2008 will be over at midnight, and it’s bound to end up as one of the ten hottest years on record. In fact it’s a rather stark sign of global warming that every year this century is on the top-10 hottest list. But the global average temperature for 2008 will not be as warm as it was for 2007. This is only natural, because global temperature shows both a man-made warming trend and natural fluctuations — noise — inherent in the climate system. While the temperature trend climbs inexorably higher and higher, each year’s average jitters up and down.
Despite random fluctuations telling us nothing about underlying trends, denialists have already started heralding this year’s fluctuation as some sort of death-knell for global warming. As wrong as they are, it’s sure to be persuasive for those who don’t know about the presence of noise in physical systems or the proper application of statistical analysis. Duping people — taking advantage of their statistical naivete — is a regular tactic of those who deny the reality of global warming. I already posted about one of the ways they “spin” the temperature record.
In fact I’ve often posted on the effect of noise on temperature time series; maybe the most thorough demonstration is this one. But that post involves discussion of some pretty heady statistics, like ARMA models, and compensating trend analysis for autocorrelation. For the average lay reader that’s just “too much information”; most people aren’t interested in esoteric mathematics. That’s one of the reasons for the effectiveness of misleading propaganda, a point excellently summed up in a recent reader comment:
But how to get the general audience really to grasp the situation, seeing the noise but still understanding the underlying trend? Taking a simplistic trend of ~0.0184 degC (+/-0.092) per year, approximately 3 out of 7 years we would expect to be cooler than the previous year, and 1 of those 3 we could expect to be at least 0.1 degC cooler.Especially considering the noise casting any cooling as evidence disputing “global warming”, how can the broader public best come to grasp this situation? A baseball team that wins 60% of its games is quite good even though that means a lot of losses, just like 60% of years being warmer than the previous means a major heat-up over the long-term even though there would be frequent cases of last year being warmer than this.
Ordinarily, it would be no problem to get people to understand the underlying trend even while seeing the noise. Show ‘em! A graph like this one, for example, illustrates the trend and the noise rather well:
The problem is that people don’t just get honest information from knowledgable scientists. They also get misinformation from those who are either deliberately lying, or are too stupid to know better than to open their mouths on topics they don’t comprehend. People are easily misled when all they’re given is this:
or worse yet, just this:
How stupid is it to think that this is representative of temperature trend? For most people, it’s not stupid at all — average folks never studied statistics and don’t know about noise in physical systems. But people who call themselves scientists and pontificate about global warming and its implications for our future and our children’s future, are supposed to know better. Anyone claiming to be a real scientist, who repeatedly makes blatantly false claims about trends in temperature data, is either the worst kind of liar, or really, really stupid.
At this point I was going to show some examples of people claiming to be scientists while actually being really, really stupid (or the worst kind of liar). There are lots, and if you’re dying to see examples you can find plenty on Anthony Watts’ blog. But it seems to me to be much more important to address the question, “But how to get the general audience really to grasp the situation, seeing the noise but still understanding the underlying trend?“
If not for the lies and stupidity from the denialosphere, a simple graph like the first one in this post would do. But then someone comes along and starts to criticize the methodology for “smoothing” data to separate the trend from the noise. Never mind the fact that I’ve used a very standard and robust method, never mind the application of rigorous statistics to establish what’s trend and what’s noise, they can rattle off enough ten-dollar words (whether they understand them or not) to muddy the water — and arguing about esoteric mathematics is exactly what will not enlighten John & Jane Q. Public.
So here’s an idea: let’s apply the principle of KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid! Let’s use the simplest, most basic, most fundamental way of all to reduce the noise level: averages. I’m not talking about moving averages — just simple averages. Here’s a look at 5-year averages of global temperature anomaly:
The last 5-yr average is incomplete, because the 2005-2010 time span isn’t completely observed yet so it’s based on only 47 months of data rather than the 60 which go into all the other averages. But the story is still quite clear. When people regurgitate claims about a “cooling trend since 1998,” or “global cooling from 1945 to 1977,” ask ‘em to explain this graph.
The fact is, that the noise level in global temperature is big enough that even 5-year averages can show temporaray reversals in spite of the underlying trend continuing uninterrupted. So it’s probably even better to use 10-year averages, to reduce the noise and highlight the trend even more:
The last 10-yr average is incomplete, because the 2000-2010 time span isn’t completely observed yet so it’s based on only 107 months of data rather than the 120 which go into all the other averages. But the story is still quite clear.
The more, and more clearly, we can reduce the noise level in climate data and emphasize the trend, the clearer it becomes that climate is changing in ways that are likely to spell trouble. Even better is to reduce the noise level from denialists.
For 2009 I’m hoping to reduce posts which, like this one, are essentially just a response to stupidity. I’m tired of letting denialists set the agenda, I’d much rather write about interesting aspects of climate science. And besides, when it comes to skewering fools, there are folks who do that a lot better than I do. So look forward, this year, to more posts about interesting information and fewer posts about misinformation. And let’s hope for a more peaceful and prosperous year for us all.
522 responses so far ↓
Tom G // December 31, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Excellent post.
I so dearly love the KISS rule.
BTW on occasion you do throw a pretty mean skewer….heh, heh.
P. Lewis // December 31, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Using the climatological year, Dec to Nov, 2008 is the 7th warmest year (GISS L+S) in 10 years, 8th warmest (demotion courtesy of the 1998 El Nino hike) in 20 years, 8th warmest in 30 years, …
BBP // December 31, 2008 at 5:27 pm
It might be simpler to change your starting point to be 120 years previous to the present, that way the final average is over a full 10 years. While the graph would change slightly from year to year it avoids the argument that your doing something special to the most recent data - plus it will work for 2011. (I’m making the assumption (hopefully wrong) that the deniers will still be around in 2011).
[Response: I started with 1880 because that's an even multiple of 10, and that's when GISS data begin. I suspect that anything else would compromise the "keep it simple" principle.]
Lazar // December 31, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Compensated a thousand times over by the brilliant scientists, and their brilliant work.
And this brilliant site.
Keep it up, Tamino!
matt // December 31, 2008 at 7:23 pm
I think you are missing the REASON folks get so excited by each yearly decline: It’s because each year of decline gets them incrementally closer to seeing the big drop as shown in ~1945 in your 5 year average.
So, if there are 2-3 more years of declines, then this post doesn’t look so rosy anymore. If there warming resumes, then this post remains valid.
BTW, I’m again struck by the warming from 1910 to 1940. Can someone point out a reason for that and also explain why what happened then isn’t the cause now?
caerbannog // December 31, 2008 at 7:37 pm
For a heapin’ helpin’ of stupid, folks might (or might not) want to check out these discussion threads over at the San Diego Union-Tribune forum: http://forums.signonsandiego.com/showthread.php?t=91320
http://forums.signonsandiego.com/showthread.php?t=91304
Posters “Billyball” and “PeterSD” are pulling out all stops to “out-stupid’ each other.
PeterSD shines in the first thread while Billyball shows his best stuff in the second.
If you do decide to take a look at those discussion threads, just remember that the usual warnings about hot beverages, nasal passages and keyboards apply.
But then again, you just might want to poke yourselves in the eye with a sharp stick instead.
b_sharp // December 31, 2008 at 7:55 pm
I’m new to this blog - actually I’m new to the AGW argument - but I’ve spent 6 years debating creationists who use a great many tactics very similar to those of the anti-AGW people.
I fully understand your frustration with having to continually debunk the same arguments time and time again, I certainly experience the same frustration with creationists, but by taking the time to debunk them you give the rest of us still learning the arguments vital information on how to be most effective. I hope that the number of posts you make debunking anti-AGW stupidity does not drop too much.
I notice that you use the GISS numbers quite often rather than the Hadley numbers. The Hadley numbers show a more dramatic drop in temperatures over the last ten years than does the GISS so is used by deniers more often. Is there a valid, important reason you prefer the GISS numbers? I have run into the situation where a denier claimed we use the GISS numbers to fudge the real trend. Elsewhere I’ve seen the claim that because of the NASA errors the GISS numbers are not to be trusted.
Should I use the Hadley numbers, which kind of avoids the Arctic, or stick with the GISS? Or use a combination?
I have taken both Calculus and stats but it was many years ago (25) and I haven’t paid any attention to them since, so you can imagine how bad my understanding is. I feel the statistical approach to debunking, which is what you do so very well, is extremely important, so please keep going.
Your work on this blog may be more important than you believe.
[Response: There are three reasons I prefer to use GISS data. 1: it's from the good old U.S.A.; 2: they interpolate the arctic rather than simply omit it; 3: it pisses off (on?) denialists.
Feel free to use Hadley data if you prefer; the details are different but the essential story is the same.]
Philippe Chantreau // December 31, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Agreed with Tom G. I thought that KISS stood for Keep It SHORT and simple…
David B. Benson // December 31, 2008 at 8:28 pm
matt // December 31, 2008 at 7:23 pm — CO2 concentration was 280 ppm in 1750 Ce and 288 ppm in 1850 CE. I don’t know the intermediate values but by 1958 CE it was 315 ppm. So during whatever interval you pick, the increase in CO2 explains a great deal of the warming. There is, of course, a fair amount of ‘climate noise’, that is, other effects.
So what was happening in the first half of the 20th century is just the same as in the second half: increases in atmospheric CO2.
If you go over to RealClimate, there is a “Start Here” link at the top of the page. I strongly encourage you to start there.
[Response: I'll add that one cannot recommend Spencer Weart's "Discovery of Global Warming" strongly enough.]
RW // December 31, 2008 at 8:39 pm
matt - “…warming resumes” - there are no grounds for saying it has stopped, so how can it resume?
As for 1910-1940, CO2 concentrations started rising long before then. Law Dome CO2 data gives the concentration as ~300 in 1910 and ~310 in 1940 - standard equations suggest that this could account for ~0.15°C of warming. At the same time, solar activity was rising. It is not rising now. Scientists who look at all the factors have studied climate change attribution extensively, and you can read an excellent summary of the understanding they’ve reached in the latest IPCC report.
luminous beauty // December 31, 2008 at 8:47 pm
matt,
This will explain some of it:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/10/19/volcanic-lull/
John Mashey // December 31, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Good post, as usual …
Science is the Forest Service calling you on the phone saying there is a fire on the way. They don’t know the exact minute your house will burn, and they sometimes don’t express themselves clearly, and there is natural noise on the phone line.
Meanwhile, it’s really hard to hear, because your radio is stuck on at high volume playing a heavy metal rock piece “Never evacuate, Forest Service lies”. That’s a different kind of noise.
TCOisbanned? // December 31, 2008 at 10:07 pm
For me, I don’t get that excited about the lower level of denialist or of warmer. They don’t have the capacity or curiosity to even have inferential quality analysis of competing explanations.
I did think it was a cool question from the denialists to the warmers (how many years decline or plateau would be sufficient to make you decide major problem with AGW.) I think it’s good to think about things this way. Very Popperian. Very Feynman.
I love the idea of climate bets as well.
Kipp Alpert // December 31, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Tamino:Thakns for posting this article before the New Year.I have been over at Accuweather and have been using this argument to no avail. Your graphs and references to earlier posts has been a revelation. It’s hard to explain noise to a denier as they are in a state of euphoria right now. They finally have a year that is colder than the year before. Deniers have been playing this song for a couple of weeks now, saying that the interglacial is over, that now we are about to have a new Ice Age. Trying to explain that a cold PDO , coming off a La Nina, and a neutral AO that it might get a little cold isn’t good enough. There is this major disconnect between, natural variations and Global Warming. They won’t see that they are not mutually exclusive of each other. Deniers won’t take the time to learn science, and I congratulate your vision to discuss more Science and battle deniers less, as they do not know, and they do not listen. They are either deeply entrenched in their body politic, or as you have said very very dumb. For my children and their children I think that the facts are vital to Humankinds future. One reason that I am here, is to learn Science more as I love it, and I am tired of arguing with dirty little deniers and being insulted for my efforts. They misconstrue what you say, or say you said something when you didn’t. They make up their own science, there own cult, and you cannot deny them their certitude. You do honest work and applaud you.Happy New Year, and thanks for your illustrative post. KIPP
Kipp Alpert // December 31, 2008 at 10:24 pm
matt: At this time you had two World Wars, and
a technology explosion. The growth of coal fired plants in China and Europe. Luminous beauty has the rest. Kipp
Steven Earl Salmony // December 31, 2008 at 11:05 pm
[edit]
Your comment has absolutely NOTHING to do with the topic here, and nothing to do with climate science. It’s nothing more than spam, you’re trying to hijack my blog for your own agenda, which is unethical and incredibly offensive. You are banned from this site.
george // December 31, 2008 at 11:25 pm
I think it is critical to maintain perspective.
Those of us who view (and write) blogs related to science see a lot of the same garbage regurgitated over and over so it is really easy to get the impression that “My God, there is a global warming denialist around every corner! They’re here, there and everywhere.”
…when in fact, it’s a relatively small number of people making the same arguments in multiple places. At times, the www is like a huge echo chamber.
The important question is, how much effect does it really have either on public perception or on official policy?
I’d guess. Not much.
Most of the public never see it (the denial or the debunking) and most of the public could probably not care less about any of it.
I think that when people do get some exposure to what appears on a blog, it is often tangentially — second hand exposure.
Politicians (who make policy, of course) utilize and quote blogs when they find the stuff is convenient to their arguments. So you get people like Inhofe citing Climate Audit as an “expert’ source. So what happens is that the public gets exposed to the blog when the politician (or some news outlet like FOX) quotes it.
I’d guess that the vast majority of people (especially Americans, who are essentially scientifically illiterate) simply do not visit blogs like this one.
They have neither the time, the interest nor the scientific knowledge required to make sense of it all (not even simple posts like the one above).
That is unfortunate, but I think true.
I think the real value of this blog and others like it is that it gives our public officials and those who “have the ear” of those officials access to information and arguments that THEY can read (and hopefully understand) when they are making policy decisions.
Perhaps most important of all, it gives these officials access to information and arguments that they can use to debunk information and claims made by their colleagues (Inhofe and others like him). So it’s useful in the “Blog Wars”.
Blogs like this one are very valuable in that regard — probably far more valuable than simply as means to “change the mind” of an individual here and there.
So, Tamino, as a very wise man (Neil Young) once said
Don’t let it bring you down
It’s only castles burning,
Find someone who’s turning
And you will come around.
Kipp Alpert // December 31, 2008 at 11:38 pm
David B.Benson;I got this from luminous beauty.
An earlier paper by Tamino. Excellent;Kipp
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/10/19/volcanic-lull/
Dave A // December 31, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Nice graphs,
Please explain what caused the temperature rise between about 1909 and 1940, which is roughly at the same rate as that from 1979 to 2000.
[Response: Hasn't this question been answered before? Were you just not paying attention?
Start with this. Add a small increase in solar output, and a small but nonzero increase in greenhouse gas forcing. That's what the computer models do, and they do it very well.]
I am sure you are well aware that the amount of CO2 being produced by humanity in those early years was far, far less than that in the latter period.
[Response: Were you simply not aware that there are many factors influencing climate besides just greenhouse gases? If so, you've got a lot to learn.]
Statistics can only take you so far but cannot ever represent the real world situation. Happy New year!
[Response: That's nothing but an excuse to reject conclusions you don't like.]
Dave A // December 31, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Aaargh!,
Last sentence should have read “ever fully represent the real world situation”.
James Hastings-Trew // January 1, 2009 at 12:22 am
Posting a climate graph indicating a warming trend from one of the coldest periods of the last couple of centuries is also about as useful as one of your pretend denialist graphs up there (which, be honest, you just made up - I’ve never seen a graph like that posted anywhere on the net). Get a real sense of climate rhythms and trends and look at a much longer time span, and you will find the current situation isn’t very unique at all.
[Response: Ladies and gentlemen, here you have a live specimen of denialis nonsensicus, the modern climate denialist. Note how thoroughly it proves the title of this post.]
dhogaza // January 1, 2009 at 1:23 am
You need to get out more, and look harder …
Alan Wilkinson // January 1, 2009 at 1:24 am
Do you realise that sites like this and realclimate which brook no debate or opposition to your analyses and conclusions are a huge turnoff to any real scientist and therefore contribute substantially to the rapidly declining public credibility of AGW?
[Response: It must surely be a huge turnoff for the terminally stupid.]
Tom in Texas // January 1, 2009 at 1:37 am
This is my first time at this blog, so if this question has been well discussed, my apologies.
What is the cause of the 30+ year pause in global temp. rise from 1930 to 1970+ shown in the first graph, as well as the 5 & 10 year averaged graphs?
[Response: In the post-war era, rapid industrialization led to the emission of large quantities of sulfate aerosols. They reflect incoming sunlight back to space, reducing the energy coming in to the climate system and cooling the climate. That's why the change is far more prominent in the northern hemisphere (where most industrial activity takes place) than in the southern.
The same thing can happen with massive volcanic eruptions, which is why they cause sizeable (but temporary) global cooling. There was also a resumption of more "normal" levels of climate-effecting volcanic activity about 1960.
And, the small but nonzero probable increase in solar output early in the 20th century seems to have ended about 1950.
Sulfate aerosols from industrial activity lead to "acid rain," so they were limited by environmental laws in the 1970s. But they're still considerable, especially in China, which is quite a pollution problem for them. You might be interested in the post about atmospheric brown clouds.]
Tom in Texas // January 1, 2009 at 1:39 am
Sorry, that should have been from 1940 to 1970+
Kipp Alpert // January 1, 2009 at 1:56 am
James Hastings Trewly.
Your absurd comment makes no sense at all.You probably know this, or are you just guessing. How and why should you comment on a simple common graph that anyone from pre-K to High school understands. If you are in a state of denial well then I can see your point.”Why should we have science if I can’t understand it.”First people have been posting graphs for hundreds of years including the last two.Therefore there is a timeline and a way to see what in nature causes what and at which time. Secondly,it is important to many sane people the amount of heat that is coming from Greenhouse gases in conjunction with
natural variations. The study of just natural variations and the increased warming became suspicious and then discovered by many famous Scientists who spent their lives finding what the truth was. If Edison didn’t invent the light bulb,would it be dark out for you. Mentally perhaps. Let me see.You want the climate rhythms and times for a longer period then 200 years. Well, after wasting space, why did Tamino pick out the coldest possible time for you.This could be a bad omen. Look back and tell us why this time was the coldest time, or when was a warmer time ,please. Are climate rhythms like 3′4 time or 4′4time. Or have you been drinking tonight. Here is a list of different forcings,positive and negative. I guess I am just waiting for the ball to drop and have nothing better to do. Wouldn’t it be easier to learn. Or, is happiness is to find a cause to hate like any psycopath. KIPP
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/RadF.txt
storeman norman // January 1, 2009 at 2:04 am
Numerous posts in this thread (and in other threads) talk as if there is “Science”, and then those who are ignorant, and fail to accept the “Science” - ie “denialists.”
But isn’t the real situation that we have at least two versions of science - “AGW Science” which seeks to demonstrate that man-generated CO2 is leading cataclysmic global warming (oh, all right - climate change) in contrast with “Sceptic Science” which seeks to question and challenge the AGW Science statements and positions, and to pay attention to alternative information that could lead to a different conclusion than AGW Science, whatever that conclusion is.
From this lay perspective, it seems that there are arguments in favour of both sides. What is apparent is that the science is demonstrably not settled, and nor is there any real consensus that the AGW Science position has been proven, and that we don’t need to do any more about it.
Some would argue that the advocates of AGW Science are jeopardising their cred by using ad hominems, failing to respond to serious questions from the Sceptical Science camp, and their efforts to discredit the Sceptical Science camp as “denialists”.
The internet has allowed light to shine on both sides of this deeply polarised argument, and the “debate” is increasingly visible to members of the public, some of whom are posting at sites like this for the first time.
It will be interesting indeed to see how things unfold, and which version of the Science gains ascendancy.
OK, do your worst guys!!
Kipp Alpert // January 1, 2009 at 2:17 am
b_Sharp:Welcome;Don’t worry about the deniers.If you read the IPCC AR4 report,Spencer Wearts”The Discovery of Global Warming” and learn the science then you will be able to deal with the BS guys, and enjoy the Science first.Deniers, I think are people who never bothered to understand Science, and therefore sound cool at the water cooler.KIPP
Ray Ladbury // January 1, 2009 at 2:25 am
Dave A. says, “Statistics can only take you so far but cannot ever represent the real world situation. Happy New year!”
Spoken like a man trying to rationalize his complete ignorance of statistics. Statistics can indeed tease out the truth that is in the real world, Dave. They’re one of the most important tools for doing so. But then, you wouldn’t know that, would you?
Ray Ladbury // January 1, 2009 at 2:31 am
Storeman Norman, Oh thanks. I needed a good laugh. Actually, your first paragraph just about sums it up. There is climate science, which implies with near certainty that we are indeed warming the climate, and then there are a bunch of ignorant food tubes who have zero understanding of the science but still think they understand it better than the pros.
Don’t believe me? Go find 2 dozen peer-reviewed papers from the past 10 years that raise any serious questions about the consensus science. Go ahead. We’ll wait.
Ray Ladbury // January 1, 2009 at 2:42 am
TCO, There’s more to philosophy of science than either Popper or Kuhn. In fact the sorts of situations they treated are quite rare in science. Only rarely is there a true revolution in science and only rarely is a theory falsified by a single, decisive result.
More commonly, it is a matter of weighing evidence, and this is probabilistic. Eventually, you wind up with evidence favoring one theory so strongly (e.g. evolution) that there are no competitors left. Or evidence begins to pile up against a theory, which more often than not must be modified only slightly to account for the new phenomena.
I have always said, I will stop believing that climate is changing when a theory comes along that better explains climate and suggests that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas or that there is a strong negative feedback right at our current temperature range. I’m not holding my breath.
Alan Wilkinson // January 1, 2009 at 2:44 am
No, Tamino, it is a turn off for people who expect to see science discussed rationally, unemotionally and without gratuitous insults in order to find the truth wherever it lies.
Abuse of these ideals does a disservice to science and to the world.
[Response: Do you want a rational discussion of "cooling trend since 1998"? Maybe you want a rational discussion of "flat-earth science."?
When skeptics give us science, we'll discuss it. But when denialists spew garbage like "cooling trend since 1998," that's not science. It's pure unadulterated stupidity.
And if you can't tell the difference ...]
dhogaza // January 1, 2009 at 2:46 am
No, unfortunately, Storeman Norman, all that the internet has done is to make it much easier for the purveyors of nonsense to push it on a public that doesn’t have the scientific background to recognize it for the pure bullpucky it is.
It has made it easier to convince a layperson, like you, that there are “two versions of science”, as you put it. There’s not. There’s science … and then there are those who lie about science in order to try to convince the body politic to ignore the warnings of science.
Kipp Alpert, above, in his recommendation to b_sharp, lists a couple of things you might read.
It is true that, when caught lying, they hate to be called liars…
Science never fails to respond to *serious* questions. The way they’re raised in science is by DOING SCIENCE and PUBLISHING RESULTS.
For some reason, the denialist side rarely does so.
There have been some credible scientists involved, i.e. Lindzen from MIT, and his ideas have been taken seriously by the scientific community.
He was shown wrong, but that’s life in science. Put your stuff on the table, and see what happens.
What else should one call people who DENY ESTABLISHED SCIENCE?
They object, because if they can convince people that they’re honest, science-driven skeptics, folks like you will be more likely to listen to their lies.
Since people like to drag in the “you’re comparing us to holocaust denialists” bit, keep in mind that holocaust denialists also deny that they’re denialists, too.
Hank Roberts // January 1, 2009 at 2:56 am
January 1, 2009 at 1:56 am
First bingo of the new year?
John Mashey // January 1, 2009 at 3:12 am
A Christmas present was a book of quotations. I’m fond of:
Carl Sagan:
“The fact that geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
I’ve also heard this featuring Galileo.
Jim Eager // January 1, 2009 at 3:13 am
storeman norman: “Numerous posts in this thread talk as if there is “Science”, and then those who are ignorant, and fail to accept the “Science” - ie “denialists.”
Not quite right, norman.
There is Science, and then those who are ignorant, and fail to accept Science, period.
Kipp Alpert // January 1, 2009 at 3:29 am
DHOGAZA;Happy New Year! I read Tamino’s graph, then from luminous beauty’s reff to matt, found the numbers from which Tamino based his findings on. All of the forcings positive and negative. I learned much and did not even deny myself some growth. Why deny, just learn. There is a qualitative difference between a skeptic and a denier. A skeptic doesn’t believe accepted facts honestly. A denier thinks that real science is as much fun as a 3D movie.
KIPP
Kipp Alpert // January 1, 2009 at 3:48 am
Ray Ladbury:Wasn’t Popper the fellow who new that religion had lost it’s girth, and came up with
Group Acceptance for all scientific discovery.
This socialism sounded like big brother, but since he was a economist, he could have been the first denier. Any thoughts? Kipp
mark // January 1, 2009 at 4:20 am
it would be interesting to see what would happen if you started your graph at 1888 and did 10 year incrments…i suspect that the last 10 years wouldn’t be too impressive.
[Response: You'd be wrong. Try it yourself; the data are easy to get.]
Jeff Id // January 1, 2009 at 4:30 am
It really bugs you that temperature trend for the last decade is flat doesn’t it. I notice also you prefer GISS temp. Your graph doesn’t show it well.
Why do you prefer the lowess filter over a more standard one? Is it because of the unusual effects on the endpoint?
It is good to see you recognize that the trend isn’t linear however.
[Response: There's zero evidence that the trend for the last decade is any different than it has been for the last 30 years. If you paid attention you'd already know that.
The lowess filter is one of the most sophisticated around. But since you don't like the result, you insult the method.
It looks like the denialist response to this post is to squirm, and to say ever more stupid things. Hilarious!]
Kipp Alpert // January 1, 2009 at 4:30 am
Ray Ladsbury;
Food tubes:That’s a keeper! KIPP
Richard Steckis // January 1, 2009 at 5:29 am
Alan Wilkinson:
“Do you realise that sites like this and realclimate which brook no debate or opposition to your analyses and conclusions are a huge turnoff to any real scientist and therefore contribute substantially to the rapidly declining public credibility of AGW?”
Alan. One thing I can say for Tamino that I cannot say for Real Climate is that Tamino is quite tolerant of open debate. He even tolerates the “terminally stupid” (i.e. non adherents to the faith) like me.
Richard Steckis // January 1, 2009 at 5:30 am
Tamino.
Didn’t you post this or something similar earlier?
Jeff Id // January 1, 2009 at 5:35 am
” There’s zero evidence that the trend for the last decade is any different than it has been for the last 30 years.”
That is an unreasonable statement. Of course the 10 year trend is different. It isn’t outside a reasonable deviation from pre-deterimened uptrend as your other posts showed quite clearly. Claiming there is no difference is your own fanatical denialism not mine.
I’m not sure that a ’sophisticated’ algorithm which fails to show only the latest 10 year trend is that useful in this situation.
While I have been called wrong, I’m not used to being called stupid. Do you feel threatened or something? The NSIDC didn’t feel I am stupid.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2008/12/24/nsidc-issues-corrections-to-webpage/
I guess I never met the arbiter of intelligence before.
[Response: In your previous comment you claimed "trend for the last decade is flat." There's zero evidence for that. None. You admit "It isn't outside a reasonable deviation from pre-deterimened uptrend as your other posts showed quite clearly," so obviously you know this -- but you still make the claim. What adjective describes that?
And you still don't like the result from the smooth, so you're still maligning the method.
Stupid is as stupid does.]
Richard Steckis // January 1, 2009 at 5:39 am
Dhogaza:
“What else should one call people who DENY ESTABLISHED SCIENCE?”
What is established science? Is it science that has been peer reviewed and published? Does that mean that one cannot question established science? If that was so then we would all still thing that the sun revolves around the earth.
I have published results that I think were not as robust as I thought at the time. If someone showed me I was wrong I would be ok with that. In that case established science becomes obsolete science.
Hank Roberts // January 1, 2009 at 5:46 am
> Galileo
Robert Park?
“Alas, to wear the mantle of Galileo …”
James Hastings-Trew // January 1, 2009 at 5:59 am
Since you didn’t bother to label your pretend graphs, I’ll have to refer to them by URL. I feel the need to clarify my earlier comment because I don’t believe I was understood properly.
This is the graph ( http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/soshort.jpg?w=491&h=363 ) that I said you made up. Nobody has published anything like it on the net. Nobody would. It’s a straw man for you to rail against.
You chose the starting point of this graph ( http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/lowess2.jpg?w=490&h=362 ) at a very cold year. Of course there is a warming trend, for any number of reasons, yes, including increased green house gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Why not start at the year 1100? That was a very warm year according to The National Academies Surface Temperature Reconstructions from the Last 2000 Years. http://dels.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/Surface_Temps_final.pdf . Wouldn’t that provide a more complete picture, rather than just choosing the upswing of a much larger cycle? Wouldn’t that be more honest?
My point was that you mocked the skeptic camp for using graphs like your made-up example which only shows a snippet of time, and then did the same thing yourself. Your snippet was longer, but certainly no more valid.
[Response: There are so many graphs (on the net and elsewhere) where denialists show only 10 years of data, or even less, that it would take too long to list them all. But when I plot the same amount of data in a way which illustrates how such arguments are deliberately deceptive or breathtakingly stupid -- or both -- it embarrasses the hell out of their claims. That's the real reason it pisses you off. Good.
As for the selected starting time: are you really that stupid? I chose the starting point as 1880 because I selected the GISS surface temperature record, and that's when the data start. Unlike denialists, I didn't leave any of it out. I guess you didn't notice that this post is about the instrumental record, not proxy reconstructions.
You probably also didn't notice that all credible proxy reconstructions (like those in the NAS report) show the last several decades to be a helluva lot hotter than anything in the preceding 2000 years.]
Jeff Id // January 1, 2009 at 6:30 am
What a joke. The recent ten year trend is flat to a least square fit as any honest man would admit. Why does it hurt so much? It’s just data and it doesn’t even change the science debate.
What it does change is the debate about honesty in science. If you can’t even admit that simple fact and qualify it in your own terms how can we trust the rest. I would call it foolish but its actually stubbornness and apparently an odd hubris.
Your arma analysis overestimated noise when plotted next to actual giss data as I pointed out on my blog. It therefore underestimated the significance of the trend as well.
What’s more, the logic of the whole premise was circular, you assumed anything non-linear on a long trend was noise and then found a shorter term trend was nose. How so many didn’t catch that is beyond me.
What you fail to admit is that the ten year trend is well known from multiple metrics, it is flat and it doesn’t care what happened in history.
Bjorn was factually correct!
You have the wrong name on your blog.
[Response: Let's take your argument to its logical conclusion: The recent 3-day trend is flat to a least square fit.
NOW do you see how stupid you sound? I'm guessing not.]
Jeff Id // January 1, 2009 at 6:41 am
I didn’t argue with Bjorn!
[Response: But you did cross the stupid threshold. Enjoy the kool-aid.]
The Wonderer // January 1, 2009 at 6:51 am
Tamino,
Thanks for an excellent post and the continuation of a wonderful web-site. I fully support your New Year’s resolution to choose the informative rather than the reactionary. Remember that most of the people agitating with mindless chatter have no meaningful influence on policy. I am reminded of that as I occasionally browse among other much less controversial sites. The idiotic blather is an endless fountain in the blogosphere. Support the curious and have a great year!
New Broom // January 1, 2009 at 7:12 am
No Hockey Stick, no CO2 increase in advance of Temperature increase, no Tropospheric Tropical Hotspots, no H2O amplification of Temp, no accurate modeling of future temperatures, no detailed explanation of CO2 Greenhouse effect, plenty Urban Heat Island Effect, mucho KoolAid for the Warmers.
[Response: You forgot "it's all caused by the sun" and "cosmic rays" and "we're plunging into a new ice age" and "medieval warm period was 7 degrees warmer than today" and "PDO" and "it's all just cycles" and "Greenland getting thicker" and "tremendous increase in arctic sea ice" and "massive snowstorms across the U.S." and "boy is it cold outside!" and of course the classic, "Al Gore is a big fat liar!"
I think I'll no longer play host to things which are this far over the stupid threshold.]
Barton Paul Levenson // January 1, 2009 at 10:44 am
Jeff Id writes:
The flatness of the last decade isn’t a “trend,” because a trend has to be statistically significant. The World Meteorological Organization defines climate as mean regional or global weather over a period of 30 years or more, and they did so long before global warming was a public issue. See here for a quick mathematical check:
http://www.geocities.com/bpl1960/Ball.html
http://www.geocities.com/bpl1960/Reber.html
Lazar // January 1, 2009 at 11:49 am
Latest influx, lemme guess, Jeff Id, therefore WUWT.
Bingo. Cary (14:37:31).
You’ve got Watt’s groupies.
Lazar // January 1, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Jeff Id,
“the logic of the whole premise was circular”
Disagree. In trend-analysis you are looking for a change in the mean level of a process, the process may include random physical variation. If the residuals are stationary, the rest is noise, given the available data. The trend from 1975:2008 is a linear response to forcings plus a random component. There is nothing in the last ten years of data to suggest that process has halted, i.e. they are consistent.
apl // January 1, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Tamino,
In your opening paragraph you say that average temperature is made up of “a man-made warming trend and natural fluctuations — noise — inherent in the climate
There is (at least potentially) another component which is a natural warming trend - noise presumably has no trend. Is it proven (or maybe assumed) that all of the long-term warming is man-made?
BTW this isn’t an anti-AGW point - I don’t think that presence of a natural warming trend as any reason to be more or less concerned about AGW
Deech56 // January 1, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Tamino,
Happy New Year to you and yours. You, and the regulars who post here and at the other climate blogs, perform a valuable service to those of us who carry these arguments elsewhere. There are very few sites like this that go into the details of data analysis and make things clearer to us non-climatologists/mathematicians. I find myself going back time and time again to your older posts to debunk yet another claim made by those who claim to be skeptics (and with whom I’ve argued age of the earth, ID and other popular topics - but that’s another story).
For any who have dropped into this site recently to counter Tamino’s analyses: please do yourself a favor and look for answers and counters to your claims in past posts. Use the search box, Advanced Google, whatever it takes. Argue from a position that has already been established. Please understand that Tamino knows a bit about the maths, time series analysis and statistics. If you have a beef about climate science, point out how you feel it differs from other sciences, and use specific examples. Broad statements like “we have at least two versions of science” are not informative. Data and published papers are. Having to answer the same tired arguments over and over again, posed by people who treat their version of denialist talking point X as a new revelation, turns on the snark activation pathway (my cell biology background put to good use). Show that your skepticism applies to the denialist side as well.
Richard Steckis // January 1, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Tamino.
I looked at the monthly data for GISS and plotted a loess function (span=0.25) which looks very much like yours for annual data. However when I used a span of 0.15 , a distinct downward trend was observed at the end of the dataset.
Looking at monthly GISS data from 1979 to 2008 (this is to correspond with the satellite data period), this downturn was robust at spans of 0.15, 0.20, 0.25 and to a lesser extent at 0.5.
There is no evidence that the downturn in the latter years (2007,2008) are any different to any other downturn in the data (e.g. 1986 and 1993) but it was deeper than 2000.
The future will be interesting.
[Response: When you change the "f" parameter, you essentially change the "time scale" of the smoothing; going from a higher to lower f value is somewhat analogous to going from 10-yr averages to 1-year averages. In other words, as you reduce the "f" parameter, you get less and less noise reduction. That's why a downturn appears.
Going from a lower to higher f value gives more and more noise reduction, but if you go too far you'll get *signal* reduction. The "art" is to find the "sweet spot" where you have the best combination of noise reduction and signal preservation.
That's why just applying a smoothing filter (of *any* type) isn't enough; you really need to test the statistics of your result. Is that "downturn" at the end of the dataset significant? No. Are the rises from ~1910 to 1945 and ~1975 to the present significant? Yes. Is the flat period from ~1945 to 1975 significant? Yes.
Incidentally, it's not the bare "f" parameter that determines the noise reduction, it's the time scale, which depends on both the f parameter and the total time span of the data. That's why you get the same downturn with a higher f value when using just the last three decades or so. It's also true that almost all smoothing methods are more susceptible to noise at the ends of the data set, hence the apparent downturn looking "deeper." Again, it's not sufficient just to apply a smooth; you have to apply some interpretation based on sound statistics.
All of which is fascinating! But it's not what this particular post is about -- it's exactly the kind of esoteric mathematics that makes John & Jane Q. roll their eyes and get bored. This post is about getting through to J&J Q. Public in a way which is both relevant and statistically honest, and about embarrassing those who are statistically (or otherwise) dishonest. For that, a plot of 10-yr averages is an excellent choice.
Of course the future will be interesting. If temperatures cease to rise, and all the gloomy expectations from climate science turn out to be wrong, no one will be better pleased than I. So far, there's zero evidence of that.]
Ray Ladbury // January 1, 2009 at 3:42 pm
APL, If there is a “natural” warming trend, where is the energy coming from? What is the mechanism? What is more, where is the need for such a trend to explain the data? The well understood and well validated physics of greenhouse warming is a sufficient explanation, and if climate science is not drastically wrong, that mechanism is necessary as well.
Ray Ladbury // January 1, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Richard Steckis asks: “What is established science? ”
It is the same as consensus science. It is the set of ideas, theories, techniques, etc. without which you cannot understand the subject matter of the science nor make progress in understanding more. In particle physics, we have the Standard Model. In biology, we have evolution by natural selection coupled with genetic inheritance via the double helix. In climate science we have forcing mechanisms, feedbacks, etc. forming a coherent picture of the energetics of Earth’s climate. Clear enough?
george // January 1, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Jeff Id said “The recent ten year trend is flat to a least square fit as any honest man would admit. ”
The least squares line is only one of the many possible trends that fall within the uncertainty range (which can only be determined with statistics)
People often forget (or perhaps just do not know) that every scientific result has an uncertainty or error bar attached to it which defines a probable range of values (not just one). The least squares line is no exception.
Unfortunately, the error bar (or range) is all too often NOT stated/shown, but that does not mean it is not there.
Sure, the least squares line for some of the data sets over the past decade looks flat (or even slightly downsloping), but if one drew in all the other possible lines within the range determined by the uncertainty attached to the trend, one would see that the claim that “The recent ten year trend is flat ” is simply not justified.
The central line may be flat, but there is no single trend line that represents the data over a given period with absolute certainty. In fact, with global temperature anomaly data, there is no reason to expect that any straight line represents the data more than approximately. (some physical relationships are very linear. Global temperature with time ain’t one of them)
There is a range of possibilities set by statistics (taking into account the details of the noise, etc).
So the best one can do is to say that it is likely (to some degree of confidence, say 95%) that the trend for the past 10 years falls within some range.
For the past decade, that range includes the “flat” line, but it also includes lines with significant upward slope — and yes, downward as well.
But Tamino has done many many posts on this where he lays all this out — the trends AND uncertainties.
I would suggest that you read them.
To find them, just search on “global warming stopped in 1998″ in the search box on this site.
Tamino likes that phrase for some reason.
Ray Ladbury // January 1, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Jeff Id, What statistical tests have you applied to determine the statistical significance of your “trend”.
As to Tamino’s analysis, you have to take the averaging period down to 3 years before you even get the last datapoint to drop relative to the penultimate. Even then the drop is only by 0.02 degrees. I’m sure even you would agree that 3 years is awfully short when it comes to climate. Want to go to 2 years? Still doesn’t help your case.
However, there is another problem with your approach. If you claim that warming has stopped, then you have to ask why. There’s no mechanism in climate science as we currently understand it to turn off greenhouse forcing. Reject greenhouse forcing, and all of climate science collapses.
