpicking is picking lice eggs.
Picking nits is a very tedious process of picking out very, very tiny things.
The usages I am familiar with is that “nitpicking” means focusing on very, very tiny things, to pick them out. Not a big picture thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitpicking
Andrew_KY
I’m just telling you I don’t share yours. You don’t seem to have any basis for your opinion. I should think others can perfectly well think you diagnosing with no evidence.
I don’t think you have any basis to for your opinion he is a “salesman” of any sort. So, you have one apparently baseless opinion which you “prove” by providing another apparently baseless opinion. I’ve no doubt you can play this game forever– supporting each baseless opinion with a never ending supply.
As the joke goes “It’s turtles all the way down!” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down)
bugs (Comment#57089)-Obviously you aren’t familiar with the satisfaction of converting others to your point of view, as that in and of itself is a substantial reason to try and “sell” ideas to people.
On the topic of this post: What is meant by “move forward” exactly? Getting “past the debate” to “pass legislation”? Because if that’s what the aim of “moving forward” is, then I am proud to create as much futility for that as possible. In the (jocular) words of William F Buckley, I stand “athwart history, yelling ‘stop!'”
“bugs (Comment#57089)
October 28th, 2010 at 7:15 am
If he was a salesman, he would be trying to sell you something so he gains something back from you in exchange. What would that be? I can’t see that as a salesman, he personally gets anything if you agree that AGW is real.”
bugs,
If I don’t believe in vacuum cleaners, I’ll never have a reason to buy one. A Global Warming graph is like a TV commercial. It’s marketing.
You gotta buy groceries before you can cook, dude.
Andrew
Andrew_KY (Comment#57082) October 28th, 2010 at 6:30 am
Yep. And there are plenty of Phd’s who think C02 has nothing to do with the climate as it is being sold to the folks : which they (the folks) actually believe to be pollution and the black stuff coming out of smoke stacks and exhaust pipes of motor vehicles. Most folks don’t even know where the temperature measurements come from either or that it is only tenths of one degree of “warming” all this ado is about!
In the meantime it’s -7 C at my friend’s house in Edmonton with a bit of snow.
We had that big storm first here in So. Cal; that hit the mid-west later so now the Santa Ana winds are here; lovely warm air and beautiful days with no threat of any of the fires we usually get for this time of year because everything is still soaked.
God Bless “Global Warming”.
“You don’t seem to have any basis for your opinion.”
Zeke posts his work here frequently. For what other reason than to persuade? He presents his work as more than just his opinion.
Andrew
Andrew_FL–
Interesting question. Moving forward is an expression. The Keith intends depends on what end point Keith has in mind, right? Is it “agreement on whether we will do ‘X’, ‘Y’, or ‘Z’ ” (a common end point in a negotiation or in a democracy) or “Agreement on how we will do ‘X’ “, where we already agree that we should do ‘X’ “.
One of the issues at climate blogs is some people are focusing on the former– with ‘X’ being reduce GHG’s at all, “Y’ being ‘don’t worry about GHG’s at all”, and “Z” being continue funding research and monitor the situation.” Other people want to talk about implementing solutions on the basis that we have already decided we should “do X”.
I think Roger Jr., Keith, Zeke, Judy Curry, Tom Fuller, Steve McIntyre and many others are in the camp thinking we should be doing something. Roger Jr. in particular frequently blogs that the fraction of people who think we should do something is sufficiently high that we should focus in what we are going to do, and how. But that’s a thorny question too.
“he would be trying to sell you something so he gains something back from you in exchange. What would that be?”
“…certain human social structures always reappear. They can’t be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people—the best people, the most enlightened people—do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.
”
Michael Crichton
Andrew_KY
Trying to argue by rhetorical question again?
I’m not going to write a long essay discussing all the possible answers to your rhetorical question– most of which do not support your diagnosis of Zeke being a salesman. There are many possible reasons to post work showing surface temperature measurements — some of which are discussed in the post above. You — or anyone– asking a rhetorical question is, in no way, providing evidence that the correct answer to that question is the one that supports your theory.
Lucia,
OK, I’ll retract my question and re-state questionless:
It appears that Zeke is trying to sell the belief in Global Warming by frequently presenting graphs on a blog that supposedly represent Global Warming.
Now let me ask you a non-rhetorical question:
Do you think my above re-stated comment is reasonable?
Andrew
One of the commenters on Climate Audit has posted the following at least once:
In Herman Kahn’s typology:
1st-order agreement is agreement on substance.
2nd-order agreement is agreement about =what the argument is about=. “If A and B have achieved it, either should be able to explain it to C and each should be willing to accept the other’s explanation.â€
3rd-order agreement is “an understanding on why second-order agreement cannot be achieved. … When third-order agreement is reached, each party can explain satisfactorily to a third why his opponent thinks the two cannot really come to grips on relevant issues and facts and eventually achieve a second-order agreement.â€
4th-order agreement is “the simple assertion by one or both [parties] that the other is too stupid or biased for further discussion to be worthwhileâ€.
