Curry: The Finale
UPDATE: After further reflection, Judith Curry lays out a way forward in comment 51 that I encourage people to read and discuss.
And you thought it was over. Ha.
Admit it. You thought Judith Curry had finally collapsed at the finish line, that after one week of taking on all comers, she was spent. Wrung out to dry. Kaput.
Have you learned nothing? I think this woman can chew bullets.
Did you think I was going to let her go without surveying the wreckage, without participating in a postmortem? (Okay, I’m done with the mixed metaphors.) Let’s get down to it, in which I ask Curry to respond to the main criticisms hurled back at her this past week:
Q: In the exchange, you’ve spoken highly of some well-known climate skeptic blogs, such as Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit. That seems to be one of the things that has most infuriated the AGW wing. There’s this growing perception, fed, for example, by Joe Romm, that you’re now siding with anti-science forces. Given that you are a research scientist, how does that make you feel?
JC: Joe Romm is bearing the fruits of tribalism, and reminds us of why this is such a bad thing. With regards to my engagement with skeptics, I need to clarify a few things. I am listening to what the skeptics have to say; this does not mean that I agree with anything (let alone everything) that they have to say. I am trying to be open-minded and am considering their arguments. This is not the same as endorsing their arguments. If McIntyre (or another blogger, or someone from a libertarian think tank) has said incorrect or otherwise inappropriate things at one point, this does not imply that everything they have said or will say is incorrect or inappropriate.
But unless we listen and engage across “tribes”, we will continue to fight these silly wars, particularly the war with McIntyre that ended up getting Jones and Mann in such hot water.
With regards to what is anti-science, here is a quiz. Read blog thread A and blog thread B. Which thread is anti-science?
In the climateaudit thread, I learned a lot not only from the diverse knowledge base of the participants, but also by having to dig into some literature that I wasn’t too familiar with, and to work hard to make strong arguments in the face of some sophisticated challenges. In a follow up email some months later from Dan Hughes (he has a blog link at climateaudit), he suggested that I read the following book: “Fundamentals of Verification and Validation“ by Patrick Roache. I ordered the book, it sits on my desk, I pick it up periodically to glance through, I hope to have more time this summer to go through it (it is heavy going, but it is already influencing some of my thinking).
I do not side with skeptical bloggers (I don’t side with anybody, rather I support or disagree with arguments), but I will absolutely defend them against any disrespect or personal attacks they receive that is unwarranted in my opinion. McIntyre has made important contributions in terms of pushing for transparency in science and public availability of data (a battle cry that is being taken up by almost everybody), pointing out that there are deficiencies in statistical analysis in the climate field (a point made by the North NRC Report and even the Oxburgh report), concerns about using tree rings in paleo temperature reconstructions (a concern that many paleoclimatologists now share), and raising concerns about inappropriate behavior by some climate scientists (well, the CRU emails speak for themselves). Watts’ surface stations.org deserves credit. Credit where it is due, anyone?
Let’s make our discussion about the scientific arguments, not about the individuals.
Q: You say you want to help restore trust in climate science. But even before Climategate, people like Senator James Inhofe, Marc Morano, and Rush Limbaugh were ridiculing climate scientists and calling global warming a scientific hoax. I don’t see them changing their tune anytime soon. Nor can their rhetoric be helpful to your bridge-building efforts. Shouldn’t someone in the skeptic community emulate you and denounce the distortions of climate science and the badmouthing of climate scientists by Inhofe et al?
JC: Senator Inhofe, Marc Morano, and Rush Limbaugh are politically motivated. Their rhetoric doesn’t help at all, and I think pretty much everyone badmouths what they have to say. My point is that it is incorrect to lump the skeptical bloggers with Limbaugh etc., and their rhetoric detracts from the case that the scientific skeptics (including the bloggers are trying to make).
Q: You’ve also taken a lot of flak this week for saying nice things about a few think tanks that seem to approach the climate change issue from an ideological bent. Yesterday, science journalist James Hrynyshyn wrote:
If Curry is implying that CATO and CEI are sincere, intellectually honest skeptics who understand and respect the scientific process instead of disingenuous propaganda machines, then I beg to differ. And I question whether she has bothered to examine their positions all that well.
Do you maintain that these institutions are acting in good faith when discussing climate science? Isn’t there a big difference between a Steve McIntyre and CEI, and if you agree, what would that difference be?
JC: The difference between Steve McIntyre and CEI is that McIntyre is interested in auditing the science, whereas CEI is interested in policy. I have examined CEI positions in some detail and I am aware of their history with regards to the climate issue. Just because I am listening to what they have to say does not imply any agreement on my part.
CEI is concerned about bad policies that will damage economic development. They are particularly skeptical of the catastrophic impacts of climate change, and believe that economic development will make everyone more resilient to adverse impacts. I have exchanged 30 long emails with Fred Smith, President of CEI. I have hammered him over the behavior of Myron Ebell. I have told him that his harassment of Gavin Schmidt re his blogging is inappropriate. I have listened to what he has to say. He has listened to what I have to say. I even visited CEI the last time I was in D.C. We have settled into a civil dialogue. He is prepared to listen to me if I think they are committing a “foul” in any of their actions. Fred Smith has proven his good faith to me by his willingness to participate in a civil dialogue on this subject.
Q: When I posted the initial Q & A last Friday, I had no idea that you were going to be so engaged with readers. Since then, Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth has called the ongoing exchange “remarkable.” (There are two threads, both still active, which have combined for over 700 comments.) Much of this owes to your frank and frequent responses to readers. This is a rather unconventional means of communication for a scientist. Why did you participate in this way? And did you learn anything from it?
JC: I’ve honed my blogging skills over at climateaudit, off and on since 2006, in a very challenging and often hostile environment (hostile particularly in the earlier days). I’ve learned a lot from this experience, not only in terms of sharpening my communication and rhetorical skills, but also in terms of what people care regarding trying to understand climate science and what their concerns are. There has been a growing distrust of climate science (which became acute following November 19). I am trying to help restore public credibility in climate science and of climate scientists, by answering questions about the scientific process, scientific institutions, and engaging with the public. I wrote about my ideas on this in my “building trust“ essay.
I’ve learned a lot from my latest two blogospheric experiments (this one plus the “building trust” experiment where I issued a blogospheric press release). First and foremost, I’ve received a lot of “evidence” to support my tribalism hypothesis. I was hoping to breach some of these barriers with my previous strategy of submitting the blogospheric press release to a broad range of blogs; this didn’t work too well. I am delighted (and surprised really) that at collide-a-scape we had an actual “cross tribe” dialogue. We attracted some “big guns” in the climate blogosphere (e.g. Connolley, Eschenbach, Mosher). And I became acquainted with some interesting new voices that I hadn’t previously encountered. This blogosheric engagement across the climate spectrum is unique in some ways. As to the effectiveness of the actual exchange in developing and refining arguments, well there were too many topics on the table to have a truly productive discussion given that there were so many diverse viewpoints present.
I would like to thank everyone who participated in this exchange of ideas.
Q: There were many times this past week when you were responding almost in rapid-fire fashion, while fielding multiple queries. Is there anything you said that you wish you could take back?
JC: My personal rules for blogging are: respond to the argument not the person, don’t take criticisms personally, use the questions as a springboard to make a point that I want to make, don’t get distracted from my main points, don’t rise to “bait” and be careful of getting my “buttons” pushed, don’t talk on subjects where I am inadequately informed, if I make a mistake quickly acknowledge it, keep my responses measured and calm and proportional and polite.
In the rapid responses, I was attempting to be responsive to the unexpected deluge of comments. I was grabbing short blocks of time in the midst of my “day job” responsibilities this week, which included annual faculty evaluations, hiring of two new faculty large number of letters of recommendation for graduating student job seekers.
In the midst of the rapid replies, I didn’t take time to go through my blogging rules checklist on each reply. The one response that I wish I could push the “do over” button on is the response related to Edward Wegman. Wegman’s name came up in the context of alleged process violations of the IPCC. I should have left it at that. But I rose to the bait provided, regarding plagiarism accusations of Wegman. This pushed one of my “buttons”, which is the relentless attacks on persons that are in any way favorable to the skeptics, rather than on the arguments they are making. So I rose to Wegman’s defense, without being anywhere near adequately informed to get involved in a discussion on this. It proved to be a big red herring in the discussion, I admitted my inadequate knowledge on this, and people eventually moved on.
Looking back, given the number of replies I made on such a diverse range of issues over a short time period, I guess I feel ok that I have only one “do over” wish. There were a lot of potential landmines that I think I mostly navigated through.
Q: So where do you go from here? Will you continue raising the issue of climate science integrity? It seems many of your peers are reluctant to have this discussion, for whatever reason. [RealClimate, for example, has not mentioned Curry’s name in any post since she published her first critical essay on climate science on November 22, 2009.]
JC: I will continue my attempts to open up the dialogue and challenge people to think about some of these issues that I think are important for the future of climate research and the assessment processes. I continue to worry that we are not learning the lessons we need to from Climategate.
However, I vow to stay away from the blogosphere for at least a week. There were many unfinished interesting discussions that were started here. I hope we can pursue some of these collectively in the coming weeks.
I don’t blame my peers at all for staying out of the public discussion on this issue (particularly in the blogosphere, it is pretty rough sport), but I hope they are at least thinking about some of these issues. Even if individual scientists don’t want to deal with these issues, the institutions that support science in U.S. are grappling with them.
***ENDNOTE***
Sometime over the weekend, I will put up a short post on the blogosphere’s varied reaction to the extended dialogue Curry engaged in at this site. More than a dozen blogs took note; many of these posts also triggered their own lively comment threads, which I enjoyed reading and which informed my questions in this last Q & A.
Once again, special thanks to Judith Curry for her full participation here this past week.
UPDATE: As of 5/2, here are the blogs that joined the fray:
Climate Audit (Steve McIntyre); Bishop Hill (Andrew Montford); Stoat (William Connolley, who also wrote a second and third and fourth post); Dot Earth (Andrew Revkin); The Blackboard (Lucia Liljegrin); The Island of Doubt (James Hrynshyn, who also wrote a second and third post; Roger Pielke, Jr.; A Few Things Illconsidered (Coby Beck); Ourchangingclimate (Bart Verheggen); Climate Progress (Joe Romm, who also wrote a second post); James Annan; Only In It For The Gold (Michael Tobis)
As one who is fairly neutral on the hot-button climate debates, Dr. Curry is a breath of fresh air. We need more like her.
She’s right about the credibility of climate science. For me, the credibility of both “tribes” is low and their actions, should they remain as they are, are not likely to change that, but Dr. Curry gives me hope.
Reposting from the last thread:
@ 66 Judith Curry writes:
But the biggest issue that I have with the attribution of 20th century temperature trend is the neglect of the ocean multidecadal oscillations. For example, the recent cooling is being attributed to switching to the cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. If that is true, then the warming in the last decades of the 20th century should be partly attributed to the warm phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
I was unaware that anyone in the field (or anyone outside of the “skeptic” crowd) had been claiming that “the recent cooling is being attributed to switching to the cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation”. Could you please provide a citation?
Thank you.
thinksbreak, here you go,
http://europa.agu.org/?uri=/journals/gl/gl0907/2008GL036874/2008GL036874.xml&view=article
But I thought anyone invoking the PDO was by definition a member of the “skeptic” crowd!
@3 Maximus:
here you go
Sorry, Tsonis and Swanson do not claim that “the recent cooling is [attributable] to switching to the cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation”, but rather proposes an undefined mechanism whereby the NAO drives a synchronization of several oceanic-atmospheric patterns, underneath which a virtually monotonic (and accelerating) anthropogenic warming exists. Hardly what Curry was describing. I am of course aware of the infatuation with the PDO among “skeptics” as a driver of much of the recent observed temperature variability- but I’ve yet to see such a position articulated by anyone in the field. Given the way that the PDO is calculated, it would be surprising indeed.
Sorry, Maximus, no cigar. That paper discusses the PDO, but not in the way you claim it does.