In effect, you are looking at a “trend” of extremely dubious (ok, risible) significance and saying that it negates the trend of the previous 30 years, which is highly significant, all of paleoclimate and much more. I refer to your particular brand of denialist as the weatherwatcher. Of course, we’ll have to see whether you deserve this label or whether you move on to some other lame argument the next time we have a record temperature.
Ray Ladbury // January 1, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Alan Wilkinson says, “No, Tamino, it is a turn off for people who expect to see science discussed rationally, unemotionally and without gratuitous insults in order to find the truth wherever it lies.”
Uh, Alan, do you even know any scientists. It is precisely because of their passion to find the truth that debates often become very emotional. I’ve seen grown men nearly come to blows over whether it is appropriate to test microcircuits at a dose rate of 10 mrad(Si) per second rather than 5 mrad(Si).
And what you fail to appreciate is that what is being done here is NOT science, but rather education and outreach. Tamino is taking time to teach us how to use statistics to tease the truth out of the data–and that is admirable. However, when you get people who come here with no interest in learning, but rather with a goal of impeding the rest of us, I think a certain derision is apppriate.
Hank Roberts // January 1, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Google:
“truth wherever it lies” +climate
Subtle irony, or perhaps a bad pun.
michel // January 1, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Ray, I think the difficulty is that the unconvinced do not think they are in need of education and outreach. They don’t think that the science is settled. If you treat them with derision and name calling, which is the usual pattern here, it will not persuade them. In fact, as others have said, it will probably increase skepticism.
What they are looking for is a discussion about what they perceive to be an open question. When they get abuse and derision, they are liable to conclude that it is because there are no other arguments, so every time its done, it increases their skepticism.
The difficulty is thus not that you consider name calling and derision appropriate. One understands that you are deeply committed to a point of view, so much so that you do indeed find it appropriate. The difficulty is that you are engaging in a form of argument which is not only ineffective, it is counterproductive.
Unless of course the real aim is to have the unconvinced simply leave the forum, still unconvinced.
[edit]
[Response: I doubt you'll understand, but I'll try anyway. You've confused skeptics with denialists. Skeptics are looking for a discussion about what they perceive to be an open question. Denialists do not perceive AGW to be an open question, they've made up their minds that it's wrong. They don't want discussion, they want to ridicule genuine science. There's no more use trying to reason with them than there is trying to reason with dedicated flat-earthers.
They also have a habit of whining about being insulted. That lasts until the urge is too strong to resist calling James Hansen a fraud and Al Gore a big fat liar, and me the "prince of darkness."]
dhogaza // January 1, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Well, Jeff Id, if the gang here runs over and takes a close look at your “proof” that PCA “always finds a hockey stick in data even if the data is flat”, you’ll probably get used to it …
luminous beauty // January 1, 2009 at 5:46 pm
That’s so last year.
The most recent 10 year OLS trend (averaging GISS/HAD/UAH/RSS) is ~0.125K/decade.
If you were an honest man, Jeff of your own subconscious desires, you’d admit that global warming is making a comeback.
Jeff Id // January 1, 2009 at 6:16 pm
You could at least let them see my name with a snipped post in it to let people know I’m not allowed to answer.
[Response: Because your contribution is confusion rather than enlightening, and I'm tired of answering your same-old-same-old over and over again, I have indeed decided no longer to allow your comments. Those who are interested in your viewpoint will, in all likelihood, find it featured prominently on your blog -- but not here. Those who wish to engage Jeff Id should go there.]
Gavin's Pussycat // January 1, 2009 at 7:49 pm
b-sharp, use the UAH satellite data. It has an impeccably “skeptic” pedigree (Roy Spencer and John Christy), and all its past, now corrected, errors made the warmng trend look smaller. It still lies below the others so presumably the same holds for yet undiscovered issues ;-)
I used this technique with some success aganst a local denialist.
TCOisbanned? // January 1, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Ray,
I agree.
None of that changes, how “mind concentrating” it is to make a prediction. Or especially a bet.
David B. Benson // January 1, 2009 at 8:42 pm
Dave A // December 31, 2008 at 11:46 pm — Does the forcing from increased CO2 in sample chapter 4 on greenhouse gases available as a pdf here:
http://forecast.uchicago.edu/samples.htm
make any sense at all to you?
Kipp Alpert // January 1, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Tamino:I was thinking last night, as an amateur,
of how I read your post,opened a door, and felt a whole new world of realities rush in. Your graphs were very informative, and gave me a better understanding, of the unquestionable warming that exists. I was also thinking about deniers, and how easily they can wreck a good post, and wished there were ways that a moderator and Author, could make ground rules
to weed them out. Well you made one, and good for you. Just like a couple of kids making noise in a movie theater, deniers should be kept out of civilized places. So thank you and Happy New Year. Kipp and Family.
[Response: I've come to the conclusion that I should enforce the "stupid threshold."]
Gavin's Pussycat // January 1, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Tamino,
it is clear that for an argument to convince non-scientists, it has to be as simple and direct as possible, as you convincngly argue. Every layer of analysis placed between the raw data and the conclusion, if at all avoidable, is one too much.
Therefore let me propose in the interest of simplicity, the “Pussycat Method of Non-Parametric Rubbng-It-In”.
1) Find a temperature plot, any temperature plot. I am partial to the ones obtainable from woodfortrees.org; but take the one offered by your denialist, provided it includes more than just the last couple of years, and is actually global.
2) Gracefully admit the downturn in measurement values, “Yes, we see it go down 0.77 degrees from Jan 2007 to May 2008. Looks like global warming has stopped, doesn’t it?”
2b) (Optional) use this as a teaching opportunity on what are temperature anomalies, and how the seasonal cycle is accounted for. Your real audience is everybody else, not the denialist.
3) But then, point out that such drops are not uncommon. Point out a few in the time series you’re looking at. Like the “biggie” post-ENSO, Mar-Oct 1998. Or Jun 1991 - Aug 1992. Or….you get the point.
4) Make the argument “so it happened before. And, did global warming stop? Doesn’t look like it, does it. After every downturn came an upturn, none of those cooling spells lasted. Why would it be different now?”
5) Rub it in. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…” Remember, the hard thing to drive home is not the reality of the trend. It’s the reality of the wiggles, and how they fool you. Most folks resent being fooled.
Dave A // January 1, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Ray,
New Year’s resolution for you - ‘just because someone has a different point of view to me, RL, I will not automatically call them an idiot or stupid or wilfully misrepresent what they said.
Dave A // January 1, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Tom in Texas.
Don’t automatically accept the sulphate aerosol argument. There is considerable uncertainty about the effects of aerosols
[Response: But their cooling effect on climate, and dramatic rise due to post-WW2 industrialization, are not among the uncertainties.]
Eli Rabett // January 1, 2009 at 8:59 pm
The dialog is shaped by the past. There is incontrovertible evidence of organized science denialism, in other words well funded campaigns designed to obscure the truth to preserve economic/political advantage.
Tobacco is the original sin, and with a little bit of googling you can trace back both the funders and the actors, for example Fred Seitz who started as the front man for the Tobacco Institute research program designed to show that smoking was harmless, went on to found the George Marshall Institute to shill for Star Wars and popped up as an ozone and global warming denialist throughout the 90s and until his death last year. According to rumor, shame was not the cause.
The Tobacco Archives is a wonderful way to trace these things, and there are more modern tools, but the worst has to be Roger Bate shilling a campaign against the WHO and Rachel Carson to Phillip Morris in order to distract attention from campaigns against smoking.
There are agendas, ranging from HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, vaccination produces autism, there is no such thing as global warming, the ozone layer is not being destroyed by CFC, evolution is just a theory, etc. All of these, when you dig deep enough meet at a small number of funders and have a small cast of actors playing to a naive public. Jeff, when someone shows up spouting the happy tunes of denialism, they get one or two chances, after which it is time to call them out for being stupid. The alternative is calling them a thick layer of soap on top of the water. Which do you prefer?
luminous beauty // January 1, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Dave A,
Writing New Year’s resolutions for others, are we? I must say, your generosity is overshadowed only by your humility.
Offered in that same spirit:
You’re welcome.
michel // January 1, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Kipp Alpert, you ask whether Karl Popper wasn’t the fellow who….
Perhaps the post was magnificently sarcastic. But if not, the answer is no. Read The Open Society and its Enemies.
Popper on science has a central relevant insight. Hypotheses to have content must have falsifiable consequences. However, what we do when we find one of these consequences is a quite different issue. We don’t necessarily abandon the hypothesis. There are two classic examples in Climate Science. One, the argument that if CO2 causes warming episodes, rises in CO2 must precede them. You would think so, but the discovery that CO2 rises follow rather than precede warming episodes has not led to the abandonment of the hypothesis of a causal relationship. We have found other hypotheses which explain why that was not to be expected after all.
Another example is from the surface temperature record. The discovery that it showed temperatures to be rising did not lead to skeptics abandoning the hypothesis that it is not remarkably warm in recent times. Instead they cast doubt on the validity of the instrumental record.
All the same, the central point that hypotheses must be falsifiable to have content, and that science advances by people trying and failing to find evidence predicted by hypotheses - this is still true and important. The impulse to seek for disproving evidence is a powerful force for progress in science, and Popper was probably the first to give it the prominence it deserves. The search for a critical experiment, something which AGW unequivocally predicts, and whose absence would refute it, is entirely reasonable, even if you don’t care for the motives of the searchers, and will probably advance climate science, though if history is any guide, not in quite the way anyone expects.
Kipp Alpert // January 1, 2009 at 10:00 pm
I have been looking at the GISS radiative forcing chart and don’t know what two abbreviations mean. Could someone help me?
AIE and BC. Kipp
[Response: "AIC" stands for "aerosol indirect effect," and "BC" for "black carbon."]
Dave A // January 1, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Luminous b,
Of course I won’t!
David B. Benson // January 1, 2009 at 10:37 pm
michel // January 1, 2009 at 9:43 pm — The evidence for AGW is alredy complete and unequivocal. Do you know what this evidence consists of?
Ray Ladbury // January 1, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Dave A., I’ll tell ya what. How about you resolve not to toss around accusations of scientific fraud when you have less than zero evidence and I will not call you an idiot. You can disagree with me all you want. It is a matter of utter insignificance to me. However, when you start accusing working scientists of fraud when you yourself don’t even know the difference between R (statistical analysis package) and R-squared (goodness of fit measure), then idiot is about the most charitable characterization I can come up with.
Now, my wife is from the South, so out of deference to her, the next time someone tosses out a gratuitious accusation of scientific fraud, I will still accuse them of being an idiot, but I will ad the postscript “….bless his heart.” Deal?
Dave A // January 1, 2009 at 10:43 pm
Eli Rabbet,
Inhabiting academia can turn your mind and make you miss so much.
For example, I get my funding from the Lycopod Trust and our aim is to encrust the world with moss.
To this end we will deny AGW until we succeed!
S2 // January 1, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Aye to that. :)
blue // January 1, 2009 at 11:36 pm
tamino wrote: You’ve confused skeptics with denialists. Skeptics are looking for a discussion about what they perceive to be an open question.
I think it is very difficult for laymen new to the climate “debate” to see the necessity of this distinction. In your normal life you simply do not expect that one side of the “argument” is blatantly lying and/or deluding themselves. You expect this kind of lying when buying a used car. In a science debate you expect truthfulness on both sides; sadly this expectation does not hold true for the denialist camp in climate science. Unfair as it is, as soon as you rightfully call a liar a liar or an idiot an idiot the liar/idiot can pretend towards the less informed to be innocent and make you look as if you were simply slinging poo. I wish this dirty trick would not work, but it does. I know, it must be frustrating and am astonished that you do not vent more. Please, don’t let them get at you.
tamino, I admire that time and again you show the data and take pains to explain every little step you take. Please keep it up, you shine. Have a good 2009.
apl // January 1, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Ray
Thanks for answering.
You asked (in response to me earlier)
If there is a “natural” warming trend, where is the energy coming from?
In my terms, a natural warming trend would be one with a longer time period than the 120 or so years we are considering in this post. Clearly there are natural cycles in temperature longer than this, which is why there have been numerious ice-ages in the past.
You then ask “What is more, where is the need for such a trend to explain the data?”.
There is no need - because AGW can explain the data without a natural trend. However this does not mean that there is no natural trend in addition to the man-made element. Surely it’s possible the natural trend over that time could even be down, with a correspondingly greater amount of warming having man-made causes.
Tamino’s original post seems to assume no long-term changes in average temperature without AGW - it’s all either man-made or noise. Perhaps that was part of the KISS process - and so it is known but not stated.
Lets put it another way. Without AGW, would the average temperature trend over the last 120 years be up, down or flat?
Dave A // January 1, 2009 at 11:41 pm
Ray,
I don’t see why you had to bring your wife into this, but more importantly I hope you asked her about it beforehand.
David B. Benson // January 2, 2009 at 12:28 am
apl // January 1, 2009 at 11:39 pm — That is a good question. Let us first answer a simpler one, which assumes no anthropogenic influence at all for the entire Holocene; what is the average 120 year trend?
Before the orbitally forced climatic optimum, the average trend would be up,but sometimes there would be downs over a mere 120 years. In fact this is what is measured in ice cores.
After the climatic optimum, then as that influence wanes, one would expect that the average trend, over 120 years intervals, would be slightly down, but maybe now and again some flats or ups. This is not what is observed, at least to the extent that orbital fordcing predicts. For the past, say, 5000 years humans have kept such average temperatures inflated via the practice and spread of agriculture. For a popular treatment, see W.F. Ruddiman’s “Plows, Plagues and Petroleum” and for more technical papers, visit his publications page.
In particular, humans have kept CO2 concentrations between 260 ppm and 280 ppm for a long time up until 1750 CE, the beginning of the industrial revolution. This induced the first AGW, but one with very, very gradually declining temperatures, it appears from ice core tmeperature proxies.
We now suppose an alternate universe in which the industrial revolution does not occur, and humans continue to earn their living by the sweat of their faces. There would be a lot fewer of us and in my opinion, orbital forcing would, on average, tend to win out: the average 120 year trend would be slightly down, for the next 20–30 thousand years.
Kipp Alpert // January 2, 2009 at 1:01 am
Michel:Thanks for that insight.I had a small dose of Popper in school, and the professor may have only seen the social not scientific necessity for critical thinking as a group. Maybe he was a fascist.I try not to be sarcastic here, as there are obviously a few fruits and nuts, trying to get famous for one second, and deny many others the benefit of good science. Kipp
Kipp Alpert // January 2, 2009 at 1:06 am
Dave A.
Why are you here. Some people want to learn Science. Kipp
Ray Ladbury // January 2, 2009 at 1:37 am
Michel, You are presuming that my goal is to convince folks that are in complete denial of the error of their ways. At this point if the reality of climate change is not apparent to you, you either ain’t paying attention or you are choosing to ignore the evidence. The majority of Tamino’s posts are devoted to explaining the science in a clear and entertaining fashion to an intelligent layman. I myself have been happy to try to answer sincere questions–some would say I’m too accommodating in that manner. However, there are places I can’t go. When good scientists are accused of fraud, I’ll be on them like a bad suit. When they refuse to try and learn the science themselves and hijack the thread with the aim of keeping others from learning, we’re better off without them.
I’ve said before, scientific debate takes place at scientific conferences and between the covers of peer-reviewed journals. There are also plenty of places for nutjobs to don their tinfoil hats and spout off about the conspiracies of the evil scientific community. Tamino, though, has worked hard to construct an environment for people to learn the science. But this isn’t No Child Left Behind, and I don’t see much advantage to waiting for the bottom 20% of the class.
TCOisbanned? // January 2, 2009 at 1:48 am
Ray: (The majority of Tamino’s posts are devoted to explaining the science in a clear and entertaining fashion to an intelligent layman.)
We should be able to debate things here as well. I have no problem if you blow of the numskulls though. I get pretty tired of the RC explain/proslytyze formula with slow discussion and limited amount of followups allowed. Tammy should not emulate that.
Philippe Chantreau // January 2, 2009 at 2:00 am
Michel, just on top of my head, 2 verifiable predictions of the CO2 driven GW:
Stratospheric cooling
Tropopause height changes
Both verified.
The CO2 driving warming thing is a poor example. When was there, in the past for which we have enough clues, outgassing of CO2 in the current proportions (15o times the outgassing from volcanic activity)?
Kipp Alpert // January 2, 2009 at 2:12 am
Ray Ladbury:I hope you don’t consider me in your 20%. I have learned a lot in one year and I am here to learn more. My work at accuwhatever won’t make me famous, but I have been fighting tirelessly for the cause. Every single day. KIPP
Ray Ladbury // January 2, 2009 at 2:36 am
Kipp, You’re going to the head of the class. Keep learning. It keeps your brain from atrophying.
Kipp Alpert // January 2, 2009 at 3:27 am
Ray Ladbury;Thanks,I have had the good fortune to read your articles, and other relevant scientists, on this board. KIPP
dhogaza // January 2, 2009 at 4:31 am
As usual, TCO, you’re blowing out of some orifice or another.
“limited amount of followups allowed” …
Let’s see … yesterday’s post on RC already has 68 comments …
16 Dec post … 375
Pearl Harbor Day post … 632
11 Nov post … 815
In fact, the average number of responses to the RC posts currently on the front page is about 300.
“limited amount of followup”, indeed.
As a popular blog, RC has more problems with spammers than many, and they use a very conservative spam filter (which catches me often enough to annoy me). But having experience fighting porn spammers (among others) myself on a variety of sites, I’m entirely sympathetic. They’re probably getting hit with spam at a ratio of at least 1:1 to real posts, and clearly no one is paying them to spend their entire life sorting through sincere posts vs. spam.
Regardless, if “limited followup” means “they only allow an average of 300 posts” (but hardly ever close threads, and then usually when the poster’s a guest who tires of moderating), well, umm, what can one say?
TCOisbanned? // January 2, 2009 at 4:53 am
Dhogza, it means that you don’t get a real forum-like chatty conversation. It takes too long waiting for approvals.
dhogaza // January 2, 2009 at 5:12 am
Meanwhile, the average amount of followup on that open, uncensored, free-wheeling icon of climate denialism, Climate Audit, has less than 70 responses per post on its front page.
Maybe that’s related to the exciting purely science-based, non-offensive content with titles like Gavin and the Big Red Dog, which, while I haven’t read it, is probably the typical McI blend of innuendo and personal attack over the “hot spot”, with all of the highly intellectual responses focusing on the fact that Gavin is, as always, guilty of scientific fraud due to his communist tendencies.
Meanwhile, it’s obvious where Dave A is getting his drivel regarding the IJC, though I would’ve never known if I hadn’t visited the site just to see whether or not CA is more “open” than the notorious Real Climate which infamously allows a “limited amount of followup”.
Richard Steckis // January 2, 2009 at 5:26 am
Tamino,
Of course you are right. Looking at the Satellite data and applying a GLM to the data with a Tukey’s HSD test shows that the 2000s (so far) are significantly warmer than the 1990s and 1980s. What is interesting to me will be how the 2010s will fare.
cce // January 2, 2009 at 5:52 am
Isn’t increasing tropopause height the result of any kind of warming?
It would be useful to compile a list of unique responses to an enhanced greenhouse effect (”fingerprints,” if you will). I could only think of 1) stratosphere cooling+troposphere warming, 2) nights warming faster than days, and 3) enhanced warming of northern continental interiors (which is a consequence of #1 so maybe not a fingerprint?)
michel // January 2, 2009 at 7:55 am
Ray said: “You are presuming that my goal is to convince folks that are in complete denial of the error of their ways”
No, not really. Just pointing out that if, if the objective is to convince, there are productive and unproductive ways of going about it. Also suggesting that if the goal is not conviction, fine, what is it, and is it actually achieving it? You seem to want to lower the noise from dissenters with the aim of having a better pedagogical environment. Its a perfectly reasonable wish, the question is whether the current method of dealing with dissenters is getting there. It looks as if it is increasing the noise levels rather than reducing them.
The distinction between denialists and skeptics is probably not as useful as many think. There are just people who, for a variety of good and bad reasons, take a different view. As with most areas of evidence based public policy issues. And when you say that “At this point if the reality of climate change is not apparent to you, you either ain’t paying attention or you are choosing to ignore the evidence”, you are basically denying the distinction. A skeptic would be someone who, having seen and understood the evidence, takes a different view of it on rational and defensible grounds. You like many others here do not believe there are any such animals. This is why we have all the comparisons to Holocaust denial, tobacco-cancer link denial, HIV-Aids denial, evolution denial. Now Eli has added to this the asserters of a vaccination-autism link.
The trouble is that dissenters look into their hearts, and find they do think smoking causes cancer, they accept evolution (though they read Jerry Fodor’s strictures with interest), they are not profiting from or subsidized by the fossil fuel industry. They know they are not what you think of as deniers and are very insulted by the suggestion. To them the issue is much more like the saturated fat - cholesterol - heart disease hypothesis. They are aware that there’s a scientific consensus, but they feel uneasy. Isn’t it possible there is a role for sugar? What about Gascony, where they eat massive amounts of fat but have low rates? Real scientists treat these worries with contempt, and propose large scale programs which they say will reduce heart disease, like dosing half the population with statins. Real scientists become increasingly convinced that the beef industry is poisoning peoples minds with misleading propaganda and killing huge numbers by proxy. Still, say the public at large, we are not convinced that this has been properly thought through, and we are a bit worried about the role of the corn lobby in the argument, and very worried about the possible side effects of the proposed solution.
In this case, after many years of dismissing their concerns, Business Week eventually comes out with an article suggesting they may have a point. Whether this will one day happen with AGW, who knows? But what’s for sure is that you cannot productively deal with people in this state of mind by accusing them of being deniers. Whatever they are, its not that.
TCOisbanned? // January 2, 2009 at 12:21 pm
dhog:
1. Number of posts does not help me in getting a real discussion. What helps is the ability for me to engage in going down a chain of logic. If the board is unmoderated, then you don’t have delays and you can keep going down a logic chain. RC does not allow that. Tammy will allow the practice, but still the delays are a bitch. On RC, they just stop approving skeptic posts that dig deeper. That site is optimized for outreach, not for noodling over things.
2. I agree with your dislike of “Big red dog” silliness. I think instead proper papers should be written. Also, that this kind of gamey stuff is just part of social games and detracts from trying to graps actual concepts.
3. Have not followed DaveA. From what I’ve seen from host on CA, disagree with his kvetching about IJC or even Santer. Find it rather hypocritical when Steve blows off fellow skeptics like me or Berger who press him for explanations of methods, but then he demands step by step help from Santer. Also, it’s POSSIBLE that Steve is right (morally) with his requests for info from Santer, but it’s not well explained. Obviously there is a difference of points of view, but Steve does not bother shining a light on the actual specifics. Instead he just sort of hounds Santer and IJC and Steve’s little hoi polloi assume Steve must be right.
Deech56 // January 2, 2009 at 1:06 pm
RE: dhogaza // January 2, 2009 at 5:12 am “Meanwhile, it’s obvious where Dave A is getting his drivel regarding the IJC…”
Where I saw this nugget of information: “Given that funding agencies rely on academic journals to ensure that authors archive data …”
and thought, ZOMG, so that’s what I’m supposed to be doing (seeing as I work at that large health-related funding agency). So we can now add funding to their sphere of ignorance to go along with publishing and performing research.
EliRabett // January 2, 2009 at 1:49 pm
There is always sci.environment or alt.globalwarming for those who want their daily dose of blather. Speaking/writing for Eli, it is a good practice NOT to reply for a while if possible, you might think something through.
And yes, given that Dave A. is a mossback, it explains much that he gets his funding from the Lycopod Trust. Unfortunately for him, they invested their $$ with Madoff and now, like many in denial, are intellectually broke
From the Merriam Webster: moss·back
Function: noun
Date: 1872
1 : a large sluggish fish (as a largemouth bass)
2 : an extremely old-fashioned or reactionary person : fogy
dhogaza // January 2, 2009 at 2:04 pm
I suspect you don’t spend much time there. They do get rid of the repetitive stupid stuff that adds nothing to the discussion, but that still leaves a lot of stuff that’s no better than troll-level.
Threads running out to 600-800 comments aren’t evidence that they don’t allow “for digging deeper”.
The denialsphere has built this myth that RC “doesn’t allow dissent”, and you’re buying it, apparently.
Ian Forrester // January 2, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Michel said: “The distinction between denialists and skeptics is probably not as useful as many think”.
This just shows that you do not know what skepticism is.
Someone who is skeptical (most scientists fall into this category) on reading or hearing about some new conclusion immediately go to the actual source, read the paper and see if their interpretation of the data and conclusions parallels the author’s conclusion.
If they feel that the conclusions have been wrongly drawn they either show where the author’s comments are mistaken or go and repeat the experimental part of the work for them selves before making a firm decision on whether the results are solid or not.
This is how science works and why most scientists do not like the term “skeptic” applied to AGW deniers.
A denier looks at the evidence, usually with no expert knowledge about the described work and declares it false and or fraudulent and starts numerous blogs telling people how the science of AGW is based on fraudulent data.
No wonder we scientists get upset when deniers invade the places on the web where science should be discussed in a rational manner. Deniers are by definition, not rational (nor honest).
TCOisbanned? // January 2, 2009 at 5:56 pm
I’m basing my comments on personal experience, not on what others say, dhog.
Hank Roberts // January 2, 2009 at 6:17 pm
> you don’t get a real forum-like chatty
> conversation.
For which I for one am most grateful.
There are uncountable chatty conversations online.
There are a few good science sites.
Overlap, zero.
Ray Ladbury // January 2, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Michel, You claim the climate change is like cholesterol/heart-disease. I disagree. Climate change is based on a physical theory, explaining observed trends with established and accepted physical mechanisms. The mechanisms if most of medical science are sketchy to say the least, and the “evidence” is largely epidemiological. These are very different fields of science, one mature (climate science) and one still feeling its way (medicine). And if the special class can’t be bothered to understand the difference, I’m not sure what we could expect them to contribute.
dhogaza // January 2, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Care to speak about those personal experiences, relevant ones, field work or the like?
Personal experience with gardening, for instance, isn’t relevant. We know that the northern range of a large number of plants cultivated by gardeners has been expanding rapidly the last half-century. But since gardeners are able to shift plants geographically many, many magnitudes more quickly than happens naturally, this doesn’t tell us anything useful about how natural systems will react.
So what’s this relevant experience you’ve had? Done research or field work for the USFS? BLM? USF&W? (I’ve done field work for all three, and been involved with one USF&W-sponsored research paper, for better or worse, though in real life I’m a bit jockey).
It’s encouraging to hear you have this relevant experience, so I’m sure you’ll share it with us Real Soon Now?
And tell us why this relevant experience leads you to the opposite conclusions of people working in fields like paleobotany, etc?
John Mashey // January 2, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Tamino: a few suggestions:
Consider adding an item at the top of your front page called something like:
“Discussion policy - READ BEFORE POSTING”, and lay out your groundrules there, whatever you wish them to be, perhaps in a Beta version, with a thread created specifically to discuss them to see if there’s any useful feedback.
A good example of this is John Quiggin’s:
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/discussion-policy/
One might go further, and give labels to reasons for editing/rejecting posts. One might point at a few existing threads for examples.
All this is like state laws in the US. There is enough variation that people can get surprised [like in turn-on-red rules, sometimes], and there are enough blogs that are free-for-alls that people think their “rights” are being restricted or something if they get edited somewhere else.
Having a clear, simple set of rules up front should leave less room for complaints, and probably help keep yoru blood pressure down :-)
Kipp Alpert // January 2, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Michel:When you reponded to my post, I didn’t expect a hidden agenda.Did you have one. Deniers exist. At Accuwhatever I have been fighting them for a year every day. Denialism exists and has survived through three Presidents only to be rejected, Now. Did we hurt anyone by stalling. What Scicentific Philosophy
deals with negative behavior. To misrepresent yourself, to disinform, while lives are at stake,
to sell Popper, because he believes in falsifiable reality, makes your case weaker. To truly falsify you just use the scientific method, and follow antithesis, to inductive reasoning,to synthesis. Popper was just socializing Hegel, and of course was also an economist Porfessor. So this is where you are coming from. You refuse to believe in global warming after all of the thousands of measurements, correct Physics, and observational Data provided. From every place on the Earth. So,perhaps you are a skeptic.If so why not say it. It would be much more honest than sneaking around, planting b.s. to the unsuspecting new blogger. Shame on you.
You preach to me, then leave with your hidden agenda and fo face in hand. Honesty is the only measurement that you should be thinking about.
KIPP
Dave A // January 2, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Eli Rabbet,
The Lycopod Trust didn’t invest in Madoff - we are into greening everything and are thus very progressive and up to date!
Kipp Alpert // January 2, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Dave A:Opaque?That Greenhouse gases have been absorbed. Your moss died. It is getting hotter,lil rabbit. KIPP
On meteorological satellites, directly measure absorption phenomena, such as those associated with carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases. The atmosphere is nearly opaque to EM radiation in part of the mid-IR and all of the far-IR regions.
Glen Raphael // January 3, 2009 at 12:07 am
Ray: I like the medical science/climate science analogy but disagree with your take on which of the two is better characterized as “mature” versus “still feeling its way”. To wit: Medical science tries to understand and predict how changes in inputs are likely to affect outputs and metrics of a relatively small system that contains numerous complex positive and negative feedback loops: a human being. The great thing about medicine is that in teasing out this relationship between inputs and outputs you have millions of examples to observe. We have detailed records relating to the medical history of individual humans over a great many entire human life cycles. And if you have a new theory to test which isn’t well served by the existing historical data you can always observe or create new experimental situations wherein, say, you give one group of humans lots of fatty foods (relative to another group or relative to that same group at a different time) and observe the results.
In short, it is at least theoretically possible to perform real *controlled experiments* in medicine - and yet researchers *still* have trouble reaching firm conclusions as to which inputs cause which outputs and how. Because the system under study is just so darned complex that the interactions can produce unintuitive and confusing results no matter how carefully you try to watch what’s happening.
By contrast, climate science is about how inputs affect likely outputs and metrics for one entire planet. We do *not* have records we can mine relating to the detailed climatological history of thousands of planets over their entire lifecycle. We cannot (yet?) do controlled experiments wherein we add lots of CO2 to some planets and not others and observe the results. We can only observe our single planet closely and we’re not even very good at that yet. The positive and negative feedback loops that affect the entire planet are likely to be more complex as they operate over a much larger physical and temporal scale than those that operate on a single human being.
Thus it seems so me any conclusions we reach about how inputs affect outputs should be far more tentative in climatology than in medicine.
TCOisbanned? // January 3, 2009 at 1:08 am
dhog: I was referring to RealClimate reading/posting personal experience. Not the stuff in your comment.
Kipp Alpert // January 3, 2009 at 1:16 am
Glen Raphael: We may not have reached a tipping point in global warming but the Arctic is a good example of a feedback loop in progress. We have measured the radiative forcing of IR in the troposphere, and the temperature increase all over the world. The frozen tundra in California and the advent of super-fires is another
proof of Global Warming. As for predictions the models now predict within three Celsius how hot it will be in 2100.Not just one satellite but many, and from Australia our Coal Producer, but China, Hadley, NASA and all of the other Industrialized Countries.What many people think, doesn’t make it right. But, Today we don’t just calculate warming, we observe it. We don’t guess that it is getting warmer,we know it.If we hadn’t had statistical data and observational data then your argument would carry some weight. What is observed is also real, the IR has been photographed, the heating has started, and AGW Exists. We don’t need a million little planets to prove that this planet has been heating because of global warming.People don’t like to use the Venus argument because of it’s overabundance of CO2, but it is too hot for it’s relative distance from the Sun. Would you have everyone get skin cancer, to prove there is a hole in the Ozone layer. My last statement is more to the point.When a Doctor is working on one patient, there is no universal truth that a certain medicine will cure that patient. If you stop using fossil fuels, you won’t save one patient of 6 Billion, but all 6 billion.That is the rub. KIPP
elspi // January 3, 2009 at 1:19 am
“Thus it seems so me any conclusions we reach about how input affect outputs should be far more tentative in climatology than in medicine.”
If I was grading that you would be given negative points for that answer. (Thank god I am done grading finals.)
In weather and climate, we have complete and absolute understanding of all the local behavior (Physics). The global behavior is simply the “integration” of the local behavior. The only difficulty is having sufficient computing power to go from local to global (and the fact that the dif. eq. are themselves chaotic)
The human body is much more complex than that. There are no simple local rules that determine what happens globally.
We have models for climate that work very well on the historical data.
We have no hope of creating such a model for the human body. The only model we have for a human body is the human body. (That is why we still do clinical trials even though PEOPLE DIE IN THEM)
We have been working hard on medicine for over 2000 years and have gotten almost nowhere. We have been working (hard) on climate science for about 50 years and we can explain almost everything in the geological record. Most of us have personal experience in how bad medical science is at diagnosing an illness let alone explaining where it came from.
The point is that medicine is much much harder than the hard sciences. (pun intended)
dhogaza // January 3, 2009 at 1:28 am
Try now. Your tone’s usually much less annoying and obnoxious than it was a couple of years ago, perhaps you wouldn’t piss them off in your current incarnation.
And - bonus! - it now tells you if your post has been eaten by the spam filter. It used to just eat them silently, and a lot of the reputation for censoring was due to that.
In particular it rejects a lot of posts with links, even single links, not surprising since spammers are typically trying to game Google by generating links to their site.
But this led to paranoid rants that “any link to a denialist site leads to censorship”, etc, when often it was clearly just the spam filter silently doing its magic/evil (depending on your POV).
Or, you can choose not to join in at RC, and to continue bitching about being censored.
Richard Steckis // January 3, 2009 at 1:41 am
Another clacker from Ray Ladbury:
“The mechanisms if most of medical science are sketchy to say the least, and the “evidence” is largely epidemiological. These are very different fields of science, one mature (climate science) and one still feeling its way (medicine).”
Climate science is about 100 years old at most. Medical science is at least a few thousand years old. This is if you accept science existed before the so called age of reason (as I do).
Philippe Chantreau // January 3, 2009 at 1:51 am
CCE: no, not from what I recall reading through general stuff on the ESPERE site and not according to Santer et al (2003). To have tropopause going higher you need the relative changes in temp in the stratosphere and troposphere that increased greenhouse effect produces, which would not be found in the case of solar warming for instance. In that sense, Tropopause height increase and stratospheric cooling confirm/reinforce each other and both agree with model predictions. The tropopause height change is also confirming that models are not doing such a bad job of getting the atmospheric physics together.
Contrarily to what Michel is suggesting there is a fairly good abundance of atribution studies. I found Harries et al 2001 interesting (direct measurement of escaping LW radiation).
Michel, superb job of framing the issue and using language, in that long post. In the pure Lutz/Rove tradition. You ought to find yourself a job writing speeches. This is exactly the kind of stuff that got me disgusted when I went to Sciences-Po many years ago. You’re good at it, no doubt.
Glen, what you say of medicine is only partially true. Physiology at the level of an organism is, IMO, much, much more complex than the climate. The problem with medical studies, even the perfect double blind ones with large groups is that they seldom allow for causation attribution.
You will see a correlation that can lead to say, “this corresponds to a higher risk of that,” without any clue whether this actually participates in causing that. You can still safely assume that reducing this will lower your risk of developing that, and even show it undeniably to be true, but you still don’t have a mechanism and a causation relation. Which does not mean that you can’t act on it.
As for all the epidemiological studies, they should always be taken with a grain of salt and their statistics examined closely; unfortunately, that’s beyond most people math abilities (including me). However, if there is a known physiological process, it gives much more weight to the study. For instance, the epidemiological studies showing that smoking bans lead to lower incidence of heart attacks do make sense, since there are also many physiological studies showing how smoke triggers platelets activation, inflammatory responses, and arterial constriction.
Philippe Chantreau // January 3, 2009 at 2:00 am
Eslpi, “The point is that medicine is much much harder than the hard sciences.” Agreed
“We have been working hard on medicine for over 2000 years and have gotten almost nowhere.” Disagreed.
If you consider traditional chinese medicine, that would be closer to 5000 years. Someone close to me had both hips replaced at a fairly young age, which made a tremendous difference in her life. I could cite many more examples. We have made progress.
Glen Raphael // January 3, 2009 at 2:07 am
elspi: What happens locally in a human body is also just “physics”, yet that doesn’t mean we understand it! In weather and climate what happens locally includes not just the physics of gasses and liquids and radiation but also interactions with living systems such as people and animals and plants (and their products, including pavement and forests and CO2). Can a planetary system that includes people be considered less complex than people themselves? To understand even the local scale “completely and absolutely” would require the same level of knowledge that we all seem to agree doctors don’t have. So it’s an illusion to think we understand it locally; it’s not just a failure of “scaling up”. It’s also a question of choosing the right level of abstraction to try to get a meaningful answer despite all the factors we can’t reasonably include in our analysis.
Kipp: you say we don’t just predict warming, we observe it. And this is true, but to put it in medical terms it’s the result of a study with a sample size of n=1. One planet - ours - got warmer for a while while all sorts of factors (most of which we’re not measuring) were changing. This isn’t useless, but it’s also not particularly compelling. To illustrate: George Burns lived to a ripe old age while smoking cigars: does that mean cigars help longevity?
Kipp Alpert // January 3, 2009 at 3:43 am
Glen Raphael:
Although your first comment is true,it does not negate all of the other evidence either.I don’t care if global warming started yesterday and we are only one planet. The salient point is the in the last one hundred and fifty years the planet has gone through rapid climate change,and we know why. It has gotten warmer due to greenhouse gases. If you disregard the temperature record, the physics, the spectroradiometer of satellites, then as far as I am concerned you might as well be a denialist. If you are not, then I think that pushing your debate further is a waste, and making the public aware of the dangers of warming should be your mantra. I think of Keeling, and those scientists berfore him that spent their whole lives furthering the understanding of Global Warming, and that perhaps we should do something more than just jaw about it. KIPP
Kipp Alpert // January 3, 2009 at 3:49 am
Richard Stickis:My granfather was an alcoholic,and my son is studying Information Technologies. So therfore I should listen to grandad. KIPP
Kipp Alpert // January 3, 2009 at 3:52 am
Richard Stickuss: Ray ladbury may know just a bit more then you ever will,and that never justifies you sounding like a fool. KIPP
Kipp Alpert // January 3, 2009 at 4:09 am
Hank Roberts:
I thought you my want to get chatty about Roy Spencers new Denier site.These are the ones that used to complain about Gore being on the take. Where did he get his hair cut anyway,Lawn Doctor. KIPP
dhogaza // January 3, 2009 at 4:19 am
Medicine denied empirical evidence for a few thousand of those few thousand years.
“Mere empiricism!” Indeed.
Makes your position regarding modern science easy to understand.
dhogaza // January 3, 2009 at 4:25 am
To be more blunt …
Yet if you subtract the Barbers and Surgeons bit, western medical science failed for those “at least a few thousands of years”.
I mean … how are your Gross Humors, dude? Killing you?
Maybe the “age of reason” isn’t just an artifact of modern science that accepts well … science.
Maybe you’re not aware that medicine in the era you want to tout rejected empiricism.
Do you?
Cool if you do, but if you do, you should find another job ….
dhogaza // January 3, 2009 at 4:31 am
Cool. That’s essentially engineering, which helps make surgery accessible to nearly any tech-trained person.
Don’t confound it with research, though, not real “how things work” research.
