Gavin tweeted this.
I thought… “Well of course searches on climategate peaked when climategate occurred and then dropped dramatically. I wonder how it compares to other climate related searches?”
Feel free to repeat test using anthony watts, steve mcintyre, gavin schmidt. Or anything else that takes your fancy.
The first time I clicked on the link for the rest of the post I got this weird message that I needed to update my Flash player. Having been burned once by something like that, I killed my browser with Task Manager. I had to do it again before I could kill the page without loading it.
‘Idiocy’ looks to trundling along with a fairly constant level of interest. Could be trending upwards but it might just be a short term fluctuation.
DeWitt…. hmm… I wonder why?
Re: lucia (Jun 10 18:26),
My guess would be an ad that I moused over by accident. I thought that your site might have been hacked, but it never happened again so probably not. I found a couple of references to the link that claimed it was safe, but IMO, paranoia is justified for that sort of thing. There was a really nasty one that claimed that you had all sorts of viruses and you had to act right now a few years back. If you didn’t kill that one with Task Manager, it would rewrite all your file associations, including .exe.
Does anyone take climate “communicators” seriously anymore?
I think with certain regression algorithms, the X-axis would be inverted and this can be used in a hockey stick study.
“hide the decline” = twin peaks
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=climategate#q=%22hide%20the%20decline%22&cmpt=q
But if I tiljanderise it … [IMG]http://i41.tinypic.com/dq12qg.png[/IMG]
Lucia–
Clicking on your Anthony Watts-Steven McIntyre-Gavin Schmidt link we find on hovering over “A” that the Herald Sun reports Anthony Watts charged with assault. In “C” we find he will be out for 6 months with a knee injury. And so on. Our Anthony does get around.
Lance,
It seems there is a football player named Anthony Watts. Needless to say “John Cook” searches are frequent too.
Steve McIntyre and hockey might be an issue…
Panthers looking for tough edge in claiming Steve McIntyre
http://www.sportscardforum.com/threads/950741-Panthers-looking-for-tough-edge-in-claiming-Steve-McIntyre
I guess I need to re-register with google, it has been years… I’m curious to see how WUWT and surrealclimate compare.
Sure, but look at the trend for Global Warming
Sort of cooling isn’t it?
Hmm… The graph in the post overcounts searches for the ‘real climate’ blog itself. Look
The searches not in ” ” include people who used the words in a phrase (I guess at least.)
It is unavoidable a bit cherry picking, but it is interesting that Google trends shows that searches with “global warming” and the terms more typical for “sceptics” such as conspiracy, controversy, doesn’t exist, fake, is fake, myth, natural, skeptics, is not real, junk science, lies, not real, are going down. Whereas searches for “climate change” and more science oriented key words such as, articles, causes, adaptation, and agriculture, data, education, effects, for kids, health, impacts, jobs, journal, lesson plans middle school mitigation, predictions, research, science, statistics, vulnerability are either stable or are even going up.
That fits to the general decline in the readership of climate sceptic blogs seen in Alexa.
Lucia, I am wondering how reliable Google Trends and Alexa are. Does the reduction in the number of readers of The Blackboard according to Alexa fit to your page counts?
For any of this to be meaningful you’d need some sort of opinion poll to determine why there is a shift in the number of readers over time. I suspect you are seeing a decline primarily because people have made their mind up and moved on?
In the case of climate gate, that was an event that is settled in most people’s mind. I doubt the decline says anything interesting beyond that. How much can you discuss a specific event like that?
I have a phrase for people like Victor, who think it’s ok to quotify people who disagree with him, it’s “you’re a self-righteous prig”.
The public opinion polls are certainly a better measure of … anything.
gallup
See “Bottom line”.
Carrick, there was just a post at Hot Whopper that a civilised discussion with climate sceptics can be difficult. Thank you for this clear example.
Victor,
There is a certain irony to providing a link labeled ‘a civilised discussion with climate sceptics can be difficult’ that leads to a page which opens with this statement:
That’s civilised discussion, is it?
