58 thoughts on “Happy New Year”

  1. What’s the time zone for your time stamps? Because if you “just got back” at 9:38 you really did dance the night away….

    Happy New Year to you, too!

  4. Oh…. Well we spent the night at a hotel in Wheeling, Il.

    We used to go to the Willowbrooke, but it burned to the ground in Oct. So we had to find another place. Wheeling is a 50 minute drive; Jim has Marriott points. We stayed in the Marriot 2 minutes from the dance venue, stayed past midnight, slept late had breakfast and drove back.

  8. Yes. I saw she’s retiring. But I’m not so sure it’s “chased out” so much as there is something else she wants to do more. Her post reads like it’s a bit of a blend of the two.

  9. RPJ wrote a similar message in the WSJ recently.
    http://www.wsj.com/articles/my-unhappy-life-as-a-climate-heretic-1480723518
    The thing is I expect this to be celebrated by the usual suspects. If academia was a bright shining light on a hill as they like to believe they are, these type of sign offs would be seen as a problem even by the defenders of truth. You make people miserable, they tend to leave. Once climate science is justly purified through social pressure, then what?
    It may be a good time to get out though, Trump whacking the climate science budget will no doubt create plenty of venom and an ensuing merciless witch hunt.

  10. It remains to be seen whether he goes through with trying to whack it and whether he succeeds. On the one hand, I’d be worried if my research plans were in climate science. But on the other hand… well… we’ll see.

    The ones in the most difficult position are assistant and adjunct professors who need to get funding on a “tenure track” time table and those in soft money positions.

    Jim switched to projects related to homeland security years ago, but he used to work in climate change. So he knows lots of people and we’ll definitely see what happens to those people/departments. Some we can envision switching to other areas… others… not sure they can so very easily. Not without pain.

  11. I am sad to see that she is not interested in getting into the Trump administration but happy to see she is “not retiring from professional life.”
    .
    I have not seen JC take the gloves off to this degree before:

    Personal opinions about the science and political opinions about policies that are sort of related to your research expertise are just that – personal and political opinions. Selling such opinions as contributing to a scientific consensus is very much worse than a joke.

    .
    The lack of scientific integrity of using one’s “climate scientist” label to be an expert on all issues climate, scientific and policy, has been the core of her disagreement with “the team” since her self-exile into “heretic” land.
    .
    I hope she tours extensively and becomes the public voice of balanced and reasoned science that hopefully can guide policy.
    .
    In a discussion a couple of weeks ago Judith hinted to SM (after he nominated her to take over NOAA):

    stay tuned . . . i have a very interesting guest post coming shortly after the first of the year

    I wonder who.

  12. I think Trump might try to give the EPA/climate science a deal it can’t refuse such as “Stop regulating CO2 and I will leave the EPA and climate science budgets intact”. The academia gravy train is probably more important than saving the planet for most when push comes to shove.
    My guess is Trump really likes to cut deals that make both sides happy-ish, but is unafraid to show a big stick in order to get there. Removing artificial market restrictions on coal (and letting it lose anyway because of fracking) is good politics in Trump country.
    I don’t think he really cares that much about climate science but will also throw it under the bus in a heartbeat for disrespecting him. The typical hyperbole from activists will not work with Trump, at all.

  13. Tom:
    I’m not entirely sure what you envision in this deal.

    Academics don’t regulate CO2. So you can’t make a deal with them to stop doing it.

    The EPA is unaffected by budgets affecting academia. So, cutting or not cutting academic research in that area has no effect on their budget.

    I think to the extent that Trump can get the EPA to stop regulating CO2, he can just do it. He doesn’t need a deal. To the extent that he can’t– owing to whatever is involved in rule making in the first place, the EPA can’t just “agree” to not regulate.

    Trump will have power to decide what sorts of court cases can and can’t be pursued and so on though– at least I think so.

  14. It would be a package deal that is worked out in Congress. Climate science funding vs EPA rules. Give and take, although that idea seems to be forever banished in DC. It used to be the two sides could work out some horse trading and lurch the country forward in awkward deviating steps. Trump/Congress could jam it down their throats, but we saw how well that works out in the long run with the ACA.
    Trump is exactly the kind of guy who could make that happen as he isn’t judged by ideological purity tests. If we are to enter an ideology feast/famine mode that would be unfortunate. In my mind Trump is much more likely to get reelected if he slays some sacred cows. There are many ways a deal could be made, that was just one example and more likely climate science would be traded for something else on the agenda. However my guess is the left becomes “the party of no” and we enter gridlock again in two years.