Ref: _Can We Win in Vietnam?_, Praeger, 1968, pp. 3-4
Andrew_KY
I think it is unreasonable. If you put in “it seems to me, Andrew” it might be true— since it seems that way to you. But, it seems that way because you harbor the unreasonable view that Zeke’s presentation of the results of an analysis is motivated by a desire to sell global warming and/or that his graphs “supposedly represent Global Warming”.
Zeke’s graphs do not “represent Global Warming”. They represent his computations of the observed global surface temperature record based on measurements and using various methods to process the data.
That one might, or almost certainly would infer the surface has warmed from these results does not mean the graphs themselves “represent” Global Warming.
Hi, Lucia (57099) and Andrew
I would certainly argue that there are a sheaf of actions we should take that are likely to benefit us in the future. These actions would bring benefits that are larger than their costs. One side benefit would be reduction of CO2 emissions.
One very quick example of many: There are commercial no-fly zones over large parts of Europe set up to manage military traffic during the Cold War. They cause lengthy re-routing of flights, wasting fuel, money and time for everyone. Not only do they serve no purpose now, the countries formerly at odds with each other are either part of a treaty organisation or have parted ways with much of their military airfleet and many of their airbases.
If we eliminate these no-fly zones, we save money, time and fuel.
Saving fuel reduces CO2 emissions.
I was about to expound on why I do not see futility in climate blogs when I read the HankHenry comment at Post # 57028. He captures well my view that these blogging experiences have value with me as a personal learning experience and an exposure to new ideas and methods. A number of these blogs allow almost a unique “easy” access to these experiences. Not only can one, through direct access to “experts” in the field, learn from their technical capabilities, but also get insights into their thinking about policy and politics and sometimes an entertaining view of their personalities. I have found that a well thought out question that goes unanswered at a blog can be almost as revealing and informative as one that gets answered or at least discussed.
The important point of HankHenry’s comment was that to really gain value from these blogs one must be willing to dig further on one’s own time to comprehend and judge the validity of evidence and arguments posed on these blogs. I have personally learned how little I really knew about statistics, linear algebra and thermodynamics. On the brighter side, I have also learned that in deed you can teach an old dog new tricks and that I can expand my capabilities and do analyses that I would not have thought I was capable of doing in the recent past.
I think a frustration with some participants can come from an expectation that the output of a blog could have an immediate influence on policy or even technical thinking on the subject under discussion. I think that view overlooks the momentum that current and consensus thinking can have and how difficult changing that direction can be. The changes in the science will come from within the science – eventually. The policy is more driven by the prevailing political philosophy of time (as opposed to scientific input) and that momentum will be even more difficult to change.
My frustration with blogs sometimes and on some threads is the time wasted by a personal back and forth when blog regulars feel compelled to not allow the comments of a poster, who comes on with often a countervailing view and gives his/her opinions, to stand without a counter comment. Without these comments being subjected to filtering, the best policy for me would be to let these comments go unchallenged and let the thinking blog readers make up their own minds as to their value. When I see well thought out questions go unanswered on some threads and instead a food fight taking over the thread I get doubly frustrated.
Lucia,
1. We could ask Zeke to comment on what his motivations are.
2. In the minds of many, many people, global temperature graphs do “represent” Global Warming, if the line squiggles up.
Andrew
Andrew_KY.
Of course. You could have asked before you diagnosed his motives and informed us what they were.
You posted the results of your psychological evaluation as a fact without asking any of this. See Andrew_KY (Comment#57082). In the following comment, I merely point out that I don’t think your conclusion is correct — which is true– I don’t think it’s correct. I don’t really need to consult Zeke to figure out that I think the result of your conclusion is incorrect. In contrast, you should have done a bit more research and thinking before presenting your opinion a fact. So, the fault of not asking lies with you, and not me.
So? In the minds of others, the graphs “represent” the results an analysis to estimate the rise in temperature based on measurements. This is, indeed, what the graphs literally represent.
Ken
This is understandable. But good questions can unanswered for many reasons. Two I can think of are:
1) No one who read it knows the answer.
2) The question didn’t register with anyone owing to timing. For example, if 30 comments arrive between 11 pm my time and 6 am my time, I am likely to only skim most. I have observed my own tendency to respond to the ones in the “top” of my email in box– so often the ones that arrived in early morning. I’ll often miss comments posted while I am composing a blog post etc.
There are other reasons people don’t answer. So, while it’s disappointing people don’t answer some comments, it’s going to happen. One of the reasons the dynamic for achieving “not futility” tends to involve “above the fold” posts between blogs is that content remains in a visibility hot spot for a relatively large amount of time. No individual comment remains there for long.
“In contrast, you should have done a bit more research and thinking before presenting your opinion a fact.”