Carrick, the Bottom Line of your Gallop poll reads:
Which fits to the latest PEW poll of March 2013, that nearly seven-in-ten Americans say they believe there is solid evidence of global warming. This number is increasing since 2009.
That Americans are not alarmed by Climate Change is understandable. The rich will suffer least and we can just solve the problem, which will not be as hard as the WUWT alarmists claim. No need for alarm, but for action.
Mark, I could naturally say: Carrick begun. 🙂 However, I am willing to admit that Sou from Hot Whopper is not the most diplomatic person.
How would you describe WUWT? As a blog that loves climate science and praises scientists for their diligent work?
I would think that most blogs that have serious discussions about climate science and related issues would have a hardcore of participants and readers and then have an audience of those less serious and less knowledgeable readers who pass through as perhaps partisans in the AGW debate looking for ammunition. Current and highly publicized affairs, and particularly those where a blog owner is quoted in the media, that are related to climate would have a greater affect on the participation of those passer-by readers. In the end none of these changing participation rates have any effect whatsoever on the quality or impact of serious AGW discussions. What is curious to me is that climate scientists, like Gavin Schmidt, would or should care – at least as scientists.
Whoa. Victor, that poll is amazing. 70% believe that there is “solid evidence that the earth’s average temperature has been getting warmer over the past few decades”. What are they thinking? Poll the authors of every skeptic blog there is, and you would get around 97% yes on that question.
I note that a much smaller percentage (less than half!) said that it was “mostly due to human activity”. Which is probably a much smaller percentage than if you would poll climate scientists, even if most of the polls so far have been pretty bogus.
Are you really paying attention to the issues, if you think that this poll shows American support for AGW?
Victor: Carrick begun.
No you “begun” when you continue your little slur “sceptic”. I simply noted how this language choice on your part registers with other, more impartial viewers.
I’m not a sceptic, quotes or otherwise, so please don’t blame this on “civilized discussions with sceptics can be difficult.” This is squarely about your choice of words and what they imply about you, and nothing else.
Regarding WUWT—I’m discussing your behavior, not theirs. They aren’t “scientists”. You represent yourself as one. Different standards are appropriate here.
I don’t dispute what Gallup or Pew says (I reserve the right to dispute your interpretation however)–my position is you first select the best methodology, then you interpret what it says. Alexa is a fun toy, but that’s it.
Your arguments about Americans and climate change are mistaken by the way. Because we have greater economic value in our society than third world nations, the cost to us to relocate if oceans rise to much, for example, would be far greater than theirs.
Victor–
First: Alexa doesn’t give page counts. It gives Alexa ranks. There is no way to do a ‘page count to Alexa rank’ translation. The # 1 ranked page has the ‘best rank’, but the page count corresponding to that might change as the internet grows.
Second: Yes and No. Long explanation based on general observations– not data processing– follows.
I don’t know how reliable Alexa is. In the past, it was not reliable unless you got to very low ranks. So, for example:
1) You could tell google got more visits than most other places.
2) You could get estimates by comparing “like” to “like”– for example: you could get a rough estimate of visits to two knitting blogs based on alexa ranks.
But otherwise, way back in the past, Alexa only counted visits from peoplewho’d installed the alexa toolbar. Generally, the only people who installed it were those interested in alexa ranks– and those tended to be IT with an interest in SEO etc who liked the one bit of information the Alexa toolbar provide them: Information on ranks. They tended not to be people who read knitting blogs. So if you had a blog that dealt with SEO relative to one that dealt with knitting, the knitting blog and both had the same Alexa rank, the knitting blog had much, much more real traffic. You can read a little about weird alexa ranks here:
http://techcrunch.com/2008/04/16/alexa-overhauls-ranking-system/
Other ways to look up google and Alexa ranks now exist, so I suspect even many SEO types have switched from Alexa to one of the scads of other things that exist.