Though obviously the surgical techniques and implant engineering are important, and deserve all the accolades it receives…
dhogaza // January 3, 2009 at 4:40 am
But medical “science”, as you chose to label it, rejected empiricism, which lies at the heart of science.
With every post, you make clear your rejection of the materialist, empiricist, foundation to modern science.
Ray Ladbury // January 3, 2009 at 4:55 am
Glen Raphael, what you are ignoring is that in climate science we understand the mechanisms and have a physical model, whereas in medicine the data tend to be epidemiological and/or statistical. In medicine, when you do have an understanding of the mechanism, I agree that conclusions tend to be more reliable than when you do not. However, especially in humans, controlled experiments are difficult and run into lots of confounding factors.
Climate science does have time series of billions of years of climate, and actually, we do have climate models for some of the other planets, as well as Earth, and they work pretty well.
Other problems with your argument–complexity does not necessarily scale with size. The Heliodynamo is a lot less complicated than the geodynamo, despite the greater size of the Sun.
You have also failed to grasp another important aspect of the science–it depends on how well you have to know the state of the system. In climate science, we are mainly concerned with the trends of the system. That’s a much easier problem than in biology, where tiny changes lead to irreversible outcomes. I’d still stand by what I said: Predictions for a system with a well understood physical model are more reliable than those where such a model is lacking.
Richard Steckis, I would date science as beginning with the scientific method–in the era of Galileo and Francis Bacon. Prior to that, it would be more properly called natural philosophy. But by your logic, medicine ought to be 10 times more reliable than classical mechanics.
b_sharp // January 3, 2009 at 5:17 am
- “real scientists”
- evidence is all a matter of interpretation
- admit (teach) the controversy
- declaration of evidence despite an absence of research
- a single authority trumps science (as long as s/he agrees with my position)
Yup, the same arguments as the creationists.
All that is needed now is the claim that since several scientists were right when they went against consensus science, everyone that goes against consensus science must necessarily be right.
Thanks to those that took the time to answer my questions. I certainly appreciate the help.
Philippe Chantreau // January 3, 2009 at 5:23 am
Richard Steckis, the medicine of old did not deserve to be called science by any stretch of the imagination, especially in the West. After more than a thousand years, bleeding a patient was considered panacea for many ills, without any evidence whatsoever, and likely led to many deaths. Only as the scientific method matured did medicine become a true scientific undertaking. Generalizing the use of evidence based practice is still an ongoing pursuit in medicine nowadays.
Besides, Ray did not make a clacker at all. Open a pharmacology book and look how many drugs say “mechanism of action unknown,” or “unclear” and then present the latest most credible hypotheses, if any at all. Then open a pathophysiology book and see how many diseases are “syndroms,” whose etiology is unclear or unknown. Up until he first (recent) microphotography showing the molecules arranged the way you’d expect, the sliding filament theory of muscle contraction was, as skeptics/denialists of all kinds would say “just a theory.” And that’s a fairly basic and straightforward physiological process. Although I disagree that we’ve got “nowhere”, I’d say there is plenty of room for improvement. A lot more than in physics, that’s for sure.
b_sharp // January 3, 2009 at 5:39 am
Climate science as it is is fairly recent but the investigation into how CO2 can affect the global temperature started at least as early as John Tyndall in 1859, and the suspicion of GH gases even earlier with Joseph Fourier in the 1820s.
Although surgery started long ago, (possibly a few millennia) the examination of causes of medical problems in what we would call a scientific manner was well behind the physical sciences.
Hank Roberts // January 3, 2009 at 5:45 am
> medicine
When people claim human activity can’t change the planet, remind them that antibiotics have only been in use for about 60 years.
http://www.fda.gov/Fdac/features/795_antibio.html
Philippe Chantreau // January 3, 2009 at 6:17 am
Yes, Dhog, I was thinking of surgical techniques in this example. There is quite a bit involved, from the understanding of biomechanics, hemodynamics, sterile technique, infection control, to the whole field of anesthesia.
I could have simply mentioned that it’s very unlikely nowadays to die from acute appendicitis in our society, whereas you had not a chance to survive a century ago. Or recall on all these people who caught a “bad fever” and died (certainly a most common occurrence until deep in the twentieth century). The list of accomplishements of modern (i.e. truly scientific) medicine is too long to consider here. Plus it’s very OT and I’m not sure how far Tamino’s patience will stretch…
Just think of this: next time that you are in a gathering of any significant number of people, ask yourself how many benefited from some medical intervention/treatment without which they would likely not have survived until the moment in time when you meet them. Even something as basic as immunizations, or, as Hank pointed, antibiotics. It’s a profound thought.
michel // January 3, 2009 at 7:15 am
Dear Kip, no I do not have a hidden agenda about Popper.
Popper was one of the significant thinkers of the 20C, and if you just read what he wrote you’ll find he has insights about the history of political thought which are central to preserving ‘the open society’ in the face of its enemies from both left and right.
He also has insights about science and its progress which are completely neutral to any particular scientific theory. We see science now differently, partially because of Popper. So it is hard to recall how the debate was structured then. Philosophy of science was based on the very unhelpful distinction between things true by definition and things true by observation, the probable and the certain, the empirically true and the deductively true. Popper’s approach prepared the ground for us being able to see that a scientific theory is not a set of theoretical statements, a set of observation statements, and some links between them. He didn’t get to this view himself, but he showed enough to make the different account visible. Remember that he was writing when the agenda was set by Logical Positivism. A simple minded account of it is found in Ayer’s “Language Truth and Logic”. After Popper, it was clear that view of language, meaning and science was hopelessly oversimplified - as close to being straight wrong as you can get in Philosophy.
In fact, there isn’t a sharp distinction between observations and theory, theres a gradation, many observations are theory laden, and our response to apparently falsifying observations is, often rightly, often not to abandon the hypothesis but to revise some element of it. This is true whether you are defending or attacking the AGW hypothesis.
It would be a great pity, and completely idiotic and unnecessary, for AGW advocates to start putting Popper on an enemies list. Both AGW skeptics and advocates ought to respect him. He is completely neutral about this and indeed all other scientific controversies.
You would have difficulty arguing for Intelligent Design if you understood Popper however. Not because he didn’t believe in God. But because it is hard to derive testable predictions from the theory, and so, his view would be, it has little or no content.
On other comments:
“In the pure Lutz/Rove tradition”. Don’t know what this is, why it was applied to my comment, or whether its a good or a bad thing. Lutz and Rove must be well known Americans one supposes?
My suggestion was NOT that AGW is as valid as, or even much like, the heart disease issue. It was the pragmatic point, that people think of it like they do of that, and generally, if you want to convince people, it helps to understand where they are coming from.
John Mashey’s suggestion would probably be very helpful in lowering the noise level. If you want to have a pedagogical forum, rather than a debating forum, it can only help if you let people know that up front.
Deep Climate // January 3, 2009 at 7:45 am
Re: James Hastings-Trew // January 1, 2009 at 12:22 am
“… one of your pretend denialist graphs up there (which, be honest, you just made up - I’ve never seen a graph like that posted anywhere on the net).”
Here’s the Anthony Watts graph showing a “sharp” one-year drop in UAH data (from January 2007 to January 2008):
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/uah-monthly-anomaly-z520.png
From the “Blackboard”, here’s Lucia’s graph showing slight downward trend in GISS surface temperatures from 2001 to 2008 which is held to confirm that there is “no statistically significant warming trend since 2001.” (I notice TCO was not too kind to poor Lucia on that post).
So a graph like this one (based on UAH satellite lower troposphere temp analysis from 2001-2008) is not out of line with the illustrations often accompanying “global warming has stopped” posts in the blogosphere.
http://deepclimate.wordpress.com/files/2009/01/uah-tlt-global-2001-2008.gif
Now for a graph you won’t see on “skeptic” blogs. Look what happens when you show the complete UAH record:
http://deepclimate.wordpress.com/files/2009/01/uah-tlt-global-1979-2008.gif
Even though there is a descending linear trend from 2001 to 2008, the positive slope of the linear trend of the whole data set from 1979 to 2008 is greater than that from 1979 to the end of 2000!
cce // January 3, 2009 at 7:46 am
Philippe,
Thanks. However, ozone depletion is the dominent cause of cooling in the lower stratosphere so a skeptic might argue that the troposphere is warmed by “natural” causes and the stratosphere is cooled by ozone loss, so it’s still not increasing GHG that is causing the change.
Deep Climate // January 3, 2009 at 7:52 am
Lucia’s missing graph from previous comment:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/giss-trend-sept2008-500×341.jpg
michel // January 3, 2009 at 8:18 am
If you think the distinction between skeptics and denialists is useful, lets use it. Which category do the following fall into?
McIntyre
Spencer
Pielke (the elder)
The Idsos
Christie
Watts
Craig Loehle
Zhang
Lucia
Jeff Id
David Stockwell
David Archibald
Easterbrook
Or, if you prefer, name a few skeptics who are not deniers.
Richard Steckis // January 3, 2009 at 11:34 am
Ray. We have had this argument before about medical science. You were wrong then and are wrong now.
Dhogaza. As usual you are all mouth and no substance. There are multiple paths to knowlege. Empricism is the british approach to reason which has become the basis of modern science. Is it the best model? Possibly for technology. But maybe not for science. The continental model was rationalism (a different breed of cat).
Having said that, empiricism has been part of science for thousands of years and was practiced by such illuminaries as Aristotle and Hippocrates (remember him. the founder of medicine as it is practiced today).
I regard you and Ray as the neo-empiricists. The ones who are trying to revive empiricism to a status above all others for the basis of reason. I happen to disagree that this is so. There are many paths to knowledge and empiricism in only one.
From Wickipedia: “The term “empirical” was originally used to refer to certain ancient Greek practitioners of medicine who rejected adherence to the dogmatic doctrines of the day, preferring instead to rely on the observation of phenomena as perceived in experience.”
Neven // January 3, 2009 at 12:00 pm
I have posted this at RealClimate but I think it’s more appropriate here. I’m curious as what to people think about this idea so please tell me what’s good/bad about it (if you want).
This is it:
I hope you allow me to vent my thoughts on the whole Denialist-namecalling issue.
I think Mr Eli said it very well that there are pros and amateurs in the anti-AGW camp. There are few pros and many, many amateurs. In fact everybody who hasn’t done any research on climate science is most probably an anti-AGW amateur. I see this around me with the people I know (me being the only one spending a few hours every day on RC, Tamino, Rabett Run, Climate Progress, but also WUWT and the anti-AGW articles from Climate Debate Daily): they think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Which of course is the aim of the anti-AGW pros. IMO the effect Al Gore generated with AIT is wearing off for the simple fact that people are conservative and don’t want to change their habits.
Now, what I’m trying to get at: in the PR war that is fought out in the blogospehere - which in my view does have an effect on reporting in the MSM - it’s all about convincing the amateurs, the masses. I believe the term Denialist, though accurate as many people are in the phase of denial, is too aggressive because it automatically puts anti-AGW pros and amateurs in the same camp and makes the pros more or less invisible.
I thought about this for a long time and I think a term like Misinformed is much more appropriate for the anti-AGW amateurs. They are in denial, but the reason this denial is so persistent is that they are systematically misinformed. Because misinformation comes first I believe Misinformed is a much better and friendlier term. Added to this you can call the anti-AGW pros MisinformANTS, and thus make a distinction between the two.
This allows you to use the rebutting style I like best when reading comments here on RC or Tamino, employed endlessly by Hank Roberts who almost never loses his patience (like for instance Ray Ladbury or Tamino -very understandably and rightly! - do): ‘It seems you are misinformed, but this is understandable as there is a lot of misinformation about. You would do well to go here and read this and that. Research it thoroughly so you can get an idea if the Earth is warming (we believe it is, and most in the anti-AGW camp do too), if it’s due to human activities (we believe it is, and quite a few in the anti-AGW camp admit this) and how serious the consequences will be and what to do about them (we believe this is what the deabte really should be about).’
I think from a strategical point of view this friendly patronizing works best and a switch from Denialist to the dual Misinformed and Misinformant would be much more productive in getting the Doubt-factor to work for you and not against you. This is more important than people think.
At the same time when ever I post comments on a site like WUWT (which is not very often) I like to stress the fact that I view myself as alarmed rather than alarmist and try to distance myself from those groups that try to cash in financially or politically on AGW. These are things I have to put emphasis on just like the fact that I lack the intelligence and knowledge to go into lengthy debates about the science. I ‘believe’ AGW is happening because I find the articles and comments on pro-AGW sites more credible and convincing than on anti-AGW sites.
Hmmm, I’m writing way more than I intended (and more for myself than for others I see now) so let me stress again that I am convinced that it would be a smart thing to switch from Denialist to Misinformed/ant.
Deech56 // January 3, 2009 at 12:09 pm
RE: Richard Steckis // January 3, 2009 at 1:41 am “Climate science is about 100 years old at most. ”
Where does this come from? Climate science is basically looking at weather over time. We’ve studied climate for thousands of years and come to some basic (and correct) conclusions - seasons exist, latitude, altitude, rainfall, etc. all affect climate. Any society based on agriculture was intimately involved with knowledge about climate.
Maybe this wasn’t considered “science,” but not a lot of medical research less than 200 years old would be considered scientific today (quick - what’s the name of that old British medical journal, and to what does the name refer?). Anyone want to go back to medicine as practiced during the US Civil War?
I’ve been involved in medical research for almost 30 years - as a technician, grad student, post-doc and investigator, and I can say that the complexity of a living organism is tremendous. We don’t have computer models; we often have to study effects and mechanisms in animals - animal modeling - and extrapolate these observations to the human system, but we still get things wrong (if curing cancer in mice were our main goal, we would really be able to pat ourselves on the back).
But basically, what I think some of this boils down to is a slam against observational sciences vs. sciences where experiments can be set up and effects observed, notwithstanding the need for almost absurd manipulation to reduce the number of variables being studied in a complex, living system. The fact is that climate science, like all sciences, is based ion the formulation of hypotheses, and testing of these hypotheses by gathering and analyzing data. There are constraints, but there are plenty of constraints in medical research as well.
Richard Steckis // January 3, 2009 at 12:42 pm
To further elaborate.
Epistemology or the theory or knowledge recognises three specific theories of knowledge acquisition:
1. Empiricism (a posterori knowledge)
2. Rationalism (a priori knowledge)
3. Constructivism (socially constructed knowledge)
I personally will use any method to gain knowledge of the problem I am studying. Of course as a scientist I must give priority to empiricism as the definitive source when presenting scientific research. But not all science research is empiricist in nature (mathematics and logic are regarded as exceptions to empirical process).
Richard Steckis // January 3, 2009 at 12:48 pm
I think Ray has a problem with medical science because it uses both a priori and a posterori modes of acquisition of knowledge and as a science has no problems with such.
Ray and Dhogaza are frightened of any knowledge system that undermines the sheer dominance of empiricism at the current time.
It is the very fact that medical science uses more than one mode of knowledge acquisition that confirms to me that it is a much more mature science than climatology.
[Response: It's not true that climate science uses only one mode of knowledge acquisition.]
Richard Steckis // January 3, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Deech56.
Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) is regarded as the father of modern climatology.
He is one of the first to postulate the greenhouse effect and the role of carbon dioxide in influencing the earths atmospheric temperature and climate.
Deech56 // January 3, 2009 at 1:10 pm
RE: Richard Steckis // January 3, 2009 at 12:48 pm “I think Ray has a problem with medical science because it uses both a priori and a posterori modes of acquisition of knowledge and as a science has no problems with such.”
As someone who actually is involved in medical research, I don’t see that Ray has any “problems” with medical science. I actually think his evaluation is spot on. Where would you place the sciences of paleontology and astronomy? Should we throw up our hands and dismiss the fossil record as evidence in support of evolution?
Deech56 // January 3, 2009 at 1:18 pm
RE: Richard Steckis // January 3, 2009 at 12:55 pm “Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) is regarded as the father of modern climatology.
“He is one of the first to postulate the greenhouse effect and the role of carbon dioxide in influencing the earths atmospheric temperature and climate.”
Now we’re limiting ourselves to “modern climatology.” I will leave it to others who are in that field to determine whether CO2 science is the only aspect of climatology.
Should I use Koch and Pasteur as founders of modern medicine? It’s kind of hard to consider medicine as “modern” before the days of germ theory, and US medical training as much beyond quackery before the opening of Johns Hopkins in 1889.
Richard Steckis // January 3, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Deech.
I don’t understand what you are trying to get at. What are you trying to say?
We should not dismiss any method of acquiring knowledge. That is my whole premise.
P. Lewis // January 3, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Human metabolism recreated in lab
Richard Steckis // January 3, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Tamino:
“Response: It’s not true that climate science uses only one mode of knowledge acquisition.”
I didn’t imply that it did. It is Ray who seems to have a problem with non empirical method.
All of science should use multiple modes of gaining the knowledge to answer the fundamental questions. I just said that climate science is relatively new and therefore not as mature as some of the more established sciences (including medical science).
This will be my last post on this philosophical exchange as I think it is a little off topic.
Richard Steckis // January 3, 2009 at 2:12 pm
OK. I see what you mean Tamino. I did imply climatology relies only on empirical method. Perhaps I should have phrased better.
Richard Steckis // January 3, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Kipp Alpert:
“Richard Stickis:My granfather was an alcoholic,and my son is studying Information Technologies. So therfore I should listen to grandad.”
Kipp. It depends on the question. If you want to learn more about alcoholism then I would definitely listen to grand dad. If he was an alcoholic professor of IT I would still probably listen to him.
It was rather a silly analogy to use.
Eli Rabett // January 3, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Glen, google FACE CO2 to find out what is being done to study the influence of increased CO2 on plants. It is a mixed bag but one of the exciting ideas is to use genetic manipulation to produce plants that can better use the higher available CO2. This is one of the few places where adaptation may help
Eli Rabett // January 3, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Not to get into the medicine man business, but it is sobering to think that organic chemistry is less than 150 years old, and chemistry, as we understand it of the order of 200-250. Physics in any meaningful way, only at best goes back to Galileo.
Eli Rabett // January 3, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Eli objects to the bathroom tiles that are being inserted next to his words of wisdom. Can we not have Rabett ears?
Ray Ladbury // January 3, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Steckis, Do you even bother to read my posts before summarizing my entire philosophy in a single word? My point here has all along been that there is a qualitative difference in a science once it has a validated theory concerning the mechanisms governing the system under study. Such a theory guides empirical enquiry and enables more rapid and reliable progress. I have even said that in those areas of medical science where such a body of theoretical work exists, progress is also more rapid.
I merely bring up medical science as an example where much of the research is still epidemiological/statistical in nature and is conducted by experiments where control is difficult. This gives rise to the “dueling studies” that tell us on alternate weeks that drinking coffee is good and bad for us. It also gives rise to the utter-crap studies telling us our brains will explode if we live under power lines or use our cell phones.
Medical science is not unique in this. The study of dark matter/energy in cosmology is even more exploratory at this point than medical science. In climate science, one area still governed by exploratory analysis is the frequency of hurricanes. The problem here is not that there is no theory, but that there are competing effects, and we don’t know which will win.
There really isn’t anything I’ve said here that’s particularly controversial. It is generally accepted that science progress from exploratory to theoretically guided empiricism and eventually to maturity where future progress tends to be pretty orderly and reliable.
As to epistemology. I recognize constructivism, believe guided empiricism offers the most reliable path to understanding and distrust rationalism unless constrained by constructivism or empiricism.
Modern science is not purely empirical. It contains elements of all three of your types of knowledge acquisition: It constructs theories from observations based on a priori criteria and using mathematical reasoning that is at least partly part of our brains’ wiring. It is inherently a collective activity (kind of hard–and pointless–to do peer review when you have no peers). However, empirical reality trumps everything else. I will certainly cop to being a proud member of the reality-based community. I also believe in markets, democracy, trial by jury and other aspects of civilization that construct knowledge in similar ways and also tend to work most of the time.
Of all of these, I do believe science is the most efficient construct for revealing certain types of truth. And to my knowledge, no wars have ever been fought over scientific disagreements.
dhogaza // January 3, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Count me as belonging to the group that describes mathematics as being mathematics … not science … not inferior to science, nor superior, but different than science.
Well, actually, no, I’m not. But you’re free to believe whatever the heck you want to believe.
On the other hand, you, like most science denialists, seem to fear what an empirical approach to learning about the world has taught us about climate, and what adding CO2 to the atmosphere does to climate over time.
Why?
Philippe Chantreau // January 3, 2009 at 5:48 pm
CCE,
Disagreed. Ozone has more of a weak warming effect in the lower stratosphere and cooling in the upper strat. Furthermore, ozone depletion could not explain both tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling. The whole stratospheric radiative budget is quite complex and RC has had some good posts on it.
This page does a good job of explaining it in a more simple way:
http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/2__Ozone/-_Cooling_nd.html
Michel, TCO is going to hate you forever; he’s not on your list, thus neither skpetic nor denier. That was kinda harsh. Good thing that he probably does not rely on you for validation.
Barton Paul Levenson // January 3, 2009 at 6:06 pm
elspi - I can’t agree about medical science haven’t gotten nowhere. I’ve got Crohn’s Disease, and if I’d had it 200 years ago I would have been dead by age 30. As is I’m 48, just getting over a bowel resection operation, but I’m alive and typing.
There are lots of reasons I could resent medical science. There’s still no cure for Crohn’s Disease, and the antibiotics after the operation left me nauseated for days. Very upsetting. But I’m alive. It matters, at least to me.
Barton Paul Levenson // January 3, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Glen Raphael writes:
It is when the causes that are linked account for almost all the variance.
We don’t believe in global warming because of climate correlations. We believe it because of the physics of greenhouse gases, which have been demonstrated in the lab (first, if I’m not mistaken, by John Tyndall in 1859).
Barton Paul Levenson // January 3, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Philippe Chantreau writes:
That was a fad of c. 1600-1800. An ancient Greek doctor or a doctor in the high middle ages would not have bled people for everything. Classical medical theory taught that there were four major humors, blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile, and disease could be due to any one of them being out of balance. The theory may look stupid now, but from what they had to go on it wasn’t a bad guess, and a lot of the treatments actually used had a good empirical basis even if the explanation was wrong.
Medieval medicine failed to deal adequately with the Black Plague for the same reason doctors in California in 1978-1981 failed to deal adequately with AIDS — because they didn’t know what the hell was going on and had no easy way to find out.
Barton Paul Levenson // January 3, 2009 at 6:32 pm
michel –
Karl Rove was a political strategist for the Republican Party (still is, for all I know). He was responsible for the “push poll” that defeated John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary. The “pollers” called up SC voters and asked them, “Would you be more likely, less likely, or about the same, to vote for John McCain if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?” McCain at the time was appearing at rallies with his adopted Bangladeshi daughter, Bridget. As far as I know he has no illegitimate children. But the impression given by the poll was enough to tilt popular opinion in SC from McCain to Bush, who won the primary. Thus speaking of “Rovian tactics” has become fairly common in US intellectual circles. Meaning about the same as “Joseph Goebbels-type tactics.”
Barton Paul Levenson // January 3, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Richard Steckis writes:
Richard, modern science largely IS empiricism. Empiricism means “looking at the evidence.” Rationalism means “thinking about the problem.” Embracing rationalism over empiricism was why ancient Greek science never went anywhere.
Barton Paul Levenson // January 3, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Richard Steckis writes:
Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) is regarded as the father of modern climatology.
Well, I’d regard him as the father of AGW theory. Don’t forget that Louis Agassiz demonstrated the existence of ice ages around 1860.
John Mashey // January 3, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Along the lines of:
“So look forward, this year, to more posts about interesting information and fewer posts about misinformation. ”
Here are a few wishes:
1) Some comparisons of surface temperature with Ocean Heat Content trends, i.e., where the bulk fo the world’s variable energy is.
2) More analysis of duration effects, noise, etc. that is, I’m long been bothered by the “it’s not climate, it’s weather” saying as a way to explain noise, because that confuses most people.
I.e., there is:
a) noise of a few hours to ~week long, which seems like many people’s idea of “weather”, and which clearly gets unpredictable pretty fast.
b) There are regular yearly seasonal effects
c) there are irregular multi-month state shifts like ENSO, whose exact timing doesn’t seem predictable, but as one starts, becomes way more predictable than what people think of as weather.
d) There are multi-year state shifts like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
e) There are semi-regular sunspot cycles
f) There is climate as seen in X-year averages, expecting that Y years are desired to see meaningful trends. Where X is typically 5-10, and Y ~30.
The problem is that many people think of a) as weather, and don’t think much about f). At the very least, what are c) and d)? Are they climate? Are they weather?
In some places, they certainly affect weather (in the normal sense), but they seem more like climate because they last longer. Of course, ENSOs mostly just move heat energy around, so one doesn’t expect them to change OHC over the long term, but they don’t easily fit the weather-or-climate model.
Anyway, it seems like some (more, tamino ha done some) posts on the periodicities and durations of various processes might lead to a better categorization than “weather, not climate” to help explain this to people.
luminous beauty // January 3, 2009 at 8:37 pm
I nominate Horace-Bénédict de Saussure as the father of modern climatology.
luminous beauty // January 3, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Although I could be convinced to push it back to Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit.
Gareth // January 3, 2009 at 8:46 pm
You need to get yourself a Gravatar.
I prefer beagle ears…
Kipp Alpert // January 3, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Richard Steckis: If you want to take my argument out of context,and then apply it to what we were saying it sounds dumb. Isn’t it intellectually dishonest to do this. You were saying, for several hundred years medicine has been around, and climate science is only 100 years old. I said that your comment is an invalid argument. One hundred years ago Doctors stopped bloodletting and in 1820, the understanding of trace gases started. Which is not the point anyway. The quality of Science
now, is so far ahead of medicine. KIPP
Gareth // January 3, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Climate and weather:
The interesting thing here is that climate change is expressed through weather events. You can classify those events and their characteristics in many ways, as John Mashey suggests, but ultimately the change is delivered by the weather that we experience.
Stu Ostro at The Weather Channel argues, in “A connection between global warming and synoptic meteorology” (35MB PDF) and in his WC blog posts, that evidence of warming’s impact on the atmosphere and the behaviour of weather systems can already be seen - specifically in the occurrence and behaviour of anomalous high pressure systems in the upper atmosphere. These can have significant effects on the weather we experience, as Stu’s long (388 slide!) presentation demonstrates.
The orthodox view is that no single weather event can be attributed directly to global warming. Ostro’s argument suggests that if warming is already directly affecting synoptics, then that needs to be rethought. After all, if there’s more heat in the system, you might expect its behaviour to change…
Ray Ladbury // January 3, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Actually, I think Steckis has revealed a lot about why he is a denialist–he doesn’t trust empirical evidence. There’s a long history of such rationalistic thought going back at least to Plato and Socrates. All I can say is that rationalism never put a man on the moon or food on a previously empty plate. Moreover, not all mathematicians believe mathematics is purely rationalistic. Godel believed it was an empirical study, and that was one motivation for his Incompleteness Theorem. Moreover, there is some evidence that group theory is in some sense empirical, and may have a very deep relationship to the topology of spacetime.
Steckis, I’ve no problem with rationalism, nor with collectivism. Hell, not even with divine revelation if their scripture ends at their own nose. My problems begin when folks say their rationalism or collected wisdom or revealed wisdom trumps empirical fact. If that makes me a neoempiricist, I can live with that–though I prefer “proud., card-carrying member of the reality-based community.”
Ray Ladbury // January 3, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Gareth, Re: climate and weather. The thing is that the energy in the system still varies. It’s just that there is pretty much always more energy than there would have been with less CO2.
JCH // January 3, 2009 at 11:16 pm
When this graph went mostly red bars, some speculated that it was a sign of AGW. Then three years of blue showed up and a study announced the oscillation was still naturally determined. During the three years of blue bars perennial ice continued its decline. It should have increased.
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/images/essays/atmosphere/A5.png
Is this one close to provable climate change?
Deech56 // January 3, 2009 at 11:41 pm
RE: Barton Paul Levenson // January 3, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Sorry for going OT, Tamino. BPL - some of the effort in which I am involved is to develop products to mitigate intestinal damage due to radiation exposure. Our hope is that some of these products would also have utility in IBD. My thoughts and prayers are with you, but for what it’s worth, so is some part of my professional life. What you describe indicates both the progress that has been made, and the frustration we all have at the considerable hurdles that remain.
RE: Richard Steckis // January 3, 2009 at 1:35 pm
I am responding to the effort to somehow differentiate climatology from other disciplines, whether based on a perceived newness of the science and the way data are collected. Others are better versed in the philosophy of science and have responded far more eloquently than I could.
Philippe Chantreau // January 4, 2009 at 2:37 am
Barton, I don’t care about their humors, so long as they keep their hands off of me. The truth is that until medicine became scientific, there was no evidence for (or against) any of the stuff “doctors” were doing. The very concept of evidence-based practice was somewhat lacking. Sometimes it worked, and the patient might have fared just as well without any intervention. Often it did not work and they did not know why. Most of the time, what they did made little or no difference, except for placebo effect and emotional relief.
I’ll concede that some actually had good knowledge of medicinal plants and that may have been the only way to make a difference.
However, good nursing practices were more likely to yield favorable outcomes than many of the “treatments.” The remarkable results obtained by Florence Nightingale demonstrate as much.
I’ll add that, the big difference between the plague in the middle ages and AIDS in the 80’s was the attitude. AIDS was a problem approached scientifically. The plague, well, these were different times.
So, no suction cups, bleeding or dubious concotions for me, thanks :-)
dhogaza // January 4, 2009 at 4:08 am
BPL, I know a couple of people with Crohn’s, and want to express my sympathy and hope that you can control it and thrive. Kick ass, dude :)
Richard Steckis // January 4, 2009 at 4:59 am
Dhogaza:
“On the other hand, you, like most science denialists, seem to fear what an empirical approach to learning about the world has taught us about climate, and what adding CO2 to the atmosphere does to climate over time”
There you go. Dhogaza detemining for me what I am. I am now a science denialist. Not just a climate denialist. What next? Where does denialism go from here?
I thought Bozo was being a bit harsh on you. Now I know it was being too kind to you.
Richard Steckis // January 4, 2009 at 5:08 am
Ray Ladbury:
“Actually, I think Steckis has revealed a lot about why he is a denialist–he doesn’t trust empirical evidence. There’s a long history of such rationalistic thought going back at least to Plato and Socrates. All I can say is that rationalism never put a man on the moon or food on a previously empty plate”
Ray is another that speaks for me. I am a denialist. Ray. A denialist of what.? Did I say I don’t trust empirical evidence? Point that out to me please. I said that empiricism in only one of the paths to knowledge. I never said any other path to knowledge trumps empiricism. Prove that I did.
Again. You, like Dhogaza, have this propensity to put words into people’s mouths and then attack them on what is your paradigm and not theirs.
EliRabett // January 4, 2009 at 5:18 am
Empiricism is stamp collecting, you need models (and yes, Virginia, theories are models) to understand why things work. Flim flammers can sell any strange theory to an empiricist who lacks a theoretical background, which is why engineers are prone to stupidities .
Philippe Chantreau // January 4, 2009 at 6:29 am
Barton, I’ll join Dhog and wish you the best recovery and best al around. Happy new year!
michel // January 4, 2009 at 8:37 am
But, notice, people who think the denialist/skeptic distinction is useful are not coming up with judgments about the people on the list.
And no-one has cited a list of people who are skeptics without being denialists.
Is it because among the doubters there are no honorable and reasonable skeptics, but only denialists? Is it because we know the truth, the science is settled, and only the stupid or corrupt do not accept it?
Ray Ladbury // January 4, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Steckis, Given your track record here, denialist is kind. And if you are allowed to reduce my entire philosophy to a single word without even doing me the courtesy of reading my posts, I think my treatment of yours is kind by comparison. I do at least read through yours.
Neven // January 4, 2009 at 2:29 pm
In my terminology Richard Steckis (and I have been reading his posts for quite a while now) would be one of the Misinformed. But by persisting in his erroneous position and posting about it continually he also falls more and more into the category of Misinformant.
This of course is a shame, because if he turns out to be wrong in his beliefs his moral position will be much worse than if say a dhogaza is wrong in his beliefs.
If I would be an anti-AGW adherent and after a year or 10 it would turn out that AGW is real and has major consequences for large numbers of people I would feel really bad. Not only because I had been falsely believing something for so long, but especially because of the fact that due to my misinformedness I actually helped spreading the misinformation causing other people to stick to their habits as usual.
You see, Richard Steckis, a lot of people read what you write and they believe it because they have this craving for a psychological status quo, in which they are not responsible for their actions and so do not have to change anything they do. You indirectly contribute to inaction.
I would feel awful if I’d had actively spreaded misinformation about such an important subject as Global Warming, even though I was misguided myself. Perhaps I would even have a hard time living with myself.
b_sharp // January 4, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Just a quite quote about Popper and falsification from a Philosopher of Science, John Wilkins. It was written in regard to Intelligent Design (ID) but I believe the following reflects his ideas about how to define science in general.
This is just to note that Popper’s falsifiability is not the be all and end all criterion of science.
Hank Roberts // January 4, 2009 at 4:39 pm
> Lakatos
He was, I think, the cutting edge on this question when I was in school tho’ I’m sure he’s history by now. I think I was paraphrasing my recollection of his point of view over at RC recently when I wrote:
> To the extent any core research program’s
> central idea isn’t sufficient, anomalies will be
> discovered while doing research around it.
> When investigated, when such anomalies
> can’t be explained under the old facts, they
> have to be wrung out to discover new facts.
> New facts that eventually will suggest new
> core ideas around which new research begins
> to be organized.
You need to move past Popper and Kuhn to look at how research really works, beyond the individual scientist working alone — work does organize around a main idea and worry at the edges of it, but the main idea is always missing something, so the loose ends accumulate, and good research doesn’t try to hide loose ends, it tries to figure out what they imply, first by improving the old main idea and, eventually, by replacing it with a new one, and a good researcher may go through this repeatedly. An extreme example would be the steps going from Earth as center of the universe, to Sun, to the galaxy surrounded by fuzzy nebulae, to “island universes” scattered across space, to wherever we were yesterday. Each still works for a limited range of actual practical questions but not for the loose ends.
Ian Forrester // January 4, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Michel, all of the people on your list can be described as AGW deniers. Hardly surprising that an AGW denier supporter such as your self would only list deniers.
Note they may not deny all aspects of AGW but they certainly use their supposed position of “authority” to promote the denier cause.
As far as skeptics go most of the AGW scientists and people knowledgeable about the subject will most likely be classified as skeptical since they will have made the effort to study the science and confirm what they have read.
I, for one, would call myself a skeptic and I would assume that most scientists would do so also.
Your question just shows that you do not understand the difference even though it was spelled out to you in my previous post.
The deniers are the ones who treat the science as a religion, which is the exact opposite of what they are preaching.
Hank Roberts // January 4, 2009 at 8:26 pm
This may help:
http://www.desmogblog.com/new-list-climate-quibblers-paid-deniers-dead-guys-and-ill-informed-fellow-travellers
michel // January 4, 2009 at 8:39 pm
OK, Ian, fine. Can you then name one or two people who are not (yet) convinced by the AGW hypothesis, but who are also not deniers?
luminous beauty // January 4, 2009 at 9:57 pm
michel,
It might help to define the stages of global warming denial:
1.) Global warming isn’t happening.
2.) It’s happening but it is natural.
3.) There’s some anthropogenic component, but it is insignificant.
4.) Yes, the anthropogenic component is dominant, but the eventual effect won’t be much.
5.) Yes, the effects will be substantial, but mostly beneficial, and we can easily adapt to the negative ones.
6.) Yes, the effects will be mostly catastrophic beyond civilization’s capability to adapt, but there’s nothing that can be done.
7.) There are things that could have been done, but we’ve dithered for so long it’s too late, and the scientists are to blame for not convincing us of the risks we were facing.
cce // January 4, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Philippe,
I’m trying to construct arguments with few “yeah, but . . .” comebacks.
Skeptics allege that the warming of the troposophere is “natural.” The cooling of the lower stratosphere is primarily the result of ozone depletion. (The cooling of the upper stratosphere is about 50/50 ozone loss/co2 increase). The tropopause height increase would be the result of tropospheric warming and (lower) stratospheric cooling, so all a skeptic needs to do is blame tropospheric warming on whatever pet theory of the moment, and then blame stratospheric cooling on ozone loss (or the “volcanic step change” — however that’s supposed to work).
The argument would be a lot easier if we weren’t destroying so many things at once.
John Mashey // January 4, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Consider a chart in which:
X = professed belief in likelihood that AGW theory is correct, from 0.0 to 1.0
Y = level of knowledge from -5 to 10, 0 meaning: really knows little, 6 means publishing professional climate scientist, -1 means simple wrong, -5 means complex wrong.
A rational skeptic might start around (.5, 0), and as they learn more (?, 2) they are likely to move to the right, i.e., (.9+, 2).
Some people might go directly to (1.0, 0) (i.e., believe in AGW without understanding).
Others go to (0.0, 0) quickly, and then then often end up at (0.0, -1:-2) (typical amateur denier), and if become a professional denialist may reach (0.0, -3:-5).
As for “skeptic-but-not-denier”, here are two examples of people I’ve heard talk, although of course they are both classic skeptics, not deniers-claiming-to-be-classic-skeptics, and they both got convinced:
Some scientists remained “not yet convinced” in the mid-1990s, i.e., they thought that some alternate explanations were not yet ruled out.
For example, here is someone who was a legitimate, expert “skeptic, but not denier” in the early 1990s:
–Professor Ronald Prinn, MIT Atmospheric Science, a Lead Author on IPCC AR4. He heads the MIT Center for Global Change Science, which includes Richard Lindzen.
I was especially glad to finally hear him, as he moderated a famous debate between Stephen Schneider and Richard Lindzen in 1990, and about 10 years ago, he thought the scientific evidence on AGW was still “equivocal”. MIT World references a video akin to the talk I heard. He describes changing his mind, as he is certainly no longer equivocal. I recommend his video especially for his discussions on uncertainty.
But let’s try a non-expert and see how he approached the problem:
Peter Darbee, CEO of Pacific Gas and Electric (very large utility in Central/Northern California).
This describes the way a nontechnical, but smart, person learns climate issues.
“After he became CEO in January 2005, Darbee understood that he needed to broaden his horizons. But when it came to global warming, he wasn’t sure what to think.
“I didn’t have a sound basis for reaching a decision,” Darbee said.
So, in typically methodical fashion, he called in a variety of experts from both sides of the global-warming debate and asked them to make their best case, pro or con. ”
The reason it’s hard to find “skeptic-but-not-denier” is that if a classicl skeptic cares about the issue, they go spend some effort to understand. For some people, there are various non-science reasons to gravitate to and stay there.
Otherwise, while there can be lots of people at (.5,0), that’s not a stable position in the face of increasing knowledge.
Neven // January 4, 2009 at 11:08 pm
Ian Forrester said: “The deniers are the ones who treat the science as a religion, which is the exact opposite of what they are preaching.”
By using words like deniers or denialists you throw everyone who questions the AGW-thesis on a big heap, making that movement stronger instead of weaker. But it’s not a homogeneous group. Like I said it consists of a lot of Misinformed and a few Misinformants.