I’ve certainly seen plenty of attempts by denialists to associate the PDO with late 20th century warming, but none from any sort of subject matter expert. That wasn’t the only reference Judy didn’t bother checking in the course of the discussion.
Oops, should have refreshed before posting.
Judith, it is wrong for you to assert that the matter of the plagiarism in Wegman’s report was a personal attack. The case for plagiarism is compelling, and I am stunned that any academic would dismiss such a serious matter in such a cavalier fashion. Surely you would agree that the IPCC should not cite plagiarised sources?
“This pushed one of my “buttons”, which is the relentless attacks on persons that are in any way favorable to the skeptics, rather than on the arguments they are making.”
DC’s analysis of the Wegman Report was brought up in response to Judith’s implication that the Wegman Report was a well-reviewed quality scholarly effort that deserved recognition on par with any other academic effort, and one the “warmists” don’t like simply because of the conclusion. She even confused it with the NRC report, an entirely different effort. It’s not a “red herring” at all in that context, unless Judith is making it. Rather than accusing others of “baiting” her (if anyone was “baiting”, it was her), she might be better served simply apologizing to DC.
I think many take issue with Judith’s quick and often uninformed defense to criticism of skeptical efforts. DC, for example, who certainly has addressed Wegman’s arguments as well (his understanding of proxies for example), in this case was examining how the research was conducted. Isn’t that Judith’s primary case against climate science in a nutshell? That the process is corrupt? Doesn’t McIntyre and many others she’s been claiming operate in good faith relentlessly attack the integrity of climate scientists and the alleged processes involved in conducting research? Why the blatant double standard? This is especially puzzling since DC has done quite a commendable and thorough job. Contrast that to how McIntyre develops a narrative.
http://deepclimate.org/2009/12/11/mcintyre-provides-fodder-for-skeptics/
Eli has an offer, when Keith and Judy stop telling tales about Joe Romm, maybe a bunch of us will attempt again to converse with Steve McIntyre.
I am breaking my no-blogging vow just for #9 Eli’s message.
Offer accepted (I can’t speak for Keith tho).
Hey, I’m just the messenger. 🙂
But I’ll tell you what, if this glasnost offer is for real, consider this blog a Romm-free zone (well, my posts, anyway. I’m not going to censor any commenters).
Eli, please email me a link when you begin that conversation anew, and I’ll be sure to note it.
I suggest that when you do initiate the conversation, you limit participation. Have a conversation among a small bunch. Set up a parallel thread for the peanut gallery folks like me, to post comments _elsewhere_ and you take from that only what’s helpful to your conversation, and do it slowly, working up to the AR5
Judith Curry,
You wrote:
“I will absolutely defend them against any disrespect or personal attacks they receive that is unwarranted in my opinion. ”
What I (and I suspect many others) would have liked to see is at least an acknowledgement (or better yet, a condemnation) that mainstream climate scientists have been attacked in exactly such ways. It actually surprised me that you seem so cavalier on that issue.
Are these attacks all their own fault?
If so, aren’t the attacks on (some of the) ‘skeptics’ also (or even more so) their own fault?
Further down you wrote:
“Fred Smith has proven his good faith to me by his willingness to participate in a civil dialogue on this subject.”
Willingness to have a civil dialogue on no way means that he’s interested in constructive science communication.
But I’d also note (as I have before) that I think your point about circling the wagons is important, and I take that to be your main point.
Thank you for engaging.
In regards to DC’s take on the wegamn report.
‘Wegman has no expertise in climate science.’
Is not a valid analysis. Proxy analysis is statistics. The problem isn’t that Wegman isn’t a climate scientist its that Mann isn’t a statistician. He had no business inventing his own method of statistical analysis. When I was in school there was something the engineering professors would commonly say ‘and we pass that off to the mathematicians.’
And now that I’m a professional I routinely pass things off to those who are trained in that field. I’ve done most of the leg work but I’ve reached a point where I would be performing armature statistics.
All,
Whatever your stand on Wegman be, can we just move past it? I think Judith made it clear above that this was the one landmine she stepped on.
I think there’s plenty more she provided in this final Q & A to poke a stick at.
#13 Bart,
For some reason I suspect your definition of “constructive science communication” is “agree with what you believe”. If that is the case then you are part of the problem.
This discussion will never progress until people on both sides learn to agree to disagree because there are a lot of things in climate science which are pure judgement calls and a lot of people are not willing to trust the judgement of climate scientists because of the political tactics that they have engaged in (refusing to admit even small errors, denigrating opponents).
One example where the will never be agreement is on the reliability of the climate models which recently caused billions in economic damage with completely wrong predictions of the volcanic ash cloud.
Tom,
“Mann isn’t a statistician. He had no business inventing his own method of statistical analysis. When I was in school there was something the engineering professors would commonly say “˜and we pass that off to the mathematicians.'”
You need to do your homework.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/michael-mann/
“Dr. Mann received his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Applied Math from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. degree in Physics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University. His research focuses on the application of statistical techniques to understanding climate variability and climate change from both empirical and climate model-based perspectives. Current areas of research include paleoclimate data synthesis and statistical climate reconstruction using climate “proxy” data networks, and model/data comparisons aimed at understanding the long-term behavior of the climate system and its relationship with possible external (including anthropogenic) “forcings” of climate. Other areas of active research include development of statistical methods for climate signal detection, and investigations of the response of geophysical and ecological systems to climate variability and climate change scenarios.”
NYJ,
Do your own homework…
http://climateaudit.org/2007/11/06/the-wegman-and-north-reports-for-newbies/
I’m glad to see time being wasted in defending Mann. He is a liability to your cause especially after his ill-advised attempt this week to sue Minnesotans-For-Global-Warming over a video that hurt his feelings. He is second only to Gore as a target of scorn. If he was on my side I would tell him to shut up and stay out of the spotlight.
I invite Judy, or anyone in the skeptic camp to review the following commentary and provide rebuttals to any portion.
http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddrj9jjs_0fsv8n9gw
(my email address is embedded in the document), and thanks in advance for any time you may devote to that, even if you don’t respond!
oops. I meant to say “anyone NOT in the skeptic camp” (not interested in preaching to the choir).
KKloor,
Dr. Curry’s handling of the Wegman issue her illustrates the problem that I think a lot of people have with her treatment of this subject. She was the one who introduced Wegman here:
<http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/2010/04/23/an-inconvenient-provocateur/#comment-3198>
Sou responded here:
<http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/2010/04/23/an-inconvenient-provocateur/#comment-3192>
And she comes to Wegman’s defense here:
<http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/2010/04/23/an-inconvenient-provocateur/#comment-3198>
And off we go. Here, Dr. Curry characterizes the exchange like so:
But I rose to the bait provided, regarding plagiarism accusations of Wegman. This pushed one of my “buttons”, which is the relentless attacks on persons that are in any way favorable to the skeptics, rather than on the arguments they are making. So I rose to Wegman’s defense, without being anywhere near adequately informed to get involved in a discussion on this. It proved to be a big red herring in the discussion, I admitted my inadequate knowledge on this, and people eventually moved on.
So she introduces Wegman’s critique of the IPCC, calls a detailed case for serious misconduct on Wegman’s part “reprehensible”, defends him at length and then finally admits her ignorance of the subject (to her credit — the parties she want to build bridges to are rarely so gracious). Now, Dr. Curry calls it all a “red herring” and the rebuttal “bait provided”, like she was provoked, and the critiques are supposed to go in one direction only.
It is hard to see what’s annoying in this?
afeman (21):
I can see what you’re saying. But I also want to remind you that this was a fast-moving exchange and there were periods when she was juggling multiple topics at once.
All I can is that she’s admitted in this last post that she was not speaking from a fully informed position. She’s owned up to that.
Instead of focusing solely on this one exchange, I ask that you look at the whole–over the course of the week.
#21 – afeman
What is annoying are alarmists who figure they can completely ignore the substance of what Wegman had to say by throwing dirt.
A more accurate description of what happened is this:
1) Dr. Curry introduces Wegman as an example of sceptical criticisms that are not being addressed.
2) Alarmists respond with a long stream of smears which have nothing to do with the substance of Wegman’s arguments.
3) Dr. Curry gets defensive because it yet another example of the blind tribalism that she is speaking out about. She tries to defend Wegman.
4) She realizes pretty quickly that untangling the lies and misrepresentations used by the alarmists would take a lot of effort. Especially since Wegman has not offered his side of the story.
5) She gives up arguing the point because she has better things to do.
In short. She was provoked by the juvenile mudslingers who are unable to address the merits of Wegman’s criticisms. I also don’t think her exit from the debate tells us anything about her opinion of the mudslingers arguments.
Raven (23)
Like you said earlier on this thread (16), it’s hard to move the discussion forward “until people on both sides learn to agree to disagree.”
Can we just do that with Wegman and move on to the other topics Judith discussed above, one of which Marc Morano pounced on today.
#24 – Keith Kloor
Fair enough.
You asked a question the other thread about finding a middle ground. I suggested that politics could be removed from the scientific discussion by adopting an extremely explicit principle of policy neutrality which leaves no room for doubt or wiggle room.
Any thoughts?
Keith Kloor (22),
I bring it up not to rehash Wegman per se, but as an illustration of why Dr. Curry’s MO alienates many who have been following the public face of climate science. She starts with vague “problems” with climate science, avoids getting specific, and then when she does provide specifics that can be critiqued, she seems to think that the critiques are part of the problem (“tribalism”), even while those she defends (McIntyre, Watts, etc.) regularly imply or outright accuse malfeasance on the part of climate scientists, to say nothing of the scientific content of their arguments (particularly with Watts). It’s a double standard par excellence.
Why would any professional willingly engage with that? Is it too much to ask that somebody with any stature be damn well informed before they demand respect for people who accuse so freely? Is there nothing additional she would like see from the naysayers? Or is the onus completely on scientists to give ground? Because that’s the impression I get from looking at the whole. Does she provide any specifics to believe otherwise?
Sure, kudos to her for taking the time, but if it’s such an imposition to be ready to defend what she says with details — something I’m sure she is accustomed to professionally — why is she saying it?
And if her views on the science boil down to “maybe the error bars in WG1 are a little too narrow”, why not say so up front? Why use a secondary, technical sense of “corruption”, when climate scientists are regularly accused of what the word usually means? If this kind of thing is a mistake, why do the mistakes seem to point in one direction?
afeman(26):
Some of what you say is fair game, particularly this:
Is there nothing additional she would like see from the naysayers? Or is the onus completely on scientists to give ground?
Anybody who recalls my comments in the other thread knows that I asked Judith something similar. She’s never really answered. I think the closest she’s come is this, from today’s Q & A:
this does not mean that I agree with anything (let alone everything) that they have to say.
I surmise the delicate dance she’s doing around this has to do with her outreach efforts to the skeptic community. In other words, best not to antagonize someone you’re trying to forge some common ground with. But I surmise.
The other stuff you mention would be better for her to address, when she re-enters the blogosphere worm hole.
Raven (25):
I was intrigued by that and meant to respond. Then I realized I had to give it some thought, but then my thoughts wandered, and now, well, the NyQuil is kicking in. So I should probably close down my brain for the night and start fresh tomorrow.
Given that the extremely Republican Va Attorney General is now demanding UVa turn over every piece of paper that Michael Mann ever touched in an effort to pin something on him and S. Fred Singer is cheering this on, Eli expects that Judith Curry will play another round of blame the victim.
#29 – Eli
FWIW – I think the VA Attorney General is way out of line and nothing good will come of it. I also think that Mann is a fraud and a liar but he needs to be dealt with by his peers within the scientific institutions.
The discussion of whom is what, reminds Eli that scientists (at least the very good ones) beg, borrow and steal any tool they can to analyze stuff. There are many accepted mathematical tools which at the time they were first used were not rigorous, these include such things as Dirac delta functions, Feynman integrals and more and sometimes the initial implementation was not, as they say, not quite 100% there
The point about the statistics that Mann used in 1998 is that they were not optimal, but they were sufficient. If you dot the eyes and cross the T-shirts you get almost exactly the same answer, as many subsequent studies have shown. If you use a different set of proxys, you get pretty much the same answer.