One advantage about Alexa rankings back when they used data from the toolbar only: It did tend to be mostly people not bots. Some other ranking systems counted lots of bot hits. (Though that wasn’t certain. One might program an automated thing to visit blogs with the toolbar installed and scrape or submit spam. But I’m not sure why any script writer would do that but some human comment spammers like to use tricked out browsers, and they might want to look at Alexa ranks. Who knows? )
I know that Alexa has done some tweaking to get away from the bias in using the toolbar but I don’t know in what way. (See http://web.archive.org/web/20080424144640/http://www.alexa.com/site/company/announcement? )
That tweaking of their algorithm will change the bias and result in apparent trends. To the extent they do use the toolbar, changes in toolbar usages will affect rankings too. (I would not be surprised if people don’t shift away from adware/tracking toolbars as they become more aware of tracking. The NSA story might raise general awareness.)
On real trends: My readership has declined in the two years; I’ve mostly attributed that to blogging less especially in 2012 while we were spending a lot of time dealing with my father-in-law and mother in law. The Alexa rank has declined disproportionately to the decline in honest to goodness human traffic. (I know hit numbers etc.) But there are some “features” to the decline that suggest some of the decline might be… uhmm… “issues” with Alexa.
My US alexa rank has not declined so much. (It’s 150,745 ) My rank in some non-spammy, English speaking countries (Australia, New Zeland) is pretty dang high.
Meanwhile my hits from outside the US especially some countries that tend to be spammy has dropped. I supposedly used to get lots of traffic from India and Thailand. Yet no one in comments ever seemed to be from there. . .
Note that Real Climate is– evidently ‘big’ in Thailand and India:
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/realclimate.org . I’m not so big there. This is not surprising because (a) I use ZBBlock which blocks lots of connections from India and Thailand and (b) that’s because many may spambots or human-comment-spammers operate on those IP ranges. I also end up blocking lots of traffic from India that hits my rule for ‘scraping’, trying to submit comment spam in <2 seconds, opening pages with things like "url-opener" and so on. All those might have been counted if I weren't blocking the IPs. They aren't 'real traffic'.
Depending on the algorithm used by Alexa, hits I block as probable bots might be inflating the alexa count for Real Climate. How much? Dunno. (I'm not going to test either.)
But meanwhile I notice: WUWT is hosted on WordPress.org, a business that has a very important business motivation to block resource sucking but otherwise undesirable traffic. (It saves them CPU, memory, helps with customers.) They can also datamine to identify IPs that cold be bad and so might be able to block quite a few bots with few false positive. One might suspect WordPress.org might have IP blocks in place for certain groups. Or failing that: even though WordPress.org doesn't block the People's republic, free blogs at WordPress are, evidently, blocked by the PRC. This reduces the bot-overload which might not be reduced at other blogs (e.g. Real Climate). Or maybe it is. I don't know. .
Alexa says he not big in Thailand or India. Climate audit hosted on WordPress is also not big in Thailand or India. So: I’d say before one interprets what the ranks mean, they need to find out whether spambots trigger false-positive visits at Alexa and whether changes in Alexa rank seem to have more to do with blogs being good at keeping bots from loading pages or …. whatever.
Still: Generally, Alexa is better than nothing and it’s probably not off by more than a factor of 5. For example
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/rabett.blogspot.com
has a rank in the million range. It’s probably true that they get less traffic than I do.
So, I don’t know to what extent things like ‘bot hits might impact Alexa counts nor Alexa trends over time. If ‘bot hits are counted, then sites that are good at bouncing bots will see their Alexa counts drop relative to sites that don’t bounce bots. But as I said: I don’t really know how ‘bot hits affect Alexa. (And I don’t really care.)
The trend for global warming alone is down since 2007 (see above), so it would be surprising if a trend for “global warning and something else” would be up. Here’s combined with fake, real, natural
Google trends in search terms are likely reliable in the sense that that is the number of searches for those terms. But they are hard to interpret. Certainly, before interpreting a three word string, you should look at the related two word strings. With regard to climategate: Of course there was a huge spike at the time the word was coined and then the interest dropped and leveled off. It’s now hovering above searches for ‘real climate’ without quotes.
With regard to global warming: it may be that interest has waned, or it may be that preferred terminology has changed and people are searching “AGW” or “climate change”. With regard to “global warming fake”, that’s declined, but so has “global warming real”. Don’t know what this means.