I never presented my opinion as fact. I presented it as a reasonable conclusion based on evidence.
Sometimes assessing people’s behavior is a more accurate way of evaluating people’s motivations, though. I’m sure you agree, lucia.
This philosophy is the foundation of our jury system, btw.
Andrew
Tom–
Yes. But quite often those wanting to reduce want to limit discussion to only the more draconian choice: People don’t fly.
Mind you, we could do both. But sometimes, insisting on discussing what one group thinks is “perfect” crowds out discussion of “good”. Other reject the perfect and we end up doing nothing.
“Two I can think of are:”
I can think of another one. The person knows the answer but chooses not to answer because the answer would make them look bad.
Andrew
lucia (Comment#57090) October 28th, 2010 at 7:15 am
Alexander
As a matter of common English parlance “nit†normally refers to a fool or idiot, there being so many about and much need for this usage.
I’ve never heard the word nit used that way.
But Alexander is right that is common usage in England, as is ‘nitwit’ with similar meaning.
Andrew_KY
You wrote:
The first sentence presents your conclusion as a fact and then continues with “argument by rhetorical question”.
Re: Andrew_KY (Oct 28 08:01),
> It appears that Zeke is trying to sell the belief in Global Warming by frequently presenting graphs on a blog that supposedly represent Global Warming.
Jeff Id, Global Warming Salesman.
For what other reason than to persuade?
.
Exploration and Education
.
By sharing his methods and findings and posting them for comment, he gets comments asking for further clarification about some particular point, or he gets pointed to additional data ,or he gets pointed to someone elses similar but different approach for contrast and comparison, or a flaw in his approach is identified. By sharing what he learns, he teaches us something and he learns some things in return. Its how science works – even if these blog posts aren’t elevated into the science literature.
Phil
Ahh! Yes. We also use that in the US. I just don’t think I’ve heard “nit” by itself mean a stupid person. I can see how it might though. Were it used that way, I would understand in context.
Amac
I think you won the thread.
Lucia,
By observing his frequent posting of Global Warming graphs on this blog (fact), it’s reasonable to conclude that “He’s a Global Warming salesman” (conclusion).
Andrew
“Re: Andrew_KY (Oct 28 08:01),
> It appears that Zeke is trying to sell the belief in Global Warming by frequently presenting graphs on a blog that supposedly represent Global Warming.
Jeff Id, Global Warming Salesman.”
AMac,
From what I understand, JeffID believes in AGW, and sometimes explains why he does. So, you are correct.
We are talking about the idea of Global Warming, unless I’m mistaken.
Andrew
Andrew_KY–
I think you are mistaking believing in something and selling it. I believe in vacuum cleaners, ovens and refrigerators. I don’t sell them.
Lucia,
“Andrew_KY–
I think you are mistaking believing in something and selling it. I believe in vacuum cleaners, ovens and refrigerators. I don’t sell them.”
Ah, but if you started a Vacuum Cleaner Discussion Blog, I would suspect you of some interest in promoting the idea of Vacuum Cleaning. You wouldn’t be a simple Vacuum Cleaner Consumer at that point. BTW, I’m a strong believer in AVC. (Anthropogenic Vaccum Cleaning) 😉
Andrew
My motivations? I’m mostly interested in the science for science’s sake (because discovery is cool!), but also somewhat concerned over what could happen during the next century or two if sensitivity turns out to be on the high side. Not that it will really affect me that much during my lifetime (unless I happen to take up reef diving), but I’ve got a soft spot for posterity 😛
I also enjoy constructive debate, and I think better selling the basics (CO2 as an important GHG, surface temp record isn’t -that- bad, etc.) would certainly make the debate more fun.
Thanks for chiming in, Zeke.
Differences of opinion make quatloo wagering possible.
Andrew
Lucia at Post #57119:
Lucia, my point on learning from unanswered questions at blogs is in line with your reasons for people not answering. A well placed question that goes unanswered from someone expounding on a topic can allow the questioner to zero in better on what the expounder actually knows, or better, does not know about the topic.
If the question goes unanswered from a lack of interest, time or space then I think that can be partially attributed to food fights (no matter the level) taking up too much space and interest and interfering with more productive conversations.
I would guess that there are psychological reasons for a troll or troll-like person appearing on a blog and knowing he can garner attention by making controversial to outlandish statements and it bothers me that, otherwise intelligent blogs and bloggers, who otherwise have much to offer intellectually, get caught up in these all too frequent events and enable these people. There are perhaps borderline cases were the troll-like poster comes on with a countervailing point of view that all could learn something from and thus other posters feel that they require engagement.
I have been participating in blogs for a sufficient time to, however, to know that those who truly come to blogs with counter arguments and are interested in having an intellectual discussion will avoid, at all costs, the food fights and personality issues. That is also why, when I see a climate scientist come to a blog with a countervailing point of view and he initiates or provokes a food fight, I know that that scientist was never interested in having an intelligent conversation and makes me doubt his interests for participating were science related.