OTOH, if you construct an example, using a random series that is not so random, yes, you can get a hockey stick shape, but the blade is much smaller (and since the damn blade is the instrumental record, that is a pretty big thing)
And to repeat
Does anyone have an idea if Wegman ever replied to David Ritson, who had some questions about the statistical analysis in the Wegman report that bear upon these points?
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/house06/RitsonWegmanRequests.pdf
Eli:
The victim in this case in the state of Virginia. That is why the Attorney General has called for an investigation into possible criminal activity that is, unlike the UN FOI laws, Not limited by some time period. Such as conspiracy and collusion to defraud a publicly funded institution.
Of course the truth will prove beyond doubt Innocence or guilt. Now keep in mind the UEA e-mails can be used as evidence.
Happy Trails Eli Wabbit
Eli:
If Mann had done proper science he should have had no problem with anyone attempting to replicate his work or to disprove it to advance science.
Circle the wagons tight the Indians of Truth are coming to your Redoubt.
Happy trails Eli Wabbit
Eli. some one needs to do a Ben Santer and beat the third person out of you. Your schtick ceased being amusing in 2006. I may be just a poor working man but I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that Wegman to this day has not paid the slightest attention to Ritson and was under no obligation to. Here is a mirror image of your strawman: has Michael Mann ever responded to the charges made by Lubos Motl?
That fist one should have been unlike the UK. Rather than UN which has no Freedom of Information period in spite of their claims to the contrary. The IPCC process is as transparent as a block of granite and getting information about methods is easy as pulling Hen’s teeth
Mike M:
I would agree and add that most reasonable pay little or no attention to those type of accusations knowing the source is enough because the source has released enough of the Eli and Romm claims to discredit themselves.
I’m a research librarian who has followed climate science at climateprogress, climateaudit and realclimate for a year now. I look for common threads.
There are 22 ““ “count ’em” ““ bloggers over a four-day period (Down Somewhat) at Romm’s website saying:
“¦Dr. Judith Curry is a terrible scientist-and a worse judge of people.
“¦ What’s most revealing is that when pressed …she can’t reveal anything more than a von Storch claim and further vague insinuations.
“¦Dr. Curry has stopped making sense
“¦vague insinuations
“¦random and vague remarks about lack of transparency
“¦Curry is typical ““ she started out trying to make peace, she has ended up as a “useful idiot”.
“¦the problem with judith Curry is, that she is mostly wrong. and not just in the side she picked. Curry is making vague brad-brush allegations and seems to feel no need to substantiate what she is saying.
“¦ Judith .. made this about Jones and Mann, not about their actual science, which has been vindicated in multiple fora and reproduced by other scientists independently.
My point is – Romm and tribe want to tell us this isn’t a belief system. It is pure science. But here is one of my favorite posts from his blog.
…..Why people resist believing in Global Warming: Reference: “From Eternity to Here” by Sean Carroll, 2010, page 373: “But at a deeper level, our anthropocentrism manifests itself as a conviction that human beings somehow MATTER to the universe. This feeling is at the core of much of the resistance in some quarters to accepting Darwin’s theory of natural selection as the right explanation for the evolution of life on Earth. The urge to think that we matter can take the form of a straightforward belief that we (or some subset of us) are God’s chosen people, or something as vague as an insistence that all this marvelous world around us must be more than just an ACCIDENT.”
If we MATTER to the Universe, then it is a law of Physics that it is impossible for humans to go extinct, or even be harmed in a major way, like a major population crash. Therefore, GW cannot exist, or if it does, GW cannot harm us. Therefore:
Job 1: Tell them that Earth is NOT the center of the solar system. They somehow missed it.
etc.
Absolutely ANYTHING we say is alarmism.
We have to give them a “Sign from God”. They are expecting celestial trumpets the size of the solar system, the sky splitting open, angel music with real angels, lightning from planet to planet, etc.
One more favorite quote from a believer:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, all this fixation on get-it-right, got-it-wrong is obscuring the real issue: the truth is what we define it to be, and the truth is that mankind is a scourge on the planet. The sooner we can limit the right to breed, the sooner the planet will recover. If glacier data is a little incorrect but helps that effort, then the data is true in all but a very narrow and clinical scientific sense.
Common people don’t really understand science. But they understand not having enough to eat and not being able to sit down on a too-crowded subway. if we can educate people not to reproduce there will be many seats and the fewer people will be happier. Indeed, as the capitalist economies of scale are reduced, the satisfaction from making your own clothes and embracing a low-carbon vegan diet will be so intense, reproduction will come to be seen in the same category as child abuse.
I yearn for the day when i might not have been born!
Michael Tobis has dug out McIntyre’s reply to Ritson, but no Wegman.
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2010/04/good-for-goose-not-for-gander.html
Dear Mike, you appear to be red queening here, pretty much like S. Fred Singer. You also appear to be confusing replicate and duplicate. As to responding to Motl, the fellow throws out accusations like most people toss their garbage.
@21, 26 afeman
Many good points there. The rewriting of history is a particular concern, especially given how it appears to be of a piece with many of the other accusations that have been made and then walked back.
On a different note (reposting from the last thread, earlier this thread- I guess now open to anyone as a direct answer may not be forthcoming):
@ 66 Judith Curry writes:
But the biggest issue that I have with the attribution of 20th century temperature trend is the neglect of the ocean multidecadal oscillations. For example, the recent cooling is being attributed to switching to the cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. If that is true, then the warming in the last decades of the 20th century should be partly attributed to the warm phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
I was unaware that anyone in the field (or anyone outside of the “skeptic” crowd) had been claiming that “the recent cooling is being attributed to switching to the cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation”. Could you please provide a citation?
Thank you.
In full:
The one response that I wish I could push the “do over” button on is the response related to Edward Wegman. Wegman’s name came up in the context of alleged process violations of the IPCC. I should have left it at that. But I rose to the bait provided, regarding plagiarism accusations of Wegman. This pushed one of my “buttons”, which is the relentless attacks on persons that are in any way favorable to the skeptics, rather than on the arguments they are making. So I rose to Wegman’s defense, without being anywhere near adequately informed to get involved in a discussion on this. It proved to be a big red herring in the discussion, I admitted my inadequate knowledge on this, and people eventually moved on.
You defended a plagiarist against charges of plagiarism until you learned he really is guilty of plagiarism.
Cut the crap. Are you an academic or not?
Hmm, had a nice post that seems to have gotten eaten by the blog software.
Anyway, Thers, you should be upfront, you are an academic, a lit professor at a community college. Apart from that you’re a bomb thrower and frequently engage in the sort of petty and very partisan relentless attacks that Ms. Curry and so many others think bog down the actual intellectual arguments.
You’re in no way qualified to understand or argue climate theory as anything other than a layman (nor am I), but you don’t have the humility to let that stop you from calling all sorts of people with far better credentials than yourself as some sort of corrupted, ignorant, anti-scientific scientists.
I’d ask if you were an academic, but I accept that you are an academic, and so I recognize that you understand how bogus your question is.
I appreciate Dr. Curry’s earnest attempt to be objective and impartial. But her comment about Limbaugh et al being political applies to so many on the other side as well–can you say Al Gore? This issue became political the moment the UN IPCC was formed, which is why so much of the so-called science surrounding this issue is more closely related to political science than climate science. For his part, at least Limbaugh consults Roy Spencer, who has been very balanced, respectful, and measured on this whole issue.
It seems to me that Judith is suffering from poor analysis rather than naivety or malicious intent.
The purpose of the likes of Watt is to have pseudo or even anti science which backs up a particular world view taken seriously.
Judith takes it seriously, ergo Watts has achieved his objective, regardless of any other impacts.
McIntyre, on the other hand is operating differently, to sow doubt, in the same way as the tobacco industry. Any engagement helps this, as it acknowledges doubt. McIntyre has no intention whatsoever to honestly engage in science, he merely wishes to find points, however, minor to raise doubt.
Judith, and particularly her terribly ill-advised language (“corrpution”, for goodness sake), gives McIntyre the outcome he wants.
There is simply no point in the attempted rapprochement; depressingly, merely attempting it actually gifts these deliberately dishonest people the objectives they seek.
Be polite, avoid attacking them, address arguments in the scientific literature, but don’t attempt engagement in this way.
so Judith was wrong on Wegman. instead of simply saying so, she is talking about “red herring”. why not waste 5 minutes to take a look?
she also was wrong on her claim, that people haven t looked close enough at climate audit or WuWt. we have, and we found them lacking. (Keith, you really offered her a cheap way out, by asking about CA and not WuWt. and she ran with it, doing a incredibly cheap “one post- comparison. you gave that one a pass as well..)
and finally there is her approach to the lobby groups:
CEI is concerned about bad policies that will damage economic development. They are particularly skeptical of the catastrophic impacts of climate change, and believe that economic development will make everyone more resilient to adverse impacts.
CEI is NOT concerned about bad policy. they are concerned about policy, that is not inklne with their TRIBE.
How Curry can defend the CEI, and rave against “tribalism” among the consensus position, is beyond me.
there is nothing more tribal, than CATO and CEI.
the position taken by Judith Curry, simply makes no sense. in most aspects, she simply doesn t know what she is talking about. the rest is vague.
Watts’ surface stations.org deserves credit. Credit where it is due, anyone?
Credit for constantly making false claims?
here is an analysis of the station data. it shows exactly the opposite, of what Watts was claiming it to show.
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-etal2010.pdf
why not give some credit to NOAA, for doing real scientific work? and not uttering baseless accusations, as Watts does?
Watts’ surface stations.org deserves credit. Credit where it is due, anyone?
Right, I missed this low hanging fruit. The surface stations project led to this report:
….leading meteorological institutions in the USA and around the world have so systematically tampered with instrumental temperature data that it cannot be safely said that there has been any significant net “global warming” in the 20th century.
In short, an accusation of career-ending malfeasance. Tamino used publicly available data to show that the stations in question have their temperature biased low if anything, not high:
(Kieth, I encourage you to go and read these posts for yourself. They’re short, and Tamino has a gift for clear explanation.)
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/false-claims-proven-false/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/shame/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/replication-not-repetition/
And that Watts evidently hadn’t done a similar analysis to determine the same:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/interesting-comment/
And summarizes here:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/message-to-anthony-watts/
It has now been independenly confirmed, by multiple persons, that my results regarding the impact of station dropout on global temperature are correct. Your claims, in your document with Joe D’Aleo for the SPPI, are just plain wrong.
You’ve avoided answering this criticism, claiming that you can’t replicate my results without my code. Yet several others managed to do just that. It’s not that difficult, and you were irresponsible not to investigate this issue before publishing your claims. The posts by E.M. Smith are so incoherent they resemble the ravings of a lunatic more than the results of a qualified analyst. Your only other response has been to call me a coward for blogging under a pseudonym. That’s nothing but a desperate attempt of a scoundrel to deflect attention from his own misdeeds.
Furthermore, your use of false claims to accuse NOAA scientists of deliberate deception was not just mistaken, it was unethical.
Does Dr. Curry stand by giving Watts credit for this? Or was she unaware of the background here as well? Or what?
Still focusing on the Wegman report’s lack of attributions for the background material in the committee’s report? It didn’t have any bearing on the mathematical analysis that constituted the essential part of the report, as I’m sure you know. MM06’s criticism of the MBH98/99 still stands.
You can argue that Wegman et al. have ‘plagiarised’ background material, but it doesn’t mend the broken hockey stick, which was after all just an illusion arising from dubious statistics and unsuitable proxies.
Dear Professor Curry, what are your thoughts on the strong criticisms omade by Dr. Richard Tol, a lead and contributing author of the IPCC reports since 1995 ?
“Over the years, the IPCC has changed from a scientific institution that tries to be policy relevant to a political institution that pretends to be scientific. I regret that.”