MikeR, if you would add up all the different reasons (urbanization, microclimate, error in homogenenization algorithms) given by WUWT claimed why the temperature trend is only half, the trend would not be visible in the noise any more.
Do not confuse a change with an absolute level. The trend in the public opinion is encouraging. The number of readers of WUWT is still beyond anything.
Lucia, thank you for the information. I already had the impression that Alexa is not too reliable. Thus I was happy that Alexa, Google Trends and the opinion polls all went into the same direction. The combination makes the inference more reliable, if still imperfect.
Wouldn’t your active bot fight hurt your own traffic estimates more than the Alexa estimates, which are mainly from real people using the Alexa bar? Or do you mean that Alexa no longer depends much on the Alexa Toolbar for traffic estimates? That would explain why the new WUWT Alexa Toolbar did not change the estimates for WUWT much.
I found it interesting how unimportant climategate is relative to global warming or climate change.
Carrick, climate “sceptic” is not a slur. It is typical to use quotes around a self-identification you do not agree with. If you are a person that is also sceptical about his own idea, I would not expect you to search for such key words and I did not mean you. Then you would be a real climate sceptic, an (amateur) climate scientist.
Victor:
When you make claims, it’s good to back it up with links.
Where do they say each of these errors (which we know are present) amount to a factor of 2 each?
The more I see you write, the less honest I think you are.
Victor Venema,
I attempted to comment at your blog just after your post about trends in blog readership, but unfortunately my comment disappeared when I tried to post it (I do not know why).
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In any case: It seems to me that the fall off in readership at most “climate skeptic” blogs is a perfectly rational reaction to the evolving political situation WRT to public policy on global warming. That is, it has become pretty clear that substantive public action to force a reduction in fossil fuel use is very unlikely in most countries any time in the next decade or so, and may never happen. Certainly there is near zero chance of a big change in policy in the USA (barring a huge swing towards the democrats in the 2014 and 2016 Congressional elections). China and India have made clear they are not interested, and the growth in their CO2 emissions reflects that. Most other developing countries are unlikely to sacrifice a reasonable rate of economic development for reductions in fossil fuel use. Heck, even in Germany, CO2 emissions will grow as nuclear reactors are taken out of service (I find that situation quite humorous). Those who are skeptical of future climate catastrophes are probably reasonably happy with the current political situation (no energy policy is far better than bad policy), and many are less motivated to continue spending time reading about global warming.
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The situation is exactly the opposite for those who are very concerned about global warming, and the motivation to visit blogs like Real Climate remains higher than ever. They have not gotten any major policy changes implemented in most countries, and are unhappy with the current political situation.
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Both groups are evaluating the political situation correctly. You, however, appear to be misinterpreting the readership trends. I would describe your evaluation as ‘wishful thinking’.
Carrick: “When you make claims, it’s good to back it up with links…The more I see you write, the less honest I think you are.”
I hope you will not deny the about urbanization, I would have to look for that one. And that would be work with all the posts about the urban heat island on WUWT. About the other two claims, I even have blog posts myself.
On microclimate, we have the famous Watt et al. (2012) manuscript that together with its press release halted WUWT for two day.
The supposed error in homogenization algorithms was in a WUWT post on a peer reviewed article, that turned out to be a conference abstract of half a page and some slides with rookie errors in applying a manual homogenization method.
Be very careful in whom you place trust.
I don’t see anything in your links that backs up:
I realize you were exaggerating for effect so I’m not going to hold you to establishing the validity of these claims.
My point is only that exaggeration isn’t an honest form of discourse. Just as claiming that “sceptic” is not meant as an insult—quoting this impugns the character and/or intelligence of the person the quoting is directed at. Definitionally that is an insult.
As to homogenization errors—we all know they are present, same with errors in TOBS adjustments, urbanization, geographical sampling, interpolation errors and so forth.
I don’t have to “trust” anybody to know these things. The question isn’t whether there are errors, but how big of a difference they make. There are scientific reasons why this is important.
(My belief is they are much less important than Anthony Watts thinks they are, but this is science not religion, so external validity matters more than belief.)