  15. So an amendment to Clean Air Act clarifying that CO2 is not included, combined with stable funding for research?
    Perhaps pass a lower level of funding first thru budget rules, then have this two part change.

  16. From reading Judy Curry’s comments at Climate Etc. I had the idea that she is the head of a company that contracts with business interests to make longer term weather predictions and perhaps give other advice. She started talking about this when she was still commenting at Climate Audit. If she thinks she can make a go of that business and no longer needs the security of her academic position, I could see her leaving for that reason. I got the idea that she was a very busy person the past few years.

    I would not want to see her take a political position. If congress needs her opinion they can call her for a hearing as they have in the past. Curry recently appeared to be rather open about a rift with the administration at her university.

    Having said that I shall now go read what she has to say about her retirement.

  17. I just read Judy Curry’s post and I think for a change I got away with posting before reading. In contrast to the old soldier, it appears she will not be just fading away.

  18. MikeN

    So an amendment to Clean Air Act clarifying that CO2 is not included, combined with stable funding for research?

    I suspect that amendment has a strong possibility of happening. I don’t know why they would need or want to combine it with “stable funding for research”. Research funding is something that is decided on every year– so its not really much of a promise.

  19. Hopefully, Judith will continue with Climate Etc. She has good options at this point with her company and that be a better forum for her to continue to engage the science and the policy.

  20. I would like to see Judith become the national expert on climate science who the media goes to for comment on new papers and issues — at the very least for Fox News. If my hunch is right we’ll see more of her not less.

  21. Repealing the ACA is much easier politically because it was passed on a party line vote and some legal treachery. The Republicans are not likely to pay much of a price for screwing up the repeal of a law most people didn’t want to start with. The repeal will be screwed up, there will be much hyperventilating some of which will be real, and it won’t change a vote in 2016.
    Somebody should learn that getting enduring legislation passed requires bipartisan support, that is very hard, and requires sacrifice. The “party of government” should especially learn this lesson.
    If people want environmental regulation sanity that doesn’t have the states suing the Federal government forever (guess who pays for this?) then a compromise needs to be made. There are many avenues for this, energy research funding, the Paris Agreement, state rights to use fossil fuels, energy subsidies, nuclear power, etc. If the left wants to go scorched earth then fine but I doubt it will serve their alleged goals in the long run.

  23. Thanks for the link, Tom Scharf.

    From the comments:

    “if you can’t accept the consensus of the experts as the current facts than you might as well throw out all scientific testimony in the courts as unreliable”

    I hate to rain on the science parade, but any testimony is potentially unreliable, and sticking a post-it note on it that says “science” doesn’t ascribe reliability to it.

    Reliable testimony is supported by evidence. Appeals to consensus are just as bogus in a courtroom as they are in real life.

    Andrew

  25. Judith Curry’s blog will be missed but I suspect she will cast an even longer shadow in the near future. I can’t wait to find out what she does next.

    Turning to Donald Trump my hope is that he will do away with “Continuation Budgets” which condone intellectual laziness while wasting trillions in taxpayer money.

    If government budgeting at all levels was done according to private sector practices departments that don’t deliver anything of value to the people would see their budgets shrink.

    Several federal departments that do actual harm would vanish entirely, for example the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy.

  26. gc,

    How precisely is Trump supposed to do away with continuing budget resolutions (real question, but I’ll give my answer anyway)? Answer: He can’t. That’s entirely up to Congress. The President as head of the Executive branch can propose a budget and that’s it. He can tweet all he wants and as long as the filibuster exists in the Senate and no party has 60 Senators, you will continue to get continuing budget resolutions to run most of the government.

    I think you’re underestimating the value of the Department of Agriculture and parts of the Department of Energy. I agree that creating a Department of Education was not a good idea. I suspect that it had to do mainly with the teacher’s unions, something else that should be done away with along with all other public employee unions. Well, I take that back, sort of. Freedom of association means that unions can exist. The problem is government recognition of them as bargaining agents. There was never a good reason for that.

  28. MikeN,

    That’s called shutting down the government. It’s been tried. It’s a losing strategy for Republicans. But if Trump wants to face a Democrat controlled Senate and possibly the House as well in 2019, he can do as you suggest. I don’t recommend it. Also, vetoes can be overridden if the Democrats decide that they want to look like responsible adults rather than dogs in the manger.