“Working Groups 2 and 3 of the AR4 violated all IPCC procedures. The conclusions are partly scientifically unfounded, and even partly copied from the environmental movement. The AR4 was substantially changed after the final review, also in parts that had already been accepted by the referees. Valid comments were ignored.“
“As a result, AR4 contains crude errors, only some of which are public knowledge. These errors can be found in the chapters, the technical summaries, the summaries for policy makers, and the synthesis report. The errors are not random.”
These criticisms support ex-IPCC chairman Dr. Watson’s earlier questioning of the apparent “alarming” bias of the mistakes that were coming to light.
Mr Eli
“If you use a different set of proxys, you get pretty much the same answer.”
Eli is wrong.
I am breaking my no blogging vow once more to see if I can help move things forward.
The events since November 19 have illustrated what has been going wrong. Since November 19, I have been stepping WAY outside of my comfort zone in discussing these issues that are really the politics of science (not so much the content of the scientific arguments). So if people are frustrated by my answers or vagueness or whatever, I don’t have “answers.” Yes I certainly have my own opinions, but at this point it is more important that people try to understand what went wrong and improve the situation. These are complex issues and there are no hard absolute answers to any of this, but hopefully some solutions will emerge that improve the situation.
What I am trying to do is break down the tribal barriers, provoke people out of their group thinking ways, and open their minds, so that we can have a civil and rational dialogue on the subject. Otherwise, scientists will continue to circle the wagons, scientific progress will be slowed down, and the policy discussion will be impaired. I’m trying to suggest another way. It might not be the best way, it might not work, but I don’t see anything else out there other than to circle the wagons even tighter.
Here is what I am suggesting along with some ideas on rules of engagement (following on some points that Hank Roberts raised):
Let’s experiment in the blogosphere to see how we can get away from this toxic situation.
Let’s stop talking about enviro advocacy groups and oil companies etc as having a big influence on the science (certainly they have a big influence on policy, lets ignore that for now). Yes there are politicians on both side of the debate that are motivated by politics and not science. Lets keep the focus on the scientific arguments and the assessment process.
Let’s have a starting point that anyone who looks at scientific evidence isn’t anti-science
Let’s declare common values of open minds and critical thinking
Let’s make it about the scientific argument, not about the person making it
Let’s declare it a collective victory when someone changes their mind or admits a mistake (rather than continue to harangue them over the mistake)
Let’s allow “do overs” (another interesting example over at Deltoid, Tim Lambert discussed this on the other collide-a-scape thread). We should be to allow people to change their mind or admit a mistake, rather than focusing on “gotchas” for people outside of your tribe. Do overs should be regarded as signs that the process is working!
Let’s work to identify areas of agreement, and then agree to disagree on the other areas
Let’s start by focusing on WG1 issues (the physical science), which provide the foundation for the entire discussion.
Examples of what I really like to do in the blogosphere are these two posts here and here.
If we have interesting, civil and provocative discussions, then this will encourage other scientists to join in.
The challenge to the blog moderators are to filter the noise while retaining the signal (by signal I mean serious questions and arguments). In my opinion, climateaudit is doing pretty well in this regard at this point, WUWT lets in too much noise, and Realclimate filters out too much of the signal (others will undoubtedly have other opinions). Then there is the issue to consider in terms of the perceived open mindedness of the blog proprietor. And other issues as well. So lets discuss how and where (multiple sites hopefully) that we might do this.
And a final point, the blogospheric playing field is not level. Scientists such as myself receive much more attention than anonymous or other unknown posters; while this is advantageous in terms of eliciting responses to your post, it also means that the scientists bear much more responsibility for what they say than does an anonymous poster. This becomes a substantial challenge when scientists wander outside of their expertise associated with their own scientific investigations. Well, there are a whole host of issues that are of great public interest that are much broader than an individual scientists’ expertise, including the overall AGW narrative and how best to put that together and then there are issues of the politics of science (e.g. the things raised by climategate). So if you want scientists to jump in to discuss some of these broader issues, you have to give them some slack. Yes hold them accountable and critique their arguments, but making attacks personal and pursuing “gotchas” is counter productive and will keep scientists from engaging in the blogosphere. The endless focus on the Wegman “gotcha” is coming from anonymous posters, that speaks volumes to me.
I look forward to your ideas on how we might proceed.
kate quotes: “¦vague insinuations
That would be me. And it’s not tribalism that caused me to write that. That’s a pretty straight conclusion of Dr Curry’s writings. For instance, she expressed doubts here on surface records because of their association with Jones. She popped on a thread at Lucia’s to suggest that records are pretty bad pre1960 without offering any specifics. “Vague insinuations” is a valid conclusion.
So take your analysis one step further, kate. Maybe there is a reason beyond tribalism that multiple bloggers have looked at Curry’s writings over the last few weeks and have wondered: Where’s the beef?
When the question was raised here “where is common ground,” I provided a simple succinct formulation of common ground. In that simple formulation I have offered more to hang your hat on then Curry has in all her multiple posts. Of course, it isn’t soft and squishie and doesn’t offer ‘feel-good’ aphorisms. It doesn’t try to psychoanalyze or offer some two-bit social theory. But what it lacks in vagueness it makes up for in clarity. The irony in this is that Curry is the scientist and I am the common blogger.
ΔT = λ * ΔF
ΔF = 5.35 * ln(CO21/CO20) W/m2
Common ground can be found among those who agree in principle with the above formulation and are willing to discuss the range and errors of λ and ΔF without invoking hoaxes, fraud, or criminal intent to defend their positions.
I suspect that this formulation could include most of the skeptical community – save perhaps WUWT. It is the ‘something’ we could all agree on and clearly distinguish those that have might have something important or interesting to say from the pure noisemakers.
But the above conversation goes on with or without blogospheric participation. It’s called Science. If the blogosphere wants to participate in that conversation, then they will have to change the manner in which advance their propositions. Reduction of every disagreement to charges of hoaxes or fraud, Politically appointed Congressional committees, Parliamentary reviews, and AG investigations aren’t Science – and when it is brought to bear against Science should be denounced in force.
Its also true that Science has some changes to make – open data access being primary among them. But it is also true that there is more data freely available on the web in Climate Science then in just about any other science field out there. A point skeptics rarely acknowledge.
This is the fight that will define the twenty-first century as either a time when mankind advances due to honest enterprise, quality science, and technical achievement…or we are subjugated by government micro-regulation from manipulative control freaks based on false and slanted data from grant recipients with no scruples.
Even though their cries of imminent catastrophe are not observable in nature and have been proven failures many times by fellow progressives they continue to see themselves as godlike and therefore able to replicate heaven here on earth. They remind me of the monks of the Dark Ages, who chose an unheated cell, mean food and self-flagellation to demonstrate their rightness. They cannot laugh at themselves and can never see the humor in anyone or anything else, and that is a tragic flaw, no matter who it may involve. For in the lack of humor lie all the seeds of evil and destruction. People who see themselves as being worthy of admiration, and who cannot conceive of themselves as ever being a cause for laughter, are far too serious for their own good, and even worse, they generally believe they have a calling to impress the importance of their beliefs on others.
The recent revelations of what has been going on with NOAA and NASA/GISS almost make the CRU look like petty criminals. We really need highly skilled, disinterested parties to examine the fraud NOAA is committing. Folks like Pachauri, Trenberth, Karl, Hansen, Schmidt and Santer are quite literally funded directly by the taxpayer. We taxpayers DIRECTLY fund NOAA, NASA and Lawrence Livermore labs.
The moral fiber of a country, and the religious basis upon which the United States and European nations have developed, has been replaced by faith in people and government. But neither is worthy of such trust. The men and women we choose to govern us are subject to the frailties of human nature. Many are in government because of their desire to acquire dominion over others, for self-aggrandizement, or for personal wealth.
The end result of the people’s reliance on their fellow man is to allow the ruling class to foster policies detrimental to the long-term interests of their citizenry. The guiding principle that emphasizes respect for the uniqueness and inalienable rights of all human beings is being discarded.
God save us all from humorless men, for they are also merciless and implacable.
Kate,
I can tell you that one of the things I have learned on my time on the internet is that it is often acts as a mirror. When you post about micro-management contol freaks while calling for political investigations into scientific institutions, when you denounce scientists as seeing themselves as self-important while leading your post with a call to save the 21st century, when you complain of the old men unable to smile at themselves …
… well it makes me smile, even laugh. I hope you can seem the humor in your post as well. 😀
Ron Broberg, For a discussion of the problems surrounding your delta T equation, see the thread over at climateaudit. Many of the points I have raised require a complete thread of their own to explore. My point is that these are issues and questions we should be talking about, and we should be concerned about whether we have placed confidence levels that are too high about things that we shouldn’t be so certain about.
Ron Broberg, re my issue with the surface temperature record prior to 1960, this is about the ocean temperatures (not so much about the land temperatures). More on this at some point, but not now and not here.
“My” delta T equation … 😀
It’s hard to stay away, isn’t it. ;D
You phrased your statement oddly to my ears: problems surrounding your delta T equation. It seems to me that your discussion in that thread revolve around the “range and errors” of climate sensitivity (lambda). That kind of discussion falls squarely into the “common ground” that I have suggested is a place where rational people can voice reasonable disagreements without relying on appeals to politics or fraud.
In other words, that kind of post is highly commendable in my mind. It educates. It informs. It is free of emotional appeals and dog-whistles favored by the torch-and-pitchfork tribe. I never doubted that you could express yourself with clarity – I have some appreciation for the discipline required for obtaining a doctorate. I look forward to seeing more like it in the future.
This 50th comment makes me think of this:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement.html
For those who do not want to look at that four inspiring minutes, here is how-to start a movement:
1. Take a leader
2. Take a first follower
3. These two attracts a third
4. You have news
5. A crowd gathers
6. Now everybody rushes to be part of the inner circle
7. Everybody joins because no-one wants to be marginalized
The important lesson is this: leading is way overrated.
What we need is a first follower. This first follower distinguishes a lone nut from a true leader.
A well-functionning tribe is the best antidote to tribalism.
Judith Curry: “For example, the recent cooling is being attributed to switching to the cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. If that is true, then the warming in the last decades of the 20th century should be partly attributed to the warm phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation”
Eli Rabbett to Judith Curry: “Could you please provide a citation?”
I think the point is that the recent 10yr+ lack of significant warming has been explained as a manifestation of “natural variability” ie. a shorter-term cooling phenomonon has temporarily masked a longer term trend.
Since natural variability will exhibit both cooling and warming, Dr. Curry is voicing the question that naturally follows : “how much of the warming of the last few decade is due to “natural variability” ?
I haven’t perused and so can’t vouch for the following papers, but in response to the request for some citations on PDO :
“Pacific decadal oscillation hindcasts relevant to near-term climate prediction”
Mochizuki et al. 2010
Concluding sentence : “This suppression [of the rising trend in surface air-temperatures] will contribute to a slowing down of the global-mean SAT rise.”
“Interdecadal climate variability and regime-scale shifts in Pacific North America”
Gedalof and Smith 2001
Conclusion: “Our analyses have shown that regime shifts in the North Pacific have occurred 11 times since 1650 and are therefore unlikely to be either artifacts of either SST data [Guilderson and Schrag, 1998] or an effect of beat harmonics in lowfrequency oscillations [Ware, 1995]. The average duration of a single phase is 23 years. Given this understanding, and accepting that the paleo-record is a reliable analogue for current variability, then another regime-scale shift in the North Paci c is almost certainly imminent [Ingraham et al., 1998; Hare et al., 1999].”
Ron, the uncertainty in how to evaluate lambda is the “known unknowns”. The “unknown unknown” here is the equation itself. It is derived from a simple energy balance climate model. It assumes that there is a simple relationship between Delta T and Delta F (there isn’t). This is also discussed in my Lindzen and Choi post.
Yes, this is the kind of thing I think we should be doing. But certainly the blogosphere got sidetracked by climategate, and apart from politics of science issues raised, I am also raising broader issues of uncertainty. So in my list of things that i think we are over confident about in the IPCC to illustrate my overall concerns about uncertainty, I do have real reasons for including these things in my list. But each of them would deserve a thread like the climateaudit one. And there is only so much time i can spend on all this (especially during my self imposed exile from the blogs 🙂
To respond to the events since Nov 19 by calling for regrouping and examining the contents of the WG I report, as Judith Curry recommends, is to me profoundly problematic.