Ken-
Yes. Food fights do that. It’s why I really need a “not CPU sucking” plugin does the following:
1) Lets me secretly assign a “food fight” index to people and
2) Shows those people the post with their comment appearing, but hides it from others for “n” hours, with “n” a function of their food fight rating.
Oh! I did that to TCO for a while. But I *think* it sucked too much CPU.
Of course, I would also need to make those comments not appear in my in-box so *I* don’t respond to comments no one can see. 🙂
Obviously, if I did this widely, people would detect it. My rep for sneaky unfair moderating would vault to “sneakiest, most unfair moderating method in the whole climate blog-o-sphere”.
Let me be clear that I do enjoy the discussions that are off topic from climate science and even having some off topic fun when the subject is a serious climate related issue. What frustrates me is an interesting topic getting taken over by a personal battle that will obviously never go anywhere.
Even when one participant is obviously wrong and/or wrong headed on a subject and the other(s) in the discussion obviously know what they are talking about it gets a little boring to see how many ways a wrong headed person can be shown they are wrong and/or wrong headed and particularly when the person being wrong would never admit it. I say if those discussions were filtered most serious blog participants would not mind.
I agree. But there is always the difficulty that some will disagree over who is “serious” and who is “not serious”. Moderating is always contentious for that reason.
Lucia when you say the following:
“There was a time, not so long ago, when above-the-fold content at some blogs was vehemently criticizing the surface temperature record in terms that suggested our collective ability to measure surface temperature or detect 0.7C or warming was so poor that we could not be confident the annual average surface temperature in 1900 was cooler than that in 2000. Or, possibly claims at the above the fold were less drastic and merely suggested the surface temperature record had some fairly large, difficult to quantify upward bias.
Meanwhile, the tone of some responses made it appear that every single uncertainty or question identified by anyone anywhere was utterly trivial, not worth discussion, and by gosh, the surface temperature record was dang near perfect and couldn’t even, hypothetically be biased upwards. (Disclaimers muttered under breath in a tone that suggested no one should bother their poor wee heads.) Often these “responses†were disconnected from the specific criticisms. The result is the criticism — whether valid or not– were left unaddressed at blogs.”
I must admit that I was not there for those discussions, but I have some problems with this particular topic and on both sides of the issue.
I can recall that some of the participants in the discussions of the Watts quality review and CRN level assignments of USHCN stations appeared to think that what was being revealed was going to require adjustments to the US temperature trend of a degree C or so. They even appeared not to want to believe that errors could change trends by statistically significant amounts but by more modest amounts than they had anticipated. I think there is much in that data that needs to be extracted and that the level of CRN rating will be significant. Unfortunately I have not seen this done to date and with published results. What a lot of those discussing the results fail to realize is that the temperature station data are very noisy and can have very different trends for nearby stations. A proper statistical analysis requires lots of data.
Some of the anecdotal data from isolated stations is sometimes oversold as a major overall deficiency in the temperature record.
On the other side we have the Menne et al. paper analyzing the Watts CRN evaluations. That analysis was based on relating the CRN12 versus CRN345 ratings when it can be shown that a CRN123 versus a CRN45 analyses will give a different result and provide more stations on the higher quality side to provide a statistically more efficient comparison. The Menne paper started the station comparison in the 1980s and it can be shown that a comparison going further back in time will give a different result and a result that might better bridge the time (and thus effect the longer term trend) when the station quality went to a lower quality level. Also Menne and others seem to be satisfied with comparing various sources of temperature measurement over the recent past (the 1980s to present). Those sources might be in good agreement over that time period but that does not bear on the longer term records.
It would appear to me that many participants in these discussion are content to show the instrumental precision, if you will, causes little error, but never do answer the question about the long term confidence limits we can put on the instrumental record, given the lack of station data as we go back in time and our seeming inability to determine the uncertainty that infilling missing data both temporally and spatially causes. I have read the few papers that address this uncertainty issue but none to my knowledge makes a claim to be a final answer. All the papers make assumptions in their calculations.
In fact, Lucia, this is one of those unanswered or inadequately answered questions that I ask on occasion at blogs that leads me to believe we do not have a good answer. That the question is an important one, if not the most important one in the use of the longer term instrumental record by climate scientists, is seen in the writings in these papers that address the issue. So when I hear someone reference what the long term temperature trends are and without even mentioning this uncertainty or the uncertainty of the uncertainty or worse assigning some made up confidence limits I have to ask.
Kenneth
There were some problems on both sides of the issue. Some wanted to say that the surface records sufferred from all sorts of problems– some of which were clearly not problems. Some which could potentially be problems. Others wanted to discount any and all potential problems– at least when discussing on blogs.