SteveF, I am sorry about the problems with commenting. I and a colleague had the same problem on my blog and another blogspot blog using Windows 8, but two different browsers. Do you also use Windows 8?
Your explanation could explain the decrease in the readership, but would not fit to the trends in the polls.
I do not want to start a large political discussion. There are other people who are more knowledgeable about that, but I just want to add that I do not expect developing countries to reduce their emissions as long as they are below ours. And they could justifiably even point to historical emissions and emit more than we do per person for some time.
In Germany, people do not see closing down the nuclear power plants as a climate problem. First of all nuclear power will not solve the climate problem. There is just sufficient uranium for a few years world energy use. If you want to get more energy out of the uranium you would have to start using breeder reactors, which is a very dirty chemical process, none running anywhere.
Nuclear power plants are very slow to regulate. As Fukushima showed, they keep on generating heat for many days after being shut down. They thus do not fit to the stronger fluctuating renewable energy sources, oil and gas power plants are a better match. Thirdly, the current emission are not that important; climate change is a long term problem. What is important is the development of technology. Closing down the nuclear power plants has spurred the development of renewable energy sources, transport networks and storage. This will be important to solve greenhouse gas emission in the long run and makes the German industry a forerunner in a future technology with good exporting chances.
That was my last post today. I have some work to do and only thought people would be interested in some more Google Trends. Have fun.
Victor
I have no idea which trends in Google Trends you think go in the “same direction” as trends in Alexa or opinion polls. Looks like the main trend at Google is a decline in searches for “Global Warming”. I could interpret that as lack of interest in Global warming or people adopting a new term.
But if whatever you think you see makes you happy, well… be happy! 🙂
The force of wishful thinking is strong with you. Did you consider the possibility that comparing trends in
“Global warming ‘word victor thinks is skeptic’ ” vs
“Climate change ‘word victor thinks is sciencie’ ” would be strongly affected by the inclusion of Global warming vs Climate change? It is. For example here is global warming effects vs climate change effects:
Most of the decline in “global warming X” is driven by the decline in searches for “global warming”.
I suppose since you are leaving you won’t read it. Bot don’t worry, we are all laughing at your obvious wishful thinking driven google search searches!
Victor, with all of your comments, I hold to my earlier claim. I believe that Anthony Watts would agree that the world has warmed. I believe that Roy Spencer would agree that the world has warmed, and Richard Lindzen, and pretty much any skeptic you can name. The fact that they are presenting various arguments that might mean it has warmed somewhat less doesn’t change that.
The big argument in climate today (I think) is understanding the climate sensitivities, and the resulting impacts on what will happen in the future. I do not understand why so many believers in AGW insist that the argument is really between total deniers and everyone else. That pretty much cedes the floor to the skeptical blogs. It also convinces the rest of us that AGW believers aren’t too much in touch with reality.
@MikeR For the record, yes I agree the world has warmed. The question is: how much?
My view is the surface temperature record is artificially inflated, Victor thinks it’s perfect, and homogenized for our protection.
No point trying to tell him otherwise, his paycheck depends on his belief.
Also for the record, I find it amusing so many people are so concerned about what I say or think.
Cheers and Ta for now, off to Washington DC for a meeting.
Re: Victor Venema (Jun 11 11:57),
Tell that to the Chinese.
Of course they’re building fossil fuel power plants even faster.
There is no world shortage of uranium. It just requires using lower grade ore, of which, there’s lots. I suspect you’re quoting proven reserves. Just like for oil and coal, they don’t mean much in the long term.
Indeed. Which is, of course, why renewable energy sources other than hydropower don’t reduce CO2 emissions all that much. The Danes, for example, rely on Norway to supply them with expensive standby power from their dams while the Norwegians pay very little for excess Danish wind power.
“That Americans are not alarmed by Climate Change is understandable. The rich will suffer least and we can just solve the problem, which will not be as hard as the WUWT alarmists claim. No need for alarm, but for action.”
Remember that Victor publishes on the design and results of benchmarking tests that evaluate variously developed algorithms for adjusting historical temperature data. I continue not to know how he would evaluate how well an adjustment algorithm would handle a long gradual trend in a difference series between a reference and near neighbor stations. I have recorded numerous occasions where these trends in difference series exist and in adjusted temperatures. Are these naturally occurring trends or related to non climate effects? Inquiring minds want to know.