Now why would anyone be a Misinformant? What could his motives be? I think there are several types of Misinformant with different motives.
a) One that truly believes in the misinformation he’s spreading because it complies with everything he stands for or because he always chooses the conspiracy side of things. This type is the Misinformed turned Misinformant. Richard Steckis is a good example, or Rod B. He’s so misinformed that he actually starts spreading the misinformation on blogs like these which probably gratifies him psychologically (the same is the case for many on the ‘alarmed’ side, such as me).
b) One that truly believes in the misinformation he’s spreading just like type a) but also because it brings him certain advantages. These are the bigger Misinformants: Lord Monckton for instance has in my view megalomaniac tendencies. I think he’s simply in love with himself and his intelligence and addicted to the attention of people who look up to him. Or look at the way Anthony Watts keeps his visitors up-to-date about how many page views his site has (in my view he gets a big kick out of that which motivates him more than his belief in the misinformation).
c) The true Misinformant, one that deliberately spreads disinformation and knows he’s doing so (for the money). Fred Singer comes to mind. To mine at least, after seeing him talk with that smirk on his face. Perhaps I’m wrong, it’s just a feeling.
I’m a nobody with no scientific background whatsoever, so please tell me if my texts are inappropriate here, or redundant. I’m just interested in the PR-side of things and how to deal with the Misinformed/ants. I think shooting at first sight is a counterproductive approach. I would keep harping on the fact, without insulting, that they are misinformed and that they should do more research. Otherwise you will only force them to be strengthened in their belief in the misinformation. People who feel insulted don’t change their mind easily.
edit: Excellent posts by luminous beauty and John Mashey. It complements perfectly what I’ve written. By asking a Misinformed person about the seven stages of global warming discussion you get a feel for where he or she stands, how misinformed he or she is.
Ray Ladbury // January 4, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Michel, In order for someone to don the mantle of skeptic in their rejection of anthropogenic causation of climate, they must either a) be ignorant of the mountain of evidence favoring the proposition, but actively trying to learn about it; or b)acknowledge the strong evidence favoring the proposition but offer an alternative explanation of ALL that evidence. Of those on your list Pielke the Elder might be more on the skeptic side–except he accepts that anthropogenic CO2 is changing the climate. So does Christie, Spencer and Lindzen for that matter. They merely dispute the severity of the threat. Where they fall short of the ideal of skeptic is in failing to acknowledge the strong evidence for a sensitivity of 2.5 degrees per doubling or higher.
Not sure where Lucia stands, really. She really is not a climate expert, and I haven’t seen that much evidence that she’s tried to learn the physics.
The rest are deep, deep in denial.
TCOisbanned? // January 5, 2009 at 12:10 am
Ray, I think that beeing steeped in a field is helpful. And I despise the types who come in guns blazing without having any background on even the state of knowledge/debate. However, I’ve also seen cases where knowledge of some technical aspects was not required to argue/analyze a given area. I had some questions/probing for Ross McIntyre on aspects of PCA…and he tried to give me a tutorial on the overall subject’s basics. However, my question did not turn on those basics and as such his response was non-responsive.
TCOisbanned? // January 5, 2009 at 12:13 am
I quite enjoyed the interchange that Steve M. had with the spelunkers. I could tell that he was trying to understand the area, rather than gun blazing. He had an initial hypothesis. But he was hypothesis testing and open to it failing. And the replies and suggestions from the professionals were very much on target. So he learned something and actually still made some decent insights. It was a cool science exchange. Thinks should be like that more.
dhogaza // January 5, 2009 at 12:23 am
I think Spencer’s crossed the line in the last year+, as he apparently no longer accepts the fact that the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is due to our burning fossil fuels.
And when he writes for a non-technical audience, he’s perfectly willing to trot out the standard denialist arguments.
counters // January 5, 2009 at 2:35 am
“And when he writes for a non-technical audience, he’s perfectly willing to trot out the standard denialist arguments.”
Dhogaza, you hit the nail on the head. We obviously can’t read people’s minds, but we can gain insight into their motives by analyzing their behavior. Many “skeptical” bloggers author posts featuring not-so-accurate analyses (as deconstructed in posts here, at RC, and elsewhere), and subsequently heavily moderate the comments to those posts. However, it’s the comments skeptical of the analysis that get the most moderation - it’s much rarer to find moderation of comments making completely unfounded or tangential assertions.
When a skeptic willingly omits data while making an argument or willingly obfuscates an important (and often damning) point - particularly when their audience is the lay or otherwise uninformed - they cross a line, and a nomenclature shift is warranted.
TCOisbanned? // January 5, 2009 at 3:16 am
I have found moderation of comments to be heavier on warmer sites than on denier sites. Most of the denier sites allow instant posting. Yeah there may be some censorship but at least you can get some stuff in. At RC and here there is pre-apporval of comments and any of my posts with snarky comments about Jolliffe get deleted.
[Response: Expect moderation here to continue to be even more severe. I'm tired of debating stupid ideas like "CO2 increase may not be due to human activity" and "there's a cooling trend over the last 10 years."
Perhaps "Most denier sites allow instant posting" because it serves their purpose, since obfuscation is their goal.]
dhogaza // January 5, 2009 at 4:01 am
Thinks should you learn to speakee more English, yes.
McI “learn anything”, in the sense that he might change his mind about IMPORTANT science.
Even you aren’t dumb enough to believe that. You’re grasping at a nanometer straw here.
Richard Steckis // January 5, 2009 at 4:10 am
Dhogaza:
“I think Spencer’s crossed the line in the last year+, as he apparently no longer accepts the fact that the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is due to our burning fossil fuels.”
I haven’t read what he said but with your propensity to put words into people’s mouths I would take your assessment with a grain of salt.
I have looked at 13C/12C stable isotope data for atmospheric carbon and the result was that the regression slopes between co2 over time and delta13C over time are significantly different. This indicates that there may be an additional source of co2 that is non-anthropogenic in nature.
[Response: Don't utterly ruin your reputation by crossing "the threshold."
There are many sources of CO2 that are non-anthropogenic, and they tend to be sinks as well. But CO2 varied only by a tiny fraction compared to modern increase, over the entire course of the holocene. The cause of CO2 increase is anthropogenic emissions, and the net increase is only about half of our emissions, indicating that the entire rest of the planetary carbon cycle has been acting as a net sink -- we've dumped enough CO2 into the atmosphere to increase it by nearly 70% over pre-industrial levels, but the uptake by other carbon reservoirs has reduced the net anthropogenic increase to only about 35%.
This is one of those "acid tests" for denialism. If you dispute that humans are the reason for dramatic CO2 increase, then you're not a skeptic, you're a denialist.]
Richard Steckis // January 5, 2009 at 4:20 am
To clarify. I said “may be” not “is”.
Neven. I hope I do have influence. I am a skeptic not a denier. If the evidence for AGW is incontrovertible then I will accept it. At the moment it is not and not even close.
[Response: Not even close? You are the one who is "not even close."]
Neven // January 5, 2009 at 4:29 am
Okay, I did some reading on WUWT and its comment sections (+ the comments by trolls in Deltoid’s article on December 30th) and maybe Denialist is the right term after all. I’m not smart but the magnitude of ignorance displayed by the misinformed is mind-staggering.
Sorry about all the nonsense I posted. :-(
Philippe Chantreau // January 5, 2009 at 4:48 am
CCE,
Deniers tend to listen only to what pleases them, but go ahead and argue, by all means.
I believe that the argument is wrong because Ozone depletion can not account for the stratospheric cooling at the higher altitudes. O3 is most relevant in the lower stratosphere, where it absorbs UV and also acts as a GH gas (absorbs IR). At higher altitudes, it radiates IR but is not nearly as much an influence as CO2. Even if O3 depletion could account for all the lower stratospheric cooling (which I’m not sure about but seriously doubt) then you’re still out of an explanation for cooling in the 40-50km layer, where CO2 is especially relevant (look again at the Iacono and Clough graph). Fig 4 on the ESPERE page (graph from Ramaswamy et al, 2001) shows significant cooling at these altitudes.
Furthermore, I seem to recall from an RC post that cooling/O3 depletion is a feedback loop, so if it is going to be the sole factor considered, you still need something to drive it. CFCs have been banned for a while.
Stratospheric chemistry/radiation budget is exquisitely complex and I am far from expertise, so I’d say you could do more digging before launching an argument. Perhaps Hank could find us some pointers. Still , it is silly to argue that CO2 is not going to cool the stratosphere, that’s arguing with physics.
Not that it can stop our deniers, however. The ever so funny Sallie Baliunas argued back in the days that O3 was not being depleted by CFCs and that banning them would cost “trillions.” Pretty scary number. Then came Crutzen/Molina/Sherwood. Now she says that O3 depletion is causing all the worries with the climate or some other nonsense.
dhogaza // January 5, 2009 at 5:06 am
But Spencer, in the last year, has not so qualified his statements.
Before you defend him, you might actually consider READING WTF HE ACTUALLY HAS WRITTEN?
Good grief.
dhogaza // January 5, 2009 at 5:08 am
Nah, no need to be sorry, you’ve just been trying to assert your belief in the basic honesty and goodness of the mass of humanity.
It’s not your fault that denialists are working hard to disprove your belief …
dhogaza // January 5, 2009 at 5:10 am
Not a chance in a rat’s ass. You don’t lie well enough to be useful to the denialist side. Your lies are too obvious to be likely to sway anyone who accepts science over the RWingnut drivel you spew here.
Philippe Chantreau // January 5, 2009 at 5:21 am
You can also ask, what of the cooling at even higher altitudes, in the 50-80 km range, or even up to the ionosphere? O3 can not be responsible for that. See Beig et al (2006) and Lastovicka et al (2006), which is referenced in this RC post:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/11/the-sky-is-falling/
TCOisbanned? // January 5, 2009 at 5:25 am
Tammy: unfortunately both CA and OM mix up the issue of education/indoctrination/promotion with the idea of noodling things around. I still prefer open comments. Look at VC. They allow instant comments and are probably the smartest popular blog on the net.
Philippe Chantreau // January 5, 2009 at 5:25 am
Good reading and references here too, but somewhat dated:
http://www.atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca/SPARC//News17/ReportTropopWorkshopApril2001/17Haynes_Shepherd.html
TCOisbanned? // January 5, 2009 at 5:27 am
Oh, and I’m all for blowing off the idiots who babble about CO2 not coming from coal or whatever. But we need to preserve the freedom to drill down into things. If this becomes a herr doktor professor site with lecturing from on high and no truck with commenters who challenge the teacher, then I’m out of here.
Neven // January 5, 2009 at 5:58 am
Richard Steckis,
let’s suppose you do have influence. Let’s also suppose that in a few years’ time you turn out to be wrong in your skepticism. How would you feel then about your continuously expressing this ’skepticism’ and thus influencing people in staying inactive for a little while longer until there is incontrovertible evidence, meaning consequences so big there is no more room for denial (such as for instance an ice-free Arctic in summer)? Would you at all feel bad/responsible about that?
michel // January 5, 2009 at 11:42 am
It is very helpful to know that Roger Pielke Snr counts as a non-denialist skeptic, because it enables one to put together a list of skeptical positions which one can take without being called a denialist. Here are some of Roger’s views, clipped from his blog:
Pielke endorses Lucia’s work on the IPCC predictions.
So, to conclude, if we still agree that Pielke is not a denialist, the Pielke case seems to show that you can be an honest non-denialist skeptic, and still think that the surface station record is warm-biased, the IPCC models have over predicted warming, Lucia’s work is valid, warming has stopped for over 7 years, the rate of increase of warming is not accelerating, and CO2 is not a dominant component of human climate change forcing. And not least, you can also think that the science is not settled - our understanding of the role of natural and human forcings is limited.
Now all we need to do is stop accusing people of being ‘in denial’ or ‘denialists’ when they assert these propositions.
[Response: We should do no such thing, because they *are* in denial. The "warming has stopped for over 7 years," speaks volumes about Pielke's willingness to lay claim to ludicrous misinformation. "IPCC models overpredict warming" is a theme on which Pielke has been an especially egregrious misniformant.
And statements like "the science is not settled - our understanding of the role of natural and human forcings is limited" is a meaningless tautology. Of course our understanding is limited, and it always will be, but the limitations do *not* include the warming effect of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, or the astounding human-induced increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, or the sizeable warming observed over the last many decades, or the fact that climate models have done an excellent job predicting the long-term large-scale course of climate change.]
John Cross // January 5, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Richard Steckis :
Having read Spencer’s comments, I would say that Dhogaza got it pretty much right. He does begin by saying that he knows that this is not accepted by most scientists and puts other weasel words in there but that is what he is saying.
In regards to who or what is responsible for the increase of CO2, I think that Tamino’s response is adequate, but I am used to arguing this point and let me put my own interpretation on it.
There are two measurements that we know fairly accurately in regards to CO2. We have a good idea of the level of CO2 in the atmosphere and we have good production and consumption figures for oil, gas and coal. As Tamino points out above, these numbers tell us that we produce about twice what shows up in the atmosphere.
Now, lets imagine what would happen if we suddenly produced no anthropogenic CO2, i.e. everything stopped at midnight! What would you expect the levels to do.
Here is an analogy I like to use. Imagine the atmosphere as a bank account and the CO2 in it as the money in the bank account. There are a number of owners of the bank account each of who can put in or take out money as they wish (these represent the various sources and sinks of CO2).
The bank account starts at $100 and over the year, we put in $7 (and of course others put in and take out various amounts). At the end of the year the balance is $103. The question is what would the balance be if we did not put in our $7?
Keep in mind that any answer that you provide must be applicable back in the real world of sources and sinks.
Regards,
John
Ray Ladbury // January 5, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Michel,
When I said Pielke Sr. is not a denialist, what I meant is that he acknowledges that anthropogenic CO2 is having an effect. That doesn’t mean that I in any way endorse his line of argument. I would not say he has a deep understanding of the physical mechanisms behind greenhouse warming. It is, however, possible to have a rational discussion with him about the subject without him denigrating the integrity or abilities of climate scientists. He does not simply dismiss the evidence, but he will do some rather amazing tap dances to “reinterpret” it.
I am reluctant to put words into Roger’s mouth, but I think that he really fundamentally distrusts the physics. He seems very anxious to try and draw conclusions based on short time series and limited datasets. In his mind, I think he is desperate to keep society from avoiding what he thinks of as a mistake. However, if you are not guided by the physics, I’m not sure what you take as your guide, especially with a system as noisy as climate.
Hank Roberts // January 5, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Speaking of stupid, Tamino, this piece is worth a look. It’s lambasting one of those “some experts say world is round, others differ” articles in the NYT . It’s about economic models, but it’s really about ignoring well known information:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/01/woefully-misleading-piece-on-value-at.html
“… Again, just plain wrong. Use of financial data series over long periods of time, as we said above, have repeatedly confirmed what Mandelbrot said: the risks are simply not normally distributed. More data will not fix this intrinsic failing.
By neglecting to expose this basic issue, the piece comes off as duelling experts, and with the noisiest critic of VaR, Nassim Nicolas Taleb, dismissive and not prone to explanation, the defenders get far more air time and come off sounding far more reasonable….”
Barton Paul Levenson // January 5, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Deech, Dhogaza, Philippe, thank you for your good wishes. I appreciate it.
[Response: I'll add my best wishes also, which I've been negligent to mention. Your contributions here (and elsewhere) are of inestimable value.]
george // January 5, 2009 at 4:52 pm
I am curious just what analysis that is based on.
Lucia has certainly not demonstrated that. Her analysis shows error bars on all the trends (for every data set) which provide for the possibility that warming has continued since 2001.
They certainly do not allow one to say that “global warming has stopped …over 7 years using lower tropospheric data”
See, for example IPCC Projections Continue to Falsify
Even if her claim that “the IPCC projections or 2C/century still falsifies to p=95% (α=5%)” is correct**, that claim does not equate to the claim that “global warming has stopped … over 7 years using lower tropospheric data”.
So, apparently, RP Sr has some other source that he is relying on for this absolute claim that “global warming has stopped”.
** Tamino has indicated problems with her noise analysis and others (see this Real Climate post) have indicated problems with her method of determining whether real world measured trends are consistent with IPCC (model run) projections.
luminous beauty // January 5, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Lucia’s ‘work’ is garbage.
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/2008-temp-update.jpg
The stupidity, it burns!
[Response: Those interested in a bit more context about that graph can read Eli Rabett's latest post.]
Dave D // January 5, 2009 at 10:25 pm
I am a first time visitor here, though I do visit Digital Diatribes and WUWT from time to time, but I do have several observations:
1) This article and tone is very negative, which I believe makes it difficult to make points or “teach” any “uninformed” laypeople. It sounds as if I entered in the middle of a war, so this may not be telling of your normal publications.
2) There is also an implication, whether deliberate or not, that John Q Public or Non Scientists are not quite a bright as the Scientific Community. Do Scientists REALLY believe that position? In my life some (25%) of the the smartest people I have known actually had PhD’s, which is about roughly double the percentage of professional people I know who have earned PhD’s… None of them thought this made them smarter than those of us without.
3) My only real comment on content: I believe that starting the graphs as you’ve done from 1880 and eliminating the preceeding several hundred years where the Global Temperature had decades of sustained temperatures above the last 30 years is potentially as manipulative as you have accused the other side of being. Or do you suscribe to the position that the Warm Period that saw colonization of Greenland and a Flourishing Europe did not happen? To my best efforts of research, even with the newest winter strain hybrids of wheat, we can still not get germination in Greenfield, which did occur less than 600 years ago for more than a century. This certainly also preceded Industrialization and CO2 generation, beyond fires and natural causes.
Again, not an expert, just trying to help you shape your thoughts and prompt some open discussion. While this comment comes under the heading of “criticism”, by avoiding words like stupid and fool, I believe it falls well short of an “attack” and I hope I will be welcome to come and read more of your content again. Cheers!
[Response: Where did you get that patently false information about "the preceeding several hundred years where the Global Temperature had decades of sustained temperatures above the last 30 years"? You've been lied to.
These graphs start at 1880 because that's when the selected data set begins, and I didn't leave any of it out.
Prior to the mid-to-late 19th century, we don't have enough thermometer records to estimate global temperature effectively. But long thermometer records with limited geographical coverage flatly contradict your claim. And, all credible temperature reconstructions by proxy data also contradict it; modern temperatures are a lot warmer than what's existed for 2,000 years or so. Study this.]
Ray Ladbury // January 5, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Anonymous on Eli’s blog stated something I’ve been alluding to: “I think the primary problem is the belief that “blog science” is real science. It’s not. It does not have any of the built in checks that publication in the peer reviewed journals has.”
The problem is that somebody posts something on McFraudit or Blackboard or elsewhere and receives accolades of the chorus and feels like they’ve accomplished something. Then they take their show on the road to the Lay Science sites and more “Oohs!” and “Ahhs!”. Then they make the mistake of posting on a site frequented by the scientifically literate and have their head handed to them on a plate. Now, an intelligent person might learn from this and actually try to understand the science. A wily person might learn to avoid the scientifically literate. And then there are the folks who just can’t quite resist reaching into the lawnmower blades one more time…
Hank Roberts // January 5, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Simple test: take a string out of a posting like this one from “Dave D” (what is it about this name+initial pattern that seems so often to be reposting stuff from blogs? Coincidence?)
Anyhow, take this:
1880 and eliminating the preceeding several hundred years where the Global Temperature had decades of sustained temperatures above the last 30 years
Paste it into Google Scholar. See what you get.
Take the exact same text, paste it into ordinary Google. What pops to the top?
There’s the problem.
John Mashey // January 6, 2009 at 4:02 am
re: Moderation
In my experience [which goes back to the mid-1980s on USENET], the signal-to-noise-ratio of any unmoderated newsgroup/blog eventually approaches zero.
Such often start out with relatively small groups of people, with a good mixture of knowledgable people and others who really want to learn.
But, sooner or later, if one gets “discovered”, it gets overrun with people whose desire to write is greater than their expertise. Even a useful thread immediately gets clobbered with silly comments, to the point where they just aren’t worth reading. At least USENET newsreaders long supported killfiles :-)
Then, most of the more knowledgable people go somewhere else.
Even if a moderator moderates very lightly, the fact that it happens at all tends to improve S/N greatly.
michel // January 6, 2009 at 8:26 am
Ray, its a reasonable view on Roger Pielke, so agreed on that. He may be mistaken, but to call him a denialist is simply ridiculous. He’s arrived at a position as a result of rational thought and weighing the evidence.
McIntyre also cannot be called a denialist. He is skeptical about the Hockey Stick and its proponents of course, but he does not seem particularly sceptical about AGW otherwise, he is not opposed to measures to limit CO2 increases, nor is he sceptical about proxy use in general. Sometimes he seems right and sometimes wrong, but most of us are like that. If McIntyre is a denialist, the term is being used to cover any dissent from any detail of the hypothesis, even non central ones, and perhaps also to cover any criticism of work done by leading personalities in the movement. This would make it a totally unhelpful term. One has to be able to take a different view of bristle cone pines and PCA without being in denial!
Lucia is definitely not in denial. Again, you can argue whether she is right or wrong, but its evidence based stuff, she is a moderate warmer in terms of overall position, and she’s careful to restrict her subject to the question of comparing observations to forecasts.
Spencer and Christy also do not feel like denialists to me. Spencer has views on clouds and water vapour which are different from the consensus, but they are rationally arrived at, and the subject of feedback is indeed as important as he says. Personally, I am undecided on that and consequently on climate sensitivity. Does that make me a denialist? Again, if so, the term has become useless.
We keep coming back to this issue of the status of the hypothesis. If it really is like smoking then its very hard to understand anyone not accepting it based on the evidence, and then the use of the term denialist is appropriate. If its more like cholesterol/heart disease, then non-acceptance is unpopular, but understandable. The trouble is, you can’t settle which it is like by calling people names, and the further difficulty is that if people feel its like the second, then calling them denialists will alienate and not convince them.
John M makes a very sensible point about moderation. WUWT found that too. Its a universal experience of open blogs.
Hank Roberts // January 6, 2009 at 9:00 am
Also, USENET NEWS _readers_ mostly understand and support killfiles. Anyone who does respond to trolls, quoting them or flaming them or both, also likely is promptly killfiled by those determined to focus.
It’s an answer to the tragedy of the commons in one limited sense; I’ve seen conversations in science threads go on with maybe one percent of the readers participating, cheerfully having killfiled the 99 percent who are throwing crap on the walls and barfing all around them.
Never had any tool quite like that since and I miss it. I still do go to newsgroups for real focused questions sometimes, with telnet; but my ISP switched to tin from nn, dagnabbit. Not so good any more.
But it takes real self-control on everyone’s part to stay focused know there’s a ghostly frat initiation/crapfest going on all around you and just killfile any user and kill any thread to avoid it. Anyone who slips one time and participates in the noise instead of the content gets killfiled by those with zero tolerance.
My idea of heaven.
Killfile for blogs works, okay, but without that base of common sense the noise level stays high.
Still, I encourage blog owners to use it:
killfile for Greasemonkey
Jul 3, 2008 … Provides a killfile for certain blogs. Covers livejournal, haloscan comments, most typepad blogs, most blogspot blogs, scienceblogs.com, …
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/4107
Barton Paul Levenson // January 6, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Thanks, Tamino. :)
Ray Ladbury // January 6, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Michel,
I would suggest that the minimum criteria to get out of the denialist bin would be the following:
1)Recognition of the exceptionally strong warming trend in progress
2)Recognition of the evidence favoring anthropogenic CO2 as A SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTOR to that warming
3)Recognition of the strong consensus that exists as to 2 and 1 and that this is not an unreasonable interpretation given the state of the science.
4)Recognition that significant climate change will likely mean significant risks to global infrastructure that will need to be mitigated.
5)Recognition that uncertainties in feedbacks could aggravate as well as alleviate the risks due to climate change.
Note that the above criteria do not preclude the existence of an unanticipated negative feedback that mitigates climate risk–e.g. Lindzen’s Iris, although there’s no real evidence favoring this possibility. They also allow some wiggle room for parameters like CO2 sensitivity. Manabe, while well within the consensus, favors a low sensitivity and thinks concern may be greater than is warranted. It’s a minority opinion, bot not unreasonable. One can also argue about the appropriate level of effort to be put into mitigation–ala Nordhaus, although, I think Lomborg crosses the line by ignoring/denying some of the risks.
Unfortunately, most of the folks you’ve listed fall a bit short on at least some of the criteria I’ve listed above, and I would contend all of them are a bit short on understanding of the mechanisms of climate change. I’ve also noticed a tendency of many who consider themselves skeptics to sieze on one, tiny aspect of the mountain of evidence for climate change, challenge the interpretation and think they’ve “falsified” the problem away. In so doing they ignore the mountain of evidendce. McI is so prone to this and to calumny that I just can’t read him. The nugget of understanding I might come away is simply not worth the gallon of vitriol I would have to swallow.
On the subject of sensitivity, it is useful to look at how the number is constrained by the evidence and at the range of values used in various climate models. James Annan’s work is among the most understandable on this issue. It is virtually impossible to get a climate model to look anything like Earth with a sensitivity less than 2 degrees C. Moreover, the evidence you have to ignore to get a reasonable probability of a sensitivity that low is the same evidence that precludes a sensitivity of 6 degrees per doubling.
Keep in mind, Michel, that we as laymen (and yes, I’m a laymen wrt climate science) are operating with an incomplete understanding of the science. We owe it to ourselves to be especially skeptical and inquisitive of our own views where they diverge from the consensus of the experts. At a minimum we have to understand why the experts have reached the consensus they have.
John Mashey // January 6, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Michel: you’ve listed a bunch of people that you don’t think can be called denialists. However, one must be very careful to consider the difference between:
a1) Helping improve science’s approximations to reality , and
a2) Using the best science as input to policy decisions.
and
b2) Having an overriding goal of avoiding certain possible policy decisions. Specifically, one might be against any restrictions on CO2 (or anything else) or against anything that sounds like it might lead to bigger government.
That’s a subset of the reasons in .
b1) And then, fight with the science in any of increasingly sophisticated ways. From an out-of-context sample, it is quite possible for an argument motivated by b2) to made to look like a1), until you look deeper and get more context. For example, if a scientist, who publishes peer-reviewed research, says something very different in OpEds, it’s a red flag.
You might read the Singer+Avery book, if you were unfamilair with them, seeing “Unstoppable Global Warming - Every 1500 years” and say “Not denialist, they admit global warming exists.” But, if you know the context and past work, especially comparing aqgainst Singer’s “Hot Talk Cold Science” … DENIALIST. When I first read that, years ago, satellite-vs-groundstation was a legitimate issue, and I didn’t know the rest of Singer’s history, and it took me a while to understand it.
The real bottom line is: regardless of what someone *says*, does following their advice help or hinder a2)?
Here’s a list of things that get said:
c1) It’s not warming.
c2) It maybe warming, but not caused by humans.
c3) It may warming, but it’s good for us.
c4) Adaptation is easier
c5) We can wait for tech breakthroughs.
c6) There’s a lot of uncertainty.
c7) If it isn’t warmer today than in the MWP, AGW goes away.
c8) If there are badly-sited weather stations somewhere in the US’s 2% of the globe, AGW goes away.
c9) AGW is real, but there are much higher priorities to be done first.
c10) We should do something, but not yet.
Some of these *admit* warming, some even admit AGW, but the net effect supports b1).
Straightforward attacks on science don’t work so well any more for as many people, current indirect ones are much more sophisticated.
I think you might want to seek out more context/history on McIntyre.
Ray: as for Lomborg, definitely denialist from the Julian Simon camp. See discussion at ThingsBreak. I’mk working on an update to that.
Phil. // January 6, 2009 at 9:01 pm
James Hastings-Trew // January 1, 2009 at 12:22 am
Posting a climate graph indicating a warming trend from one of the coldest periods of the last couple of centuries is also about as useful as one of your pretend denialist graphs up there (which, be honest, you just made up - I’ve never seen a graph like that posted anywhere on the net).
Well you should take a look at WUWT then as the latest post there highlights just such a graph as #2 (for NA only)!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/06/ncdc-updates-database-for-dec08-ncdcs-own-graphic-shows-10-year-cooling-trend/
Gareth // January 6, 2009 at 9:58 pm
There is a very handy guide to the real sceptics: the list of signatories of the Manhattan Declaration: Heartland helpfully sort out a list of “climate experts”, and - lo and behold - there’s Roy Spencer. Rubbing shoulders with Bellamy…
Hank Roberts // January 6, 2009 at 11:28 pm
> such a graph
Note that’s “… from their automated graphics generator linked to their database …”
Note also the automated graphics generator lacks a “wisdom” or “significance” operation. You can use an automated tool to generate a “trend” with as little information as you want to believe, but only does what you tell it to do.
David B. Benson // January 7, 2009 at 12:13 am
Richard Steckis // January 5, 2009 at 4:10 am — It is clear from your posting about C12/C13 that you fail to understand the carbon cycle. There are many teaching aids about the carbon cycle on the web.
But with regard to AGW, please follow the advice I give a bit below.
Dave D // January 5, 2009 at 10:25 pm — For relaibel information regarding climate and globbal warming, please read “The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer Weart:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html
Review of above:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E7DF153DF936A35753C1A9659C8B63
caerbannog // January 7, 2009 at 12:32 am
If you are looking for another “stupid fix”, you might want to wander on over to blogsearch.google.com and search on the keywords “sea ice” “1979″ (keep the quotation marks around “sea ice”).
You’ll see the latest scrap of silliness that the “contrarians” have latched on to….
Caution: Be prepared for an incredible gusher of stupid.
Ray Ladbury // January 7, 2009 at 1:53 am
caerbannog, you know, it must take years to cultivate such a level of stupidity. I mean, these guys have information incident on their brains every day and yet remain utterly impervious to it. And it’s not just a few morons–there’s 4 pages of the bastards!
It does point out one thing, though, the correlation between Libertarianism and climate denial. It makes sense: the only way you can be a Libertarian in the first place is to utterly ignore reality.
[Response: Discussion of libertarianism is rather off topic, and may incite even more animosity than global warming, so I'd rather not add it to the already existing bones of contention.]
Hank Roberts // January 7, 2009 at 6:26 am
Ray, there’s a place for that kind of talk:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/06/i_think_i_despise_antienvironm.php
michel // January 7, 2009 at 9:15 am
Ray, your criteria are reasonable, and I actually accept all of your points, except for the first one, where its not so much outright rejection, just I’m not convinced that the evidence on the exceptional nature of the present warming, as compared to the last 2000 years’ worth of warming events, is really conclusive.
McIntyre probably does also, though he too has lots of open questions about the dendro and other proxy records. Lucia certainly does. Pielke does.
So I am greatly looking forward to no longer being called a denialist on this blog - and also look forward to Pielke, McIntyre and Lucia not being put in that bin either! McIntyre may be irritating, may be on a crusade against MBH and its authors, but on any reasonable criterion, he’s not a denialist. He has said that he recognizes and would accept the consensus in policy terms, if responsible for policy. He’s also been very cautious about what exactly the proxy record shows about whether today is exceptional. His feeling seems to be that there is gold in that record someplace, but rather little has been extracted so far. And that some of the sampling has been improperly done.
On policy, well, anyone with a brain should probably see that to deliberately raise CO2 levels as we are would, if it had been put forward as a geo engineering proposal in advance, aroused a chorus of dismay about risks and unforeseen side effects. Just because its business as usual, does not mean its sensible. You can agree with this without buying in to AGW as a whole, its simple prudence. Don’t mess with the atmosphere without proper risk analysis.
John Mashey // January 7, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Michel: jsut out of curiosity:
Wegman said, years ago, that it was time to move on.
Why hasn’t McIntyre?
Is the bottom line of McIntyre’s actions to encourage people to:
a) Accept the overpowering agreement of all major scientific societies that AGW is real.
b) Wait.
george // January 7, 2009 at 4:30 pm
John Mashey asks
I’d add one to that:
c) get Micheal Mann to acknowledge that he (Mann) was wrong — and just as (if not more) important: that McIntyre was right.
michel // January 7, 2009 at 4:31 pm
The effect of McIntyre’s publications is probably neither of your alternatives. In his continued examination of the proxy studies, the effect is probably to make people more dubious about MBH (and about Mann, Briffa, Jones themselves). Its also to make people pay a lot more attention to the details of the time series used, why the ones used have been selected, how they have been treated statistically. The effect is not to encourage either waiting or action particularly.
Why has he not moved on? He’d have to speak for himself. One has the impression that its because he sees the issue of proxy reconstructions as being potentially valuable, important and informative, and he sees continuing defects in the reconstructions done by those who have dominated the field until very recently. Surely he is right on this? We need proxy reconstructions. Proxy reconstructions have enormous problems, but they are one of the few views we have into the times before temperature records.
He has also criticized the way the surface temperature record is generated, weighting algorithms and so on. Well, its a legitimate subject for investigation surely? Many will find the adjustments to values dating from the turn of the last century very much in need of explanation. But this doesn’t say wait or act, it just says, lets get this transparent and above all lets get it right.
While he has stated repeatedly that if in policy mode, he’d accept the IPCC recommendations on what to do, he probably thinks that the last thing you should think about when examining whether studies are well founded is the effect on policy if people come to accept your conclusions. Just get to the bottom of it, seems to be his motivation. He has sometimes compared it to crossword puzzle solving.
I don’t think that the argument for action on CO2 is importantly dependent on any of this stuff. This stuff is interesting and important, but the basic argument is, don’t mess with the climate without having done risk analysis and being very sure. What exactly happened in the middle ages doesn’t really bear on this, so in a way, MBH is a bit of a distraction. Of course, if its wrong, we need to get that out in the open, and whatever the proxies really do show, need to find out. But its not central to the case of should we carry on making large scale changes to the atmosphere when we don’t really know what effects they will have.
I have never met or corresponded with him, by the way.
Ray Ladbury // January 7, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Michel,
Have you considered what it would say about climate sensitivity if the current warming epoch were not unique? Wouldn’t that suggest that climate is even more sensitive to small perturbations than we had thought and that we are really in the soup? See, this is one of the problems I have with the crowd at CA: they don’t seem to examine the implications of their assertions regarding climate.
The other problem I have is the vitriol they pour on scientists doing their honest best to tease the truth out of the data. MBH98 is not a perfect study. It was, however, the first multiproxy study on such an ambitious scale, and as such, it deserves some credit for subsequent developments in that field. That some of the statistical techniques might have been stretched a bit too far in the process is understandable. We scientists don’t always have a statistical test at hand that fits our data. We make do with what is available and what we know. To accuse working scientists of scientific fraud because of that is simply inexcusable.
The point is that MBH98 was not an unreasonable interpretation of the data they had, as evidenced by the fact that all subsequent reconstructions have reproduced the basic features thereof. The GISS and HADCRUT, MSU and RSS reconstructions are also not unreasonable. The models represent the physics–and the trends–pretty darn well. And really, the consensus view is pretty much the only one that gives a consistent view of what is going on with the climate. So if your candidates for “skepticism” all pretty much agree with all this, why then does RPSr. never miss a chance to accuse modelers of groupthink? Why is McI so quick to yell “FRAUD!!!” and then later whisper, “Oh, never mind?” Why do they insist on working with short time series of noisy data?
Look, I can accept that Hansen really is concerned about the threat climate change could pose. I can accept that RPSr. et al. is worried we could derail the economy by going overboard with mitigation. However, there is good science out there and pretty much all of it says it’s getting warm. All I’m asking for folks not to get labeled “denialist” is that they don’t deny the science. Once the science is accepted, we can have a rational discussion about what to do in the way of mitigation, improving the science, etc. ‘Til then, I don’t see how we keep from shouting past each other.
Deech56 // January 7, 2009 at 5:58 pm
RE: caerbannog // January 7, 2009 at 12:32 am
ZOMG - someone just threw one of those news articles up at me yesterday in support of, oh - who knows. This became a distraction in an argument about the momentous correction of the NASA GISS surface temperature data. This argument is so “1934 and all that.”
matt // January 7, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Ray: However, there is good science out there and pretty much all of it says it’s getting warm. All I’m asking for folks not to get labeled “denialist” is that they don’t deny the science.
But Ray, who gets to decide what is “good” science? Generally people are trusting of others UNTIL they see something dubious. At that point, they scrutinize further and if things look even shakier, they become even more distrusting. MBH was held up as the most detailed and most conclusive and as a result was the most trumpeted. And it failed even the simplest of scrutiny. And in the process it became clear the peer reviewers didn’t even scrutinize. The paper matched what they expected, and they rubber stamped it. Very dangerous.
When Feynman dunks the space shuttle o-rings in a glass of ice water and notices they become brittle during a hearing on the very topic, he’s a genius.
When McIntyre pumps red noise through the MBH algorithm and gets the hockey stick, he’s somehow a jack$$ for doing so? How dare he even look? If the community would have treated McIntyre’s finding the same way they treated Feynman’s finding, I suspect McIntyre would have been off to other things. But they didn’t. They dug in and defended marginal science. That was a crucial mistake and very polarizing. And McIntyre’s response is no different that Tamino’s response when he sees faulty analysis. Latch on and don’t let go. And I admire that from all sides.
Most “skeptics” readily change their opinions when confronted with solid data. Many were initially very intrigued with Watt’s temp study on station siting. Then JohnV (?) took the data, threw out the bad stations, and showed the temp record didn’t change much at all. And suddenly it’s a non issue. And the temp record is all the stronger for it.
BTW, CA is showing today a Finnish study in which they look at old trees and determine Finland was +0.55′C during MWP. So your assertion that today’s temp at +0.5′C is “unique” is a bit specious. Yes, it’s probably valid if you believe in MBH…but if you won’t distance yourself from MBH conclusions, why should McIntyre step away from it?
[Response: Please step away from the double standard.
Watts' ludicrous attempt to discredit the surface temperature record did *not* go away when it was shown how mistaken he was, he's still at it. After all the times I've shown how "analysis" on his blog (by him and his guests) is not just wrong but grossly incompetent, he's still at it, in fact he continues to host "analysis" by the same incompetents. As many times as he's been told that 10-yr trends, and 11-yr trends, and 7-yr trends, and 1-yr trends, aren't trends at all, he still touts them as evidence against global warming and quite recently is trumpeting an 11-yr trend for temperature in the U.S. only -- not enough time for a reliable trend, and less than 2% of the globe.
I don't know what the Finnish study says or how credible its temperature reconstruction is, but even if it's 100% correct -- that's Finland, not the globe. Yet you compare a global reconstruction to a local one and conclude the global reconstruction is "specious"? I'd say it's your reasoning that's specious.
Add the fact that the evidence against a warmer MWP isn't just MBH98, it's every credible proxy reconstruction there is, including quite a few that don't use PCA or bristlecone pines or any tree rings at all.
It's true that genuine skeptics readily change their opinions when confronted with solid data. The people you're defending don't, which is why they don't deserve the name "skeptic" -- they're denialists.]
Ray Ladbury // January 7, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Matt asks: “But Ray, who gets to decide what is “good” science? ”
Well, Matt, that would be the scientific community–you know the experts, the pros, the guys who have studied this stuff for entire careers, write papers and decide what other papers were useful enough to cite.
He then suggests “MBH was held up as the most detailed and most conclusive and as a result was the most trumpeted.”
Actually, no. It was exciting because it demonstrated the feasibility of multi-proxy reconstruction over millennial time scales. The peer reviewers did scrutinize it and decided that even if it did have some flaws and even if they might not have understood every detail, it was sufficiently correct and novel to be of interest to the community. That is THE barrier for peer review.
And McIntyre is not an A$$ for suggesting errors in the analysis. He’s an A$$ for making it his life’s ambition to assassinate the character of any scientist who accepts the consensus view. He’s an A$$ for getting his good buddy Inhofe to issue Congressional subpoena’s to climate scientists. He’s an A$$ for pretending to do science for his minions and then never publishing anything. And then he has the cohones to whine because Mann et al will not do his work for him and wrap up his data and analysis in a bow and hand it to him. Hell, I wouldn’t let him drink my spit if he were thirsty!