To my knowledge, Menne was not participating at blogs. I haven’t spoken to Menne. All I know is his paper says what it says. Does it address everything said at a blog? I’m sure it doesn’t. Journal papers generally only focus on those things they did deal with, and to some extent, that means they focus on the possible.
You are right to ask.
BTW: My impression is Zeke has been discussing issues with Menne. It’s possible some of the issues that concern you might eventually be discussed in the literature. With respect to blogs this means that some of the things the blog supporters of the surface record waved away as not worth discussing may very well end up discussed in greater detail– and at the level of journal articles.
Re: lucia (Oct 28 12:48),
It’s funny… TCO made an appearance on a Tiljander-related ClimateAudit thread a few months back, and the two of us began a food fight. Then we pulled back on the snark, and got into the science. It turned into what I see as the best discussion on the subject to date, propelled forward by some of the CA regular commenters (and irregulars, too).
I post-hoc moderated (= edited) that thread and put it up as a pair of posts (Part 1). They are very dense, and of interest only to somebody who really wants to follow the development of arguments about the Tiljander data sets, and how they pertain to Mann08’s reconstructions.
But as Kenneth Fritsch stated upthread, that is one of the virtues of some posts’ threads: the opportunity to see arguments fleshed out, assess them, and assess the credibilities of various commenters (professional scientists, citizen-scientists, and regular Joes/Janes).
Amac–
TCO can, from time to time, post useful stuff. Unfortunately, he is often included to assume the form of Godzilla.
He hasn’t been back here in a while. I know he was recently telling us he’d kicked the sauce and gotten in shape. Maybe he’s developed other interests.
Kenneth Fritsch,
Unfortunately work on CRN-based rankings is on hold at the moment until the full set of rankings gets released, something that Anthony is rather loathe to do until his paper comes out.
In the mean time, however, I’m working with Menne and a number of other bloggers on a somewhat different approach to estimating UHI using urban-rural station pairs and different urbanity proxies (GRUMP, Impervious Surfaces, Historical Population Growth data, and Nightlights). Its been interesting so far, and hopefully we will be in a position to discuss more soon (spilling the beans on initial results on blogs tends to be somewhat frowned upon by journals).
We’re also playing around with other methods of categorizing site quality using high definition spatial imaging. Ron’s been doing some particularly interesting work to this end of late.
There is an interesting ongoing process, stemming from a Judith Curry post.
A little while back, Curry used an Italian Flag metaphor to discuss her view of “Uncertainty”, and where the AR4 approach falls short.
Michael Tobis loathed her analogy, and wrote a “She’s jumped the shark” takedown.
When it came up in the C-a-s “Curry the Apostate” comment thread, I strongly objected to the poison-pen character of Tobis’ analysis (C-a-s comment #49).
Discussion followed, with back-and-forth disagreement. Is the personal nature of an criticism important (AMac: yes), or do skeptics use such things as dodges to avoid issues (PDA: yes)?
PDA then tried an experiment: separating Tobis’ vitriol and snark from his actual case against the Italian Flag approach, and posting the snark-free analysis on his blog (C-a-s #109; Tobis on Curry’s Uncertainty and Doubt Series at “Clue-by-four”).
Tom Fuller has now posted a rebuttal to Tobis’ analysis at PDA’s post, having checked personal issues at the door.
I doff my hat to PDA and Tom Fuller. This is a pretty encouraging set of developments. I hope anyone with an interest and a qualified opinion on the Italian Flag Question will consider what they have to say.
We are not doomed.
Maybe a change of venue can change the tone. We’ll see.
Zeke when you say:
“In the mean time, however, I’m working with Menne and a number of other bloggers on a somewhat different approach to estimating UHI using urban-rural station pairs and different urbanity proxies (GRUMP, Impervious Surfaces, Historical Population Growth data, and Nightlights).”
I really think if the Watts team evaluations have any merit at all they would have changed the focus of measuring something as overly generalized as the “UHI” effect to something that we might call the micro climate effect and of individual stations. I can readily see that a change of stations from an inner city location to one at the airport out in suburbs would mean little when we attempt to classify stations as rural and urban by their general population description. What does it mean to have rural station surrounded by black top paving. But then what is easier for the “ivory tower” types to do than to classify stations as rural and urban and something in between or to go out in field and look at the micro climate effects for many individual stations (all stations would be better) and even perhaps estimate when the micro climate might have changed and further if those changes would be of such magnitude and direction that we could detect them with statistically significant break points and then adjust for them accordingly.
On the other side, that is often associated with the skeptics, I too often see people referring to a the absolute magnitude of a potential UHI effect and not talk about the when the change occurred. If the major change occurred mostly 100 years ago and we are looking 100 year trends then the UHI effect, no matter how large, means little with regards to the temperature trend. Sometimes overlooked by some skeptics is the fact when we are looking at the US temperature trends using the GISS data set, we are looking at the so-called rural station trends and UHI per say is not involved. I guess, perhaps a more ambitious tower dweller might then reduce their micro climate search to rural stations. Of course, one might then want to ask why the GISS data set ignores rural and urban classification in adjusting station data for the rest of the world.