  30. Trump is already killing children through his yet to be implemented climate change policy…
    http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/opinion/sunday/as-donald-trump-denies-climate-change-these-kids-die-of-it.html
    .
    I don’t know about you all, but I rarely read these articles anymore. I just included this because it was laugh out loud worthy, not to mention being disconnected from reality in numerous ways. I guess name calling has now been escalated to child killer, that should work. Perhaps Trump has a libel case, he should consult with Mann, ha ha.

  31. From the article:

    //As the sun set, I told Fideline that there was a powerful man named Trump half a world away, in a country she had never heard of, who just might be able to have some impact, over many years, on the climate here. I asked her what she would tell him.
    “I would ask him to do what he can, so that once more I can grow cassava, corn, black-eyed peas and sorghum,” she said. “We’re desperate.”//

    Leaving aside the obvious objections, maybe she should aspire to buying her food in a shop, with the produce coming from mechanized agriculture. The population of Madagascar has gone from 4 million in 1950 to 24 million now and is supposed to reach 50 million mid-century. Subsistence farming isn’t gonna cut it. Deforestation is already serious, and I don’t doubt that it affects the weather.

  32. TimTheToolMan (Comment #157086)
    January 8th, 2017 at 5:15 pm

    The reference thread is closed so I will reply here to comments on that thread.

    Tim, please recall that the Karl paper was not about the methods and data used in going from ERSST v3b to v4 but rather using that data in an attempt to show that the recent warming slowdown was no longer in evidence using v4. Huang was the lead author on the ERSST changes and I doubt that Karl would have understood all the changes made.

    The lack of spatial sampling by buoys would have been covered in the Karl paper under the uncertainty limits given for measurement and sampling error. You would need to analyze that error in order to make a proper and detailed critic of the dearth of spatial coverage.

    I concentrated my critiques of the Karl paper to their using a long period from the 1950s to 2014 to compare to a recent period of suspected warming slowdown of the past 15 or or so years. I suggested that they should have used a period starting in the 1970s, like 1975, to a year previous to the suspected warming slowdown then the start year of the suspected slowdown to present. I judge that they agreed with me as the paper they were putting forth for publication included those periods for comparison. I also suggested that they used a trend method other than linear regression since the warming slowdown would suggest a non linear trend. They were not willing to go that far as at that the time with a series to 2014 it could be shown that the even with the ERSST v4 that a slowdown was occurring using Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) – which by the way at that time could not separate the secular trend from the cyclical components. The Karl authors did plan introduce the Empirical Mpde Decomposition (EMD) into their proposed paper as a side light but stop communicating with me when I showed them that they needed to deal with a secular trend and cyclical component separately and not together. I have since shown here at the Blackboard that using EMD, there are no secular trend or cyclical differences between the GMST using ERSST 3b or ERSST v4 and that differences end up as noise. The period for that analysis was from 1880-2016.

    Other papers that I have recently found have made somewhat similar analysis using EMD and SSA in order the extract a secular trend and cyclical components from global and regional temperature series are linked below. The first paper using EMD to compare observed GMST to climate model makes, I think on first reading, the mistake of comparing the observed which is Land SAT and Ocean SST to the model Land and Ocean SAT when it should be for apples to apples model Land SAT and Ocean SST. The second link points to the weakness in using SSA in separation of a secular trend from cyclical components when the series is not detrended. They authors did like I did in using simulated series with a known trend and cyclical components to show this weakness in SSA and then how when removing the trend SSA can much better resolve the cyclical components. I removed the secular trend from the Cowtan Way Infilled HadCRUT4 series using the EMD decomposed secular trend and then found that SSA could resolve the same cyclical components as EMD did.

    What I find most interesting with these exercises is that while there are a few other papers showing these trend and cyclical components resolved for the GMST the topic is not given much attention in general in the climate science literature or at least the literature of which I am aware. This situation is in line with my general complaint about the papers published in climate science and that is what is left out.

    http://engine.scichina.com/publisher/scp/journal/SCES/59/1/10.1007/s11430-015-5465-y?slug=full%20text

    https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Navin_Ramankutty2/publication/243786163_An_Oscillation_in_the_global_climate_system_of_period_65-70_years/links/004635170b2213d44a000000.pdf

  33. Ron Graf (Comment #157084)
    January 8th, 2017 at 4:04 pm
    I think Ken will shoot me if I ask Zeke if he is a lukewarmer.

    No, Ron I will not shot figuratively or literally, but rather remind you of:

    Matthew 7:1-3King James Version (KJV)
    Judge not, that ye be not judged.
    For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

    If you think that whether one is a luke warmist or not effects their motivations in talking about AGW then I would guess we would have to suspect the same of you. This stance really makes the discussion go nowhere. We need to look at and judge each paper and pronouncement as it stands. We might look harder if we have suspicions but those suspicions do not make what we are looking at wrong in and by itself.