Look, Matt, the science is there. It’s been looked at six ways to Sunday, not just by climate scientists, but by every scientific professional and honorific organization that could understand any aspect of it and not one–not even the American Association of Petroleum Geologists dissents. If people are pretending it’s not there or that it is seriously flawed, I’d say they’re kinda in denial, wouldn’t you?
Dave A // January 7, 2009 at 10:59 pm
“Add the fact that the evidence against a warmer MWP isn’t just MBH98, it’s every credible proxy reconstruction there is, including quite a few that don’t use PCA or bristlecone pines or any tree rings at all”
I think you are ‘over-egging the pudding’ here. Most post MBH98/99 papers simply used them as a starting point and didn’t do any new analysis, using them as a reference point.
[Response: The sad part is that you might actually believe that.]
You are closer to the mark when you say “that’s Finland not the globe”. Just like the BCPs are a small part of the US and not the globe.
ChuckG // January 8, 2009 at 1:19 am
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/12/31/stupid-is-as-stupid-does/#comment-26547
matt says
Don’t know where you got this. YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY WRONG!!!! I will let you research why.
Further. I can’t believe you would equate in any way SteveMc and Feynman!
TCOisbanned? // January 8, 2009 at 1:50 am
I agree strongly with Ray. The “choir” gives the impact that more is being accomplished than is. It becomes more of an online social thing than real science.
When I was in the service, there was a saying (sarcastic, but with a point) “not documented, not done”. McI has persisted in “blog publicaation” rather than real publication (only one “real paper”and it was 4 years ago).
TCOisbanned? // January 8, 2009 at 2:03 am
McI has been unreasonable and silly and tendentious. He has also a good brain and some interesting provocations.
Mann is a competent scientist. But he has also not even admitted the failure to DOCUMENT a method (where Tammy agrees that he should have).
I disbelieve in false symmettry, yet I find interesting dynamics of similar flaws in the two. And Jolliffe is my idol. He is clear about what he doesn’t know. The smarter you are, the more you know that you don’t know things. Rumsfeld had a point with the whole “unknown unknown”, “known unknown” concept.
Rattus Norvegicus // January 8, 2009 at 3:39 am
Matt,
When Feynman dumped the O-rings into the glass of ice water he was already aware of the warnings which had been given by the Morton-Thiokol engineers. Hardly a genius for doing that, just pointing out that NASA launched in spite of the warnings not to launch in low temperatures.
matt // January 8, 2009 at 4:36 am
Ray Ladbury: Actually, no. It was exciting because it demonstrated the feasibility of multi-proxy reconstruction over millennial time scales. The peer reviewers did scrutinize it and decided that even if it did have some flaws and even if they might not have understood every detail, it was sufficiently correct and novel to be of interest to the community.
Sufficiently correct?. According to what they believe is correct, is that right?
Do you mean the reviewers were aware that pumping daily stock market closings into MBH resulted in the hockey stick still emerging? Are you serious?
Or, did the most bandied about graph and the poster-child for AGW come to be without anyone seriously scrutinizing the work?
Either way, you have a very serious breakdown to deal with.
The pro-AGW loved MBH because it affirmed what they believed in their heart. And because it echoed what they believed, they collectively spent zero effort to look for issues in the paper. To them “good science” was any science they agreed with, even if it was wrong. And yes, something with fundamental errors that reaches the correct conclusion on accident is still wrong. And by extension, to them, “bad science” is any science they don’t agree with, even if it right.
Even when confronted with the problems in MBH, folks STILL won’t admit there were serious issues on so many levels (review process, over ascribing confidence, PR, etc etc). If someone won’t admit there were serious problems with MBH, then you can be certain they are driven by dogma and agenda.
Hank Roberts // January 8, 2009 at 4:51 am
> Daily stock market closes
Try it now. Remember back when they told you the market could only go up? Anyone could find that shape — til it stopped.
matt // January 8, 2009 at 5:06 am
Ray Ladbury: Look, Matt, the science is there. It’s been looked at six ways to Sunday, not just by climate scientists, but by every scientific professional and honorific organization that could understand any aspect of it and not one–not even the American Association of Petroleum Geologists dissents.
You are correct that indeed much of the science is there, especially for past performance. But as the fine print says, “past performance does not indicate future performance”, and for the future performance we are relying on a handful of people writing some truly nasty Fortran to tell us what is going to happen.
And those models have changed their outlook considerably over the last 10 years. And the greatest unknowns in these models is cloud parameterization.
The signal the modelers are looking for is much smaller than the uncertainty around cloud types. TAR noted, for example, that 2XCO2 ranged from 1.9 to 5.4 based purely on cloud parameterization properties with everything else being held constant.
So things range from “not bad at all” to “we’re all going to roast alive” based on picking a reasonable number (at either extreme) for cloud modeling.
Huh.
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1175/1520-0442(1999)0122.0.CO;2&ct=1
[Response: 1.9 is a far cry from "not bad at all." It's bad.]
lee // January 8, 2009 at 5:06 am
Here is another definition of ‘denialist.’
Someone who pretends to knowledge on tis topic, yet still says things such as:
“Most post MBH98/99 papers simply used them as a starting point and didn’t do any new analysis, using them as a reference point.”
or
“The pro-AGW loved MBH because it affirmed what they believed in their heart. And because it echoed what they believed, they collectively spent zero effort to look for issues in the paper. To them “good science” was any science they agreed with, even if it was wrong. And yes, something with fundamental errors that reaches the correct conclusion on accident is still wrong. And by extension, to them, “bad science” is any science they don’t agree with, even if it right.”
man…
lee // January 8, 2009 at 5:19 am
problem with MBH98/99. YO guys keep harping o0nn ti s,f or apari of decade-old, superceded papers.
I might listen, if y’all would:
1. List precisely what the problem(s) are. Not general accusations such as “review process, over ascribing confidence, PR” But details - what they did, how it was wrong - one at a time, not conflated.
2. Detail the impact each error has on the result of the analysis. The ENTIRE analysis, not some intermediate step.
3. For each such problem, explain how it remains relevant to the science, and how subsequent work has not addressed or superceded that issue.
4. IOW, since we are interested in what the science is telling us, not in the history of a obsolete paper nor in McIntyre’s pursuit of character assassination of Mann et al, tell us how your complaints impact the current state of the science.
5. If your complaints don’t touch on the current state of the science, if they are confined to a pair of decade old, superceded, obsolete papers, then your complaints are not relevant to the current state of the science, and their purpose can not be to understand the science, but rather to obscure it. I call that denialism.
Richard Steckis // January 8, 2009 at 6:14 am
Ray Ladbury:
“And McIntyre is not an A$$ for suggesting errors in the analysis. He’s an A$$ for making it his life’s ambition to assassinate the character of any scientist who accepts the consensus view.”
I don’t think McIntyre is an A$$. He actually makes it an ambition to audit the statistical basis of the science. I don’t think thats entirely a bad thing.
michel // January 8, 2009 at 7:34 am
Ray,
Its a commonly used argument but its a logical fallacy. Whether the present warming episode is unique tells us nothing about what causes warming and cooling episodes, what caused the present one, or whether the current one is more dangerous than previous ones.
What you can conclude from an MWP as warm as today is limited to this: Its asserted that A is causing B. We may have cases in which B occurs without A. That simply shows that more than one thing may cause B. It does not show that A does or does not cause it.
We could strengthen the case for A being the cause of the current episode were we able to specify what caused the previous one, and show it is not occurring today. It is quite reasonable, if you think there was an MWP of the scale of todays warming, to want to show that its cause is not operative today, so we do need to look for a different cause. But even can you not find one, this does not show that A does or does not cause the present one.
Your later remarks about McIntyre are positively gross. Its sort of amazing that you’d permit yourself this stuff in print. It detracts from your own standing. McIntyre, agree with him or not, is a serious person Just as you find remarks like your own on Tamino, so you find unfortunate comments on his blog. But its the only science blog where you’ll find people posting code for public inspection, and debating the evidence in that kind of detail. His criticisms of MBH are detailed, reasonable and quite rigorous, with all the code made available. The discussion of the Finnish materials is interesting. It may lead no place, but its interesting and valid.
Anthony Watts is further toward the denialist part of the spectrum in some of what appears on his blog, but the discovery of just how badly the surface stations are being run is important and interesting. If this is denialism, then the term has become useless - its being used to try to make any critical appraisal of the sources of the evidence illegitimate. The indignation about Watts’ documentation of the state of the stations has always been incomprehensible. This was stuff we needed to know. The indignation appears to have been aroused only because these were inconvient truths. They are badly run.
My point was not to debate the merits of MBH or Michael Mann, who can speak for himself. It was to point out also that if you cannot dissent from MBH without being accused of denialism, the term has become useless. I think McIntyre’s strictures on MBH and sequels are basically correct. The evidence shows MWP was probably global and certainly hemispheric, though I’m not sure how pronounced it was. That does not make me a denialist, just someone who has reasonably different views from Mann on how to do proxy studies and how to use PCA.
But really, Ray, if you want to have intelligent discussions, edit out the gross personal insults before posting. It has no place.
Ray Ladbury // January 8, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Michel, It was actually Matt who said climate scientists look on McI as an A$$. I was merely pointing out why they might feel that way and your comment did not address any of those criticisms. You claim McI is doing serious science–and yet he does not publish, an absolute prerequisite for serious science. Moreover, McI stepped over the line by accusing virtually the entire climate science community of fraud. He further stepped over the line by allowing himself to be used by Inhofe and in the hearings organized by Doolittle and Delay (no, I couldn’t make this stuff up). The very idea that a scientist could be subpoenaed by Congress just for doing his job goes beyond McCarthyism and verges on Lysenkoism. By comparison Edward Teller’s betrayal of Oppenheimer was mild.
Your claim that you cannot dissent from MBH without being accused of denialism is pure horse puckey. Wegman is not accused of denialism because, while harsh, his criticism stuck to technique. Jolliffe likewise. Where it does become very difficult to avoid being a denialist is when you reject the significance of the current warming trend. Every reconstruction shows this to one degree or another. Not some; not most; all. Now if no one can’t come up with a reconstruction that shows we’re within the limits of normal variation, it’s kind of hard to take seriously the claim that the variation is all natural.
Ray Ladbury // January 8, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Matt, I really don’t know how to state this any more clearly: Uncertainty is not your friend. What you are saying is that even by taking the forcing due to clouds to its most negative extreme, you can’t get sensitivity below 1.9 degres C per doubling. Now granted this is better than 3 degrees per doubling. It buys time. However, it still doesn’t mean we can continue business as usual and quit worrying about tipping points. And at the other end of the range, 5.4 degrees per doubling–we’re toast unless we put the brakes on CO2 right fricking now!
So on the one hand, sensitivity could be as low as 1.9 (and no lower), in which case we have to do exactly the same things we’d do if it were 3.0, but maybe we’ve got a decade longer to phase them in. On the other hand, if sensitivity is 5.4, then drastic and immediate action is essential to our very survival.
How do we tell the difference? Paleoclimate provides some help, and favors a value around 3. However, if you want more help for your case to avoid drastic action, you’d better pray those models you denigrate are right. They are essential to showing sensitivity isn’t 5, but they also preclude values below 2-2.5.
Do you really not understand this?
luminous beauty // January 8, 2009 at 2:54 pm
michel,
Just because you have a different view of something doesn’t make it valid, no matter how reasonable you might believe it to be.
The data graphs, just as it is, a hockey stick. Without analysis. All the furor is about estimating the statistical accuracy of the data. The difference between MBH98 and M&M is that using a segmented PCA, and comparing each segment as they proceed back in time, MBH98 estimates a >.7 confidence before 1400BP. By using a practically worthless PCA of the entire instrumental record, M&M’s confidence is, unsurprisingly, much less.
The problem with your supposed logical fallacy is it supposes some unknown forcing for which there is not even the hint of a reasonable hypothesis, causing an imaginary variance for which there is no evidence . This is bogosity squared.
matt,
The cloud uncertainty suggests dramatic increases in storm frequency and intensity might mean lower surface temperature rise.
Somehow, I find that less than reassuring.
Hank Roberts // January 8, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Please post the current stock market daily closing numbers and show us how they — hello??
You’re saying it doesn’t work any more?
Bob North // January 8, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Ray -
I am going to pull a Hank Roberts and ask for some citations for your statements that CO2 sensitivity cannot be less than 1.9C/doubling. If I recall IPPC still has it as 1 -4.5C, with 3 has the most likely value.
Also, you can call me daft if you want, but could you explain more fully why an equally or slightly warmer MWP (or Roman Optimum, or other period) suggests that the CO2 sensitivity is greater than the current best estimates.
Thanks,
Bob
Hank Roberts // January 8, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Andrew North, Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Past Millenium
A clue for those who don’t think they need one:
http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/NorthH264.mp4
JCH // January 8, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Not to quibble, but wasn’t it Joe Barton, formerly a consultant for Atlantic Richfield (the all-out dumbest oil company in history) who issued the congressional the subpoenas and held the hearings.
Richard Steckis // January 8, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Ray:
“we’re toast unless we put the brakes on CO2 right fricking now”
Then we are toast Ray. China, India and any other developing country that is trying to provide a future for it’s citizens will continue to use coal and other fossil fuels apace. The price of civilization is energy. Without it our civilization as it stands now cannot exist.
Anyway Ray, we will not be toast just toasty!
Bob North // January 8, 2009 at 5:35 pm
My bad, Ray. I misremembered the current IPCC numbers which are 2-4.5C per doubling, with a very low probability of less than 1.5C
Philippe Chantreau // January 8, 2009 at 6:00 pm
What’s this BS about Mc Intyre? McIntyre is the father of all denialists. He created the all movement. He set out with the exclusive ambition of disproving scientific conclusions that he did not like for the simple reason that he did not like them. His web site and his entire effort is aimed only at that goal. He’s got mouthfuls, blogfuls of ways climate science should be done, but he does not publish anything. All of you here who describe yourselves as skeptics are jokes. TCO is the only one that I’ve seen capable of applying the same level of skepticism to all ideas. McI and all the skeptic blog garbage cluttering the internet does not even come close to that.
McI and his pathetic crowd of “skeptics” give credence to anything (really, any old thing) going the way they like, while they subject anything else to a level of scrutiny that many other sciences would have a hard time to deal with.
And yes, that applies to medicine/pharmacology. Where were the skeptics looking for COX2 inihibitors correlation with heart attacks? They would not even have needed as much “transparency” and openness that the climate “auditors” whine about. Where are the skeptics “auditing” the evidence that would justify a full course of activated protein C at a cost of 30 grands or more?
McIntyre has bragged and boasted about how much “auditing” is also in use in the business world, where he claims some experience. Well, don’t we all wish that there could have been some, at least a little, reality to this fantastic business/economic/financial auditing. We wouldn’t be left holding the bag. No “auditors” there, I’m afraid. They probably did not think that this was an area where widespread group think could mix with rampant fraud and bad practices to produce a fiasco measured in the trillion dollar range. Too bad. That’s one reason why I proclaim that the “auditors” are stupid. If they weren’t, they would have employed their auditing talent where it was needed and would have saved us, for real, upward of 8oo billions, right now. Talk about a missed opportunity. Instead they prefer to take photos of thermometers, call Al Gore fat or play around with statistics to see how they can produce pleasant graphs. What a pathetic joke! Audit? My A$$.
And, of course, they spare us no extremity of mind manipulating method, from describing themselves or any dissenting “scientist” as victims, widespread accusations of fraud, rightful indignation at the denialist name calling etc, etc. Every trick in the PR manual, every subtlety of language, everything goes.
The only reason why McIntyre is a little more careful than clumsy ones like Watts is because he cares very much about being taken seriously, enough to makes sure that there is a credible appearance of being evidence based. Nothing but a facade. McIntyre’s only goal is, and has always been to discredit existing science that supports CO2 driven global warming and to give credibility, whether deserved or not, to any old piece that support an “alternative.” Even using these deceptive words with quotations gives me nausea. What a friggin’ joke.
Anyone here wants climate science? spare yourself the hassle of CA, there is no shortage of acronyms where much better info can be obtained: NASA, HADCRUT, AGU, GRL, SPARC, NSIDC, AWI, ERBE, ARM, and many, many others. Don’t have much time? Don’t waste it on CA or WUWT.
luminous beauty // January 8, 2009 at 6:46 pm
—1400CE (gah!)
JCH // January 8, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Yes, India and China are full of stupid people who are incapable of understanding science or coming up with responsible solutions and innovation. Lol.
Ray Ladbury // January 8, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Bob North, I was speaking of climate sensitivity in general. Since we are pretty sure there was no major change in insolation and the only other known change in forcing was a volcanic lull, we’d be talking a large rise in temperature with a small increase in energy. This would imply a larger feedback than is reasonable. The same feedbacks would apply for CO2.
On the other hand if you posit a significant increase in energy into the system, where did it come from.
The final possibility is not very plausible–a very small thermal mass for Earth. This is belied by a range of evidence.
Barton Paul Levenson // January 8, 2009 at 8:07 pm
matt writes:
And if people insist there were serious problems with MBH, they molest children and burn puppies to death.
Same kind of logic. Don’t address the argument. Attack the person.
Dave A // January 8, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Hi all,
It’s really interesting that while you constantly mantra that MBH 98/99 are “old, obsolete and superseded” papers you can’t quite bring yourselves to stop defending them.
Dave A // January 8, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Philippe C,
If you have problems with what Steve M is doing why not go to his blog and argue about it?
You will be unlikely to get a hostile reaction since, in my experience CA is actually very open to discussion and most contributors are well mannered and ,if not, don’t get published.
Bob North // January 8, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Ray - Thanks for the reply. Just to be clear relative to your reply, relative to the volcanic lull, are you discussing the lull early in the 20th century (ala Tamino’s earlier post) or at some time during the MWP? Looking here
Major Holocene Volcanoes it is not clear that there was a lull during the MWP.
TCOisbanned? // January 8, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Lee, Ray and Phil:
I agree with 95% of your comments (seriously). These are the few places I do not exactly agree.
Lee:
1. Analysis of the intermediate steps is interesting in the place that said intermediate step itself was cited in the paper and is related to justification of the method. This is a nit, because otherwise I completely agree that both McI’s have actually been wriggly like eels in refusing to acknowledge the difference between the intermediate and final result.
2. The paper has not been completely obsoleted. It still gets defended and we still have requests (cf. your own comments) for precision of the complaints on it. Still more, it is completely reasonable to fix problems in the literature and 5-15 years is not really such an old paper anyhow. The nice thing about the archived literature is that it is there forever and can be used forever. And as such things should get fixed (by PUBLICATION of course, as Ray points out.)
Ray:
I think Congressmen should subpoena whoever they want to talk to, whoever they are interested to hear from.
Phil:
McI is much brighter than Watts. Being bright is not the same thing as being honest or as being unbiased/objective. But it’s not just a matter of desire to be respected. EVen if Watts wanted that, his strengths are just not there. (Note, I see being smart as different than being moral…same as I do physical strength different for moral.)
Hank Roberts // January 9, 2009 at 12:53 am
> subpoena whoever they want
Civil liberties ever interest you? Try one today.
http://www.google.com/search?q=misuse+of+subpoena+power
Ray Ladbury // January 9, 2009 at 1:31 am
Dave A., Do you have a reading comprehension problem? That there are flaws in MBH98 is not surprising. There are likely to be flaws in any approach that is sufficiently innovative. The reason MBH98 is still cited is because it was the FIRST multiproxy study of such ambitious scope. There are better efforts now, but you do get credit for being first in science.
TCO says: “I think Congressmen should subpoena whoever they want to talk to, whoever they are interested to hear from.”
Funny, Joe McCarthy felt the same way.
Both of you: Seriously, the fact of the matter is that there are better reconstructions of paleoclimate now than MBH98, so why not devote your efforts to those. They would be more instructive for you.
TCOisbanned? // January 9, 2009 at 2:38 am
Why not admit it is wrong? sheesh, Ray, you’re more post-modern on science than I am.
matt // January 9, 2009 at 2:56 am
Philippe Chantreau: He set out with the exclusive ambition of disproving scientific conclusions that he did not like for the simple reason that he did not like them.
No, like millions of other curious people, he saw something he didn’t understand, attempted to replicate it, and in the process discovered that no matter what was input, the output was the same.
He asked the authors for clarification, they dug in their heels and refused to release data, and he did exactly what Tamino, Gavin and much of the crowd at RC would do and has done when they are frustrated by lapses in logic: Turn on the flamethrower and let them have it.
TCOisbanned? // January 9, 2009 at 3:06 am
Was your deletion of my pro-Mcarty pst from cursing or from pr-McCarthy? (yes is not acceptable answer)
[Response: It was because of cursing. I'm no prude, but I have my limits.]
MattInSeattle // January 9, 2009 at 3:20 am
Ray Ladbury: That there are flaws in MBH98 is not surprising. There are likely to be flaws in any approach that is sufficiently innovative.
[Changing my name from Matt]
The flaws were not in the innovation, which was admirable. The flaws were in the basic quality control performed by the study authors, the failure of the peer review process to catch these most basic errors, the speed at which the study served as a baseline for other studies, the speed at which the PR arm of the scientists (IPCC) ran with the data, the speed at which the data leaked into trillion dollar policy discussion, and the speed at which the mainstream media reported it.
And all of that was followed by the lack of speed in which the process above unwound itself. Imagine if MBH had said “Yes, there are problems, and we withdraw the paper and will re-submit when those are worked out”. Wouldn’t that have been preferable to congress and statisticians and the NSF involved?
Those were the sins of MBH.
MattInSeattle // January 9, 2009 at 3:25 am
Hank Roberts: Please post the current stock market daily closing numbers and show us how they — hello??
You’re saying it doesn’t work any more?
Since McInyre also ran red noise through the algorithm and got the same shape, you can be pretty sure than a bear or bull market would do the same thing.
TCOisbanned? // January 9, 2009 at 3:34 am
I get banned a lot on the internte
MattInSeattle // January 9, 2009 at 4:07 am
Ray Ladbury:However, if you want more help for your case to avoid drastic action, you’d better pray those models you denigrate are right.
Actually, I’d first pray that the models were documented.
The code today (from CLOUDS2.F) in ModelE
!@param CCMUL multiplier for convective cloud covers
REAL*8, PARAMETER :: FCLW=0.5 REAL*8, PARAMETER :: CCMUL=2.,CCMUL1=5.,CCMUL2=3.,COETAU=.08d0
Magically, 5 years ago, that value was 1. No documented reason it changed. No pointer to a paper they’ve written explaining it. Nothing. Just good old fashion research, er, tweak till it works, I guess.
I’d not trust this level of code quality in my TV remote control, let alone a machine designed to tell me what the future will look like.
Browse through the diffs of the code and see for yourself. This is a total mess. There are places where entire operations are commented out. As in they were orginally deemed important, and at some time later, they were not. So they were commented out.
BUOY(L)=(TVP-TVL(L))/TVL(L)-COND(L)/MPLUME ! *BYAM(L)
Now, BYAM is defined in clouds.f as 1/Layer Pressure Depth (in mb), so the units aren’t consistent. When the ! is there, the stuff after the ! is a comment. When the ! is removed, the multiplication occurs. Scary, scary stuff.
Seriously, everyone reading this must have a friend that can write software. Send him the link below and ask him or her to give you a quick read on the quality. It is abysmal. Jim Galasyn, if you are reading, how does this code stack up to MS code? Much better? Much worse? About the same?
http://simplex.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/modelE/model/CLOUDS2.f.diff?only_with_tag=MAIN&r1=text&tr1=2.1&r2=text&tr2=2.136
Philippe Chantreau // January 9, 2009 at 4:11 am
Astute assessment, TCO.
Dano // January 9, 2009 at 5:09 am
“Yes, there are problems, and we withdraw the paper and will re-submit when those are worked out”.
This is a false premise, asserting that the paper was so flawed that it should be withdrawn.
I guess those grapes were really sour - there’s still people, today, spitting and frowning.
Ah, well. Some people aren’t happy unless they’re unhappy.
Best,
D
Hank Roberts // January 9, 2009 at 5:39 am
> red noise
Look at the Y axis. I remember that one.
Rattus Norvegicus // January 9, 2009 at 5:43 am
Prior to my present job I worked on OS code — Unix, Linux and Windows and some stuff that nobody remembers for 15 years. Comments? Internal documentation? Don’t make me laugh. I currently work on a rather large web based application. Same thing.
It is assumed — probably because of the macho attitude amongst code jockies — that you can read code. If you don’t know the language, learn it. If you have questions ask the guy who wrote it. If he’s not available (quite often) spend the sweat and learn what it means. The old Unix kernel had almost no comments; deal with it.
Hank Roberts // January 9, 2009 at 5:43 am
>Y axis
Here.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/09/chronicle_on_hockey_stick.php
No need to recreate the stupid.
Read it instead of asking for it all to be retyped. Then ask yourself why wherever you read this didn’t tell you the whole story, and why you didn’t question what you read on some blog and ask a good librarian to check it for you.
You’ve slipped into a sump like the one with the people who don’t believe freon hurts the ozone layer or antibiotics select for stronger diseases.
Flee.
Hank Roberts // January 9, 2009 at 6:02 am
Let’s make this even easier. Why ask newbies to slog through all the stuff when people are still sending them deeper into the swamp on this old pointless trail.
Brief excerpt from another resource you should read in full follows:
“… To see what I mean, check out http://tinyurl.com/n8g6g, which points to a PDF copy of the “Wegman report” that contains this bogus hockey-stick criticism.
In particular, look at the upper plot in figure 4.3. That is a plot of Mann’s original “hockey stick”. Make a mental note of the Y-axis range (-6 to +2 standard deviation units). Now look at figure 4.4, which contains an ensemble of “hockey-stick-shaped” leading principal components that Mann’s critics generated from random noise.
They look pretty similar to Mann’s hockey-stick, don’t they? They look like they do a pretty damning take-down of Mann’s “hockey-stick”, don’t they? But take a closer look at the Y-axis scales. The random-noise “hockey-sticks” have a dynamic range something like two orders of magnitudes less than Mann’s hockey-stick (something like 0.08-0.1 SD units instead of the 8 SD units for Mann’s hockey stick).
IOW, Mann’s critics generated hockey-sticks about one hundred times smaller than Mann’s hockey stick and tried to claim that they were equivalent to Mann’s results! That is, they were trying to argue that 1 = 100!….”
——-
from: http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/08/turn-of-tide.html
Gator // January 9, 2009 at 6:07 am
MattinSeattle. If you worried so much about the code you should be calling your congresscritters and demanding that we triple the budget for these people so they can hire professional software engineers.
As John Mashey said: Are you working to improve the science or just to make noise?
Phil. // January 9, 2009 at 7:22 am
Dave A // January 8, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Philippe C,
If you have problems with what Steve M is doing why not go to his blog and argue about it?
You will be unlikely to get a hostile reaction since, in my experience CA is actually very open to discussion and most contributors are well mannered and ,if not, don’t get published.
Really, I’ve been abused plenty of times there for doing exactly what you suggest!
michel // January 9, 2009 at 8:57 am
There is no logical reason why it would. It would just tell us that the climate may warm and then cool on the same scale as it has warmed recently, but from different and at present unknown causes.
It would show there is more natural variability than MBH thought, but it could tell you nothing about climate sensitivity to CO2. If you don’t know what caused it, you don’t know whether it was large or small, so you can’t reach any conclusions from its existence about climate sensitivity. If you could show it happened, and was the result of a very small forcing, then that would be significant. That really would increase the plausibility of the AGW hypothesis. You’d be showing that forcings of the same order as the present hypothesized CO2 forcing can indeed have large effects.
It probably is important to the narrative to get an unambiguous account of RWP and MWP and LIA. Did they happen or not, and what caused them?
Ray argues that we know from all reconstructions that present warming is unique, ie taking presumably the line that RWP, MWP and LIA did not happen. That does not correspond with my reading. All reconstructions using the MBH proxies show that present warming is unique, but that’s not all reconstructions.
MattInSeattle // January 9, 2009 at 9:20 am
Gator: If you worried so much about the code you should be calling your congresscritters and demanding that we triple the budget for these people so they can hire professional software engineers.
Actually, NASA has a nearly $20B budget. 40 QA staff at $130K/year (loaded) is $5.2M, or 0.026% of NASA’s budget.
If NASA can’t be bothered to spend 0.026% of their budget on QA staff for ModelE, then I certainly can’t be bothered to call.
Let NASA manage their own money.
MattInSeattle // January 9, 2009 at 9:49 am
Hank Roberts: IOW, Mann’s critics generated hockey-sticks about one hundred times smaller than Mann’s hockey stick and tried to claim that they were equivalent to Mann’s results!
You are missing the point. It’s not the magnitude that matters. The point of all those panels is to show the algorithm overwhelmingly generates a bias trend when stimulated with something that should not have any long-term biases. I think you are alone in your line of thinking. Since everything is (probably) 64-bit floating points, and since a numerical package will generate noise with whatever PSD you wish with a +/-1 max amplitude, there’s nothing wrong with squirting in noise at any amplitude and collecting the stats from there. The results are the same.
Ray Ladbury // January 9, 2009 at 10:55 am
TCO asks (presumably of MBH98): “Why not admit it is wrong? sheesh, Ray, you’re more post-modern on science than I am.”
Well, does it contain some techniques still being used? Yes. Were its basic conclusions about the temperature series correct. Yes. Then dismissing it as “wrong” isn’t particularly accurate. Are there better techniques and reconstructions now. Certianly.
Awhile back, I recommended the most recent Reference Frame from Physics Today. I recommend it again.
TCOisbanned? // January 9, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Are there some techniques that were wrong? If so, how? Which ones? How much, etc. etc. See Burger05. See Joliffe10.
I recommend Katzoff (from your org) and Wilson (from your discipline).
Ray Ladbury // January 9, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Matt, Over half of NASA’s budget goes to the Manned space program. Most of the rest goes to the Centers. GISS gets a tiny fraction of NASA’s budget, and the models are in turn a tiny fraction of GISS’s budget. I’d recommend some day taking a look at everything NASA does with that 0.15% of the Federal budget. We keep the orbiting pork barrel (aka Space Station Freedon) orbiting. We launch missions to planets. We observe everything from interstellar dust to extra-solar planets to dark matter. And we look at Earth, albeit given the last 8 years, not as much as we’d like.
Contrary to what you may think, the code is not the main ring when it comes to scientific modeling. It is important. It isn’t central. The computer models are merely an expression of the physics running at teraflop rates. The computer models, moreover, were never intended for public consumption. They’re meant to give results that scientists turn into research papers.
And did I understand you say that stock prices have no bias? Well, there goes the entire theory of investment!
Ray Ladbury // January 9, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Michel, I don’t claim the MWP did not exist, merely that it was not global, and that is consistent with the best evidence. Moreover, if warming events like the current epoch are common, it seems to me that you have to possible consequences:
1)There must be some energy source that supplies a whole helluva lot of energy. There is no candidate for such a source at present.
2)That it takes a whole helluva lot less energy to heat up the globe than we thought. If this is the case, then we are in the soup.
Personally, I prefer the alternative supported by the evidence: The MWP was predominantly a NH phenomenon.
Do you have an alternative explanation?
Hank Roberts // January 9, 2009 at 4:01 pm
> I think you are alone in your line of thinking.
I know you did not look into the history of the stuff you’re copypasting like you thought it was novel.
Ray Ladbury // January 9, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Matt, Bias is not necessarily an insurmountable obstacle. The sample variance is a biased estimator of the population variance. However one can quantify and compensate for this bias (for sample sizes greater than 2, anyway). If the bias is small or can be bounded, the estimator can still be good.
[Response: Your point is valid, but the example is not a good one because the sample variance (when dividing by n-1 rather than n) is actually an unbiased estimate of the population variance. The maximum-likelihood estimate (diving by n) is a biased estimate.]
Richard Steckis // January 9, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Ray.
There is ample evidence that the MWP was a global phenomenon to the same extent that the current warming is a global phenomenon. That is to say that the main locus of the MWP was the Northern Hemisphere just as it is the locus of the current warming period. However, there is paleoclimatic evidence from New Zealand, South Africa and South America of wamer periods that coincide with the MWP. I have references if you wish me to provide you with a couple. It stands to reason that the major evidence for the MWP is in the NH. After all that is where the major proportion of the earths land mass is.
I may make this a blog topic at my site.
[Response: Let's see those references.]
Dano // January 9, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Really, I’ve been abused plenty of times there for doing exactly what you suggest!
Ask Dano about abuse.
Look up, at CA, ‘Tilman et al.’ and see if the comments are hostile or not, and if the commenters are credulous or not and see if they get hostile when their credulity is examined.
And it’s instructive wrt placing bets to back convictions. I haven’t paid out one penny.
Best,
D
Hank Roberts // January 9, 2009 at 7:07 pm
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2001GL014580.shtml
and click the “cited by” tab
Barton Paul Levenson // January 9, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Dave A writes:
I’ll defend Newton’s “Principia Mathematica,” too, even though it’s old, obsolete and superseded. Well, it’s not obsolete, really. Of course, neither is MBH98/MBH99.
Barton Paul Levenson // January 9, 2009 at 7:39 pm
matt, who is seeking out sin, writes:
No, matt, it wouldn’t. Papers with problems are published all the time. Problems, if I can put it this way, aren’t a problem. Clear errors are, and those are what get papers to fail peer review.
Yes, it would be nice if the crackpots and their allies in Congress hadn’t gotten involved, but that’s hardly Mann et al.’s fault.
The way problems with a paper are corrected is with another paper or series of papers. Take the Astronomical Journal. Van de Kamp 1963, 1968a, 1968 b (planets around Barnard’s Star) are no longer cited because Gatewood and Eichhorn 1974 (you have instrument problems at Sproul Observatory) showed that they were fatally flawed. But Van de Kamp wasn’t doing something immoral by using the instruments he had at hand. It was good work given what he knew.
For that matter, Wegener was shown to have a physically impossible model for his theory of continental drift. But we still honor Wegener for coming up with the idea and collecting data to support it. His papers were flawed, but they are still cited, because he was onto something real. Just like Mann et al.
Barton Paul Levenson // January 9, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Matt writes:
Why don’t you do that and tell us what you get?
Oh, and what was the magnitude of the change in McIntyre’s result, versus those in Mann et al. 1998? I seem to remember the “hockey stick” involved in the former was 20 times less prominent and not statistically significant.
David B. Benson // January 9, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Richard Steckis // January 9, 2009 at 5:37 pm — Patagonia following the Antarctic during MWP. THe evidence from South America that I know about is droughts in Peru, just barely in the southern hemisphere.
Barton Paul Levenson // January 9, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Matt writes:
You mean, Hansen et al. were honest enough to show that they had tried something which they later had to abandon?
I’m writing a radiative-convective model of Earth’s atmosphere at this time. I tried a method of forcing radiative equilibrium at TOA, and it didn’t work. So I commented it out. That way I could temporarily go back to the old code until I came up with something better. At the same time, I would be reminded of what didn’t work, and when I wrote up the documentation, I could cite what I did wrong and why it didn’t work. Instead, that is, of removing all the flawed old code altogether and pretending I had produced a pristine model in the first place.
You are faulting Hansen et al. for not covering up their earlier inaccuracies. You are faulting them for being honest about their work.
Gator // January 9, 2009 at 8:34 pm
MattInSeattle: If NASA can’t be bothered to spend 0.026% of their budget on QA staff for ModelE, then I certainly can’t be bothered to call.
In other words, you are not interested in advancing the science.
That code diff you pointed to includes changes over almost 6 years. Another thing you could do if you were genuinely interested would be to look at papers published over those six years to see how methods and results have changed.
Instead you give us another “Oh noes! The code haz changed!” Well duh. I would hope it has changed over those six years. I wouldn’t expect to read the code to understand the whys, I would look at the papers published.
Dave A // January 9, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Gator,
Yes, let’s give NASA some credit for eventually, however reluctantly, publishing its code over a period of time.( We’ll ignore the fact that the changes are mostly incomprehensible)
But what about Phil Jones who refuses to release information relevant to HADCRU and Lonnie Thompson who resolutely refuses to archive information relating to ice cores, and Santer who has point blank recently refused to provide any information?
If they are confident in what they are doing why are they seemingly afraid of disclosure?
Dano // January 10, 2009 at 12:58 am
If they are confident in what they are doing why are they seemingly afraid of disclosure?
Zombie argument # 46A. Don’t these fetishes ever die? Why won’t amateur auditors volunteer their time to straighten out these files, so the overbusy researchers can get to answering amateurs’ questions?
Oh, wait: researchers are rrrrrich! from green enviro money, and can afford their own staff to do this, They just don’t because they are afraid of disclosure. Never mind.
Best,
D
Hank Roberts // January 10, 2009 at 1:25 am
Dave A pretends to be stupid about history.
But he does it over and over and over.
Science is done in the journals.
Some scientists make the effort to educate the general public in other forums.
Few find it rewarding.
You _know_ what happened to Ben Santer.
MattInSeattle // January 10, 2009 at 1:49 am
Gator: That code diff you pointed to includes changes over almost 6 years. Another thing you could do if you were genuinely interested would be to look at papers published over those six years to see how methods and results have changed.
There are ways to develop code for websites and spreadsheets, and there are ways to develop code for mission critical things.
Ironically, NASA practically invented software engineering with their requirements traceability methods for spaceflight, and those practices have propagated through to medical and flight software.
if you believe the climate model that can predict the future is more critical than heart monitor, then you must agree it should be developed with the same rigor and oversight.
One aspect of this is that every place you see a constant in source code, there is a comment next to it that says something like
// Per #26636
And then you go to the requirements database and look up record 26636 and you see the countless journal articles and debates among the scientists as to why that value was chosen. And when that value changes, you see another string of debates.
And at the end of each debate, because you can know what other modules depend on that code, you know what you are required to test.
Instead, ModelE is developed like most shareware products out there. People tweak and hack until they get a response they like.
And as we saw from MBH, when they get a response they like, they figure the output must be good.
That’s not science. That’s hoping.
Ray Ladbury // January 10, 2009 at 2:03 am
Dave A.,
OK, hmm. Gee, can anybody think why all the real climate scientists might not want to play with the climate pseudo-scientists/auditors.
Could it be because the real scientists are busy doing real science and don’t have time to engage the adolescent fantasies of a bunch of wannabes?
Nah! That couldn’t be it.
Could it be because the denialists haven’t ever learned how to play nice and say, “Please” and “Thank You”.
Nah!
Could it be because the denialists run to their fellow tin-hat types in Congress and get working climate scientists subpoenaed?
Nah!
Could it be because the denialists savage them on blogs and in op eds and then come begging because they don’t have the expertise to reproduce what the scientists did with public domain data?
Nah! Couldn’t be that!
Must be a conspiracy! Yeah, that’s it!
Hank Roberts // January 10, 2009 at 2:18 am
PS, I looked up the then standard grant terms years ago in response to one of the many copypastes of that nonsense about ice core data. Consider the expense and effort involved in obtaining ice cores, you can read about it. Is the university then required to give the cores away free? Nope, the grant says (1) share (2) with other researchers (3) who pay their proportionate share of what it cost to obtain.
If you’re a researcher in the field, you’ll get an answer. If you’re an anklebiter you’ll be ignored.
Life is short. Researchers are few. Annoyances are many. Judge which you rate as, by how you’re treated by the researchers who can look up your work in the journals, if you did any.
Ray Ladbury // January 10, 2009 at 3:20 am
Matt, That is utter horse puckey. You are taking the same approach to the code that you take to the science–namely, saying: “I don’t understand it, so it must be wrong.”