I tip my hat back to AMac (I am too fond of my stingy-brim fedora to fully doff it) but I’d soften the position he(she?) imputes to me. I don’t think it’s a “dodge,” necessarily, but it can be easy to get one’s back up and refuse to engage. I have done so myself.
Anyway, y’all come! I’m about to go AFK, though, so behave yourselves…
Re: PDA ,
What’s A F K? Can’t be “Away for the night”….
I’ll be interested to read any final summary of the italian flag thing, but I admit to not really understanding it at any ones blog.
lucia (Comment#57255)-Away from keyboard.
Thanks Andrew
Oh, by the way, I hadn’t seen it before: Yes, Tom, as presented allowing planes to fly in many current no fly zones is a good idea, emissions reductions aside. Because the governments of the world have very little business proclaiming dominion over and right of restriction upon the sky itself. Well, I suppose you don’t have to agree on the reason for something to agree that it is a good idea.
That being said, I think one has to carefully assess when it really is completely wise to eliminate such zones. Ya can’t be sweeping about it. Some of them may still be needed. So that becomes an ugly issue of fighting it out on a case by case basis. And in Eastern Europe, Russia is still pretty belligerent.
AMAC at Post #57230:
I followed the link in your post for a quick look at the Italian flag metaphor and I would say that it presents a good example of an exercise in futility. Someone commented that it appeared somewhat in the method of the IPCC dealing with uncertainty. That it appears to be a subjective like that used for the IPCC is probably correct, but I do not think that we know how the IPCC arrived at its uncertainty measures, because, while they had general guidelines for arriving at uncertainty levels, the exact methods were left to section leaders. The leaders were supposed to document the exact method, but I have never seen those methods revealed and my requests to see them have fallen on deaf ears.
Re: Zeke (Oct 27 13:52),
The comment section has become a tired old play with all the same characters saying the same things. And I agree without a common agreed upon set of rules for admitting when your right or wrong, there is a lot of futility
Kenneth, the Italian flag was being posited by Dr. Curry as an alternative to the IPCC’s way of framing uncertainty. While I think Dr. Curry applied it unskillfully in her example, it seems to me that the method has value as a way of illustrating interval probabilities. Hall et. al. [PDF] use Italian flags in an “influence diagram” to analyze the sources of uncertainty in various pieces of evidence for a climate-related proposition.
PDA, the IPCC attempted to put something appearing to be an objective measure on the uncertainty of climate events by using “expert judgment” with general guidelines and then undisclosed applications in specific instances. That is like putting lipstick on a pig.
Most probably one can conjure up a system with Bayesian approaches that might make for better public relations but it will still be based on expert judgments of experts that could well be chosen rather arbitrarily. It would be like using a more attractive shade of lipstick on that pig.
Policy makers might want to use of these systems to evaluate uncertainty but something akin to a show of hands by “science experts” to establish uncertainty limits surely has no place in the science end of it. In fact why are climate scientists concerned about such approaches to begin with and since the IPCC has a charter to review the science and not suggest policy, they have no business doing these policy calculations.
That gets down to the government policy makers where I dare say the decisions will nearly always be more politically motivated then arrived at through the science. It might be interesting to see how the Italian flag metaphor has been (mis)applied to government policies. Even it were given a proper application, would the uncertainty of the policy consequences , including the unintended ones, be given the same consideration and analysis?
Is anybody defending Curry’s post? It was terrible. She confused uncertainty in the hypothesis with uncertainty in how much warming is anthropogenic.
Boris:
Typical Boris, nasty toned comment that is so poorly constructed that nobody except maybe Boris even knows what he’s trying to say.
Boris–
I admit I don’t find the “red/white/green” flag metaphor very helpful to my thinking.
But, are you sure Curry is the one who is confused? Or if she is, is she the only one who is confused?
Tobis’s post was a very confusing read; it sounds like he’s in quite a muddle. I skimmed, got to portions where I went back to Curry’s, thought that whatever Curry meant, it wasn’t what Tobis suggested. Then I decided the whole thing wasn’t worth thinking about any more than that.
If other people are finding it useful, maybe someone will present the metaphor in a clear way connecting it to what the IPCC may have meant or what anyone might mean. In the mean time, I think it reads like a generic idea that might help someone, somehow, if worked out more clearly. But.. at least for now, not explained very well by Curry, and discussed in an extremely more confusing way by Tobis who makes some rather strong declaration (particularly given how confusing what he writes reads.)
Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe Tobis is a paragon of clarity. . .
Best series of blog posts has been the last few at Jeff Id on the Russians with their concerns about understanding of hurricanes. While I accept that a lot of hard work went into the temp series recon’s, to my mind that issue is more about the UHI effect than whether people have recorded numbers correctly. It is the adjustments!