I absolutely agree that it is a good thing that there is a burgeoning community of amateurs interested in WG I problems, and that an opportunity to improve the practice of science exists in their demand for openness. The amateurs are potential allies in moving science off a 19th century model based on tight social networks to a 21st century model based on openness and sharing of methods and data. On this I completely agree.
But it makes no sense to enforce this model retroactively and impose hoped-for future norms on past behaviors. Various groups of science insiders have concluded that both Jones and Mann have behaved according to the extant norms of pure science; these norms evolved in different technical and social circumstances. It’s possible to go on at length about expectations and it may be fruitful to do so, but I want to make a key point.
McIntyre, Hughes, Liljegren etc. may be perfectly sincere, and Mann, Jones, etc. may not be saints, but they are also sincere and well-intentioned. The implication that anything revealed by the emails rises to gross malfeasance is persistent in the comments in their blogs and often insinuated in the articles. This itself is an enormous problem in the amateur climatology blogs.
If we weren’t in such disatrous straits, it would be amusing to note how, as the work is slowly replicated in amateur circles, we find that station placement isn’t important, the observational record is more or less as reported, and presumably once someone gets a serious millenial reconstruction together it will fit right in the spaghetti diagram of AR4. In other words, the old fashioned and clubby version of science (of which, I want to say, I am far from a beneficiary) indeed comes up with the right results.
So, 1) normal behavior constrained by existing ethical principles and 2) broadly correct results.
Yet, we have this repulsive word “climategate”. We have press reports insinuating gross malpractive. We have lawsuits instigated at the gubernatorial level against EPA based on the purported malfeasance “revealed” by the CRU emails. And now we have retroactive investigations of some two bit grant (“almost half a million dollars” over seven years may sound like a lot to anyone who hasn’t put together science grant proposals; this might have been almost enough to support a grad student) by the Virginia state attorney general, egged on by the inexcusable Fred Singer.
And we have ” ‘Since it’s public money, there’s enough controversy to look in to the possible manipulation of data,’ says Dr. Charles Battig, president of the nonprofit Piedmont Chapter Virginia Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment, a group that doubts the underpinnings of climate change theory.”
http://is.gd/bQ3tq
Nothing in the actual record is used to support this repulsive witch hunt. There is merely “enough controversy”.
It is absolutely fine to try to reformulate the discussions of WG I matters in a less confrontational way. Zeke Hausfather is doing a good job of this over at Liljegren’s, for instance.
It is absolutely irresponsible to take this moment, the moment when the excesses of the critics of climate scientists are reaching their most extreme crescendo, to be bending over backwards to make peace with them, though. We cannot possibly ignore the completely disproportionate damage they have done and are continuing to do.
The key issue here is not scientific. That’s obvious. When things are done with increased formality and openness, they seem to regularly come to the same conclusions, albeit more slowly.
We should welcome the increased attention to science in detail, and not try to shut it down. But we shouldn’t allow that to distract us from the facts.
The facts are that the real issues here are 1) injustice to innocent individuals, 2) an attack on scientific practice, 3) the vulnerability of conventional science communication channels to deliberate distortion by political forces and 4) fodder for potent propaganda from those who would like to distract us from the real open questions.
It is urgent and crucial that we discuss policy, adaptation and mitigation, about the future of civilization and the sustainability of the planet. If people want to spend years of their lives arguing about two paragraphs in an obscure journal about bristlecone pines, that is a peculiar hobby, but if that sort of thing is used to displace discussion about the enormous systemic problems we actually face, that is a deep and fundamental problem.
These are the “issues and questions we should be talking about”.
To first order, the work of WG I is done. The Charney sensitivity is around 3 C, with a range of 1.5 – 6 C. Even on the low side that is worth worrying about. Risk weighted that range is more than enough to require action.
Going back to physical science is a perfect delaying tactic for those who are motivated by ideology or financial interest (often both) to want to delay, but the chances that S << 1.5 C are probably very low and in any case are not high enough to support such a delay. Those of us who are interested, myself included, should keep talking about it. But to take the uncertainty in WG I results as the key lesson of this fiasco is, (man, I’m casting about for an adequate adjective… um, is there a polite word for “toxic, perverse, hugely destructive and insane”?) no damn good.
Judith Curry, all I can say, is what you have said is absolutely correct and well considered and well put. As for Wegman, you are quite correct but, I personally, would put it stronger – the ridiculous and libellous commentary about Wegman must stop. Please.
Judith Curry : “[..] we should be concerned about whether we have placed confidence levels that are too high about things that we shouldn’t be so certain about.”
This has been a problem with the IPCC reports for over a decade. In 1996, an editorial in Nature (“Climate debate must not overheat”, Nature 381, June 1996) addressed this problem : “phrases that might have been (mis)interpreted as undermining these conclusions have disappeared”.
The Nature editorial was, I believe, in response to an editorial in the Wall Street Journal by Fred Seitz, a past president of the US NAS, in which he levelled strong criticisms against the IPCC report:
“In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.”
“A comparison between the report approved by the contributing scientists and the published version reveals that key changes were made after the scientists had met and accepted what they thought was the final peer-reviewed version.”
Examples of deleted passages, as provided by Seitz :
“None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.” – DELETED
“No study to date has positively attributed all or part [of the climate change observed to date] to anthropogenic [man-made] causes.” – DELETED
“Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced.” – DELETED
Shorter Michael Tobis : “This issue is too urgent and pressing to waste time re-examining the science. And anyway, it’s settled.”
Micheal, you’re confusing facts with opinion. These are not facts:
1) injustice to innocent individuals, 2) an attack on scientific practice, 3) the vulnerability of conventional science communication channels to deliberate distortion by political forces and 4) fodder for potent propaganda from those who would like to distract us from the real open questions.
The only open question is, can you allow scientists to be scientist, and not advocates, and if the results don’t suit your beliefs, will you allow them, too. This is not a political campaign but a wish to find out where we are and what we have to do. As for your ‘anger’ I shall append what I put on the other thread:
Micheal Tobis, Your anger is both misplaced and based on a misunderstanding, if it isn’t disingenuous. Besides the fact the phrase “˜archetypal scientist’ is absolutely meaningless, your attempt to set up Phil Jones as some kind of saintly martyr just does not wash ““ he did refuse, obstruct and attempt to obstruct a proper examination of his and other results, he did write an email instructing others to delete emails re IPPC, as well as implying he had done so himself, and he did take a sometimes very partial stance in presenting his results ““ re the graph that “˜hides the decline’ in the IPPC report. I am certain that he is a sincere and well meaning and, also, honourable fellow and these errors were unintentional and in “˜the heat of battle’. But that’s the point ““ all passion must be excluded from science. As for the more scurrilous terms used about him and other scientists, I deplore them but I, also, note the many, sometimes, extremely vicious commentary made about McIntyre, Anthony Watts, even Keith Kloor, some of the more sceptical scientist ( ‘second rate’, “˜lier’ etc ), even, damn it, Dot Earth. I don’t see you getting “˜angry’ about that! Besides, this article, as the previous ones, was not about personalities but about process, and how that affects the general perception of the science and, therefore, how that might affect our going forward. And yet you jump on about Phil Jones ““ what?!
#60 Michael Tobis Says:
To first order, the work of WG I is done. The Charney sensitivity is around 3 C, with a range of 1.5 ““ 6 C. Even on the low side that is worth worrying about. Risk weighted that range is more than enough to require action.
This is a perfect example of how science is being corrupted by people who do not separate science from their own political ideology/values.
The science is policy neutral. It does not “require action”. The decision on what to do is a complex decision involving economics, technology, politics and values. Change any of those factors and the most appropriate course of action changes. More importantly, given the same set of facts/risks people with different values will have different (legitimate) opinions on what should be done.
Take the case of two 25 year old women who are told they carry a gene which gives them a 25% chance of developing breast cancer by the time they are 60. One woman may choose the ‘precautionary principle’ and accept the sacrifice required for a double mastectomy. The other chooses diet, exercise and regular mammograms. Neither is decision is wrong. Neither decision “ignores the science”. It is a decision based on values.
If people want the attacks on science to end they have to stop using the science as an ideological weapon because that leaves people who oppose the ideology no choice but to attack the science and the people producing it.
Raven: that leaves people who oppose the ideology no choice but to attack the science and the people producing it.
I have come to much the same conclusion. Much of what is masked as scientific skepticism is in fact a politically motivated ideological attack. A clash of political values pretending to be a scientific dispute.
#67 – Ron Broberg
The scepticism is legitimate but you have remember that people automatically demand a higher standard from science when the science is being used to justify decisions that they opppose.
For example, the average environmentalist does not care about the science of nuclear power. As far as they are concerned nuclear power is bad and they will look around for any shred of evidence that casts doubt on safety of nuclear power. You could say it is driven by ideology. You could say they “deny the science”. Or you could say their value systems require a standard of evidence with the science does not cannot provide.
Judith, I am not anonymous. And I don’t see how any academic could dismiss plagiarism as a trivial “gotcha”.
Tim Lambert,
if you can cite where and when anyone plagiarised anyone, please send the details to the appropriate academic authority. Otherwise, stop it – it isn’t to the point and is just beneath everyone’s dignity. Stop it!
Raven #66, exactly and well put!
“But the above conversation goes on with or without blogospheric participation. It’s called Science. If the blogosphere wants to participate in that conversation, then they will have to change the manner in which advance their propositions.”
Mr Ron
Your learned comments are suited for a pulpit when you have your faithful line up in rows in front of you. You are talking here to people already in science.
Contrary what you say, ‘science’ in climate science is carried out exactly has the same manner as posts and comments are in the ‘blogosphere’.
On blogs especially on certain ones, posts are deleted, held in line and statements are chopped off. Emotions and egos play a far greater role than the science itself. Certain commenters get to posts for hours on end because they are buddies with the moderator while replies are stuck in the pipeline forever. And when the replies are published, everyone has ‘moved on’ to the next thread.
We’ve seen the same thing happen in the climategate emails. We’ve seen how the game is rigged. Anyone with a modicum of knowledge in publishing a few peer-reviewed papers and the academia knows this well enough. Good science, if anything, gets done in spite what goes on in the journals and science bodies and their politics.
Lewis start here. I would hope that we could agree that plagiarism is serious misconduct.
#73 – Tim Lambert
Actually no. Plagiarism is serious misconduct for academics and students. For people doing real work in industry plagiarism in a report no more serious than spelling errors.
Look, Tim, as far as I can see your reference talks about alleged unattributed ‘attributions’. This is ridiculous – I repeat, if you have specific and detailed accusations of plagiarism please address the appropriate academic authority, otherwise, stop it. I might end up accusing you of ‘plagiarism’, since your repeating stock nonsense only tolerated on sites such as Realclimate etc.
Sorry, I meant to say, what, Tim, has this got to do with anything?
Raven Agrees that Science is not the Key
Raven, you seem to be disagreeing in a way I can agree with.
If you stipulate that the sensitivity is in the range 1.5 to 6 C per doubling, that means that the main issue is what to do about it. A narrowing of the sensitivity estimate would be only modestly helpful since we have established the right ballpark.
Further scientific input is needed for society to form a clear strategy, but not, to first order, from the community of physical climatologists. Rather, the issues are about what the impacts are and what the correct adaptation and mitigation strategies would be, as I said and as you also said.
Is Drawing Conclusions from Science Unscientific?
Of course, we do disagree in practice.
If you want to suggest that “what to do about it” might reasonably be “absolutely no policy, ever”, i.e., that my “more than enough to require action” is an extrascientific judgment, that’s the sort of argument that the word “sophistry” was made for. OK, stipulated, “science is policy neutral” means that I can’t say that without qualification, in exactly the same sense that oncology is indifferent to whether cancer cells win or lose, but most people think it’s OK if the medical researcher doesn’t root for the cancer.
Red Herrings
Many people seem committed to distracting from the real lessons of the CRU fiasco.