Lucia,
“The force of wishful thinking is strong with you.”
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Indeed, that was exactly my reaction to Victor’s blog post. He strikes me as someone in den*al of political reality: nothing much is going to happen any time soon to reduce fossil fuel use, because there is not sufficient political support. If the public response to global warming doesn’t threaten to substantially raise gasoline, diesel, electricity costs, or taxes, then most people don’t care very much what is done. If it does any of those things, then the politicians responsible will be toast.
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One well known survey that asks how much US citizens would be willing to pay to ‘solve’ global warming tells the real story (answer: almost nothing, http://www.argojournal.com/2013/01/poll-watch-rasmussen-r-survey-on-global.htm). Politically correct answers to survey questions about global warming are to be expected, because those answers are quite inexpensive.
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What most puzzles me about Victor (and many other people who hold similar views) is the flat rejection of the most practical and immediate way to reduce emissions of CO2: greatly expanded nuclear power generation. I shake my head in disbelief every time I hear that only solar and wind are acceptable. It is as if Victor et al want to be certain nothing significant is done to reduce fossil fuel use… a perfect self-defeating strategy. Or as Roger Jr would say: an own-goal.
Humm… the link above is not working. I will try again:
http://www.argojournal.com/2013/01/poll-watch-rasmussen-r-survey-on-global.html
Victor Venema, you do know that the whole of the Climategate emails have been released, and at this moment are quietly removing personal material and archiving them all?
“No one would have believed in the early years of the twenty first century that this internet was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than thermogeddonist’s and yet as cruel as Peter Gleick; that as ‘climate scientists’ busied themselves about their various exagerations they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency the alarmists went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their fudges and overfitted models. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same.
Yet across the gulf of science, minds that are to Aristotelian’s as Aristotelian’s are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this Earth with clear eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans to expose pseudoscientist’s.”
Re: Waning interest in “global warming”
By the time I reached their little red brick house, Carrick and Hausfather were gone.
The summer sun is fading as the year grows old,
And darker days are drawing near,
The winter winds will be much colder,
Now Leif’s not here.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=climategate#q=%22Stephan%20Lewandowsky%22&cmpt=q
well… and this
Re: DocMartyn (Jun 11 16:42),
I have a copy of Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. Richard Burton does the narration. Those opening lines are still spine chilling.
DeWitt writes “I have a copy of Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds.”
I actually had an original vinyl copy! Its one of my favourites and this thread inspired me to listen to it this evening 🙂
“That Americans are not alarmed”
US coal consumption has dropped 21% in 5 years.
http://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/pdf/t32p01p1.pdf
There us ‘talking the talk’ and ‘walking the walk’. In terms of cutting CO2 emissions the US is ‘walking the walk’.
What’s to discuss if ‘free markets’ are accomplishing the goals of the climate concerned without substantial government intervention?
Harryw2,
Really? I was under the impression that the EPA was wiping out coal use in the U.S., not market forces. Only anecdotal evidence I’m afraid, but very colorful anecdotal evidence:
(http://cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/epa-officials-philosophy-oil-companies-crucify-them-just-romans-crucified)
Gah HarryW2, the more I think about this the more my panties get bunched up.
If the U.S. cuts coal emissions by 1/5’th over 5 years, yet China and India increase their emissions, I don’t understand why this makes anybody feel any better. We’re not making mitigation progress in this scenario.
Excuse me, I’ve got to go fix my underwear. :>
Anthony Watts:
You can think Victor for that. Remember in politics that having the right enemies is almost as important as having the right friends.
MikeR (Comment #115564):
It is naturally possible that Anthony Watts does not realize the consequences of his posts. His manuscript on microsite problems: New study shows half of the global warming in the USA is artificial
The trend since 1880 is about 0.8°C per century (in GHCNv3). Thus that makes 0.4°C.
Then we have the post: “New paper blames about half of global warming on weather station data homogenization”.