The discussion with Anastasia (?sp) has been excellent with only the occasional personal spat. It has been facsinating to watch people who believe something is settled science to argue their points and have first principle responses which seem take them back a bit.
Hopefully both proponents are learning.
Lucia – It would be good to see you join the fray with your well measured thoughts too.
I don’t think you need Tobis to understand how Curry has goofed. She wants to test this hypothesis:
Let’s just consider the 28%. This is her estimate of natural variability over the last half of the 20th century. minus the uncertainty. Red is labeled as “evidence against.”
But that makes no sense whatsoever. If natural variability is about 30% of the late 20th century warming, then the statement is true. How can a result that leaves the statement true be counted as “evidence against”?
Of course skeptics like this post because it vastly overstates uncertainty. And let’s not forget that it completely ignores the possibility that natural variability has masked some anthropogenic warming. Uncertainty goes both ways.
What Lucia said at 10/31/10 1:38pm.
Verdun: The German High Command picked this French fortress because it was tactically hard to defend, in the Western Front’s trench warfare of World War I. They announced that it would be a terrible defeat for the French, were it to fall. The French High Command took the bait and poured men in, so that it would not fall. Verdun did stay in French hands… but at a cost that wasn’t worth the prize (a bunch of tunnels and smashed-up reinforced concrete strongpoints).
I didn’t read Curry’s Italian Flag Analogy post carefully, and certainly didn’t go back into the Uncertainty literature. The potential insights did not seem to be worth the effort. From what I gather at C-a-s and PDA’s post:
1. The IFA expresses basic concepts about uncertainty that are better described directly and plainly, or
2. The IFA is outright dumb, e.g. Curry mangled somebody else’s related idea and/or it contains internal logical contradictions, or
3. The IFA makes some subtle point but not-very-important point about the IPCC’s approach to Uncertainty that I haven’t grasped, or
4. The IFA demonstrates a subtle and crucial point that is eluding me.
The accolades of many WUWT commenters don’t mean anything to me, one way or another. Likewise the brickbats of the OIIFTG commentariat.
A “Verdun” response would only be wise if Judy Curry can demonstrate Case #4, IMO.
How this plays out isn’t going to change much of anything. As long as WUWT et al. like Curry’s message, they won’t worry too much about IFA details. It’s the opposite for the Pro-AGW Consensus advocacy bloggers. They’ve already decided that Curry is to be derided as a fringe player with kooky and silly ideas. A Pulitzer-worthy essay on the IFA won’t alter their stance.
You don’t need to know anything about uncertainty literature to see how Curry goofed. You need only apply logic.
Boris–
Is it?
Can’t it just be that she didn’t use enough words in the bullet points?
Try this:
* p(observed warming| leprechauns, cosmic rays cause warming) =5%
* p(observed warming| CO2 causes warming)= 67% its due to anthropogenic forcing.
* p(observed warming| natural variability causes warming)=28%.
So, to answer your question, if this is what the weights mean then the 28% constitutes “evidence against”. Evidence against would be precisely what 28% means, and it’s not even difficult to understand this.
Now, to go into something more general:
I admit to not knowing precisely what Curry means by her example. It seems like she may have fallen into a bungle by not precisely stating what the various conditionals in the flag etc. The result is, we don’t know. But it seems to me that neither your nor Tobis’s interpretations necessarily align with what she actually said. Then, after insisting she “must” mean something she may not have meant (and, in fact, did not say) you conclude she “must” be wrong. But this is silly: I don’t think you know what she meant.
Mostly, I think it’s a big waste of time to try to “prove” what she said is either correct or incorrect based on the post alone.
It would make more sense to use some less contentious examples to work out what the italian flag is supposed to do at all, then given the specific definitions of what assigning a number to a particular region means, and then working it all out. It might be necessary to write down what the portions of flag represents using more formal notation (closer to what I did above.)
Because it’s not clear to me that the analogy or metaphor would get us anywhere, I’m not going to spend much time on it. But, it seems to me that both you and Michael Tobis are “filling in the blanks” with thing she didn’t say, and jumping to some conclusions about what the various assignments must mean based on stuff you filled in. But that doesn’t prove Judy is wrong.
(It is clear that the analogy is sufficiently vague to be confusing– but that doesn’t make it obviously wrong. )
Boris
And attribute statements to her she did not make.
Re: AMac,
I agree with this. I think Judy wrote something qualitative and vague. It’s probably too vague to be right or wrong.
One group will ‘fill in the blanks’ with things she did not say to read it as obviously wrong; the other will ‘fill in the blanks’ to make it possibly right. I think as discussed in her first blog post, it was just too vague to know for sure.