A few minor transgressions of one or two people came to be presented as decisive evidence in deciding the future of the planet. Great swaths of the press bought into it credulously. Copenhagen was derailed. Innocent people’s lives have been screwed up. Groundless lawsuits are being presented against EPA. The Virginia AG is proposing to harass Mann on the grounds that he once committed willful acts of research using Commonwealth funds. Meanwhile, though a few marginally important results have been challenged and a few numbers have been marginally corrected here and there, the main import of the work hasn’t materially changed in any way worth noting.
Now you’re hairsplitting about me expressing an opinion that a carbon policy is necessary. Apparently as someone educated in a relevant field it is outside my rights to assert such an opinion for some reason, though presumably amateurs are entitled to their own opinions.
If you’re genuinely still stuck that far back in the argument that you don’t beleive a policy is necessary, let’s by all means discuss it. Short of that, though, your point comes down to exactly my point. Policy is not a WG I question, and discussing WG I science is a red herring. To first order the WG I results are in. Betting on them changing materially is not a winning proposition.
If only there were a market for red herring.
My Point, Lest it be Missed Yet Again
Let me reaffirm my point here since so far everybody has missed it.
The main lesson of the CRU fiasco is that the crucial conversation of our time is easily derailed by narrow interests, nitpicking, hairsplitting, and misdirected outrage. This is a big problem. We need to fix it. Journalists are not passive observers in this dynamic; the role of journalism is crucial.
Curry buys the Red Herring
The biosphere is a biological, chemical and physical system in space, whose properties humans are grossly altering without plan or purpose, to our own peril. We need to get a grip on these issues, CO2 among them.
Attacking the messengers for not dotting our i’s is, I suppose, one way to react. It may even have some value. But taken as a substitute for getting a planetary perspective that is respectful of quantitative evidence, the approach taken in the blogs most critical of climate science and echoed by the press is dangerous even if not deliberately malicious. And, as is plain to see, some people use that position as a camouflage for extreme malice that is hard to see as less than deliberate and calculated.
Dr Curry’s responding by saying, OK, we’ll go back and dot all our i’s and cross all our t’s and so on, is not helpful, given that time is of the essence. She has expanded her horizon from the scientific community to the scientific community plus the more technically competent hobbyists, but that is a very dangerous, if seductive, place to draw the line. The context is much larger than that.
This isn’t actually about science at all. Science is being misused as a proxy for politics, which ironically is a point on which there is agreement on all sides.
Engaging the amateurs on their own terms is one thing. It has many possible benefits.
On the other hand, accepting their definition of the context is something else entirely. It amounts to stepping into a political minefield blindfolded. That raises the stakes enormously, and requires looking not just at the nitpicking about statistics, but also the willful lack of sophistication about physics and geochemistry, and the array of political forces arrayed around eager to turn the nitpicking into a bizarrely overstated “scandal”.
This isn’t actually about science at all. Science is being misused as a proxy for politics, which ironically is a point on which there is agreement on all sides.
Exactly but who is confusing the science? I notice repeated assertion that ‘dotting the i’s’ etc is dangerous! And who, please, are the amateurs – aren’t you an amateur? Or have you promoted yourself? We are all ‘amateurs’ when it comes to deciding what will happen to our planet and what we can ‘do’ about it?
#77 – Michael Tobis
When it comes to sensitivity the science tells us that the effects of human emitted CO2 range from inconsequential to catastrophic. IOW – the science tells us nothing more than CO2 might be a problem.
I also don’t think it will be possible to narrow the range because I suspect that CO2 sensitivity is not a constant even if it does always fall within a range. This means it is impossible to predict what the sensitivity will be in the currently unfolding scenario.
More importantly, choosing to do nothing is a legitimate policy choice that can come from looking at the scientific evidence and taking into account the various economic, political and technological constraints. When you insist that there must be some form of concrete action you are making a statement about your values – not the science.
IOW – the statements that ‘science tells us we should aggressively reduce CO2 emissions’ and that ‘sciences tells us we can wait and see what happens’ are equally wrong. The science tells us no such thing – our values do. If you don’t like it when science is attacked then stop trying to use it as an excuse to impose your value system on others.
Lastly, you got it wrong. The crucial conversation of our time was NOT derailed by CRU. It was finally put back on track because the people who sought to use science as an ideological weapon have been exposed for the ideologues they are. That is why I feel the way forward is not more science but a clear and unambiguous declaration of the neutrality of science when it comes to making policy decisions.
Michael (77):
I never cease to be amazed at how much import you give Climategate. Would things only be that simple. You simply go off the rails when you write this:
A few minor transgressions of one or two people came to be presented as decisive evidence in deciding the future of the planet. Great swaths of the press bought into it credulously. Copenhagen was derailed.
Do you honestly believe that Copenhagen was derailed because of Climategate?
I’m tempted to go on but I’m going to stop there, because I just have to know if this is what you are claiming, because it sure looks that way to me.
Further, your argument, is totally incoherent: instead of saying “As far as I understand the science, as agreed in general, says such and such, which involves such and such consequences, and, therefore, I believe such and such action should be taken”, you wish to castigate an acedemic for pleading for general understanding among a variety of positions which may determine the reception for your wish-list. Totally absurd, mad, even!
> Do you honestly believe that Copenhagen was derailed
Yes
> because of Climategate?
Another excuse might have been found, but that sufficed.
Keith, are you just being the messenger?
Whose message is it, and what is it exactly you’re conveying?
It’s murky, it leaks through as an undertone.
Well said as always Michael. Keith I think you’ve done a pretty good job at moving this discussion forward over the past week, but your antagonism towards MT is pretty puzzling, as his conduct IMHO typifies the kind of rational, courteous behaviour that is absolutely necessary in the climate blogosphere…did he stiff you on a bill or something?
> For people doing real work in industry plagiarism
> in a report no more serious than spelling errors.
Worth a discussion in its own right, I suggest. Georgia Tech turns out a lot of industrial employees, I understand. Would that be acceptable?
MJ, thanks much for the kind words.
That said, I can defend myself, and in this case I think Keith asks a fair question. We’ve been hard on each other on occasion but I think there’s some underlying mutual respect, too.
Do I think “climategate” was responsible for the failure at Copenhagen? Not in isolation, no. But it sure didn’t help. It’s the same failures and credulities in the press and in the skeptics and the pseudoskeptics that make these larger failures possible.
If a very selective virus wiped out the English-speaking countries, what would the state of the climate treaty world look like? If it would be any different, the difference you see is basically due to misleading propaganda in English. So yes, I think it’s very important.
In support of Tim…
As I’ve said before, the seeming plagiarism was just the tip of the iceberg, and there is more to come. Once again, the larger context, referencing DC’s work, is explained in detail:
http://www.desmogblog.com/crescendo-climategate-cacophony
That’s V1.0, but. V2.0 will be longer, because more problems keep popping up . DC has already documented ~7 pages of “striking similarities”, spread across 10 pages of the Wegman Report. I’ve documented the “grey literature” references. We’ve documented the weird history (with Jerry Coffey) and the selection of references by Peter Spencer … *nothing* like the independent, objective, expert panel it was portrayed as.
Universities do care about plagiarism. So do certain government entities, like the ORI:
http://ori.hhs.gov/education/products/plagiarism/
Publishers occasionally care, also.
Plagiarism is sometimes just a hint to look deeper, which is what happened here, thanks to DC. But it’s just the easiest understand tip of the iceberg, and the stuff below water may end up being much more serious than”mere” plagiarism.
Michael (77):
I agree with your main point re the ‘red herring’ but you go far if you think CRU mess derailed Copenhagen. I was there for 3 weeks, it was hardly mentioned, current geo-politics guaranteed derailment.
And are folks here forgetting CC is well underway now? There is plenty of see with-you-own-eyes evidence, record-breaking weather extremes, melting glaciers, sea ice etc. Millions of people are already affected.
Surely we ought to be using all of energies to figure out what to do about it?
“Senator Inhofe, Marc Morano, and Rush Limbaugh are politically motivated. Their rhetoric doesn’t help at all, and I think pretty much everyone badmouths what they have to say.”
This isn’t true at all. Roy Spencer appears on Limbaugh’s show quite often and never has criticized Limbaugh’s views on global warming. If anything, he legitimizes and confirms them.
Raven #79 “When it comes to sensitivity the science tells us that the effects of human emitted CO2 range from inconsequential to catastrophic. IOW ““ the science tells us nothing more than CO2 might be a problem.”
This is pretty much wrong as the very low sensitivities appear to be excluded, but suppose we stipulate it for the sake of argument.
The fact that the science does not constrain the sensitivity to be less than catastrophic is sufficient, from a rational risk-weighting perspective, to take action to reduce emissions as early as is feasible, given that the concentration is effectively cumulative.
If more evidence comes in and things are not as bad as they currently appear, I will be among the first to celebrate. In that case, we may have wasted some expense developing energy in a direction that would otherwise have been sub-optimal. We can happily go back to cheap coal for a while at that time, yielding a huge windfall. That seems to be the main thing at risk from taking the problem seriously.
If more evidence comes in and things are more precarious than they currently appear, I really hope we have got off the business as usual track quickly.
If you do a risk weighted calculation, and accept that risk increases faster than linearly with concentration, you will see that if the science is completely ignorant, as you propose, the need for carbon restraint policy increases dramatically.
(I’ve been making this argument for almost twenty years now. Weitzman quantified it.)
The fact that the critics of the science completely ignore this argument has always been an indication to me that they are not serious, but are merely arguing backwards from the conclusion they want.
Incorrectly, as it happens.
<i>The endless focus on the Wegman “gotcha” is coming from anonymous posters, that speaks volumes to me.</i>
My name is “Andrew Haggerty.” How this matters is as obscure to me as the notion that pretty well-documented plagiarism is a “gotcha,” but I guess I am merely blinded by tribalism & partisanship on that one.
Marlowe (83):
More incredulity, on my part. But I’m glad to see Michael took it in stride because he’s right: I have genuine respect for him.
That said, I think he’s too overwrought on Climategate to have the proper perspective on it’s impact to the policy debate–especially in the global sense. As Steven Leahy mentions, the geopolitics trumped all else in Copenhagen. In fact, I suspect that things would have played out exactly as they did–even if those CRU emails never saw the light of day. That’s a reality that folks here have to come to grips with. But that’s definitely a topic for another thread.
#89 Michael Tobis
A question for you: How would you describe a woman with a genetic predisposition for cancer refuses to have a double mastectomy? Irrational? A denier of science? See my post above for a more complete explanation of the scenario.
Limiting fossil fuel use will have consequences. They may not be as severe as some claim but an aggressive program to limit CO2 emissions could trigger a large scale economic collapse. This risk of economic collapse due to emission control is at least as significant as the risk of catastrophe due to global warming.
The fact that emission control advocates always ignore the real economic harms caused by emission control indicates to me that they are not serious. They simply are using the science as an excuse to push political policies that suit their ideological agenda.
#66 Raven says: “If people want the attacks on science to end they have to stop using the science as an ideological weapon because that leaves people who oppose the ideology no choice but to attack the science and the people producing it.”
What of cases where a number of prominent sceptical scientists and a statistician or two make a vow to see manmade CO2 emissions continue or even increase, regardless of anything? That’s not a result of the science but of idealism.
#93 – J Bowers
I don’t know what statements you are referring to. But based on your description I suspect they are simply stating that the put the economic well being of people living today ahead of hypothetical problems 100 years from now.
IOW – they not using science as ideological weapon. They are engaging in the debate at the level that it should be engaged. i.e. at the level of values, economics, technology and politics.
#94 Raven says: “IOW ““ they not using science as ideological weapon. They are engaging in the debate at the level that it should be engaged. i.e. at the level of values, economics, technology and politics.”
No they’re not. They’re doing it because they believe God has ordained it, and CO2 is plant food to feed the poor. Sadly, they seem to have missed the Stanford experiments showing CO2 increase and other atmospheric mixes based on projected emissions increase is pretty bad for the grass species, and we all know what’s grass. Good for roses and chrysanthemums, though. Oh, I’m speaking of McKitrick, Ball, Spencer and D’Aleo, amongst a number of others, in case you were wondering. Look up the Cornwall Alliance.