  34. jit,

    Madagascar has seen average lifespan increase from well under 40 in 1950 to about 65 today. Combine that with a current birth rate of >4.5 children per woman, and the population will double in ~25 years. Unless there is a fall in birth rate and a shift toward an industrial economy (current per capita GDP is ~$390 per year versus $56,000 in the USA), the island’s unique ecosystems will be badly damaged or destroyed.
    .
    Of course the NY Times would never actually examine the serious population and economic problems of a country like Madagascar, which are self-inflicted, and instead uses the backdrop of a country with problems to place blame on the Times’ political enemies. The Times is fundamentally a leftist political organization, and should be ignored.

  35. SteveF (Comment #157096)
    January 9th, 2017 at 12:24 pm

    If the article were at all serious about climate change other than attempting to make a political statement it surely would have addressed the issue of the Paris Accords and what if any difference that would make for the problems it describes.

  36. Kenneth,

    Sure, but the NY Times is clearly not serious about anything except promoting a leftist agenda. The Paris accords will have zero impact on Madagascar’s main problems of rapid population growth and extreme poverty. Subsistence farming causes lots of problems in and of itself (including damage to the land and lower agricultural production). Of course, the Times would never examine the problems with subsistence farming either. The Time’s ‘reporters’ are a bunch of leftist ideologues who are blind to any reality which does not conform to their politics. If you want to be truly revolted, just read a few of Charles Blow’s many raging columns… utterly disconnected from reality.

  37. Charles Blow had a seizure on Nov 8th and hasn’t recovered yet. He has become unreadable. When I stated before the election it would be worth Trump winning just to see the usual suspects lose their minds, this is what I was talking about. It’s like someone took away his favorite teddy bear.

  38. DeWitt, the shutdown happens only if the parties cannot come to an agreement. In this case, the Republicans are running House and Senate, and budget bills cannot be filibustered. Trump could insist on the dozen or so regular order budget bills, instead of an omnibus. He could ask for smaller bills on the order of billions of dollars each.

  39. MikeN,

    The problem is that continuing spending resolutions aren’t even considered until it’s obvious that there isn’t time to pass regular budget bills before the government runs out of money. Now if Congress were to pass a continuing resolution nine months before it was necessary, your strategy would work. But they won’t and it won’t.

  40. John McCain and Lindsey Graham and perhaps Susan Collins will probably want to flex their moderate Republican muscle as all it takes is 3 votes to negate anything the Republicans might want to do. I see McCain and Graham already at it in wanting to resume the cold war with Russia. These senators will have the backing of the MSM and the Democrats and could even be sustained as their heroes.

    When I hear some of you talking about what the Republican congress will and can do I think you are forgetting about the moderates and their egos being stroked by the media.

  41. DeWitt, Trump could still insist on lower levels and limited scope in these resolutions. The reason we’ve had continuing budget resolutions is by putting a clock on negotiations, it forced people to push the can down the road, rather than another faceoff that produced a shutdown. There would be no similar faceoff between Trump and House Republicans.

    The original commenter I think meant by ‘eliminating continuation budgets’ zero baseline.

  43. Kenneth,
    I think you are right about Collins…. she is in a marginal state and could easily lose her next election to a Democrat is she is not very ‘moderate’. McCain is so old that he may not care much about the next election, but both he and Graham could be primaried out of office if they block Trump’s appointees.

  45. I think there are 8 Democrat Senators up for reelection in 2018 from states Trump won. For example Manchin is from WV which Trump won by >40%. These guys are going to be hard pressed to be part of a hard line anti-Trump agenda if they want to keep their jobs. So the right can pickup some votes here and there from Democrats. People need to be continuously reminded that Trump is anything but a standard run of the mill Republican. He will exploit wedge issues on the left just for his own entertainment, and needle the right as well. He already has with the ethics commission. Trump will not be tamed, for better and worse.

  46. angech (Comment #157109)
    January 9th, 2017 at 10:28 pm

    I am debating with myself whether I should go there and ask about using EMD on the New and Old Karl and acknowledging that that method shows no difference between the New and Old series for the secular trend or cyclical components and that the difference ends up in the noise. It would probably be a waste of time as I have noticed when the hard issues arise the first instinct is to ignore with a reply something like I am not sufficiently informed about that method to determine whether it has value in this matter.