To claim that the results are unreliable when you haven’t got the foggiest ideas about validation methodologies relevant to the field is just flat bloodyminded. Maybe if you actually spent some time talking to people who write code for scientific enterprises rather than trying to read the damned stuff, you might get somewhere. Perhaps you would learn that:
1)they are understaffed
2)they are underfunded
3)they are under time pressure to get the latest results out the door even as they are
4)trying on ideas for the next project.
Is the code in scientific enterprises perfect? Hell no! Could it be better documented? Damn right. So write your damned Congressman and get some money in NASA’s damned budget.
As it is, all you’ve done is show you are an absolute ignoramus when it comes to scientific coding. For one thing, climate models do not “predict” the future. They elucidate trends and physics that are likely to be important in future climates. GCMs are tools. The focus is on the science, not the tools.
michel // January 10, 2009 at 8:15 am
1) There are many references which show evidence of an MWP which is no more regional than present warming - there’s a fine collection on CO2 Science. Note, please, this is not an endorsement of CO2 Science the site. Simply that, whatever their merits or demerits in other respects, they have performed a service by collecting a whole lot of valid references on this in one convenient place.
[Response: CO2science is one of the most reprehensible websites in existence; they cannot be trusted, just because they say a given reference supports a given idea, doesn't make it so.
You're gonna have to do better than that. And don't just echo their list of "references" because I don't believe their characterization of anything. How about giving references you've actually read, and actually understood?]
2) McIntyre is doing what he wants, and there’s no reason he should do anything else. Any more than any of us should. There is no particular reason why he should publish in peer reviewed journals. The indignation on this is completely misplaced. We all contribute in the ways we feel like to topics that interest us. The interesting thing about McIntyre is the arguments, and of course, the R code.
3) The argument from ignorance is fallacious. If we do not know what caused MWP (or RWP), we really don’t know. We don’t know anything about it. Yes, if it was more than regional, and if it was the same size as current warming, that would indeed show that there is quite a lot we don’t understand about climate fluctuations. But until we know what the cause was, we cannot conclude anything about how big or small it was.
We can only make deductions about sensitivity from it when we know what it was. It could indeed be a small forcing from some unknown source, and the MWP could show great sensitivity to small forcings. Or it could be a larger forcing from some equally unknown source, and the MWP could show small sensitivity to large forcings. Or it could be medium…. As Wittgenstein might have said, if we don’t know, we don’t know, and guessing doesn’t help.
We really do need to complete our history - which would include not only finding the causes of MWP and RWP, but also finding the cause of LIA.
[Response: The MWP and LIA are not the impenetrable mysteries you make them out to be. Known natural variations (solar, volcanic, and yes GHG too) are plenty big enough to account for the size of those changes (as demonstrated by Crowley 2000 and others). There's no valid evidence that it was "the same size as modern warming," just unfounded speculation, insultingly sloppy work (Loehle), and twisted propaganda (co2science). Bu for some unfathomable reason you won't accept anthropogenic global warming but you'll give "co2science" as a reference.]
Richard Steckis // January 10, 2009 at 8:40 am
Bibliography MWP
Cook E, Bird T, Peterson M, Barbetti M, Buckley B, D’Arrigo R, Francey R (1992) Climatic change over the last millennium in Tasmania reconstructed from tree-rings. The Holocene 2:205-217
Cook ER (1995) Temperature histories from tree rings and corals. Climate Dynamics 11:211-222
Holmgren K, Karlen W, Lauritzen SE, Lee-Thorp JA, Partridge TC, Piketh S, Repinski P, Stevenson C, Svanered O, Tyson PD (1999) A 3000-year high-resolution stalagmitebased record of palaeoclimate for northeastern South Africa. The Holocene 9:295-309
Holmgren K, Tyson PD, Moberg A, Svanered O (2001) A preliminary 3000-year regional temperature reconstruction for South Africa. South African Journal of Science 97:49
Khim B-K, Yoon HI, Kang CY, Bahk JJ (2002) Unstable climate oscillations during the Late Holocene in the Eastern Bransfield Basin, Antarctic Peninsula. Quaternary Research 58:234-245
Lamb H, Darbyshire I, Verschuren D (2003) Vegetation response to rainfall variation and human impact in central Kenya during the past 1100 years. The Holocene 13:285-292
Mauquoy D, Blaauw M, Geel Bv, Borromei A, Quattrocchio M, Chambers FM, Possnert G, xf, ran (2004) Late Holocene climatic changes in Tierra del Fuego based on multiproxy analyses of peat deposits. Quaternary Research 61:148-158
Polissar PJ, Abbott MB, Wolfe AP, Bezada M, Rull V, Bradley RS (2006) Solar modulation of Little Ice Age climate in the tropical Andes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103:8937-8942
Rein B, Lückge A, Reinhardt L, Sirocko F, Wolf A, Dullo W-C (2005) El Niño variability off Peru during the last 20,000 years. Paleoceanography 20
Thompson LG, E. M-T, Davis ME, Lin P-N, Henderson K, Mashiotta TA (2003) Tropical glacier and ice core evidence of climate change on annual to millennial time scales. Climatic Change 59:137-155
Turney CSM, Palmer JG (2007) Does the El Niño–Southern Oscillation control the interhemispheric radiocarbon offset? Quaternary Research 67:174-180
Tyson PD, Karlen W, Holmgren K, Heiss GA (2000) The Little Ice Age and medieval warming in South Africa. South African Journal of Science 96:126
Richard Steckis // January 10, 2009 at 8:45 am
The southern hemisphere is less studied. However, there are some interesting results of research into the synchronicity characteristics between NH and SH with regard to these events.
Richard Steckis // January 10, 2009 at 8:46 am
I even forgot the New Zealand papers!
Ray Ladbury // January 10, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Michel and Richard,
As a physicist, I tend to look at things in term of energy. The warming we’ve seen in the past 30 years represents an astounding amount of energy, and especially so if any significant amount of it has gone into the oceans (that in the pipeline). We have a candidate mechanism for this warming–anthropogenic CO2. There is no other credible mechanism that doesn’t involve unknown physics.
If the MWP really represented a commensurate amount of warming, you need to posit a similarly large energy source. The only alternative would be if the effective thermal mass of the climate system is much smaller than we think or much larger feedbacks than we think. Both of these lead to higher sensitivities (to CO2 doubling, but higher generally). That would seem to be precluded by the research Tamino details.
Denialists concentrate on tiny aspects–a commented operation in a model, a perceived weakness in a single study. The thing is that there’s a mountain of evidence you ignore when you concentrate on such molehills. I’d recommend spending some time on creationist sites and comparing your attitudes to those of creationists attacking evolution.
Hank Roberts // January 10, 2009 at 3:09 pm
> bibliography
Whose bibliography? For what paper, making what point? Or are you just saying there’s something in those papers somewhere? If there isn’t a paper for which that serves as the list of references, you should write it. Quote the relevant bit from each and footnote to the source.
If there’s a pony, someone likely has found it.
TCOisbanned? // January 10, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Ray, you seem tohave a real problem differntiating argument on a particular with that on a generality. you always want to jump up and debate the general and even avoid looking at a particular. I find this problem at work all the time and invariabily problem solving works better when we get people to stop always trying to debate the larger issues when a micro issue is under examination. Even to gather data.
Feynman used to infuriate people by drilling down, but he would do it for a while and eventousally come back.
You should not worry so much about said behaviour. At the worst it’s just wasted time. And it might uncover something. But you seem so tied up in the policy devbate and such that you won’t allow canoodling on micro issues. I wonder if this is why you moved out of hard core science (or were not suited to it, etc.) This is why I really see you more as a culture of science type than a penetrating analyst.
Philippe Chantreau // January 10, 2009 at 5:04 pm
TCO, the problem is that denialists draw macroconclusions from their microissues (even if they don’t solve them), and then proceed on to invalidate the macro body of evidence. Just like that. And they’re very loud about it. And they whine to no end when shown that it doesn’t fly. And invoke freedom of speech. ‘coz they’re persecuted, just like Gallileo, ya know. Sheesh…
Ray Ladbury // January 10, 2009 at 5:28 pm
TCO, I have no objection to drilling down as deeply into an issue as you want. What I do object to is looking at a micro-blemish and claiming that it invalidates all of climate science. In general, the commenters–myself included–are all amateurs here. We can try to understand climate science for the sake of our own curiosity. We can debate policy wrt how we should address the threats. We should not, however, make the mistake they do over at CA and contend that what we are doing is real science any more than a Mod. Phys. student repeating the Millikan Oil Drop experiment is doing real science.
I would contend that those still harping on MBH98 aren’t even learning about science so much as history of science–why would you study out of a decade-old science text?
So my objection is not in going from specific to general so much as the contention that the specific overrules the general. It does not.
Richard Littlemore // January 10, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Skewering Fools
Don’t be modest. You do as nice a job as anyone on the net.
[Response: I'd put the Rabett in the #1 slot, or maybe George Monbiot.]
MattInSeattle // January 10, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Ray Ladbury: 1)they are understaffed
2)they are underfunded
3)they are under time pressure to get the latest results out the door even as they are
4)trying on ideas for the next project.
Ah yes, the perfect groundwork for why failure was acceptable. Sounds like the SEC after the fact. Please. Let’s avoid this scapegoating. Sounds like you are saying they are set up to fail from the beginning. No shame in that. But let’s not sell it as something it’s not.
The path that led us here is this: You like to state that past warming and future warming are certain, tied by a well understood theory. My point is that the theory is not at all well understood RELATIVE TO THE SIGNAL THAT IS BEING SOUGHT. The programmer’s pick for cloud parameterization has a much greater impact on the amount of predicted warming that the the CO2.
And then we see arbitrary changes to cloud parameters–by a factor of two–that have occurred over the last five years. And there’s no traceability to published papers, changing requirements, experiments or anything else.
Now, there could be a massive database behind the scenes that holds all this info. But I’ll bet not. And absent that database, this code development is nothing more than hacking about until you get an answer you agree with.
And because we’ve seen how MBH was handled, whcih was “if you agree with the answer, then there’s no need to validate it”, this is problematic.
Your angle on this has been to claim this is “scientific software development”, which I think to you means you get a pass and don’t have to develop it according to normal software engineering practices that are used to develop even photo-viewing software.
Well, good luck with that.
David B. Benson // January 10, 2009 at 7:30 pm
MattInSeattle // January 10, 2009 at 1:49 am — You could begin to learn how climate models have been developed by starting with “The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer Weart:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html
Review of above:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E7DF153DF936A35753C1A9659C8B63
and then continuing with this book
http://books.google.com/books?id=vnYeHl6AvgkC&pg=PA128&lpg=PA128&dq=Jastrow+Hansen+GISS&source=web&ots=wOy1ydpPQp&sig=WX37YNQF7kcfxynebSYhUbJAWuQ&hl=en#PPA144,M1
and a couple of recent papers by Gavin Schmidt, one co-authored.
Paul Middents // January 10, 2009 at 8:21 pm
TCOisbanned Jan 9 12:21 PM
TCO lobs incomprehensible references in response to someone who apparently asked for specific problems with MBH98. This is typical of his elliptical “canoodle” style that does little to advance the discussion.
Katzoff of your org? Google scholar is silent.
Wilson of your discipline?
Joliffe10? At least we all know who Joliffe is. TCO cajoled him into giving up some love for TCO’s great insight—non centered vs uncentered PCA or something like that.
Now Burger05 is at least comprehensible and findable:
http://coast.gkss.de/staff/storch/pdf/b%FCrger.cubasch.grl.2005.pdf
Are multiproxy climate reconstructions robust
G Bürger, U Cubasch - Geophysical Research Letters, 2005 - coast.gkss.de
Taking Hank’s advice of following the cites to this work forward we come to Burger07:
http://www.clim-past.net/3/397/2007/cp-3-397-2007.pdf
On the verification of climate reconstructions
G. B¨urger FU-Berlin, Institut f¨ur Meteorologie; Carl-Heinrich-Becker-Weg 6–10, 12165 Berlin, Germany
Received: 30 November 2006 – Published in Clim. Past Discuss.: 31 January 2007
Revised: 23 May 2007 – Accepted: 5 July 2007 – Published: 11 July 2007
And a significantly less than enthusiastic referee’s slap down of Burger’s work:
Interactive comment on “On the verification of climate reconstructions” by G. Bürger and
U. Cubasch
http://www.cosis.net/copernicus/EGU/cpd/2/S139/cpd-2-S139.pdf
“This is a deeply flawed manuscript, and its publication would damage the reputation of this
promising new journal. The authors display a disregard for existing peer-reviewed literature that unambiguously refutes their main claims. Each of their primary claims is false or misleading, as detailed below in this review. Moreover, the focus the paper is now plainly inappropriate, focusing on nearly decade-old work, the details of which and the key conclusions of which have now been independently validated by numerous other studies. The manuscript is backwardlooking,
invoking flawed criticisms of now very old work, while current studies have moved well
beyond this spurious debate about statistical minutia, focusing instead on real scientific issues: the reconstruction of spatial patterns of climate, and the elucidation of mechanisms of variability that can inform our understanding of climate and/or climate sensitivity (e.g. Mann et al, 2000; Delworth and Mann, 2000; Shindell et al, 2001; 2003; 2004; Waple et al, 2002; Braganza et al, 2003; Adams et al, 2003; Shindell et al, 2003;2004; Jones and Mann, 2004; Osborn and Briffa, 2006; Goosse et al, 2006; Hegerl et al, 2006).”
So TCO, canoodle me this. Drill down in the referee’s detailed comments and tell me why I should still care about Burger’s work either ‘05 or ‘07?
David B. Benson // January 10, 2009 at 8:24 pm
MattInSeattle // January 10, 2009 at 6:49 pm wrote “The programmer’s pick for cloud parameterization has a much greater impact on the amount of predicted warming that the the CO2.”
Them’s fighten’ words. Back it up or get out of Dodge.
JCH // January 10, 2009 at 8:31 pm
You would have better luck training Al Capone to work for H&R Block than you will educating Matt in Seattle. He thinks he’s the one doing the educating.
The thing that I just don’t get, the ExxonMobils of the world have stables full of stud scientists and computational types. I’m certain they follow CA, etc. It’s obvious they see nothing there that is of any worth to them at all. And they’re looking for something that would be worth tens of billions of dollars to them - what Hank calls a pony.
The oil industry has given it up. ExxonMobil just came out in favor of a carbon tax to mitigate CO2 pollution. They fully accept unprecedented dangerous warming is being caused by human behavior, and that CO2 is going to have to be mitigated. They would never surrender wholesale in these ways if their internal scientists were not totally convinced CA is a spectacularly insignificant dry hole.
They owned Joe Barton. What is he now? Nothing. Inhofe? What good to them is that pile? They’ve lost. They invested in the wrong arguments, the wrong arguers, and the wrong politicians. You can bet right now the oil-stained feelers going out to Al Gore out number the feelers to denialists by a million to one.
TCOisbanned? // January 10, 2009 at 8:54 pm
Ray: What I do object to is looking at a micro-blemish and claiming that it invalidates all of climate science.
AGREED
In general, the commenters–myself included–are all amateurs here. We can try to understand climate science for the sake of our own curiosity.
AGREED.
We can debate policy wrt how we should address the threats.
AGREED. BUT BETTER DISAGGREGATION WOULD HELP (FROM BOTH SIDES).
We should not, however, make the mistake they do over at CA and contend that what we are doing is real science any more than a Mod. Phys. student repeating the Millikan Oil Drop experiment is doing real science.
80% AGREE. THE WORK IS FAR BELOW WHAT THE HOI POLLOI THINK IT IS IN TERMS OF IMPACT. BUT THERE ARE ASPECTS OF THE ANALYSES THAT ARE INTERESTING, NOVEL AND ADDITIVE. MY MAIN ISSUE WITH THEM IS THAT THEY ARE NOT ADDITIVE ENOUGH…SINCE I THINK SOME OF THE ISSUES TOUCHED ON ARE FASCINATING. ALSO ONCE YOU ACCEPT DISAGGREGATION, PROBING OF MICRO-ISSUES, ETC. IT IS NOT SO IMPOSSIBLE THAT ANALYSES DONE CAN NOT CONTRIBUTE SOMETHING.
I would contend that those still harping on MBH98 aren’t even learning about science so much as history of science–why would you study out of a decade-old science text?
COMPLETELY DISAGREE WITH YOU, HERE. I HAVE MY UNION CARD, AM OUT OF SCIENCE NOW, BUT WAS AWARDED A MEDAL AS TOP IN FIELD AS STUDENT AND TOOK SCHOLARSHIP OF THE FIELD VERY SERIOUSLY. TO THE EXTENT THAT EVERY PAPER I FIRST AUTHORED WAS ACCEPTED WITHOUT REVISION WHEN MY ADVISOR HAD NEVER HAD ONE OF 150 ACCEPTED WITHOUT REVISION AND AS EDITOR OF 300 PAPERS HAD NEVER SEEN IT EITHER. IF YOU ALLOW PICKING AT MICRO-ISSUES, YOU NEED TO ALLOW PICKING AT 10 YEAR PAPERS. YOU MAY HAVE A PROBLEM WITH EXTENSION OF THAT EXAMINATION TO A GENERAL VIEW OF PROXY TEMP RECORD. BUT INVESTIGATING A COMPLEX, FLAWED, FIRST OF KIND METHOD PAPER AND RUNNING TO GROUND ISSUES (CF. JOLLIFFE DISCUSSION) IS GOOD STUFF.
So my objection is not in going from specific to general so much as the contention that the specific overrules the general. It does not.
I AGREE WITH THAT. BUT STOP TRYING TO STOP THE DISCUSSION OF THE SPECIFIC BEFORE AN ASSERTION OF THE GENERAL IS MADE. WAIT. JUST LIKE THE PEOPLE AT WORK WHO WANT TO DEFEND THEIR BUSINESSES WHEN WE ARE NOT AT THAT STAGE YET. ARE AT INITIAL DATA GATHERING. THIS IS HUMAN NATURE, RAY. IT’S CALLED PRE-POSITIONING. AND YOU ARE GUILTY OF A VERY HUMAN FLAW.
counters // January 10, 2009 at 8:56 pm
The programmer’s pick for cloud parameterization has a much greater impact on the amount of predicted warming that the the CO2.
And then we see arbitrary changes to cloud parameters–by a factor of two–that have occurred over the last five years. And there’s no traceability to published papers, changing requirements, experiments or anything else.
That’s just not the case. This comment convinces me that you have no idea what you’re talking about. Have you even done a cursory check of the pertinent literature to see if this assertion is based in any bit of reality? Of course not, because if you had, you’d be well aware that research into representing clouds in climate models is an extremely active field with much work being published every month.
You ask if there is a database behind the scenes holding all of this information; that database is the peer-reviewed literature. I strongly recommend that you cease making uninformed claims until you’ve spent some time on ams.allenpress.com browsing the archive of the Journal of Climate.
You need to step back and realize that you do not really know anything about the climate modeling community, its methods, its current research, or its progress. This can be remedied, however, if you stop lingering around the denialist hangouts on the blog-o-sphere and instead spend your time perusing the pertinent scientific literature - be it textbooks or published journal articles.
Dave A // January 10, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Ray,
So ” real climate scientists” are so busy doing science that they can’t be expected to do any housekeeping so that other scientists can actually fully understand how they arrived at their conclusions.
Moreover, because they are ‘published’ they don’t really need to provide supporting evidence because they would not have been published if there was something wrong with their work.
This is a circular argument which doesn’t get to the nub of whether they were right in their original papers or not.
As for conspiracies, what about the conspiracy of the consensus?
Dave A // January 10, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Dano,
“Zombie argument # 46A. “,
Actually its #23B, but no less relevant for that.
Ray Ladbury // January 10, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Matt, Who is talking about failure? The GCMs have done a whole lot more to elucidate our understanding of climate than, say,…oh…, you. All I am saying is that the climate models are no worse–and in some cases quite a bit better–than the majority of scientific computing.
Right now, your position is based on utter ignorance. You have no idea how scientific modeling is done–what its goals are, how it is validated, etc. You have zero understanding of the subject matter.
So you have a choice: You can continue to fulminate in ignorance–and meantime climate science will continue to explain things and improve. Or you can learn enough about the subject matter to actually appreciate what’s going on. Don’t expect much respect or sympathy if you choose ignorance.
TCOisbanned? // January 10, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Phil: Agree with your comments, both that this happens and that it is wrong. My problem is with the human argumentative tendancy that I see to fail to concede a point, because of worry (or even knowledge) that a subsequent inference which is wrong will be argued.
luminous beauty // January 10, 2009 at 9:07 pm
matt,
The cloud uncertainty suggests dramatic increases in storm frequency and intensity might mean lower surface temperature increases.
Again, I find that less than reassuring.
Dave A // January 10, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Tamino,
“Response: I’d put the Rabett in the #1 slot, or maybe George Monbiot.”
I’d be careful about putting yourself in the same frame as George M. Whilst he sometimes has good ideas he often shoots himself in the foot with off the wall suggestions.
In a recent Guardian article he suggested , on the basis of about three people he had come across since he moved to Wales very recently, that Welsh society and outlook was totally different to that of England.
Well, I am a relatively newcomer to Wales, but I have been here for 16 years and I can tell you he’s talking a load of cobblers. I could speculate on the reasons why but I won’t, although I do believe George needs to be ‘accepted’.
TCOisbanned? // January 10, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Dave:
1. You can’t ask me to reiterate all the various areas of MBH in debate in specific gory detail AND say “why the heck are you obsessing on this.” I CAN’T satisfy both you and Ray in that sort of situation.
2. Who cares about the reviews on Burger07! I cited Burger05. Sorry for the cryptic comments. I quite agree with detailed citations. I’ve just been involved with this thing for several years and so have most of the veterans here, so I get lazy. I will always clarify which paper if asked, though. Jolliffe10 was a joking reference to work that Jolliffe is doing right NOW looking at Mannian off-centering and it’s properties. Again, if you’ve been around, you would get the joke.
3. The reviewer comments on Burger07 (which I felt was flawed but more from gross lack of clarity) were laughed at even by people on the AGW “side”. And the editor chided the reviewer for lack of professionalism. At least look at the review by Tapio Shneider for a guy on your side who didn’t conflate a bunch of bluster into the science review.
Dano // January 10, 2009 at 9:39 pm
[Response: I'd put the Rabett in the #1 slot, or maybe George Monbiot.]
Tamino just points out the foolishness without calling it so (until comments and fools start acting foolish). IOW: plays nice with others until swung at.
There is a need for this, as there is a need for skewering. Both are needed.
Best,
D
Ray Ladbury // January 10, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Dave A. says “So ” real climate scientists” are so busy doing science that they can’t be expected to do any housekeeping so that other scientists can actually fully understand how they arrived at their conclusions.”
Actually, I haven’t heard any real scientists–you know, the ones who publish–complain. Look, you’re either
a scientist–in which case you are actively publishing and advancing understanding of climate–
a student–in which case you are actively trying to understand what the scientists are finding–
a policy maker–in which you SHOULD be taking the best of what the scientists are producing and trying to mitigate the threats of climate change
a bystander–in which case you should be aspiring to learn enough to select intelligent policy makers
0r
a pudknocker–in which case you are pretending to have something relevant to say about science or policy without having done the homework to understand it.
Choose one.
Dave A // January 10, 2009 at 10:05 pm
TCO,
I think it was Paul Middents who lobbed those questions your way.
guthrie // January 10, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Dave A- thats not really what Monbiot said. What he wrote was:
“This impulse arises from a number of observations, viz:
1. In two years of walking through the valleys and over the hills here, I have never been shouted at.
2. The café in the local leisure centre serves smoothies in measures labelled “small” (about a pint) and “regular” (about two pints).
3. When I wrote to a very active councillor, asking his permission to recommend him for a gong, he replied, “I would prefer not to seek such an honour.”
Through such observations, I have begun to form the impression that Wales is less socially stratified, less grasping, more liberal than the rest of Britain. Though I am an outsider, from the colonial power, with an unerring ability to wind people up, I have never been made to feel unwelcome here. And it seldom rains here, and then only at night. (That’s not strictly true, but this is what nationalism does). ”
Slightly different from the suggestion that he talked to 3 people. He does have this tendency towards high falutin’ generalisations, but I have found him to be accurate enough when he gets down to business, and he has been known to apologise about getting something wrong, unlike many other hacks I’m sure we have seen.
Lee // January 10, 2009 at 10:40 pm
TCO says:
“Ray, you seem tohave a real problem differntiating argument on a particular with that on a generality. you always want to jump up and debate the general and even avoid looking at a particular.”
But TCO, the reason people get infuriated with the focus on the “particular’ of MBH 98/99 - is precisely that the people doing so ALMOST NEVER gets back to generality. Finding a flaw in MBH 98/99 is relevant to the generality ONLY if that flaw has a significant impact on the conclusions of the paper AND is not addressed in later papers, either directly or by redundancy of analysis.
The argument should be:
‘1. We find this specific flaw in MBH98/99,
2. It was significant to their conclusion,
3. That flaw is still relevant to our understanding of paleoclimate because subsequent work has not corrected or superceded that flaw, or attempts to do so have not been adequate,
4. And here is the rigorous review of the subsequent literature that shows that it has not been adequately addressed.’
THAT is how one dives into specifics, and then makes the specifics applicable to the general. The denialists never get beyond step 1 or 1/1/2. They then handwave through steps 1 1/2 - 4 and conclude without any actual analysis that the flaw still matters (or more often and worse, imply without actually arguing that their statement of step 1 alone is enough to disqualify the general).
Here is a ‘disaggregation’ for you, TCO. One could remove MBH 98 / 99 from the literature altogether, analyze subsequent works on their own, and it would have no impact on the current state of our paleoclimate knowledge. This alone tells us that focusing on specifics of MBH 98/99 is irrelevant to the generality of climate science at this point. It is relevant to history, it is relevant to attempts to trash Michael Mann, it is relevant to attempts to slime climate science - but it is irrelevant to our current understanding of paleoclimate.
All of this leads me to conclude that people who focus on MBH 98/99 are interested in something other than our best current understanding of paleoclimate.
TCOisbanned? // January 10, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Lee: You are so wrapped up in the “battle” of the general that you don’t even realize what a BLESSING it would be to debate the specific and not even talk about the general. The inability to spearate the two is a flaw in both your side and Steve’s side. Try to do better, man.
MattInSeattle // January 11, 2009 at 12:25 am
David A. Benson: Them’s fighten’ words. Back it up or get out of Dodge.
See NASA’s own: http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0442/15/17/pdf/i1520-0442-15-17-2491.pdf
Read the intro. It will give you a good overview of the efforts to understand this over the last decade. And of course, it’s from NASA, so it’s got to be good.
Now, given all that has been studied here, how do we end up where the “multiplier for convection cloud covers” just jumps from 1.0 to 2.0 over 5 years? Are they sure it’s not 1.9? So much has been studied here, why not a link in the comments to the literature as they do in other places?
Unless, of course, they are just tweaking until they get an answer they like.
Luminous Beauty: The cloud uncertainty suggests dramatic increases in storm frequency and intensity might mean lower surface temperature increases.
No, it does that mean that. It means that it’s completely possible that in 2012 the modelers might come out and say “OK, now we understand clouds on the impact on global warming. And our new findings explain how the climate is actually self regulating and that 2xCO2 WHEN CLOUDS ARE ACCOUNTED FOR is actually 0.2′C.”
And yes, this happened before. It happened in the mid’90’s, when Hadley believed 2xCO2 was nearly 6′C.
Paul Middents // January 11, 2009 at 12:48 am
TCO Jan. 10, 9:34
I’ve been around almost as long as you. I don’t waste my time at CA or opining on things I don’t know much about such as “The Indians ate the animals”.
I choose to read and learn from literate sources like Tamino, RC, Rabett, Grumbine, Tobis and the peer reviewed literature. Your cryptic, cite free, episodically incoherent style is not particularly helpful.
I followed the PCA kerfluffle on this blog and am well aware of Joliffe’s position and his intention to write up the PCA stuff. I hope he does. I can get a joke when it’s couched in English.
I’m really “impressed” by your drilling down, clever repartee, oft claimed union card, and great publication record in some perhaps vaguely related field. At least we know exactly who Ray B. is and what his publication record is.
As far as I can tell Burger ’05 has been cited by perhaps five substantive articles including Amman & Wahl ’07. Unfortunately most are hidden behind pay walls.
You had an exchange with Gavin in 2006 on Burger ’05. I can’t see much light emanating from that bit of “drill down”.
The review comments and discussion associated with Burger ’07 are quite interesting. The editor does in fact note “the inappropriate tone of reviewer #2 and his/her scientifically irrelevant points.”
Reviewer #3 really rips them up. Why isn’t this of interest?
J. Guiot comments on reviewer #2 are not quite as harsh as the editor’s.
http://www.cosis.net/copernicus/EGU/cpd/2/S182/cpd-2-S182.pdf
Guiot even makes some of your points concerning the value of picking away at the statistical techniques used in an early paper and opposes the attempt by reviewer #2 to close the debate. Isn’t this the point you keep belaboring with Ray?
A little bruised, Burger finally got the paper through the review process.
Back to another of your throw away references–It’s spelled Schneider. Which particular review did you have in mind?
And who is Katzsoff? I suppose if I were an insider of your long experience I would know but please tell me.
You are not at all reluctant to hold a professional’s (Pelto) feet to the fire to answer your questions. Do me a favor—cite please. Complete sentences please. Spell check is not just for sissies.
MattInSeattle // January 11, 2009 at 12:51 am
Ray Ladbury: Matt, Who is talking about failure? The GCMs have done a whole lot more to elucidate our understanding of climate than, say,…oh…, you. All I am saying is that the climate models are no worse–and in some cases quite a bit better–than the majority of scientific computing. Right now, your position is based on utter ignorance. You have no idea how scientific modeling is done–what its goals are, how it is validated, etc. You have zero understanding of the subject matter.
I don’t doubt the value of models.
I do have considerable experience in complex software development by large teams, and I’ve build countless models over the years for modeling everything from field failure rates of consumer products, to IC yields and costs, power amplifier losses due to dielectric material and paths for meandering line microstrips, signal processing, complex non-linear control systems for piloting a UAV when the various loops are perturbed by wind, and finally, years spent with historical stock market data while trying my hand and at exploiting the stock market. About half are in Excel, and and the more detailed analysis (UAV control system, signal processing and financial) are all done in C or C# up to around 20,000 lines of code (not including UI).
Believe you me, I’m fully aware how easy it is to convince yourself that “this time, it’s right”.
There is nothing unique about the problem space that comes by sticking the word “scientific” in front of “computing”. It does not change human nature, and it does not change the best-practices for which these types of problems are solved.
counters // January 11, 2009 at 12:56 am
Matt,
In the very near future, a new iteration of the major climate models will be finalized (mainly so that the appropriate scenario runs can be performed so that IPCC AR5 will be released on time). These models will be two generations removed from the synopsis of the science presented in your linked paper.
Cloud parameterization has been a major focus of research for the upcoming generation of climate models, and a vast number of schemes have been developed to rectify this open-ended problem. One such scheme can be read about here.
You’re right that one day in the future, someone might crack the cloud parameterization problem once and for all. It’s preposterous, though, to suggest that when that day comes, the climate sensitivity will revise down to a fifth of a degree C. The only place where such a fantasy exists is in the denial-o-sphere. Most likely, when clouds are finally rectified, their impact on our projections will hardly be the panacea that denialists are looking for.
Lee // January 11, 2009 at 1:00 am
TCO,
Bullc**p.
I never said, implied, or argued that specifics don’t matter. The ‘general’ is built out of many, many specifics, and I would love to be debating specifics THAT ACTUALLY HAVE SOME RELEVANCE TO THE DEBATE.
My argument was not that specifics don’t matter - it is that THESE specifics are irrelevant to the general issue. I am perfectly able to separate specific and general issues - that’s what my entire post was about, for gods sake. I laid out a strategy for showing that the specifics from MBH 98/99 - or any other paper for that matter - are or are not relevant to the general issue.
I note that you have not addressed the substance of that post.
Lets talk specifics. Lets talk, for example, about cloud dynamics, the current research, the best current understanding of the range of values for the feedback parameter from cloud dynamics, the evidence that constrains it, the implications of values throughout that range, the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches. That would be fun, I’d learn a lot, because its an area of the science I know almost nothing about.
And if someone brings up an older paper, and says, ‘ this paper seems to have these flaws, and then we find that later papers addressed those flaws, modified the conclusion somewhat, and advanced the science, then LETS STOP ARGUING ABOUT THE OLD PAPER. AND MOVE ON TO THE RELEVANT SCIENCE.
There are better, more recent paleoclimate papers than MBH 98/99. They are papers with specifics that are relevant to the current state of general knowledge. Anyone who focuses on MBH 98/99 to the near exclusion of the current state of the art papers and the specifics of those papers, anyoen who wont place their criticism sof MBH 98/99 in the context of whether and how those issues are addressed by the further analyses since then, is interested primarily in history and the evolution of the field (which is fine, but not all that informative about what we currently know) or in trashing the field (which is denialism). I’m interested in what we currently know about paleoclimate. What about you?
Steve Bloom // January 11, 2009 at 1:58 am
Tamino, not to take anything away from Eli and George, let’s not forget Tim Lambert on the denialist debunking front.
Also, while he’s not nearly as prolific as any of the above, IMHO Ray P.’s work at RC (thinking in particular of How to cook a graph in three easy lessons) are the masterpieces of the genre.
[Response: I agree there are many contenders and no clear winner. I like the Rabett because he's a good writer, and uses humor effectively.]
John Mashey // January 11, 2009 at 2:23 am
Of course, as is often the case, once one gets into arguments over MBH98/99 and MWP, and the fog settles over the science, I’m reminded to ask:
Suppose the MWP was global, and the average temperature was a little warmer than right now [ despite the evidence otherwise, including my favorite anecdotal piece, Richard Selley's Winelands of Britain, wherein wineries have advanced noticeably further North of either MWP or Roman ones.]
But just suppose MWP was a little warmer:
a) If the planet was (slightly) warmer than now, does that prove that we can throw out modern physics and prove AGW isn’t happening? To prove non-AGW, is it sufficient to prove MBH98/99 weren’t perfect?
b) Suppose it was (slightly) warmer, but we didn’t have any estimates.
c) *Exactly* which policy decisions would be different going forward? in either a) or b).
Of course, regarding disclosure, those unfamiliar with The Data Quality Act might want to learn what it was for - read the Chris Mooney references there.
Finally, regarding the use of statistics, I used to work at a place with excellent statisticians. At least one would be rolling in his grave regarding the frequent misuses of statistics seen elsewhere in this turf.
On the other hand, I suspect John Tukey would have heartily approved tamino’s work here…
[Some will recognize this as a compliment.]
luminous beauty // January 11, 2009 at 2:46 am
matt,
I wonder if you could describe this hypothetical self-regulation? What is the physical process that gives clouds such magical properties? What would we expect to change if the surface temperatures changed so little?
elspi // January 11, 2009 at 3:34 am
MattInSeattle: “There is nothing unique about the problem space that comes by sticking the word “scientific” in front of “computing”. It does not change human nature, and it does not change the best-practices for which these types of problems are solved.”
It does change the groupthink that happens in the business world. That is entirely missing in science.
That is why something like the recent financial meltdown never happens in science. In science there is a bias against the conventional wisdom. In the business world the bias is all the other way.
Richard Steckis // January 11, 2009 at 3:48 am
Hank:
“Quote the relevant bit from each and footnote to the source.”
What do you want me to do? Quote the full abstracts. I could do that but I think Tamino would get upset at the length of the resulting post. I think you should do a little of that yourself. You go and look at the papers.
Richard Steckis // January 11, 2009 at 3:52 am
Ray. I can’t say what the energy source is. I am not an atmospheric physicist. However, perhaps you are so attached to the concept that the only possible source of extra energy is anthropogenic that you are blind to other possibilities (such as deep ocean sinks etc). I shall search for you.
Hank Roberts // January 11, 2009 at 4:31 am
No, I just want to know what paper these cites are the bibliography for. How did you get them, where did you get them, what statements in them are you relying on. Usual question about a bibliography.
You don’t expect me to go through there and try to find support for your statements, do you? That’s your job as an author when you present a list like this and say it’s — what is your statement, that there is evidence of a global pattern?
Pony here doesn’t cut it.
Hank Roberts // January 11, 2009 at 4:32 am
Oh, wait — “abstracts” — do you mean you’ve only read the abstracts? Have you read these papers yourself? You realize I’m going to have to go to a university library to read most of them, but you’re AT a university, you presumably did already do that?
Philippe Chantreau // January 11, 2009 at 4:57 am
Elspi, couldn’t agree more. Yet many will deny that even though it has become so painfully obvious…
Hank Roberts // January 11, 2009 at 5:03 am
Well, let’s try to make this work.
Holocene — abstracts, no full text. Looked at several, nothing pertinent found there.
Here’s one that has content, the Holmgren/Moberg paper: http://www.sabinet.co.za/abstracts/sajsci/sajsci_v97_n1_2_a12.xml
“preliminary 3000-year palaeotemperature series is presented for South Africa. The series has been derived using the correlation in recent times between the colour variation in annual growth layers of a stalagmite taken from a cave in the Makapansgat Valley and an area-averaged regional annual maximum temperature series. A statistical transfer function was applied to the variation in colour banding in the stalagmite over the last 3000 years…. Medieval warming with a maximum at around AD 1500 and a pronounced warm episode around 100 BC were prominent features of the record.”
K Holmgren, PD Tyson, A Moberg, O Svanered - South African Journal of Science, 2001 - Sabinet Online … research letter.
Cited by 24 — interesting:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?num=50&hl=en&lr=&newwindow=1&safe=off&cites=5667376435717073804
cited by some familiar-sounding names I’ll have to look up: Zang, Loehle, de Frietas
Leads to this:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/hl455083166743j2/
“analysis of fossil pollen, charcoal, diatoms and isotopic evidence from Mapimbi, a small lake in the Kruger National Park, South Africa …. The transitions between four, statistically different phases in the time-series data coincide with regional climate records previously constructed from speleothem data, and are consistent with the transition from the medieval warm period ending in the 14th century a.d. to the cooler, drier conditions prevailing during the little ice age of ca. a.d. 1400–1800. The data also suggest a period of significant, anthropogenic influence after a.d. 1800…”
Might be something there. I didn’t find anyone who’s written it up as a paper on the subject of whether the MWP was global or not, perhaps ‘ve missed a reference. Someone will turn it up if it’s there.
MattInSeattle // January 11, 2009 at 8:18 am
Counters:
You’re right that one day in the future, someone might crack the cloud parameterization problem once and for all. It’s preposterous, though, to suggest that when that day comes, the climate sensitivity will revise down to a fifth of a degree C.
Did you think it was preposterus when Hadley’s climate model 2X estimate went from 5.2′C to 1.9′C just 12 years ago?
After all, most here would argue that was well within the window of scientists being incredibly enlightened about AGW and the mechanisms.
In 1995, when the Hadley figure was 5.2′C, do you think they knew it was wrong but they shared it anyway? Or were they pretty sure they were right, but they just misunderstood something significant (like clouds).
Is there another unknown beast lurking about? Why could that not happen again? Would you bet your retirement that it won’t?
MattInSeattle // January 11, 2009 at 8:29 am
Luminous Beauty: I wonder if you could describe this hypothetical self-regulation?
Er, it’s hypothetical, so by law I’m not required too.