#95 J Bowers
I am quite familiar with arguments made by McKitrick and Spencer and god has nothing to do with it. Their argument is purely a cost benefit question. They feel that the risk of CO2 has been systematically exaggerated and the risk of economic harm has been underestimated.
As for the effect of CO2 on plants: the experiments done in a lab don’t mean much. As do experiments that assume that farmers change nothing. Here is one study that shows in increase in wheat yield with CO2
http://www.co2science.org//articles/V10/N13/B3.php
I realize this a complex topic and the science is not settled, however, I find the claim that more CO2 will threaten food supplies to be among the least plausible of warmist arguments.
“A question for you: How would you describe a woman with a genetic predisposition for cancer refuses to have a double mastectomy? Irrational? A denier of science?”
I would describe her as prudent.
But let’s get the analogy right. She has a dark spot showing up on X-Rays. Could be a cyst or some other material, but the doctor suggests removing the lump. So do eight others. Another doctor says it’s not cancer and surgery is unnecessary. She reckons on the surgery expense and decides it’s too much.
How would you describe her now?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/27/rumours-of-my-death-have-been-greatly-exaggerated/
Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated
by Anthony Watts
There has been a lot of buzz about the Menne et al 2010 paper “On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record” which is NCDC’s response to the surfacestations.org project. One paid blogger even erroneously trumpeted the “death of UHI” which is humorous, because the project was a study about station siting issues, not UHI. Anybody who owns a car with a dashboard thermometer who commutes from country to city can tell you about UHI.
There’s also claims of this paper being a “death blow” to the surfacestations project. I’m sure in some circles, they believe that to be true. However, it is very important to point out that the Menne et al 2010 paper was based on an early version of the surfacestations.org data, at 43% of the network surveyed. The dataset that Dr. Menne used was not quality controlled, and contained errors both in station identification and rating, and was never intended for analysis. I had posted it to direct volunteers to so they could keep track of what stations had been surveyed to eliminate repetitive efforts. When I discovered people were doing ad hoc analysis with it, I stopped updating it.
Our current dataset at 87% of the USHCN surveyed has been quality controlled.
There’s quite a backstory to all this.
In the summer, Dr. Menne had been inviting me to co-author with him, and our team reciprocated with an offer to join us also, and we had an agreement in principle for participation, but I asked for a formal letter of invitation, and they refused, which seems very odd to me. The only thing they would provide was a receipt for my new data (at 80%) and an offer to “look into” archiving my station photographs with their existing database. They made it pretty clear that I’d have no significant role other than that of data provider. We also invited Dr. Menne to participate in our paper, but he declined.
The appearance of the Menne et al 2010 paper was a bit of a surprise, since I had been offered collaboration by NCDC’s director in the fall. In typed letter on 9/22/09 Tom Karl wrote to me:
I discussed it with Dr. Pielke Sr. and the rest of the team, which took some time since not all were available due to travel and other obligations. It was decided to reply to NCDC on a collaboration offer.
On November 10th, 2009, I sent a reply letter via Federal Express to Mr. Karl, advising him that we would like to collaborate, and offered to include NCDC in our paper.. In that letter I also reiterated my concerns about use of the preliminary surfacestation data (43% surveyed) that they had, and spelled out very specific reasons why I didn’t think the results would be representative nor useful.
We all waited, but there was no reply from NCDC to our reply to offer of collaboration by Mr. Karl from his last letter. Not even a “thank you, but no”.
Then we discovered that Dr. Menne’s group had submitted a paper to JGR Atmospheres using my preliminary data and it was in press. This was a shock to me since I was told it was normal procedure for the person who gathered the primary data the paper was based on to have some input in the review process by the journal.
NCDC uses data from one of the largest volunteer organization in the world, the NOAA Cooperative Observer Network. Yet NCDC director Karl, by not bothering to reply to our letter about an offer he initiated, and by the journal not giving me any review process opportunity, extends what Dr. Roger Pielke Senior calls “professional discourtesy” to my own volunteers and my team’s work. See his weblog on the subject:
Watts promised to do the analysis for good stations once 75% of all stations had been surveyed.
<blockquote>I’m waiting to get at least 75% of the stations surveyed, plus some significant infill in Texas, OK, KS, NE, AR, AL, and MS.
I want to ensure a majority sample plus broad distribution. Still a few months out before we get there. ““ Anthony</blockquote>
(Inline response, post #7, here —> http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/16/nevada-ushcn-station-surveys-are-done/)
Watts wrote that in November 2008. It’s been about a year since surfacestations passed the milestone nominated by Watts. It takes a day to crunch the numbers. Watts has published three long articles on climate change and the reliability of the surface record since the 75% milestone. None contained the promised analysis.
I’ve asked at WUWT quite a few times when we can expect Anthony to do the work. Perhaps other people will have better luck getting an answer.
I expect he has crunched the numbers in all maner of ways and found that Menne et al has it right, and that is why Watts is complaining about professional courtesy (rightly or wrongly) instead of simply doing the long-overdue work.
May I request that friendlies at WUWT try to get an update from Watts? After all the photographs and speculation, this analysis has never been done by him – it is fundamental to his assertions about the US temperature record, siting issues, and would be the crowning data analysis for surfacestations.org. Menne et al have published. Watts has been AWOL on it.
Sorry, Kate, he’s a veritable zombie. What’s funny about this is that RP Sr. inspired the whole exercise in order to get his own work (to the effect that boundary layer effects screw up the surface record) validated, but instead it inspired someone to take a closer look at the obscure paper RP Sr. based everything on, and voila: it turned out to be crap. How I love the smell of irony in the morning.
“The fact that emission control advocates always ignore the real economic harms caused by emission control indicates to me that they are not serious. They simply are using the science as an excuse to push political policies that suit their ideological agenda.”
Raven comes up with a ludicrous pastiche of my point and concludes with a thoroughly offensive allegation. Raven is not just trying to get me riled up. Raven has quite succeeded in making me angry.
Congratulations.
Raven pretends not to understand what the problem is with CO2 “Science.” That the abstract is not linked to nor reproduced in its entirety is a hint. Here’s a little honesty test for you, Raven: Go find the abstract and link to it so everyone can see the extent to which it jibes with the CO2 Science representation.
In fact, I suspect that things would have played out exactly as they did”“even if those CRU emails never saw the light of day.
I am still not clear on why there is not a major scandal about how somebody mounted a sophisticated criminal hack on private emails in order to advance a partisan agenda.
Your house gets broken into, and immediately you have to defend yourself about what got pilfered. Oh wait plagiarism is no big whoops.
Gotcha.
> Raven comes up with a ludicrous pastiche of my point …
Aw, relax, MT, don’t take it personally until we run it through the plagiarism detector and see if it’s even original to him.
#101 – Michael Tobis
Wow. All I did was copy the tone of a comment you made. For some reason, I suspect you are simply using it as an excuse to avoid the tougher issues.
I will restate them:
1) Consider a scenario where a 20 year old woman is told that she has a gene that gives her a 25% chance to develop breast cancer. Let’s say the that woman chooses not to follow the precautionary principal and keeps her breasts. Would you say she is wrong? Would you say she is a science denying flat earther? If not why not?
2) You agree that science cannot provide any more certainty than it has so you argue for some sort of weighted risk analysis to determine the best course of action. My response is such analyses are useless unless they include the potential for economic harm caused by the anti-CO2 measures. The economic harm that could be caused by these measures is also a probability spectrum where total collapse of economy/great depression is a possible outcome. Please explain why you think a risk analyses which does not include the economic harms is useful?
#103 – Thers
The answer is simple. The court of public opinion is not trial and people do not ignore evidence simply because of its means of acquisition. Whoever released those emails (I am suspect students within the university) did the world a huge favour.
#102 Steve Bloom
I quite amused that you did not even bother to google the abstract yourself and check it out. You would have saved yourself some embarrassment.
From the abstract:
Each treatment was replicated three times. The results showed that elevated CO2 concentration owing to CO2 application leads to remarkable increase in leaf area index (LAI) and shoot biomass, and also generates the higher value of leaf area duration (LAD) that can benefit the photosynthesis in the growth stage and yield increase in crop compared than the no CO2 application treatment. When CO2 concentration elevated by 14.5,40 and 54.5 μmol mol-1 with irrigation and fertilization, correspondingly, the grain yield increased by 6.3, 13.1 and 19.8%, respectively, whereas without irrigation and fertilization, the grain yield increased by only 4.2% when CO2 concentration increased to 40 μmol mol-1
To Judith Curry (et al),
It occurs to me that my above request would be a good job for J C in her efforts to balance the discussion between the tribes. Let me give some context by way of chronology:
Anthony Watts has been saying for many years that the US surface temperature record is flawed – biased upwards by adjustments. Surfacestations.org materialised in 2007 as a way of rating stations a la USHCN, rating from 1 – 5, 1 being stations least affected by microsite issues. The work was/is done by Anthony Watts and many volunteers.
In late 2007, John Vilet, Steve Mosher and others at Climate Audit began to analyse the station data as they accumulated under the surfacestations project. Central to the effort was the construction of time series and trends of the best-sited stations (1, 2 and/or 3 rating), to compare with the official record. Hundreds of posts and three threads later, preliminary analysis showed excellent agreement between ‘good’ stations and the official records.
The first three threads are here:
http://climateaudit.org/2007/09/14/a-first-look-at-the-ushcn-quality-classification/
http://climateaudit.org/2007/09/15/a-second-look-at-ushcn-classification/
http://climateaudit.org/2007/09/30/a-second-look-at-ushcn-classification-2/
Reading those threads as they unfolded, I was struck by the dedication to the work and the lack of meta and acrimony. Here Judith Curry would find what she hopes for – a collegial project undertaken by skeptics and non-skeptics focused purely on data and methodologies. At the time, I thought it was the best the web had to offer along these lines. (Although there are a few bilious posts, the vast majority of the conversation is technical)
After a couple of months, this project was shut down. I asked Anthony why it was not ongoing, and he replied that the analyses were ‘premature’, in that there wasn’t enough data – 17 ‘good’ stations with not enough coverage. I didn’t ask him why the work should not continue openly on the web anyway, and it struck me there was no good answer to that, particularly as Anthony has been at the forefront of those asking for more access and transparency.
One thing was clear at this point – work fundamental to the many claims Watts and his colleagues have made about the US temp record had not been done. NCDC and GISS make adjustments to data to try and account for site issues and other inh0mogeneities. The comparative analysis would give a strong indication on whether or not these adjustments have been sound. Indeed, that would seem to be the fundamental bit of work necessary before weighing in. Instead, Watts et al have based their claims – which go as far as asserting malpractice – on speculation of photographic evidence of a number of sites, and analyses of a very small number of weather stations.
November 2008: Watts said he would run the analysis, continuing the work of John V et al at Climate Audit, once 75% of stations (+plus some infill) had been done.
May 2009: Watts published a report entitled, <a href=http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/surfacestationsreport_spring09.pdf>Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?</a>. Although only 70% of stations had been surveyed, Watts considered that sufficient to say, “The conclusion is inescapable: The U.S. temperature record is unreliable.” The report contained no data analysis of the like done at CA.
June 15 2009: Watts <a href=http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/15/surfacestations-now-at-80-of-the-network-surveyed-illinois-and-florida-ushcn-surveys-complete/>announces</a> that 80% of stations have been surveyed.
Since then he’s published 3 further reports (co-authored with Joe D’Aleo) on the surface record, repeating the claim that the US record is unreliable.
At no time, whether on his blogs or in his publications, has Watts done the key data analysis he promised over a year ago. It’s been 11 months since he had enough data – on his own terms – to do this.