    By the way I used Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (CEEMD) to decompose the New and Old Karl series and I obtained 6 imf components and a secular trend with only the trend and one imf being significant. It gave essentially the same results as I presented previously for EMD – just in a neater package.

  47. Tom Scharf (Comment #157114)
    January 10th, 2017 at 10:35 am

    Or they can simply abstain from voting.. Obama, when he was a state senator in IL, used that tactic many times and as I recall he was in a safe district.

  49. Tom Scharf 8+52=60. So Democrats will give people permission to vote for cloture, holding back one Senator each time for a series of 59-41 votes. Each Senator will have engaged in a filibuster, which is not the same as a no vote politically, just 12.5% of the time. The key would be scoring by outside groups. If NRA says they are scoring a vote for Supreme Court justice, a filibuster or no vote costs more.

    However, there are not 8, but 10 Democrats in Trump states. Meaning Dems would have to hold back potentially 3 of 10 for each cloture vote.
    Senators from: Penn, Wisc, Mich, Ind, Ohio, WV, Fla, Missou, ND, Mont.
    Also, Minnesota and Virginia have Senators up for election.

  50. MikeN,

    Yes there are ten, but PA and MI went for Trump by small margins. Pat Toomey retained his PA Senate seat by a small margin. I don’t think PA Senator Bob Casey is likely under anywhere near the same pressure as, say, Joe Manchin in WV. Nor do I think MI Senator Debby Stabenow could be considered endangered at this point.

  51. MikeN: “Democrats will give people permission to vote for cloture … The key would be scoring by outside groups.
    DeWitt: “I don’t think … could be considered endangered at this point.”
    Both sound points,as judged by conventional wisdom. But Trump has made a habit of defying conventional wisdom. I think that if any of the dozen Democrats who are potentially endangered in 2018 vote to block a Trump proposal that is highly popular in their states, they will find themselves in the midst of a violent twitterstorm. It may be enough to sway the needed votes, especially considering that more than a few congressional Democrats have serious doubts about the direction of their party (for example, those who voted to oust Pelosi).
    We live in interesting times.

  52. Manchin won’t be caught dead voting against guns or for climate (energy policy). He’s guaranteed to be on board for an EPA smack down. My favorite political commercial of all time was Manchin (D) shooting a hole through the cap and trade bill.
    See if this looks like a Democrat:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIJORBRpOPM
    It would be very unsurprising to see him change parties.

  53. MikeN (Comment #157118)
    January 10th, 2017 at 1:30 pm

    Do not forget that some of those states that went for Trump with Democrat senators went for Obama in a previous election. From what I hear of the Democrats is that they believe that their message is not wrong it was just poorly delivered. That does not sound like a scared voting bunch – maybe in denial but not scared and voters do change.

  54. In states like North Dakota and Indiana it is a steep climb for Democrats and those Senators should be nervous.

  55. Lucia…A math word problem…as only Mark Twain could construct……
    “If A trade a barrel of onions to B, worth 2 pence the bushel, in exchange for a sheep worth 4 pence and a dog worth a penny, and C kill the dog before delivery, because bitten by the same, who mistook him for D, what sum is still due to A from B, and which party pays for the dog, C or D, and who gets the money? If A, is the penny sufficient, or may he claim consequential damages in the form of additional money to represent the possible profit which might have inured from the dog, and classifiable as earned increment, that is to say, usufruct?”
    Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (Kindle Locations 2663-2667). . Kindle Edition.

  57. Here is an interesting Cato Amicus Brief supporting En Banc reconsideration of the opinion in CEI vs. Mann. Take away:

    Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn have asserted a good-faith disagreement with the findings of several commissions, each assembled to investigate claims of misconduct against Dr. Michael Mann. But the [court] expresses bafflement as to “how [the defendants] came to have such beliefs in light of the reports that had been issued.” Slip op. 89 n.56. The division notes that they were “struck . . . by the composition of the investigatory bodies,” and that the reports “were conducted by credentialed academics and professionals.” Slip op. 85.
    The clear implication is that anyone in their right mind should have been awed at the assortment of titles and degrees these commissions had collected. Such obvious and unimpeachable authority, in the division’s view, lends itself to a new res ipsa
    loquitur proof of actual malice: some commissions are so eminent, some institutions are so established, and some personnel are so qualified, that the simple act of voicing dissent with their views may itself be taken as sufficient evidence of bad faith. Slip op. 96–97.

  58. Will J Richardson –
    Thanks for that link.

    By the way — I didn’t read the entire decision — did the judges comment on the several amici briefs filed in support of Simberg? It seems that they made similar points, but were not found compelling.

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