By point is that if most types of clouds have a net cooling effect, and we don’t know what causes those types of clouds to form, then perhaps a mechanism exits. Not saying it does
MattInSeattle // January 11, 2009 at 8:35 am
elspi: It does change the groupthink that happens in the business world. That is entirely missing in science.
Are you you really this clueless? Every professions suffers from groupthink. Would you please quit pretending that scientists are super human? Look at the direction funding dollars are heading and you’ll find groupthink in science. In economics. In engineering. In medicine.
Academia is a half block around the corner from science, and it is the very definition of group think.
MattInSeattle // January 11, 2009 at 8:44 am
Lee: LETS STOP ARGUING ABOUT THE OLD PAPER. AND MOVE ON TO THE RELEVANT SCIENCE.
Yes, let’s. And let’s also admit the paper was innovative.
But before we leave this paper, understand much of the argument isn’t about the science in the paper itself. Will you admit:
1) The scientific community pushed the paper into the media with zero validation of the conclusion? Peer review failed in this case.
2) The confidence of the conclusion was overstated by some some non-trivial degree.
3) The conclusion of the paper may be accurate, but the math that led to that conclusion was flawed. In college EE courses, that got you an “F”. Maybe science was different.
4) The scientific community was very slow to admit and address the problem.
If you will admit these 4, then you and I can move on. But if you won’t admit these items, then I suspect the debate will rage on.
TCOisbanned? // January 11, 2009 at 11:38 am
Paul:
1. I agree with the beating that burger took on 07. Heck in my little way, I was part of the beating. BUT I DIDN’T CITE THAT PAPER as an example of useful work. I cited a different one. If we segue the conversation to discussion of men, than fine, make a general crit on burger for every paper that has a hard time getting through. Praise me for how I get stuff through quickly. But that’s a different topic.
2. I agree that my comments are mildly crytpic and sometimes irellevent and unsupported (Indians eating animals). If you hang in there, you can usually tell the difference and there are ways to engage me in more substantive discussion if that’s your bent (note, not just giving me make work…but having interesting points.)
TCOisbanned? // January 11, 2009 at 11:45 am
Lee:
1. We should be able to dissect specifics even if they “don’t matter” to a discussion of the general, even if they don’t correspond to what you think is important. Only when we make an asserion of the implication should you disagree. Allow the investigation of priors to occcur. For one thing, it allows us to find common ground on prediucates before a different argument is joined.
2. MBH is not so teribbly old. 10 years is nothing in peer reviewed literature. Also it has a complicated and somewhat novel method and said method has not been agreed to be flawed. How do you know people won’t repeat the mistakes (whatever they are) if there is no understanding of them being wrong?
3. Why do you want to shut down the debate when there is not even agreement on what was/wasn’t wrong? When there really are still characterizing studies of method to be done? When McI’s research was flawed and made less insightful because of being too much of a hit peiece rather than an exploration of the interaction of data/method and result?
TCOisbanned? // January 11, 2009 at 11:54 am
Lee: I do mildly agree with you that McI (and his ilk, but taking him as most serious of that camp) should look at more papers than just MBH. Certainly he has read enough literature and studied enough concepts (autocorr, etc.) that he should opine on papers like Zorita, VS (recently mentioned here).
Also, I was amazed that he put Santer under the microscope, but not Douglas! They have almost the same topic. Santer is almost a reply to Douglas. Douglass was being actively talked through by his community. Even in discussion of one or the other, people (cf. Lucia) bring in t’other. So it was bizarre and gamey and just not showing intellectual interest that he did not examine each. I bet they both have little issues!
Similarly it’s bizarre to me how many popular critical posts have been done on Moburg and Hegerl, without ever getting to an archived, peer-reviewed publication. I think this reflects both writing laziness, as well as not wanting to be pinned down, as well as a feeling that he is more about PR and community gratification and being on the net, than about actual hypothesis testing and insight finding.
TCOisbanned? // January 11, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Paul, here’s the Google cite page for Burger05:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cites=18146789277266353656
I thought there would be more than what is shown.
I. Actually, I wonder how good G Scholar is.
A. It says 19, but shows 14.
B. And it only shows 4 cites of Wahl and Amman.
C. Directs to pdfs of papers rather than to the papers themselves. Seems to web centric rather than how a real abstracting service like APS/ACS or webofscience works.
II. While I agree that all 19 are not “countable” cites, I think it’s more than 5. Would include all the cites by papers in peer reviewed journals as well as the acedmic book cite. We can exclude the Junk science cite and the “interactive comment” cite from COSIS.
—————————
Anyhow, at least B05 is published. It’s in the game. It’s helpful. McI’s website could go down tomorrow and then what has he done in terms of real science?
michel // January 11, 2009 at 1:15 pm
I never said I do not accept AGW. There are a number of hypotheses in it, some of which I accept, some reject, and am unsure about others. As for CO2 Science, I was careful not to endorse any more than the list of references from it. Its part of life’s rich pattern, but of course, some like it more than others. This reaction is part of a very common and wrong approach, which is to treat skepticism about any part of the grand AGW narrative as skepticism about the whole, which it is not.
The argument started, lets remember, about whether, if the MWP really did exist globally, and was about as large as today’s warming, it would be correct to conclude from that fact alone that climate sensitivity is high. Higher than what? Not quite sure, but we seem to be arguing that the existence of MWP is in some way a support for high climate sensitivity. This is normally used as an ad hominem argument to divert attention from the deficiencies of MBH, by arguing that the case for high climate sensitivity is greater if they were wrong than if they were right.
Is that claim valid or not, logically? I still cannot see it. We need a consistent narrative. One narrative would be that found in MBH. There was no MWP, or it was regional and unimportant and not comparable. Therefore today’s warming is exceptional and we must look for an exceptional cause. CO2 is a good candidate for such a cause. This is logically fine, whether its correct or not is another story.
Another narrative might go, there have been lots of warmings of the same size as today’s. We do not know what they were due to. But they show that the climate is sensitive to small forcings.
This is logically fallacious. They cannot show any such thing, unless we identify the forcing. Yes, if the MWP resulted from identified small forcings, it would indeed show that small forcings can produce largeish warmings.
You can’t have it both ways at once. If MBH is correct, there was no MWP (or LIA) to explain, and then today is unique, and we need to find a unique cause.
But if it happened, we need an account of what caused it, and how big it was, and then we can assess what it shows about climate sensitivity.
To argue that MBH was correct, and that if wrong, it shows that climate sensitivity is high, is incoherent. This is just constructing the hypothesis that it happened and was due to small forcings, which is both contrary to MBH, and in need of some sort of evidence, it can’t just be asserted as following from the mere existence of MWP.
So which is it? Is MBH right or wrong about the MWP? And what is the evidence, if they were wrong, for its being due to small forcings?
saltator // January 11, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Hank.
Try:
Broecker WS (2001) PALEOCLIMATE: Was the Medieval Warm Period Global? Science 291:1497-1499
Abstract:
During the Medieval Warm Period (800 to 1200 A.D.), the Vikings colonized Greenland. In his Perspective, Broecker discusses whether this warm period was global or regional in extent. He argues that it is the last in a long series of climate fluctuations in the North Atlantic, that it was likely global, and that the present warming should be attributed in part to such an oscillation, upon which the warming due to greenhouse gases is superimposed.
Hank Roberts // January 11, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Oh, I know the North Atlantic stuff, the ‘likely’ is familiar; what’s been wanting is the cross comparison of actual data from enough different locations in the southern hemisphere. Of course part of the problem is the predominance of ocean south of the equator, it’s harder to get stratigraphic records from ocean sites. But there are enough records to say it’s not “almost certain” and the blank spots need to be filled in by someone with the patience to evaluate all the different findings and cross-compare them.
I haven’t seen that done. I see it frequently asserted as though it were proven because it’s a PR talking point. But what’s missing is the paper that lines up the evidence across the globe.
Ray Ladbury // January 11, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Michel,
Look, there are two possibilities:
1)There is a very large source of energy that ain’t solar, ain’t ghg, has nothing to do with volcanic frequency and leaves no trace in any record we currently know and seems not to be operant today (otherwise we’d be measuring it now, right?).
2)That climate sensitivity to small increases in energy is much larger than we currently believe.
If you claim 1), you are doing so in the absence of any evidence–indeed, seemingly in the absence of any possible evidence.
Meanwhile, claiming 2) runs you into a whole helluva lot of contradictions, not the least of which is the 20th century record of climate.
On the other hand, the consensus is pretty darned self-consistent. This is why I emphasize the aggregate of the evidence. Trying to explain the mountain of evidence in the absence of that self-consistent model is…daunting.
Sekerob // January 11, 2009 at 3:32 pm
One steve goddard, who’s he (The Register ?), has a hmmm postulation at wotsoup on the expand of Antarctic sea ice being more important in cooling terms than the loss on the Arctic side on warming. I have a hard time equating 945,000 km square missing on the Arctic side this moment with 162,000 km2 more on the Antarctic side combined with being 3% closer to the sun during the southern summer. No ice in the Baltic to name off as is there little near Vladivostok. Not enough of a more southerly offset on NH?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/iphone.currentarea.series.html
Does this maybe qualify for a new “X is as Y does” topic?
luminous beauty // January 11, 2009 at 3:37 pm
matt,
Your entire argument rests on some unknown imaginary forcing for which you have no evidence, being the cause of some hypothetical phenomenon the extant evidence contradicts.
Formally, this is known as an Argumentum ad Ignorantiam fallacy.
Informally known as making stuff up.
counters // January 11, 2009 at 3:43 pm
In 1995, when the Hadley figure was 5.2′C, do you think they knew it was wrong but they shared it anyway? Or were they pretty sure they were right, but they just misunderstood something significant (like clouds).
Is there another unknown beast lurking about? Why could that not happen again? Would you bet your retirement that it won’t?
Are you really asking this?
A scientist never has all the answers at one point in time. Everything has an uncertainty tagged with it; you’re ignoring this uncertainty entirely in your argument. There’s no reason to not publish a result because of an uncertainty (unless it’s way over the top).
You’re making a very poor argument based on a complete lack of knowledge on how climate models have developed over the last decade. That a figure such as climate sensitivity will change as our methods get better and we add more pieces to the picture is not surprising. That value might drift a bit randomly over time, but you have to talk about the error associated with it too to make an honest argument.
But that’s beside the point. We know the worn out tactic you’re using here: you’re making an unfounded assertion that climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 will drift to a negligible value over time.
You know, just because you can plot a line between two points doesn’t mean it’s meaningful. You need to lay out a physical basis for your assertion of a trend. There is no credible line of research which lends the suggestion that cloud feedbacks will cancel the forcing from a doubling of CO2. No serious member of the climate science community believes this will happen, and no research points down that direction.
Your argument is completely bunk and you’re wasting your breath by repeating it.
It’s not a matter of if I would bet my retirement on this fact being true. It’s whether or not you’d bet your retirement on the climate sensitivity being revised down to zero.
Ray Ladbury // January 11, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Matt, OK, I refuse to believe that you are sufficiently delusional to think that CO2 sensitivity will drop as low as 1 degree per doubling. I know you are not an idiot, and I respect that your expertise in programming. I’m wondering why you will not extend the same professional respect to climate scientists.
And the thing is, the adjective “scientific” makes all the difference in the world when it comes to computing. For one thing there is a physical reality out there to validate the model against. CO2 stands out like a sore thumb in that physical reality. There simply is not any other forcer with such a long time constant that stays well mixed up into the stratosphere for millennia. That a cloud mediated mechanism could mimic that strains credulity. That it could do so repeatedly in interglacial after interglacial, through eons of variations of paleoclimate and into the modern era is risible.
Matt, your models, I am guessing, have all been statistical models. GCMs are dynamical–that’s a world of difference. Moreover, your program development has been conducted in an commercial environment, where resources are more plentiful than they are in scientific research. You are looking at scientific computing from a very different culture. Don’t you think you should maybe make an effort to understand the science behind the models and the culture in which the models were implemented and validated before saying to the entire scientific community (which has validated the conclusions of climate science) that they are all a bunch of idiots?
Lazar // January 11, 2009 at 6:51 pm
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.
MattInSeattle // January 11, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Luminous Beauty: Your entire argument rests on some unknown imaginary forcing for which you have no evidence
You could have said the exact same thing in 1994 when Hadley believed the impact of clouds was negligible. And that unknown imaginary force turned out to be…get ready…it’s really scary…soft, fluffy CLOUDS.
See how something simple and benign can change your thinking WHEN you don’t understand the puzzle? CFCs used to be not scary, and in fact they were a wondergas. But then our understanding changed, and they became scary. Same with asbestos.
Is it possible that a previously unexplained mechanism could result in more low-level clouds forming as we warm? And since most clouds have a net cooling effect, we don’t warm as much as we believe?
The IPCC lists “indirect aerosol effect” as potentially as strong of a cooler as CO2 is a warmer and yet very poorly understood in terms of how it contributes to cloud formation.
Why would you not think something significant could come from this? Why do you believe the mid-90s smackdown on Hadley’s sky-high 2Xco2 figure could not happen again?
Dave A // January 11, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Lee,
“There are better, more recent paleoclimate papers than MBH 98/99. They are papers with specifics that are relevant to the current state of general knowledge”
OK, then, tell me what papers these are and we can move on from there.
Dave A // January 11, 2009 at 11:48 pm
Ray,
Remember your suggested new year resolution and try to make at least one post without superfluous denigration - it doesn’t endear anyone to your argument.
David B. Benson // January 12, 2009 at 12:00 am
MattInSeattle // January 11, 2009 at 12:25 am — I ead the entire papaer, with profit. As I suspected, it does not support the assertion you made.
Get out of Dodge.
counters // January 12, 2009 at 12:20 am
Why would you not think something significant could come from this? Why do you believe the mid-90s smackdown on Hadley’s sky-high 2Xco2 figure could not happen again?
Again, you’re asking the wrong question. Why do you think that this will happen again?
Science doesn’t work the way you’re practicing it. We don’t assume anything about what we’ll discover in the future. That’s about as anti-scientific as things go, since it biases ones objectivity based on what they predict will happen. We don’t go around waiting for “previously unexplained” phenomena to confirm our pre-conceived notions; this obviously violates parsimony.
Unless you can provide a credible, rational argument as to why the climate sensitivity will change, then this discussion is over. You’re obfuscating and wasting everyone’s time by continuing it.
Ray Ladbury // January 12, 2009 at 12:25 am
Dave A., Like I say, you stop making spurious charges against working climate scientitists, I’ll try to be nice. I’m still waiting.
Ray Ladbury // January 12, 2009 at 12:32 am
Matt, Let’s just say that you have a creative way of viewing the reduction in uncertainty of climate sensitivity. You will notice that when the range diminished, the midpoint stayed about the same. That’s usually a pretty good indication that things are pretty well determined. Matt, PLEASE, I’m begging you. You are not dumb. Please learn some of the science so that you don’t appear that way.
luminous beauty // January 12, 2009 at 1:40 am
matt,
I’d love a cite for that 1995 (or is it 1994?) 5.2C/2xCO2 Hadley Centre projection.
What I can find is:
Transient Response of the Hadley Centre Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Model to Increasing Carbon Dioxide. …
JM Murphy, JFB Mitchell - Journal of Climate, 1995 .
Equilibrium response to 2xCO2: 2.8C.
Harmless fluffy clouds, eh? Promise?
luminous beauty // January 12, 2009 at 2:09 am
Take your pick.
Hank Roberts // January 12, 2009 at 2:48 am
> Hadley … clouds … 1994
You’re channeling who, Lomborg maybe?
Clueless about how these models were built, or how long they had to be run on the computers available at the time, I guess.
lee // January 12, 2009 at 4:55 am
MattA,
You pretend to enough knowledge to contribute something useful to the conversation, and yet you don’t know?
“OK, then, tell me what papers these are and we can move on from there.”
Are you intentionally discrediting yourself?
lee // January 12, 2009 at 5:05 am
Mat,
The Hadley 2xCO2 sensitivity value was
NEVER 5.2C. It was NEVER 1.9C. It was, at each of those times, and at all other times, a range with a stated confidence interval around a central value. The range matters - in fact, the range is critical, much more relevant than the central value.
That said, would you please give us a cite - a single cite or perhaps 2 if they are relevant, not a listing of every Hadley paper ever - for each of those values? And while you’re at it, tell us the confidence intervals for each of them?
lee // January 12, 2009 at 5:14 am
TCO:
“3. Why do you want to shut down the debate when there is not even agreement on what was/wasn’t wrong?”
Sigh… I’m not ‘trying to shut down the debate.” Hell, I listed valid reasons for continuing that debate. Can you read, TCO? Strike that - I know you can. So why are you saying such an absurd thing, when it is a complete nonsequitors?
Y’all can debate MBH 98/99 to your heart’s content. Just please, when you do, make it clear that your debate is irrelevant to understanding the current state of paleoclimate science. Stop injecting your debate into conversations that are about our current understanding of paleoclimate - it is IRRELEVANT in such discussions. Stop using the argument to insinuate that something is bad wrong with climate science - that is slimy beyond naming. Stop supporting the denialist attacks on science by pretending or allowing the insinuation that this means something more than it does.
MattInSeattle // January 12, 2009 at 8:07 am
luminous beauty: I’d love a cite for that 1995 (or is it 1994?) 5.2C/2xCO2 Hadley Centre projection….Equilibrium response to 2xCO2: 2.8C….Harmless fluffy clouds, eh? Promise
That cite is good, as is “Carbon Dioxide and Climate. The Impact of Cloud Parameterization” by C.A. Senior and J.F.B. Mitchell.
The point is not the final figure, the point is that the previous estimate was cut in (more than) half by an incremental understanding in a previously not-well-understood area. Why could it not happen again, especially given the IPCC admitted lack of understanding (still) with clouds and aerosols? Not saying it will. I’m just saying there’s a reasonable chance it could.
MattInSeattle // January 12, 2009 at 8:12 am
Hank Roberts: You’re channeling who, Lomborg maybe? Clueless about how these models were built, or how long they had to be run on the computers available at the time, I guess.
Since both NASA and Hadley have both had pretty significant contributions and have both published lots of literature on clouds that is readily available when you google “cloud parameterization {Hadley | NASA}”, you could say I’m channeling Hadley and NASA. Have you stopped using Google given their recently published contribution to warming?
I detect a shift from you Hank…are you saying yes, the early estimates were wrong and it was because the models are hard and the computers were not powerful enough? That same argument could play out in 2020, 2050, etc, coudln’t it?
Hank Roberts // January 12, 2009 at 10:36 am
> We don’t go around waiting for “previously
> unexplained” phenomena
Actually that’s the “missing link” notion from the creation websites, that the mysterious force behind what happens is operating in those areas where there are gaps in scientific knowledge.
Nobody’s ever found one yet, as the gaps get narrower as facts accumulate. But nobody can prove it’s not there. And the narrower the gaps get, of course, the more powerful the mysterious missing actor must be to accomplish everything postulated in so little time without any apparent evidence.
TCOisbanned? // January 12, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Lee: It may or may not be relevant. In any case, I really can disaggregate that issue (the relevance) from the paper itself. I think if you all think the paper is flawed, you should concede that without worrying about wrong inferences later. A real Feynman style brutally honest physicist will concede valid points despite them helping with later invalid points. The key thing about this style of intellectual engagement is that we can limit the debate to actual areas of disagreement.
TCOisbanned? // January 12, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Just to clarify, what I see, Hank. I think the paper has very limited relevance to overall AGW. would not agree that it is 100% irellevant, but think that victories over it are way over-touted by the CA hoi polloi.
Ray Ladbury // January 12, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Matt, do you really not understand the difference between a confidence interval and a best estimate? Here’s a hint: 1.9 to 5.2 degrees per doubling was a confidence interval. The best estimate was and has always been in the range 2.8-3.2 degrees per doubling.
Hank Roberts // January 12, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Matt, Google has moved aggressively to deal with server farm energy waste. You can, heh, look it up. They started out cheap and dirty, with huge redundancy, using high failure rate throwaway hardware; they’re leading the industry toward improving, now that they’re rich. Your suggested alternative will be news if it’s newsworthy.
> models were hard and computers were
> not powerful
The Navy agrees. So does every other group that’s built models. Do you disagree? Do you understand how computation can catch up to a problem over time, or do you think it’s always going to be impossible?
This may be like fusion. I hope not.
http://www.nps.edu/News/ReadNews.aspx?id=3979&role=pao&area=media
Barton Paul Levenson // January 12, 2009 at 3:57 pm
matt writes:
No, because there wasn’t zero validation of the conclusion. Where in the world did you get the idea that there was?
The validation came when other studies got the same results.
No it didn’t. It got an interesting paper with no obvious mistakes into a major journal, where it became a predecessor of further papers. That’s exactly what peer review is supposed to do. If the further studies had disconfirmed its results, peer review would still have worked. The purpose of peer review is not to prove what a paper says, it’s to get an interesting result with no obvious errors before the scientific community. If errors pop up later, they weren’t usually obvious.
No doubt.
No, it was not. See below:
Yes, it is different. It’s not a binary choice between flawed/not flawed. Mann’s group got approximately the right result with their method. And their method, while unnecessarily complicated, was not wrong — just overelaborate. Decentered PCA still works. It’s not a useless, wrong method.
What problem? The scientific community is often slow to admit problems which don’t exist, or which exist only in the minds of crackpots.
luminous beauty // January 12, 2009 at 5:12 pm
matt,
I’m just saying that [unsupported by any] reasonable [physical hypothesis] chance has as its real world consequence most likely an increased intensity and frequency of tropical storms. Y’know, big fluffy clouds.
David B. Benson // January 12, 2009 at 6:08 pm
MattInSeattle // January 12, 2009 at 8:07 am — Sigh. Go read, with understanding, Annan & Hargreaves. There are many links to and commentaries about ther paper on the web.
Most likely value for climate sensitivity is 3- K.
Lazar // January 12, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Matt,
Which “previous estimate”? Our knowledge does not rest on one result, one paper, one GCM, one cloud parameterization, or one combination of the former two. There is not ‘one estimate’ of climate sensitivity. The abstract of the paper (Senior & Mitchell 1992) concludes;
… in full agreement with the 1979 Charney estimate of 1.5 C - 4.5 C, the 2008 estimate of the IPCC AR4 of 2 C - 4.5 C of 2008, and studies of transient and paleoclimate data.
The 5+ C figure you cite comes from the 1987 Hadley AOGCM. As others have pointed, the mid-90s HADCM2 sensitivity is around 2.5 C.
curious // January 12, 2009 at 8:47 pm
So what is the ACTUAL sensitivity for the last 10 years, 20 years, 30 years etc??
Hank Roberts // January 12, 2009 at 10:19 pm
> actual … years
Unanswerable by definition.
Sensitivity is the change _after_ the temperature has stopped increasing, and that only occurs a long time after the level of CO2 has stopped increasing.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/307/5716/1769
David B. Benson // January 12, 2009 at 10:30 pm
curious // January 12, 2009 at 8:47 pm — Nobody knows, but whatever the value it is the same for all those decades.
The most likely value is close to # K. GISS ModelE has a sensitivity of 2.4 K, 2.6 K and 2.8 K, depending upon just which variant is being run (Schmidt et al., recent).
David B. Benson // January 12, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Oops.
3 K, not # K.
Hank Roberts // January 13, 2009 at 2:43 am
Matt, they aren’t “estimates” — they’re “if we take this information, and do these operations, we get this number, now let’s examine the information and the operations” exercises. Lots of those have been done, with increasing information and increasing sophistication and with the astonishing ongoing rate of improvement of computer hardware underlying the process.
Imagine if we were still using ENIAC or UNIVAC and having to clean literal bugs out of the relays.
http://tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:nToWTLrQINcQcM:http://www.jamesshuggins.com/i/tek1/grace_hopper_h96566k_full.jpg
Paul Middents // January 13, 2009 at 5:03 am
TCOisbanned? // January 11, 2009 at 11:38 am
TCOisbanned? // January 11, 2009 at 12:14 pm
TCO, you originally offered up Burger’05 along with some other less comprehensible references, apparently in response to Ray Ladbury // January 9, 2009 at 10:55 am.
These references were supposedly an example of something fundamentally wrong with MBH98 and somehow still of significant relevance.
To clarify just a little: Burger has published three papers, all pretty much milking the same cow.
Burger and Cubasch (GRL, 2005), Are multiproxy climate reconstructions robust?
BÜRGER , FAST,CUBASCH, (Tellus, 2006) Climate reconstruction by regression – 32 variations on a theme.
Burger (Climate of the Past, 2007), On the verification of climate reconstructions.
The latest was subjected to an open review process on the web which was pretty brutal but very interesting. I can find only one cite to this paper and that by Loehle. TCO, you claim some part in the review process for this paper. That is very tantalizing. Please elucidate.
TCO makes a good point concerning Google Scholar cite lists. They should not in any way be considered complete. Burger ’05 and ’06 have both been acknowledged in two fundamental reviews of the state of paleo temperature reconstructions over the last 2000 years, neither of which show up in Google Scholar cite lists for the two articles. These are:
IPCC WG1 Chap 6 of the 4th assessment
NAS, Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years (2006)
The bottom line in both of these reports supports recent warming as unique for, at the very least, the last 400 years, just based on the proxy reconstructed surface temperature record.
This seems to be Burger’s last word in 2007:
“If one were to focus the controversy into the single question: Was there a hemispheric Medieval Warm Period and was it
possibly warmer than recent decades? – that question cannot be decided based on current reconstructions alone, at least not in a verifiable sense.”
Are you suggesting that paleo researchers are not aware of the points made by Burger, et al in these papers and that they might unwittingly reuse the techniques of MBH98? Burger’s last word might constitute something of interest, but only Lohele seems to have jumped on it.
I am not interested in engaging you on any extended basis. You rework the same old war horses: Mann’s arrogant and the warmers won’t admit his original work was flawed; McI’s a windbag who doesn’t publish. I know nothing of Mann personally but I acknowledge that his first work was flawed. McI is a joke. You cite (or I should say refer to) the same stuff over and over; Burger, Joliffe, von Storch. You claim to enjoy drilling down and engaging the minutiae. Well, start doing some of it at the cutting edge of current work—coherently, with cites to the literature in a form even a newbie might be able to follow.
Has it ever occurred to you that the lack of response on Real Climate might have something to do with your aggressive and incoherent style? You say you have great respect for scholarship and precision and that you were very successful in getting your work through peer review. Try applying whatever skills you might have once possessed to your participation on a climate blog. You are of interest because, as someone already pointed out, you are the only skeptic willing to hold the feet of both sides to the fire. Solem, Mashey, Benson, Hank, Bradbury and our esteemed host all provide good role models.
michel // January 13, 2009 at 7:12 am
This is the real significance of the MWP and Hockey Stick debate, is it not? The consensus view of forcings and climate sensitivity implies that the MWP and RWP cannot have been as global or as large as current warming. Hence Deming’s famous quotation about having to ‘get rid of’ the MWP. If they were as large and as global, this falsifies some aspect of the consensus on forcing and sensitivity.
I think the evidence is that they were as global and as large. I do not know what the implications are exactly, other than that this implies that the science on forcing and sensitivity is not settled.
Adam Gallon // January 13, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Ray Ladbury // January 1, 2009 at 3:42 pm
APL, If there is a “natural” warming trend, where is the energy coming from? What is the mechanism? What is more, where is the need for such a trend to explain the data? The well understood and well validated physics of greenhouse warming is a sufficient explanation, and if climate science is not drastically wrong, that mechanism is necessary as well.
Interesting couple of pieces on (Dare I mention it here, in amongst The Zealots’ High Church?) Watts?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/12/can-el-nino-events-explain-all-of-the-global-warming-since-1976-%e2%80%93-part-2/#comments
A plausible explanation for where some of the heats been hiding?
luminous beauty // January 13, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Adam,
If ENSO was driving heat stored in the deep oceans to the surface, then bulk ocean heat content would be falling.
It isn’t.
Simple physics beyond the ken of Bob Tisdale.
Stupid is as stupid does.
Dano // January 13, 2009 at 6:00 pm
The Zealots’ High Church
Again, I point out how the issue is framed for some ideologies.
This is the reference frame for some. This is what they know and where they come from. A long recitation of citations, facts, evidence means nothing to someone with this frame.
Jus’ sayin’.
Best,
D
Ray Ladbury // January 13, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Michel says of the MWP “I think the evidence is that they were as global and as large.”
OK, so then why does it not show up as significant in ANY of the multi-proxy reconstructions?
Adam Gallon: All that shows is that Watts doesn’t understand what ENSO is.
David B. Benson // January 13, 2009 at 6:13 pm
michel // January 13, 2009 at 7:12 am — The evidence is that MWP was not as global and certainly not as large as the current warming. Here is but one part of the direct evidence:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Fast-Melting-Glaciers-Expose-7-000-Years-Old-Fossil-Forest-69719.shtml
With other evidence from glaciers world-wide.
TCOisbanned? // January 13, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Paul: I’m not citing Burger07. I know that paper and have criticized it. I thought 05 was insightful and helpful in moving thinking forward. You are the one who comes in with 07. If my inside joke on Jolliffe10 made you do that, well that’s your tough shakes. In any case, I have clarified for you that I’m not citing Burger07. Capisce?
Dave A // January 13, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Lee.
No, I can probably guess the papers you might have cited. I just wanted you to put some names out so that we could have a real discussion.
Hank Roberts // January 13, 2009 at 9:17 pm
> have criticized it
May I again recommend Zotero, or a card file?
If you keep track and point to this stuff it might be possible to follow the logic of your arguments, much as one can do when reading a paper where each statement is cited to a source.
Otherwise we keep getting “trust me, I know this, or knew it some time ago ….” and of course we do trust you implicitly, but since we can’t look the stuff up we can’t keep up with your logic.
It’s kind of like reading a scientific paper after an explosion after it went into a paper shredder. The parts all may be there somewhere. But the wind came up and ….
Ian Forrester // January 13, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Michel said: “I think the evidence is that they were as global and as large.”
Michel, you have got it all backwards. Scientists do the research, produce the data (evidence in your mind) interpret it , then publish it so other scientists can think about it.
In your world of science you come to a conclusion then look for “evidence” to prove it and disregard any data which disproves it.
Needless to say, your way is not the correct way.
Hank Roberts // January 13, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Michel, you’re not relying on something from a site like Earthlab, I hope? There are PR vendors specializing in taking whatever conclusion you want and supplying reasons for it after the fact.
It’s called “reverse research” — see here:
http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=519#comment-78946
MattInSeattle // January 13, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Ray Ladbury: Matt, do you really not understand the difference between a confidence interval and a best estimate? Here’s a hint: 1.9 to 5.2 degrees per doubling was a confidence interval.
These are not confidence intervals.
These are the changes in output based on a range of strategies for dealing with cloud parameterization.
These strategies, at this point, are decisons made by scientists and programmers. Of course, we hope they are well made, and over time, we will be certain they are.
But make no mistake, the 2xco2 figure spit out from these models has a HUGE component that comes from human intuition at this point.
Dave A // January 13, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Ian F,
I think you have a very ‘romantic’ view of the way science is conducted.
Do you really think that most scientists in a particular field don’t follow the majority and opt not to ‘rock the boat’? After all this happens in most spheres of life. And if they do so would they not “look for evidence” to support their position>
To pretend that scientists are somehow different from other human beings is just not credible.
TCOisbanned? // January 14, 2009 at 12:26 am
Hank:
I figured most of y’all had seen that stuff. But I am starting to realize that even some of the regulars have not dipped as deeply as I have in the deniosphere. I guess I could just get spreadsheet and keep all the cites in there. I actually despise it when Steve McI does not properly cite papers, but I was holding myself to a lower standard in comments.
Hank Roberts // January 14, 2009 at 12:52 am
Oh, good grief, you’ve never read science ethics rules, have no clue about how science is done, or else you’re just trying to rerun the RC thread about this nitwittery for the fun of it.
Clue: any organization can require and generally get far better than least common denominator ethical behavior by paying close attention.
If you’ve never had that experience you will really believe nobody could ever be more honest or more careful than you want to be yourself.
It’s constant work, not any kind of moral superiority, to accomplish that.
If you’d ever done it you’d understand it.
Pathetic, really.
http://massscifair.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=36&Itemid=78
http://www.chem.tamu.edu/organic/ethics.html
http://www.onlineethics.org/CMS/edu/precol/scienceclass/lessonplans/lesson7.aspx
http://ps.fass.org/cgi/content/full/86/10/2051
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1483899
http://ethics.iit.edu/resources/scientific.html
Not perfect. Aspire to do better.
counters // January 14, 2009 at 1:25 am
Dave A, you’re the one who is contending scientists are different from other human beings.
How do you think a scientist makes a name for him/herself? Is it by confirming the results of another person? How do you think a scientist wins a Nobel? Is it by doing a follow-up study or slightly tweaking another study? How do you think scientific progress is made?
Scientists always look to “rock the boat” and shatter the status quo. They’re always looking for novel things.
Ray Ladbury // January 14, 2009 at 1:32 am
Matt says, “But make no mistake, the 2xco2 figure spit out from these models has a HUGE component that comes from human intuition at this point.”
Matt, what the frick does that even mean. Do you even have the foggiest notion of the data that constrains sensitivity? Do you realize that if the best-fit value of 3 degrees per doubling is wrong, it’s more likely to be higher than lower.
Do you realize that you are blowing smoke about an area where you are totally ignorant to a group who actually understands it?
On another subject, wanna play poker sometime?
Ray Ladbury // January 14, 2009 at 1:45 am
Dave A, have you ever even known any scientists. We tend to be a contrary bunch. In science, the currency you bring to your relationships with your fellow scientists is your ability to increase your and their understanding of what you are studying. Period. I have worked with scientists who probably could have added a page or two to the DSM IV.
Professionally, in science, you get ahead by bucking the trend and being right. So in a sense, you are right, scientists act in their own self interest. It just so happens that in science their self interest is in sticking with the evidence, not with the peer group.
Hank Roberts // January 14, 2009 at 1:47 am
This chart will last for a day or so.
Look at it carefully, it says a lot:
http://www.pdfdownload.org/pdf2html/pdf2html.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpubs.giss.nasa.gov%2Fdocs%2F2008%2F2008_Lean_Rind.pdf&images=yes
Original article in PDF form:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2008/2008_Lean_Rind.pdf
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 35, L18701, doi:10.1029/2008GL034864, 2008
How natural and anthropogenic influences alter global and regional surface temperatures: 1889 to 2006
Judith L. Lean and David H. Rind
Ian Forrester // January 14, 2009 at 2:13 am
Dave A, you don’t have a clue about science or how scientists operate. Why do all you deniers exhibit this complete misunderstanding of science?
Why are you all anti-science and anti-scientists? Did someone in a white coat scare you when you were little?
cce // January 14, 2009 at 6:10 am
What follows are the papers that Annan and Hargreaves used to constrain climate sensitivity. They used 20th Century warming, volcanic cooling, and warming since the last glacial maximum. The idea that such a variety of papers are all wrong (not just individually, but collectively), and there is a hidden forcing to explain the warming, or a Fairy God Mother feedback that will nullify it is absurd.
So called “Charney” sensitivity has remained ~3 degrees for three decades. Skeptics need to accept reality and move on from this fantasy that it is on the verge of toppling.
20th Century Warming
Knutti, R., T. F. Stocker, F. Joos, and G.-K. Plattner (2002), Constraints on radiative forcing and future climate change from observations and climate model ensembles, Nature, 416, 719–723.
Gregory, J. M., R. J. Stouffer, S. C. B. Raper, P. A. Stott, and N. A. Rayner (2002), An observationally based estimate of the climate sensitivity, Journal of Climate, 15 (22), 3117–3121.
Andronova, N. G., and M. E. Schlesinger (2001), Objective estimation of the probability density function for climate sensitivity, Journal of Geophysical Research, 108 (D8),22,605–22,611.
Forest, C. E., P. H. Stone, A. P. Sokolov, M. R. Allen, and M. D. Webster (2002), Quantifying uncertainties in climate system properties with the use of recent climate observations, Science, 295 (5552), 113–117.
Volcanic
Wigley, T. M. L., C. M. Amman, B. D. Santer, and S. B. Raper (2005), Effect of climate sensitivity on the response to volcanic forcing, Journal of Geophysical Research, 110 (D09107).
Frame, D. J., B. B. B. Booth, J. A. Kettleborough, D. A. Stainforth, J. M. Gregory, M. Collins, and M. R. Allen (2005), Constraining climate forecasts: The role of prior assumptions, Geophysical Research Letters, 32 (L09702).
Yokohata, T., S. Emori, T. Nozawa, Y. Tsushima, T. Ogura, and M. Kimoto (2005), Climate response to volcanic forcing: Validation of climate sensitivity of a coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model, Geophysical Research Letters, 32 (L21710).
Last Glacial Maximum
Ballantyne, A. P., M. Lavine, T. J. Crowley, J. Liu, and P. B. Baker (2005), Meta-analysis of tropical surface temperatures during the Last Glacial Maximum, Geophysical Research Letters, 32 (L05712).
Bintanja, R., and R. S. W. V. de Wal (2005), A new method to estimate ice age temperatures, Climate Dynamics, 24, 197–211.
Taylor, K. E., C. D. Hewitt, P. Braconnot, A. J. Broccoli, C. Doutriaux, J. F. B. Mitchell, and PMIP-Participating-Groups (2000), Analysis of forcing, response and feedbacks in a paleoclimate modeling experiment, in Paleoclimate Modeling Intercomparison Project (PMIP): proceedings of the third PMIP workshop, edited by P. Braconnot, pp. 43–50, Canada, 1999.
Crucifix, M., and C. D. Hewitt (2005), Impact of vegetation changes on the dynamics of the atmosphere at the Last Glacial Maximum, Climate Dynamics, 25 (5), 447–459.
Claquin, T., et al. (2003), Radiative forcing of climate by ice-age atmospheric dust, Climate Dynamics, 20, 193–202.
von Deimling, T. S., H. Held, A. Ganopolski, and S. Rahmstorf (2005), Climate sensitivity estimated from ensemble simulations of glacial climate, Climate Dynamics
michel // January 14, 2009 at 8:54 am
<blockquoteIn your world of science you come to a conclusion then look for “evidence” to prove it and disregard any data which disproves it.
Needless to say, your way is not the correct way.
No I don’t do that, and you’ve no reason to accuse me of it. Other than you may perhaps disagree with the post?
However, the approach of seeking for evidence that is predicted by a theory, whatever one’s motives, is perfectly sound and normal. Like, for instance, examining cases of apparent immunity to smallpox to see if they are associated with contact with cows, where one has conceived a prior prejudice that cow contact immunizes. Motives for inquiry are unimportant in science. What counts is what is discovered. This is what was so ridiculous about Jone’s famous remark.
Disregarding evidence, well, its more complicated than that. It is a perfectly reasonable approach sometimes to conclude that the theory is not falsified, but that the instruments must be maladjusted. This is a consequence of the fact that there are no observations that are not theory laden. It is quite reasonable to seek for grounds for there not being an MWP on this basis. You don’t automatically abandon a theory in the face of the first bit of contrary evidence.
The real progress we seem to have made in this discussion is this. We all seem to be agreed that the existence of an MWP as large and as global as present warming, were it to exist, would NOT prove that the climate is more sensitive than skeptics think, and thus strengthen the case for AGW. It would on the contrary be inconsistent with the current accounts of present day warming and climate sensitivity.
No, Hank, I have never heard of Earthlab. Who are they? Should I care?