Thus that makes 0.2°C per century. You could also say another 0.4°C. Then there would be no global warming in the USA. However, 0.2°C is sufficiently close to no global warming. Had the trend been that small, it would likely not be statistically significant, especially assuming that the climate has long-term persistence, which is another recurrent theme at WUWT. And if the trend was that small, much of it could be attributed to increases in urbanization.
It could be that Anthony holds that it has not warmed in the USA, but it did in the rest of the world, it could be that he did not realize how the various problems would add up, it could be that he has noticed that his manuscript is wrong (which would explain the long silence) or he doesn’t mind publishing erroneous posts. I feel the most generous option would be to assume that he does not believe in global warming.
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@DeWitt Payne, Nuclear power can help one country (China) generate more electricity, that does not refute my previous argument on global energy use. By the way, nuclear power has a similar problem as wind. France has much too much nuclear power plants and has to export (dump) electricity at night to the rest of Europe at a big loss. I see no problem with paying Norway a premium price for a highly valuable service. There are plans underway to connect Norway to the UK, The Netherlands and Germany via a direct current cable under the North sea, so that these countries can use Norwegian hydropower plants as a cost effective energy storage. While we learn to use the technologies for the next century, the USA is left behind.
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@Kenneth Fritsch, you had a lot of time since the last discussion to test your hypothesis. It is extremely easy. Take your favorite spreadsheet, generate two columns with a constant value and one with a linear trend; you could add a little noise. Then apply one of the free homogenization methods, I have pointed to you and plot the results again in your spreadsheet.
It would make a great guest post at WUWT. If you are right, that would be an important result. The other climate ostriches would admire your great idea and skills and would celebrate the results as the final nail in the coffin of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. If you were really interested, if you really thought you were on to something, you would have done so be now. I know you talk nonsense and do not feel like wasting my short life time.
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SteveF (Comment #115575):
Interesting that you expect me to think like a typical climate ostrich: First you look what conclusion you would like to have and then you search for arguments.
I was just observing and am happy that things seem to be moving in the right direction. Don’t ask me to try to understand US politics. The pure existence of something like WUWT makes it clear to me that I never will. That the same people who claim to be the only ones with moral values are the same ones that continually mislead (or at least do not complain when they are misled by WUWT) and set a very bad example for their kids is very, very weird and something I will never understand.
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@DocMartyn, Yes I am aware that the Climategate emails have been released. I am aware that the first batch of mails did not show anything substantial. Except that the violation of the privacy of these scientists shows a complete lack of manners by the climate ostriches. Another example where I am asking where the ostriches get their moral high horse from. I am aware that no one was interested in Climategate 2.0.
And as I know science, I also know that it would not change a thing in the unlikely case Climategate 3.0 would show that a few scientists did not behave as they should have. There are 4 different land surface estimates, they have to fit to many different sea surface estimates, they have to fit to many different radiosonde dataset and the last part has to fit to satellite measurements. Dozens of national weather services analyze their data and would notice if their data would not fit to the global datasets.
Dream on about Climategate 3.0. Science does not work because scientists are angels. It works because people write up their ideas and results so clear that every colleague can check it and improve on it. That is what keeps scientists honest and makes sure that mistakes are corrected.
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@Lucia, thanks for the reminder how unimportant the internet debate on global warming is. Chocolate has a beautiful seasonal cycle peaking at Christmas. Does global warming have a seasonal cycle as well? If it does, it seems to have a minimum in summer. I had expected the reverse.
Anthony Watts:
I find it quite natural that many people respond to WUWT posts. It claims to be the most read website of the climate ostrich community. Thus that is where you go to try to understand the mainstream. Why discus what the dragon Slayers are saying if even the ostriches find them unscientific?
P.S. Sorry, for responding so late. I am currently a bit too busy and am thus also not sure whether I will be able to respond later on.
Victor Venema,
“There are 4 different land surface estimates, they have to fit to many different sea surface estimates, they have to fit to many different radiosonde dataset and the last part has to fit to satellite measurements.”
So many opportunities, so much failure.
Good (CO2 free) Korea trip.
could venemous Victor’s anger power the world?
(apologies for a rhetorical question)