If Tobis’s criticism had been: Huh? I don’t understand it? What do those weights mean? What is this all supposed to tell us? This isn’t ready for submission to “The Journal of Estimating Probabilities Using Colors of Flags”, I would say: no it’s not. But is it wrong? Who knows? I think it’s too vague to tell and I think Tobis is stretching.
Or, if he’s not stretching, I think his discussion is every bit as vague and muddled as anything he is criticizing in Judy’s post.
How can be definite about something that is vague? That has been the constant criticism of her. She says something, then doesn’t back it up, just moves on to something else. If she said something definite, and stuck to it, maybe a definite response could be made.
Bugs–
Boris’s criticism doesn’t read as if he’s saying she’s vague. It reads as if he is saying she is wrong, in the sense that the things she says contradict each other. The former criticism seems fair; the later seems to over-reach.
It’s fair enough to criticize Judy if she goes wrong somewhere, but you don’t get to criticize her for being wrong when the problem was she is unclear.
I also don’t think she has to stick to working out all possible details of the italian flag metaphor. Maybe it doesn’t work and it’s more useful to move on. Not a big deal in my mind.
If all it took was a couple of vague or dumb or silly or wrong posts to get somebody banished from blog-land, we would be hearing a lot of crickets chirping. When the hardcore skeptic cheer squad start going after W and X (on their side) for their shortcomings, I’ll take their adulation more seriously. Likewise, when the Consensus advocates begin criticizing Y and Z (on their side), it’ll be time to think more carefully about the potshots directed at their enemies (real or imagined).
Michael Tobis and Willis Esenbach could costar in one of those prisoners-who-despise-each-other-escaping-while-handcuffed-together movie capers. When calm, each is capable of writing thoughtfully and perceptively. Too often, they become emotionally overwrought when thinking about the evident justice of their cause and the obvious perfidy of their opponents.
When Amac says:
“When the hardcore skeptic cheer squad start going after W and X (on their side) for their shortcomings, I’ll take their adulation more seriously. Likewise, when the Consensus advocates begin criticizing Y and Z (on their side), it’ll be time to think more carefully about the potshots directed at their enemies (real or imagined).”
Since Judith Curry has been perceived by the opposing “cheer squads” (your terminology) to have changed sides (I have major doubts on that), it is interesting to hear the general criticism of Curry by the skeptic side previously and the consensus side now. Some of it is consistent and you can take that for what you think it is worth. Cheer squads are in my opinion much better at criticizing the other side than they are in defending their own side. A thinking person can, in my view, separate out the partisan rhetoric from the more substantial content of these criticisms.
Look at the two major political parties in the US when they criticize the other side and when they defend their own side. Even some of the more partisan criticism rings true, in my view, while the defenses of their own side are often indefensible. That is probably why I have such a low opinion of politicians. I do feel much better about the partisan criticism we see in this country, regardless of its content and validity, when in other countries, that have only one party, I hear the ridiculously over done praise of the party in power (the ultimate cheer leading and cheer squad).
On the topic of setting probabilities whether by the IPCC or with some mixture of Bayesian approaches, I think we do the topic a disservice by not getting to the basic concept of how valid is using expert judgment and how would one select these experts.
It is rather obvious that the issues the IPCC are presenting do not have objective measures of uncertainty. Also should not scientists acting as scientists and not advocates and science oriented approaches avoid the subjective approach to dealing with uncertainties. Judith Curry has given us the opportunity to discuss this issue and instead I see it wasted on defending and criticizing Curry.
Amac:If all it took was a couple of vague or dumb or silly or wrong posts to get somebody banished from blog-land, we would be hearing a lot of crickets chirping.The same comment could be applied to peer-reviewed literature.
But Lucia, she is applying the Italian flag to this statement:
Her estimates are very clearly based on it.
Re: Kenneth Fritsch (Nov 1 09:07),
Postworthy comment.
Boris– So? How does that matter? Could you finish that thought?
I’ll say it again: If she is creating an Italian flag for that statement, then her percentages make no sense.
Boris– Yes. You keep saying that. But why do you think her percentages make no sense? It seems to me that previously you were saying she “goofed” which is rather stronger than merely making no sense. The reason you gave before didn’t hold up. Then, you merely requoted a line from an earlier comment.
So, are you backing down from “goofed” (which implies they are wrong) to the weaker you can’t figure out what she’s saying? Or are you still insisting she goofed, but clarifying the reason you think we should all believe she “goofed”? Because your reason seems to involve attributing claims to her that she did not make.
Because 28% natural variability during the last half of the 20th century is not “evidence against” a statement that says that it is 95% likely that 51-90% of late 20th century warming was anthroprogenic. And yes, things that don’t make sense are wrong.
Boris–
If the 28% means this:
This would be
Where do you think 28% comes from? (Hint: it is not her personal estimate.)
Boris if you don’t like the 28% number give another one. Stop being a whiny little b*tch.
Stop being a bully. Seriously.
Where do you think the 28% comes from, Carrick?