Ray Ladbury // January 14, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Michel says, “However, the approach of seeking for evidence that is predicted by a theory, whatever one’s motives, is perfectly sound and normal. ”
Actually, that approach is problematic because it does not include an objective way of assessing the degree of support the evidence provides for the theory. Most statistical tests are comparative–e.g. relative support given to the hypothesis and the null hypothesis, likelihood ratio, AIC, BIC… For instance, your hypothesis is that the MWP was global and of the same order of warming as we experience today. Now you can find some studies that support that, but you can find many more that do not. It appears you are giving much higher weight to the former. Why?
He also posits: “It is a perfectly reasonable approach sometimes to conclude that the theory is not falsified, but that the instruments must be maladjusted.”
This, too is highly problematic. On what basis do you assume the instruments are maladjusted? What are the errors introduced? If you cannot answer these, you are simply denying the validity of the measurements because you don’t like the results–that’s denialism.
He then says: “We all seem to be agreed that the existence of an MWP as large and as global as present warming, were it to exist, would NOT prove that the climate is more sensitive than skeptics think, and thus strengthen the case for AGW.”
Michel, this can be true only if you posit a very large energy source operative during the MWP. I know of no convincing candidate for such a source. What is more even if you had such a source, there is zero evidence it is operative in the present warming epoch–and with the current level of instrumentation, to contend that such a forcing accounts for any significant amount of warming in the current epoch strains credulity.
So, take your pick: Either the MWP implies a much higher sensitivity than thought, and we’re really in the soup, or it is irrelevant to the current warming.
luminous beauty // January 14, 2009 at 2:47 pm
michel,
Who is this ‘we all’ of whom you speak?
A larger historical variance than what the data shows, absent some unknown forcing, would infer a higher climate sensitivity. It does nothing to strengthen the case for AGW, but it does suggest the response would be stronger rather than weaker.
To counter this argument you need to demonstrate two things:
1.) There was a MWP as warm as the present.
2.) There was a forcing equal to the present day forcing that caused it.
There is zero evidence you have offered for either.
Hank Roberts // January 14, 2009 at 6:11 pm
By the way, I want to particularly recommend this article from among the links I posted above; it’s available in full text.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1483899
It’s a compilation of first hand reports. “Warts and all” because, duh, that’s how science is done — including science _about_ how science is done.
The netwitters will find quotes they can mine and use out of context for their rants, of course.
The scientists can take some pride and a measured and appropriate dose of humility because this kind of work makes clear the whole point Dave A and his ilk misunderstand.
It’s not that scientists are different. Scientists have to be extremely aware of the things people do to fool themselves, compete unfairly, steal ideas, fail to credit sources, undercut good work to protect self-image.
To do science you have to know the value of working very hard — in the research work and writing about it — to avoid the pitfalls and temptations every person lives with.
Because, duh, that’s how science works.
But don’t expect nicer people, better neighbors, or holier-than-thou posturing outside the perimeter of the scientific work. Taking off that burden of being better than you want to be has to be a relief at the end of the day.
David B. Benson // January 14, 2009 at 8:30 pm
This is a reasonable summery of what is known:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period
supported by papers such as
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m4m476w270215w15/
Dave A // January 14, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Conuters,
“Scientists always look to “rock the boat” and shatter the status quo. They’re always looking for novel things”
There must be an awful lot of dissatisfied and unfulfilled scientists swilling around then because only a tiny percentage of them ever make that important breakthrough or win the Nobel prize.
Do these scientists not behave as other people, accept their lot and support the supposed ‘wisdom’. Or are they all, to use an 18thC analogy, “noble savages?”
Dave A // January 14, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Ian F,
“Why are you all anti-science and anti-scientists?”
I’m not anti- science or anti- scientist, as you put it, just have queries and doubts about climate science and also the political nature of the IPCC.
Dave A // January 14, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Hank,
“By the way, I want to particularly recommend this article from among the links I posted above; it’s available in full text.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1483899“
Did you actually read the comments of the people in the focus groups? They don’t point to the glorious world of science that you and others try to portray here. Even the authors refer to the “mundane work” of research!
Ian Forrester // January 14, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Dave A said: “I’m not anti- science or anti- scientist”
Then stop bad mouthing them. I have not read anything in all the places you blog where you have ever had a nice word to say about real science or scientists. In fact your worthless utterings disgust me. Why don’t you get a life and stop slandering people who are so much better than you? It is easy to see why you prefer “what’s wrong with watt” than RealClimate, you have bottomed out at your own level of understanding.
Hank Roberts // January 14, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Pleaase, Tamino, killfile.
http://userscripts.org/scripts/review/4107
Hank Roberts // January 14, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Links at this page for these:
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2009/01/just-some-stuff.html
* Yale University has put some of their basic courses online, if you miss your freshman days.
…
* James Hansen was chosen by his peers to receive the 2009 Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the American Meteorological Society.
David B. Benson // January 15, 2009 at 12:01 am
Dave A // January 14, 2009 at 10:41 pm — Research has its moments of glory in return for often years of hard slogging. Sorta like mountian climbing and finally reaching the top to see the view. Makes one forget about the mud and mosquitos on the approach march.
Hank Roberts // January 15, 2009 at 12:19 am
Dave, there’s nothing glorious about it, you’re the one trying to set up the notion scientists are claiming to be different from ordinary people, so you can try to knock down the notion.
Or rather, you’re once again soaking up a lot of attention here by throwing chaff and blowing smoke. Anything to detract from the discussion about science, eh? You must really fear what’s happening, if you think it’s the scientists who are after your wallet and your freedoms. You’re attacking the source of your own wealth.
It’s extra work to be a scientist. The extra work is done because it allows learning things that can’t be learned otherwise.
Yes, I did note that study had real material that could be quote-mined. And lo!
Hank Roberts // January 15, 2009 at 12:25 am
Here, Dave:
“There is a profound difference between what appears to be and what is; and if you believe otherwise, the Gothicist has a surprise for you. The strained, sunny smile of the Enlightenment — “All that is, is holy;” “Man is a rational being” — is confronted by the Gothicist, who, quite frankly, considering the history and prehistory of our species, knows better.”
– Joyce Carol Oates
http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article01060902.aspx
Ray Ladbury // January 15, 2009 at 1:47 am
Dave A. says, “I’m not anti- science or anti- scientist, …”
No, Dave, what you are is ignorant of science–both the subject matter thereof and of its culture and mechanics. What is more, given the plethora of opportunities you’ve had of learning the above, I’m beginning to suspect that you are quite content in your ignorance.
I mean, don’t you find it just a wee but ironic that you are questioning scientists accounts of how science is done?
Look, Dave, I work my butt off. I put up with lots of bureaucratic frustrations. I know I’ll never win a Nobel Prize. I know that my name will be forgotten after I’m gone. However, I get to learn something new about something I find interesting every day. And I get to contribute to projects that are going to revolutionize the way we look at the Universe. One bird I worked on actually saw a black hole swallow another black hole. Another one is measuring the ice balance at the poles. Now how is that not cool?
And the price of admission is that I have to put aside any personal agenda and make sure I stay on the side of the evidence. That’s not that high a price to pay for learning how the world works.
stupidhuman // January 15, 2009 at 5:15 am
I see that this is back in the news.
Revealed: the environmental impact of Google searches
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/artic
About six months ago a similar item resulted in some rather heated debate here in the shed, culminating in the birth of what I like to refer to as “the cult of the magic volcano”.
You see, even though there is no global warming. Which isn’t caused by CO2, by the way. And the level of which isn’t increasing, anyway. My computer use is worse for the greenhouse than cars, because google said so. So it’s okay to fit a 400kW engine to my car and spend litres of petrol and sets of tyres making smoke in the cul-de-sac for my mates. Because, there isn’t global warming, and if there is it’s natural anyway, and if it isn’t, it’s not caused by CO2, and has nothing to do with oil, because, what does oil do in your engine? It lubricates it! So what does oil do in the ground? It lubricates it. So all we need to do is get some really slippery oil and pump it underground and everything would cool down. But we don’t even need to do that, because it isn’t getting warmer, but even if it was, we don’t need to worry because anyone can see that one volcano can cool us back down again. That’s the real conspiracy, some scientists, somewhere are stopping the volcanoes, somehow. That’s why they’re lying about CO2. When the magic volcano finally does go off, it’s going to be angry and we need to pump CO2 in to the atmosphere to save us from freezing, even though CO2 isn’t a greenhouse gas.
Hank Roberts // January 15, 2009 at 5:22 am
> Revealed … impact of Google searches
The newspaper made up both the numbers and the words they attributed to the researcher. Fortunately they spelled his name correctly so you can find the correction.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=526108
michel // January 15, 2009 at 8:59 am
Ray, no, it is not denialism to doubt the instruments. Its the way life is. It is an error to think we have theories and then observations which are fixed and independent of all theories. In fact, AGW like any other theory is a continuum of statements. Some are theoretical, some about observations. It stands or falls as a whole. It is quite reasonable, and not at all denialism, for an AGW advocate to be rather sceptical about apparently disconfirming observations, like for instance the MWP. If we encountered a disconfirming observation to some basic law of physics, we’d not doubt the law but would doubt the experimental setup. Initially at least. And this is just how science progresses.
Rather the same thing might happen in medicine - which is why people spend such a lot of time eliminating other causes for conditions by doing matching of samples.
Real denialism occurs when the theory and the observations all hang together as a whole, and your alternative hypothesis as a whole does not fit with the real world. Like, Copernican motion versus Ptolemaic for example. Or when the account of the evidence on historical matters which is required to deny their occurrence gets so baroque its not credible, but people go for it anyway. If AGW goes away, it will not be on account of one disconfirming observation, or even a lot of them, it will be because the logically consistent accounts of those observations that are required to accomodate them end up with a theory too baroque to be credible.
You can see this happening with the surface station record. It is evidence for. Then people look at UHI. The reaction is to find reasons why UHI is not an issue. You will always be able to find them, its just whether the resulting theory with all these added bits and pieces seems plausible as a whole.
Denialism in this case is really not a useful concept. Much more useful is the question of the explanatory power of the theory as a whole.
Ray Ladbury // January 15, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Michel, Your characterization of the treatment of urban heat island and other systematic effects is utterly incorrect. The reaction was not to find rationales for dismissing these effects, but rather to find algorithms for identifying, quantifying and filtering them. All you have shown is that you don’t understand these algorithms–or indeed the algorithms for estimating global temperature. Do you seriously believe that the climate is not warming? If so, you are in the worst form of denial.
Barton Paul Levenson // January 15, 2009 at 2:25 pm
cce, thank you for the cites on empirical constraints of climate sensitivity. That list is a valuable resource.
Barton Paul Levenson // January 15, 2009 at 2:26 pm
The Deimling paper cite is missing volume and page numbers, though.
Hank Roberts // January 15, 2009 at 6:18 pm
> cite missing
Just paste the entire cite into Scholar, which finds six versions online, some PDF, some HTML.
Cited by 34.
luminous beauty // January 15, 2009 at 8:13 pm
michel,
Do you understand cause and effect?
AGW is caused by the radiative properties of multi-polar gaseous molecules.
Exactly what the effect of that forcing on the many coupled features of the climate will be has an uncertainty bound by the forcing.
The sum of the energy exchanged among those features is equal to the energy of the forcing according to the law of conservation of energy.
.
pough // January 15, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Ray Ladbury: “One bird I worked on actually saw a black hole swallow another black hole.”
Wha!? Are you sure you’re not Ray Bradbury?
Dave A // January 15, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Ian F,
If you want to see people who are anti science and anti scientist look no further than most environmentalists. It is quite ironic that they seem to be fully signed up to climate change whilst rejecting scientific ‘consensus’ on almost everything else.
Hank,
You could also have noted the study by Titus,Wells and Rhoades reported in Nature, vol 453, 19 June 2006 which reported 201 cases of misconduct- nearly 60% 0f which were fabrication or falsification and almost 22% were at professor or senior scientist level.
BTW, I couldn’t give a S**T about my wallet but I damn do care about freedoms ( with responsibility, of course)
Ray,
Working your butt off and bureaucratic frustrations are hard. I and my partner have been there often. The special moments are also very rewarding, however.
But that doesn’t mean that we should not question the apparent consensus - indeed I would have thought that that is a first priority.
Dave A // January 15, 2009 at 9:40 pm
OOPS,
Was Nature, vol 453 19 June 2008
Hank Roberts // January 15, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Sure, Dave.
And you know this how?
Now, how good is self-enforcement and study in your profession, whatever it may be?
Point us to the ethical constraints you follow in your work, and the studies of how your peers do?
There must be some explanation for your cynicism, unless you’re just one of those Gothics.
Hank Roberts // January 15, 2009 at 10:02 pm
> and you know this how
Oops, I’m getting snarky. You know this because you read it in a science journal. It’s not because scientists are better than you, it’s because they know the information science gets relies on doing it right despite all the human failings, and it’s very hard.
You do realize that for some 30-50 thousand years no scientific culture emerged, and we’ve only had one in the last few centuries, a few places on Earth.
Nobody thinks it’s easy.
Now, where do we read about yours?
luminous beauty // January 15, 2009 at 10:50 pm
DaveA,
To imply that because some scientists have acted unethically, then a large body of scientists from a large number of scientific disciplines are possibly mutually engaged in unethical practices is a poster child of the fallacy of composition.
Popular with witch hunting expeditions and lynch mobs.
Dave A // January 15, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Hank,
I don’t quite understand what your twice repeated “and you know this how?” refers to
Ian Forrester // January 15, 2009 at 11:41 pm
Dave A, you are sick, sick, sick.
You smear science and scientists and now you are smearing environmentalists. I’m sure that the majority of people who are knowledgeable about AGW (which excludes all you deniers) are environmentalist of one sort or another.
Hank Roberts // January 16, 2009 at 1:16 am
> and you know this
You know scientists take seriously the difficulty of doing this right
> how?
by reading about it in detail, as reported in one of the more prominent science journals
And tell us now about your profession?
michel // January 16, 2009 at 9:11 am
“Do you seriously believe that the climate is not warming? If so, you are in the worst form of denial”
Never said that. I thought we were having a discussion about the relation between observation and theory and falsification, and also about MWP.
I was arguing that there are no pure observation statements, all are to some degree theory laden. There are therefore no falsifying events in the way that is often understood; in all cases we have a choice between finding an alternative explanation of the apparent falsification, or taking it that the theory is falsified. What determins acceptance or rejection is not generally a critical experiment, but the plausibility of the whole thing.
That generally speaking, we tend to accept or reject theories as a whole, that is, as a combination of explanations plus observations plus accounts of those observations.
So, I was saying, it is quite reasonable to find other explanations for the apparent evidence for MWP than its real existence. There is nothing improper about this. Nor is there anything improper about looking for evidence with a point of view in mind - this happens all the time and often leads to valid discoveries.
It is a naive model of science and knowledge to think that we have a theory, and then we independently arrive at observations which are in some sense pure observations and are not in any way theory dependent, and then use them to confirm or falsify the theory. That’s not how knowledge is structured.
I do hope this too is not going to be classified as denialism! The list of forbidden thoughts here seems to be expanding rather alarmingly if it is.
On the significance of the MWP for sensitivity, I’m still puzzled by your point and want to give it some more thought before replying.
Sekerob // January 16, 2009 at 10:05 am
Time to revisited the “Dumb Trolls and Trollisms” manual or google for some free tips:
http://www.wikihow.com/Recognize-a-Troll-on-the-Internet
Ray Ladbury // January 16, 2009 at 11:57 am
Dave A says, “But that doesn’t mean that we should not question the apparent consensus - indeed I would have thought that that is a first priority.”
Where did you get the idea that the consensus is unquestioned? Again, you don’t go to the head of the class by running with the herd. Dave, think about it. To become a scientist, you first have to work really hard in high school learning much more math and science than your peers. Then you go to college, and more of the same. Then as your peers are starting their careers and families, your life is on hold as you work for slave wages, deprive yourself of sleep and social life… Then you do the post doc thing, which is only slightly more conducive to having a life than grad school. That pretty much guarantees that scientists will be highly motivated and ambitious and will care deeply about the subject they are studying. The more you pay, the more it’s worth, right?
Then the scientific community is structured in such a way that you have to distinguish yourself by innovative research if you are to progress. To do that you will need to acquaint yourself to the most powerful ideas and techniques you can get so that you can do that. The sum total of those ideas and techniques that the community agrees they can’t do without–that’s the scientific consensus. One of the quickest ways to move to the head of the class is to challenge that orthodoxy–by adding an idea or technique, or even more by subtracting one and coming up with a simpler theory. You simply can’t do climate science without a significant sensitivity for CO2. Telling a climate scientist to model climate without CO2 sensitivity is like telling a surgeon he can’t use a scalpel. And a significant sensitivity makes anthropogenic climate change an inevitability.
TCOisbanned? // January 16, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Ray:
1. I been in the union card trenches. Other than theoretical physics, they are not as a class that brainy. And many people just devolve into science because they enjoyed the undergrad major, but are not nescessarily Feynman class inquisitiveness. I would not put there lonley travails so much in thrall as you do. For one thing, slave wage grad school also allows a lot more freedom to do what you want than a “real job”. Finally, I find that the more some one is impressed by having a Ph.D., the lesser of a real player he is. It’s the weakest types who are proudest of the acheivement. And you are proud. I personally thought it was pretty easy and a good break from working.
2. Please improve your paragraphing (achieve a line space.)
David B. Benson // January 16, 2009 at 7:54 pm
michel // January 16, 2009 at 9:11 am — How is not
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Fast-Melting-Glaciers-Expose-7-000-Years-Old-Fossil-Forest-69719.shtml
just an observation unburdened by ‘theory’?
Dave A // January 16, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Ian F,
My comment about environmentalists, whilst perhaps unfair to some, comes from almost 25 years of experience as an activist.
Dave A // January 16, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Ian F,
Hit the button a bit too fast!
25 years experience as an activist with the UK Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), for over 10 years of which I was a member of their National Council, and from Sept 1998 toNov 2003 one of their representatives in a ‘Stakeholder Dialogue’ with British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) largely centred around reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel and the resulting build up of plutonium stockpiles.
During that time I was involved in a number of collaborations with Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and other more local environmental groups. Overwhelmingly there was an anti scientific bias in their approach, especially amongst the rank and file members, though the ‘higher ups’ were not immune to this either. Indeed the majority view was that they just ‘knew’ what they believed in was right and they didn’t therefore need to delve into ANY of the science underlying the issues.
Eventually, this attitude became too much for me, and others, and I left CND, even though I still support the idea of nuclear disarmament.
Ian Forrester // January 16, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Dave A, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and other environmental groups are far more pro-science that all the AGW denier “think tanks” (and other denier types e.g. CFC’s, asbestos, chromium etc).
I think you are confusing environmentalists with anarchists who are prevalent in most groups and who should have their activities curtailed.
I have never really considered nuclear to be an environmental problem, more economic and threats of nuclear bombs (which I don’t really see as a connection but many do).
Hank Roberts // January 16, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Dave, have you heard the caution never to let the best be the enemy of the good?
Dave A // January 16, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Ian F,
“I think you are confusing environmentalists with anarchists who are prevalent in most groups and who should have their activities curtailed.”
This was close up, personal type interaction over 25 years. Sure there were some anarchists in there, but given their beliefs they tended not to last the course. As I said most of the people involved were not at all interested in the underlying science.
And you ignore, of course, the fact that often those who were pro science were only so if the science seemed to support their already decided position
Dave A // January 16, 2009 at 11:17 pm
Ian F,
Also there are numerous environmental issues surrounding the nuclear weapons complex and nuclear power and its connections with the former. Of course, any nuclear weapons use would also have serious environmental consequences, and nuclear proliferation increases the likelihood of such use.
So it is very much an environmental issue
TCOisbanned? // January 16, 2009 at 11:31 pm
I like Ray…but even more I respect Tammy for letting me tease Ray. Mwahahahaha!
dhogaza // January 16, 2009 at 11:36 pm
This describes yourself very accurately, DaveA.
Given your track record here, I’d also say that I don’t think you’re capable of judging whether their arguments were at all reasonable from a scientific point of view or not …
Maybe they weren’t, maybe they were, but your opinion is of no use.
Ray Ladbury // January 17, 2009 at 2:12 am
TCO, Science is a little like sex–that fact that you don’t seem to enjoy it suggests to me that you aren’t doing it right.
In any case, who said anything about lonely travails. One of the things I like about physics is working with smart folks. My point was that anyone who goes into science has a whole helluva lot more invested in it than, say, an MBA. You don’t become a physicist (or chemist or climate scientist…) by accident.
So, actually, TCO, I’d say you are the anomaly. You place no value on being a scientist. And as to being proud, well perhaps, but at least I am not so delusional to think that Joliffe loves me.
;-)
Ray Ladbury // January 17, 2009 at 2:20 am
Michel says, “Nor is there anything improper about looking for evidence with a point of view in mind - this happens all the time and often leads to valid discoveries.”
Actually, Michel, while not wrong, you do have to be very careful with that strategy. It’s much easier to fool yourself that way, and much harder to statistically characterize the strength of the evidence you do find.
“That generally speaking, we tend to accept or reject theories as a whole, that is, as a combination of explanations plus observations plus accounts of those observations.”
I’m not really sure what this means. However, a theory is much more likely to be modified in the face of incompatible evidence than it is to be rejected. There’s more to philosophy of science than Popper and Kuhn, Michel.
Ian Forrester // January 17, 2009 at 2:32 am
Dave A stop showing your ignorance of science and environmentalism.
CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) is not and never has been a science based or environmental organization. It was established purely as a POLITICAL ORGANIZATION and was 100 percent Labour supportive.
Your comment “As I said most of the people involved were not at all interested in the underlying science”. Exactly, they were politically motivated. Most of the science at the time was probably covered by the Official Secrets Act anyway.
CND was full of political hacks and anarchists. To even conflate that organization with scientists and environmentalists is a travesty and shows your lack of respect for science and scientists and your lack of basic understanding of environmentalism.
Why do you keep posting such rubbish on this and other sites? What are you trying to prove?
Hank Roberts // January 17, 2009 at 3:51 am
Er, he’s trying to prove people will keep replying to him if he keeps posting, and the more effort he soaks up the less time there is to talk about science with people who want to learn about it.
michel // January 17, 2009 at 8:29 am
Ray, will you please stop condescending to your interlocutors, who know at least as much about Philosophy of Science as you?
What is so ironic is, I’m actually defending skepticism about the extent and size of the MWP, a point of view which is on your side of the argument!
You asked earlier about my opinion on warming. I don’t feel very certain about its size, or significance. Looking at the satellite record since 1978, what has happened so far does not look very disturbing. The trend is certainly slightly up, but is it out of line with the ordinary fluctuations we would expect? Doubtful.
[Response: Did you miss this post?]
Then there’s the surface record, both in the US and elsewhere. Again, I find it hard to know what to think. There is clearly and underlying rise in the data. But there seems to be a divergence between the US and the ROW data. The fall in the number of stations is a bit worrying. The documented failure of very large numbers of the US stations to meet standards is very worrying. The data manipulation algorithms seem difficult to justify - and the changing of readings back in the 20C cannot surely be justified? I accept Lucia’s analysis that very recent warming is not at the rate predicted by the IPCC.
[Response: Smearing the surface temperature record is a desperate tactic from those who don't want to believe the truth. The corrections aren't a method to create a false trend, they're corrections -- or would you rather work with faulty data? As for Lucia's analysis, I've shown its folly more than once; she too often applies inappropriate analysis, and definitely mischaracterizes what the IPCC prediction is. Here analysis is both mistaken and dishonest.]
All in all, I am not sure how considerable, how global, or how serious the warming since 1978 has been. Which is quite different from saying it has not happened. Do hope we can make that distinction.
Of course, the real argument has to do with the GHG effect, and what is to come. The public policy argument has to do with prevention. I am not much of a skeptic about this. It has always seemed totally irresponsible to make huge material changes to the atmosphere without having done a proper risk assessment.
guthrie // January 17, 2009 at 12:20 pm
DAve A- slagging of environemntalists for being anti-science has nothing to do with this topic- please go away and do it somewhere else.
regards
a science educated pro-environment person who has voted green and knows the difference between politics and science, as well as is against trident renewal.
Ray Ladbury // January 17, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Dave A., I’m more than willing to admit there are anti-science morons on the left as well as on the right, and among environmentalists as well as Earth-rapists. What matters is who is in ascendence, who has influence out of proportion to their numbers and understanding. I am a committed centrist, not because I think the only good ideas are found in the political center, but because the center seems to be the only place where pragmatic folk can come together and leave behind the nutjobs among their allies.
However, it seems to me that accepting the best science as a basis for policy is a minimum prerequisite for pragmatism.
Hank Roberts // January 17, 2009 at 3:12 pm
> It has always seemed totally irresponsible to
> make huge material changes to the
> atmosphere without having done a proper
> risk assessment.
Sure, and it was irresponsible to do a lot of other things — but that’s all history, along with the changes to the ocean. You’re not arguing that we shouldn’t try to stop the ongoing irresponsibility, are you?
Just because we’ve inherited stupid choices doesn’t commit us to staying on that course.
luminous beauty // January 17, 2009 at 3:27 pm
michel,
In order to have a meaningful knowledge of the philosophy of science, one must first have an understanding of the actual process of science.
Since you have no standing concerning the latter your opinion concerning the former is risible.
Such persistence of ignorance by an otherwise intelligent person is both comic and tragic.
I am duly impressed by the way you live up to the title of this post.
EliRabett // January 17, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Ray, allow me to disagree. While perhaps a slightly to the left moderate on European terms roughly where the social democrats are, Eli is a raging leftist in the US. Still, the bunny is a practical raging leftist, interested in what works and for that reason not very fond of the dogmatic green parties. Oh yes, Eli thinks we need nuclear power.
Philippe Chantreau // January 17, 2009 at 4:49 pm
And Eli is right about nuclear, IMO. All solutions must be used.
Michel says:”I find it hard to know what to think.” I reckon. So you got yourself a clue from Watts. Smart move. Carry on.
Barton Paul Levenson // January 17, 2009 at 6:40 pm
I think we can probably do it all without nuclear, but that’s just me.
Ray Ladbury // January 17, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Michel, My intent was not to condescent, merely to point out that there are other ways for science to evolve without “falsification” or “revolution” of an entire theory, and that in mature sciences, that is how they do in fact evolve.
You say that you don’t see significant warming since 1978 and imply that somehow the satellite picture differs from the land-based picture. As Zeke Hausfather points out, a lot of the difference is period of normalization.
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/Picture9.png
Your characterization of changes to the land-based record borders on the paranoid. I really do not see much cause for skepticism that we are warming, particularly in the face of all the corroborating evidence–4 independent trends all agreeing, warming oceans, decreasing global ice in the teratonne range, etc.
As to the significance of the trend, I think the planet is the ultimate arbiter of that. It will tell us when we reach a turning point, and there are plenty of indications that it is trying to get our attention.
Ray Ladbury // January 17, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Eli, my personal political bias is social liberal and fiscal conservative. However, it is my own position that climate related threats are sufficiently grave that we’ll have to compromise to reach a solution. I don’t think we can afford to pick and choose solutions.
michel // January 17, 2009 at 8:06 pm
No. Who put that idea into your head? The argument was exactly the opposite.
No. It is whether the corrections really do make the data less faulty that’s exactly the thing that worries one. And to make those points is not “smearing the surface temperature record”. Its to register intellectual discomfort with (for example) recent alterations in temperature records made 100 years ago, when we know no more about the conditions of measurement now than we did 50 years ago.
I am similarly uncomfortable with the divergence between proxies and recent surface temperature measurements, and undecided what the explanation is. I’m undecided what the apparent discrepancy between the US and the ROW shows, and what the discrepancy between satellite and surface may mean.
I’m here to learn. But that doesn’t mean being here to be taught the truth of which one is ignorant by people who know it. It means being here to learn by observing and listening to the arguments of people who have a well defined point of view, which may or may not be correct, with a view to assessing those points of view.
I visit other sites such as CA, D’Aleo, Lucia, Real Climate, the Pielkes, atmoz, in the same spirit. In short, the science may be ’settled’, but my own view of it is not, yet.
[Response: The corrections to the temperature record are based on documented information. These include the "urban heat island" effect, for which a correction is computed by comparing urban to rural stations, and the effect of the time of day at which observations are recorded, which has a demonstrable effect on mean temperature, without doubt. These corrections are well documented in the literature, accessible at the GISS website.
You may not be trying to "smear" the surface temperature record, but you're sure getting some of your information from those who are.]
Dave A // January 17, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Ian F,
I wasn’t just talking about CND but also many, many people I came across from Greenpeace etc. Also, even if CND was politically aligned to Labour, where’s the problem in that?
Dhogaza,
Ever thought of looking at the mote in your own eye before commenting?
Dave A // January 17, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Ian F,
In other threads on this blog I have been called, to paraphrase, ‘a right wing creationist’ - not least by Dhogaza himself.
Now, apparently there is a problem because I was ‘too left leaning’.
Sometimes you can never win :-)
guthrie,
Are you R Guthrie from Southampton University?
Dave A // January 17, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Ray’
“However, it seems to me that accepting the best science as a basis for policy is a minimum prerequisite for pragmatism.”
Would’nt disagree at all - its just that we have different views on what constitutes the ‘best science’.
EliRabett // January 17, 2009 at 8:57 pm
A good place to start understanding the treatment of surface temperature records is Peterson. Googling “Thomas Peterson” NOAA (there the bunny being a full service rabett provides the link) tosses up a great deal of informative information
Eli is fondest of this short paper, where Peterson takes apart the entire argument of denial about the surface temperature record, and shreds Roger Pielke Sr.’s attempt at Wattism (actually RP Sr started the camera’s clicking). To quote Peterson
Ray Ladbury // January 17, 2009 at 9:49 pm
OK, Dave, you had to know this one was coming? Where’s YOUR science?
Lazar // January 17, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Temperatures reconstructed using subset of high quality unadjusted station records, versus low quality unadjusted, versus GISTEMP using all and applying adjustments. Larger GISTEMP versus high quality.
Surface station versus satellite.
Land versus sea.
Watts and CA encourage fiddling whilst the building is razed to the ground.
guthrie // January 17, 2009 at 10:39 pm
DAve A- nope. It is my middle name.
Ian Forrester // January 17, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Dave A expects us to trust his idea of best science. What a joke. He has no idea of what constitutes science let alone best science. My best bet is that Dave A is a politician or a political hack. No knowledge of science whatsoever but pretends he is an expert, typical political trick.
Hank Roberts // January 18, 2009 at 12:01 am
Thanks Eli, excellent reference.
luminous beauty // January 18, 2009 at 12:12 am
Dave A is a bolshie!
Now it all makes sense.
Philippe Chantreau // January 18, 2009 at 2:01 am
Michel, the same site where you’re getting your doubts about the surface temp record is the one that was clamoring a spectacular recovery of Arctic sea ice last summer. Trust it if you want.
Hank Roberts // January 18, 2009 at 5:16 am
> bolshie
Well, there are some clusters in politics where ideas traditionally ascribed to only the left or right wing are found to overlap. Look up the history of the guys who made that Great Global Warming Scandoohickey thing on British TV for examples.
michel // January 18, 2009 at 7:43 am
Philippe,
I’m not in the business of ‘trusting’ sites. Any sites. Including this one. In the case of WATTS, what I look at is the photographs, the reports, the clippings of the excerpts from written standards. Then its not a case of ‘trusting’ but evaluating. WUWT is like the curate’s egg. Its good in parts. And its bad in parts too. Like many things.
TCOisbanned? // January 18, 2009 at 5:31 pm
michel:
Watts is bad not just in parts, but in capability. It’s like comparing some hack political blog like Libertarian Reublican to Volokh Conspiracy. There’s an intrinsic difference, such that your time is better spent at VC than at LR (regardless of them both being similar in political stance). Unfortunately there is no equivalent of VC for AGW. Yet CA and OM are light years above Watts, which is much more PR and bad scoop, than a good salon.
P. Lewis // January 18, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Well, that’s mistake no. 1. You are faced with an investment decision: do you go with the guy with the less spectacular, solid performance or use the “facts” and “figures” of a Bernard Madoff?
Well, that’s mistake no. 2. What you should be looking at are the photographs, the reports, the clippings of the experts.
Ah! A modicum of promise. But then …
Well, that’s mistake no. 3. Nuff said: see any Tamino analysis of Watts’ and his buddies’ pronouncements, and they were but the worst of many.
Overall assessment: Easily led down the wrong path by the wrong people. Must do better, but fear lacks the capacity.
TCOisbanned? // January 18, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Lucia has banned me from commenting on her site. I think it was because I routed her little community. I stood astride her forum like a collossus.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/you-cant-make-this-stuff-up/#comment-8991
michel // January 19, 2009 at 8:50 am
Let us confine ourselves to the photographic record of the US surface station network.
Are you claiming that the WATTS photos and documentation are not accurate records of the stations they purport to be about? If so, how did they come about? Were they done by the volunteers? Or did the volunteers perhaps not exist? Or did the volunteers submit materials that were then amended and faked? Or did the volunteers themselves Photoshop the pics before submitting them?
Or are you claiming that the photos and documentation is accurate, but that they do not show that the stations fail to conform to published standards?
Or are you claiming that they are accurate records, that they do show that the stations violate standards to the extent claimed by Watts, but that this does not affect and has not affected their readings?
Or perhaps, that it has affected their readings but that there are enough stations that it all averages out?
Notice that to answer these questions we do not have to make any judgments about whether WUWT is the equivalent of A or B, or whether its right or left wing, or whether Anthony himself is a nutter. We don’t have to like Anthony or his correspondents. No, we just have to examine the photos and the records, and the station standards and make some judgments about plausible reasons for them.
P. Lewis // January 19, 2009 at 12:42 pm
All totally (or almost totally) irrelevant to the real world!
deech56 // January 19, 2009 at 1:07 pm
RE: TCOisbanned? // January 18, 2009 at 8:47 pm
OK, I admit - interesting reading, especially your attempt to flirt with Lucia (was it romance or a sweater you were after? - with the geeky crowd, it’s hard to tell).
I was actually interested in your writing about how you had changed your position regarding the whole global warming thing. Since many of us are engaged in some sort of outreach or persuasion efforts, it’s enlightening to learn what clicked for others. Many of us argue elsewhere with those who believe Watt is a water walker, but try to play to the lurkers.
dhogaza // January 19, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Michel, the photo project is so passé. Nothing useful from a scientific point of view has been accomplished. This was predicted at the beginning.
caerbannog // January 19, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Michel, the photo project is so passé. Nothing useful from a scientific point of view has been accomplished. This was predicted at the beginning.
Just wondering — has the surfacestations project resulted in any papers getting published in peer-reviewed journals like GRL?
GRL and similar journals are “quick-turnaround” journals that publish short research articles after a relatively quick and short review process. So there has been plenty of time for the surfacestations folks to get at least one paper published in such a journal.
If nothing has been published, has anything even been submitted? Any surfacestations fans want to weigh in here?
caerbannog // January 19, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Michel, have a look at this post: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2069#comment-139036
This is exactly what Anthony Watts and his surfacestation.org fellow-travelers should have been doing — i.e. actually analyzing the data instead of spending all their time taking pretty pictures.
caerbannog // January 19, 2009 at 5:04 pm
This post is also relevant re: the surfacestations.org effort (http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2061#comment-138864):
JS:
No, it doesn’t.
I compared the best stations (according to surfacestations.org) to GISTEMP and found them to be very close. I compared the worst stations to GISTEMP, and found that they showed a warming trend.
The GISTEMP results are close to the results from the top 13% of all US48 stations.
There have been a lot of accusations here that Hansen et al are fudging the numbers to show an artificial warming trend. My results show the same trend with the best stations and no adjustments applied.
Philippe Chantreau // January 19, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Michel, I was looking on Watts’ blog for a plot of good stations (properly sited by Watts’ standards) vs bad vs GISSTEMP. Couldn’t find one. If there is a suggestion that the record is too contaminated by micro site effects, I’d expect that someone would try to quantify. Has that been done? If not, why not?
At his very beginning, Watts trumpeted his paint experiment as ready to blow the whole surface record. That hasn’t happened and now the paint has taken a back seat for something else, whose significance is unclear, and for which there is yet no result. It goes on and on.
J // January 19, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Disclaimer — I’m not part of the surfacestations project, and I may be wrong about what follows. If so, I apologize!
The impression I’ve gotten is that interest in Watts’s surface-stations project nosedived after the late summer/early fall of 2007, when John V. showed that there was no difference between GISTEMP and the highest-quality CRN stations.
If this page is up to date (http://www.surfacestations.org/USHCN_stationlist.htm) they’ve currently surveyed a total of 534 stations (out of ca. 1200). But from archived versions of that page (www.archive.org) it looks like in the first four months of the project (June-Oct 2007) they surveyed 400 sites. So in the past 15 months, they seem to have only added 130 more. At that rate, it’ll take nearly seven years before all the remaining stations are surveyed.
I believe John V. has suggested to Anthony Watts that it would be nice to do another comparison, using the additional stations collected post-Sept 2007. Watts’s position, I believe, is that it’s better to wait until a larger percentage of the stations has been surveyed. If the list at surfacestations.org is up-to-date, that could be a very long wait!
I’d like to be wrong about this. The idea that all those volunteers were excited about proving GISTEMP wrong, and lost interest once it appeared they might be proving GISTEMP right, is really depressing (at least for someone who tries not to be cynical about human nature).
Hopefully, Watts or someone else from surfacestations.org will write in and clarify that the numbers I’ve cited are wrong or out-of-date, and that they’re a lot further along than this.
dhogaza // January 19, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Given the transparency of the effort from the very beginning, I’m certainly not depressed. Filled with glee is more like it.
Hank Roberts // January 19, 2009 at 9:07 pm
> a total of 534 stations (out of ca. 1200)
Not using a random sample; the ones I saw talked about in advance of the evidence were believed to be ones they were sure would prove their thesis.
Philippe Chantreau // January 19, 2009 at 9:18 pm
J, I do believe that your info is up to date.
Looks like the surface station thing has already been beaten to death. Sorry, Michel, my question was loaded and I knew the answer, being familiar with John V’s work. However, that’s the kind of question that you should ask yourself and the folks at WUWT if you were to apply rigorous skepticism.
Now Watts is using the “let’s wait for more data” line, while data collection has inexplicably slowed to a crawl (it was really fast intially). Whatever.
Dave A // January 19, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Ian F,
“My best bet is that Dave A is a politician or a political hack.”
FYI, your best bet is totally and utterly wrong. Perhaps that might make you reflect on some of your other ‘best bets’ - climate change, for example.
TCOisbanned? // January 19, 2009 at 10:17 pm
The Watts paint experiment was actually a pretty cool and testable concept. I just want to see the answer, whether the impact was large and significant or small and not statistically significant. But 2 years later and a simple test of two different instrument types still has not been completed. Plus the doofus set up a several month experiment of 2 instrument types and did not even realize that there might be within instrument type variation (only had one example of each type).
Why do my skpetics come up with such interesting problems and do such a lousy job of finding answers to them. Like on Surface Stations, JohnV was the one who got the job done. Watts just bloviated and never analyzed. And McI did a confounded (by geographic bias) analysis (that “looked good” for denialisim, surprise surprise), which JohnV had to straighten out with a geo-controlled comparison.
Ian Forrester // January 19, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Dave A, if it quacks like a duck, looks like a duck and is as stupid as a duck then you are a political hack.
[Response: Clearly I'm willing to call a duck a duck. But perhaps you've gone a bit overboard with the "political hack" line? Do you have evidence of connection to a political organization/lobbying group?]
dhogaza // January 19, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Actually, JohnV showed that the GISS people had been getting the job done for a long time and that the whole exercise was one in futility to begin with.