So, my request to Judith Curry, if she has a good relationship with Anthony Watts, is to ask if he is committed to producing the analysis he promised, and when we might see it. And perhaps Ms Curry might encourage Mr Watts to enable a resumption of the online analysis that was ongoing at Climate Audit in near real-time, in the name of transparency and openness that everyone agrees is a good thing. Of all the issues that Ms Curry might raise with Anthony Watts, I think this is probably the most crucial, for reasons that should be clear from the above.
#102 Steve Bloom
I quite amused that you did not even bother to google the abstract yourself and check it out. You would have saved yourself some embarrassment.
CO2science is a horrible source. they typically misrepresent papers they cite, never quote the abstracts or place the results wildly out of context.
in this case, the error is the latter one.
here is the “Co2science” claim:
What is more, since this period of time is typically claimed by climate alarmists to have seen global temperatures rise at an unprecedented rate and to an unprecedented level, these findings suggest that even this supposedly catastrophic degree of global warming poses absolutely no threat to global wheat yields when it is accompanied by the current rate-of-rise in the air’s CO2 content.
the problem is, that the paper does NOT simulate temperature increase nor changes in rain patterns.
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=18390693
nobody disagrees, about CO2 helping certain plants grow. but whether the combined effect of CO2 increase and resulting climate change will help, is a completely different topic. CO2 science is drawing wild conclusions, and that for misrepresenting the paper.
the really important stuff in the paper are the numbers:
because actually the CO2 increase alone, is a tiny factor: the grain yield increased by only 4.2% when CO2 concentration increased to 40 μmol mol-
while on the other hand, irrigation and fertilizers are major factors: the grain yields in irrigation,irrigation plus NH3NO34HCO3 application and irrigation plus application of NH treatments are 73.4, 148.0 and 163.6% higher than that of no-irrigated and no-fertilized treatment, suggesting that both irrigation and fertilizer application contribute to remarkable increase of crop yield.
basically the paper doesn t support the claim, made by CO2science. as always.
———————-
CO2sceince is a typical example of a denialist source. if Judith Curry was serious about bridging the gaps, she would spent the majority of her time, attacking rubbish coming from sources like CO2science, or WuWt.
#108 – sod
I referenced that paper because someone claimed that higher CO2 would hurt grasses like wheat. The paper fully supports the claim I made. I don’t really care if the Idsos included editorial comments that are not supported by the paper. The site is still a great place to find references to papers on the effects of CO2 on plants.
In any case, no claim about future agricultural yields is credible unless it takes into account that new farming techniques, different crop selection, selective breeding and genetic engineering will allow farmers adapt to many types of climate changes. If anything, the higher CO2 levels will help because plants growing in CO2 enriched environments are more drought resistant.
the original poster (#95 J Bowers Says: May 1st, 2010 at 9:36 pm)
made a reference to the Stanford experiment:
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Sadly, they seem to have missed the Stanford experiments showing CO2 increase and other atmospheric mixes based on projected emissions increase is pretty bad for the grass species, and we all know what’s grass.
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and, surprise, surprise, the article says exactly what i said above:
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But an unprecedented three-year experiment conducted at Stanford University is raising questions about that long-held assumption. Writing in the journal Science, researchers concluded that elevated atmospheric CO2 actually reduces plant growth when combined with other likely consequences of climate change — namely, higher temperatures, increased precipitation or increased nitrogen deposits in the soil.
http://news.stanford.edu/pr/02/jasperplots124.html
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you were wrong. co2science is wrong. all the “sceptics” were silent on your false claims.
business as usual…
I don’t really care if the Idsos included editorial comments that are not supported by the paper. The site is still a great place to find references to papers on the effects of CO2 on plants.
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wow, great attitude. so you don t care about false claims being made constantly? because the stuff that you pick, of course, is right?
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apart from in this case, it was false? pure chance?
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there is tons of work for Judith curry, on that one denialist site alone. i am pretty sure that she will start to build a bridge there soon…
#110 – sod
I don’t see what your point is. I responded to what the original poster said and he said nothing about the study include effects other than higher CO2. If he had written what you had said, I would have pointed out that such studies are not interesting unless the take into account that farmers will adapt to changing conditions (i.e. farmers are not stupid).
The bottom line is humans farm in virtually every climate except deserts and tundra. It is simply irrational to claim that 2-3 degC increase in temperatures will cause any problems that cannot be fixed by changing the types of crops grown.
Excuse me moderators – I posted a request to Judith Curry, which went AWOL upon submission. Could you check the spam filter?
TIA,
Barry.
#97 – barry
By changing the scenario you changed the risk analysis by increasing the likelyhood of an adverse outcome and decreasing the intangible cost of the surgery (a lumpectomy instead of a double masectomy). That will, of course, change the decision that people make.
In any case, the CO2 situation more like my scenario because the alleged harms are long in the future and the recommended treatment could significantly reduce the quality of life for the patient. It is not a simply matter of a few dollars.
Therefore, to use your word, people who think we should take a wait and see attitude on CO2 are being prudent if they feel the harms of the preventative treatment outweigh the benefits.
As a final note: climate scientists have no business recommending treatments. They can identify risks – that’s it. For that reason the policy recommendations of 9 out 10 climate scientists are quite irrelevant.
Raven Says:
May 2nd, 2010 at 3:28 am
#110 ““ sod
I don’t see what your point is. I responded to what the original poster said and he said nothing about the study include effects other than higher CO2. If he had written what you had said, I would have pointed out that such studies are not interesting unless the take into account that farmers will adapt to changing conditions (i.e. farmers are not stupid).
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he wrote what i said. here are his words:
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No they’re not. They’re doing it because they believe God has ordained it, and CO2 is plant food to feed the poor. Sadly, they seem to have missed the Stanford experiments showing CO2 increase and other atmospheric mixes based on projected emissions increase is pretty bad for the grass species, and we all know what’s grass
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he did point you to the stanford research, that i quoted and linked above. you were to lazy to check it. instead you quoted a source, which doesn t provide a counterargument. and is misrepresenting its own source. pretty pathetic performance.
@Michael Tobis
I just wanted to say I enjoyed your post at #60 very much. That the responses were largely hostile and full of misdirection is unfortunately entirely predictable.
I once again find it a shame that, while professing a desire to build bridges, Dr Curry misses an opportunity for balance and attacks only one side for “gotcha” claims. Are not claims that “the broken hockey stick, which was after all just an illusion arising from dubious statistics and unsuitable proxies” simply dubious “gotcha” arguments? Are not “skeptical” blogs litterred with “gotcha” arguments? Is not pretty much every single post at WUWT a “gotcha” argument? Arguments which indeed have far less grounding in evidence than the recent claims that the Wegman report plagiarised and distorted a text from one of the very researchers it was attempting to criticise?
Bad Science recently discussed research that showed that – to those with entrenched beliefs – issuing corrections actually only served to entrench those beliefs further. It is precisely this effect that those who have been trying to honestly discuss the science for years have been banging their heads against. I don’t see how Dr Curry’s approach does anything to address this – all it achieves is to further damage the credibility of existing science in the eyes of those that wish to believe it discredited, while simultaneously failing to change any minds. It doesn’t matter how many times you explain the actual conclusions of either the NAS or Wegman reports, or the effect minor statistical improvements had on the outcome, or the subsequent confirmation by other studies – those that *want* to believe that Mann in particular is a fraud, and that his work is “broken”, will only do so all the more.
And now where are we? One of the people that *wants* to believe Mann is a fraud (and has reason to dislike UVA anyway) is in a position of authority, with the means to conduct a frivolous and hugely burdensome fishing expedition. I am, frankly, disgusted.
Raven says: “I am quite familiar with arguments made by McKitrick and Spencer and god has nothing to do with it.”
You’re clearly not familiar enough.
“A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming
E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., Paul K. Driessen, Esq., Ross McKitrick, Ph.D., and Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D. […] As evangelicals, we commend those who signed the Evangelical Climate Initiative’s “Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action” for speaking out on a public issue of ethical concern. We share the same Biblical world view, theology, and ethics”¦ […] “¦Therefore we pledge to oppose quixotic attempts to reduce global warming. Instead, constrained by the love of Jesus Christ for the least of these (Matthew 25:45), and by the evidence presented above, we vow to teach and act on the truths communicated here for the benefit of all our neighbors.”
http://www.cornwallalliance.org/docs/a-call-to-truth-prudence-and-protection-of-the-poor.pdf
@oneuniverse
In #62 you make reference to an old piece by Fred Seitz, as if he were a respected authority who was expressing outrage at the politicization of science around him.
Lest we forget, Seitz created the infamous Oregon Petition (with its whole sordid history), and was paid handsomely for years to help tobacco companies deny a link between smoking and cancer. He has been a key cog in the machine politicising the scientific disinformation on this and other issues for decades.
And again – is not your comment a shining example of a “gotcha” argument?
Raven says: “As a final note: climate scientists have no business recommending treatments. They can identify risks ““ that’s it. For that reason the policy recommendations of 9 out 10 climate scientists are quite irrelevant.”
History demonstrates to us the complete opposite:
* Hugh Hammond Bennett, the Soil Conservation Service, and the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s.
He was ignored and at least thousands died if not tens of thousands, as well as the entire US economy almost collapsing.
http://www.soil.ncsu.edu/about/century/hugh.html
* Dr Smith Dharmasaroja and the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.
Hundreds of thousands died. Many of us know people who were there (I do). The rest is easy to quantify.
http://www.seapabkk.org/newdesign/fellowshipsdetail.php?No=452
“Dr Smith Dharmasaroja was not just ignored and ridiculed. Tour and hotel operators and other businesses heavily dependent on tourism warned him against ever setting foot on the famous beaches he had forecast would be hit by a tsunami. […] Dr. Smith explains, “It’s very difficult to tell people what’s going to happen because that (natural phenomenon) didn’t happen for a long time. The thing has not happened for a hundred years, and you say this thing can happen in the future. They say you’re crazy, there is no proof. But from now on they are starting to believe because we have proof.”
Give me an advocate scientist over a “scientised” politician any day. Inhofe and Limbaugh are prime examples of the latter.
Raven says: “As for the effect of CO2 on plants: the experiments done in a lab don’t mean much.”
They weren’t conducted in a lab. It’s quite probably the only open top experiment, conducted over a number of years, reproducing the same temperature and atmospheric gas ratios, to have been conducted to date. Most other studies are closed top and conducted in labs.
All results were from direct observations and measurements.
Grass does not like too much CO2, but the surrounding flora and microbes do, which places grasses in a position of disadvantage. C3 grasses cope worse with temperature increase, and C4 grasses with CO2 increase. You do know that grass is a young species and it was restricted to watersides for much of its species existence?
To say that we’ve been lucky during the Holocene is a laughable understatement.
So it appears both sides are digging in. I’d like to return to something Michael Tobis said earlier in the thread (68):
The main lesson of the CRU fiasco is that the crucial conversation of our time is easily derailed by narrow interests, nitpicking, hairsplitting, and misdirected outrage.
He’s partially right. This conversation is easily derailed by narrow interests, nitpicking, hairsplitting, and misdirected outrage.
For example, Michael is guilty of this himself, because his outrage over what he sees as the overblown and distorted coverage of Climategate prevents him from recognizing that the “CRU fiasco” factors marginally–if at all–into the stalemated globate climate treaty talks, and the current situation with the U.S. Climate bill.
That said, the Climategate battlefield is certainly part of the larger theater of conflict. To the extent that it inflames an atmosphere of mistrust between two competing camps is not helpful. Thus, in my opinion, what Judith is doing is laudable: she is merely trying to build a bridge between two combatant camps. If that bridge can be built, and hostilities are reduced, that’s a net plus for the larger conversation over how to decarbonize the world economy.
I just think it’s useful to keep some perspective on the actual impact of Climategate to the policy debate.
That said, the Climategate battlefield is certainly part of the larger theater of conflict. To the extent that it inflames an atmosphere of mistrust between two competing camps is not helpful. Thus, in my opinion, what Judith is doing is laudable: she is merely trying to build a bridge between two combatant camps. If that bridge can be built, and hostilities are reduced, that’s a net plus for the larger conversation over how to decarbonize the world economy.
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building bridges would start with a serious attack against those, who stole the mail. and those, who spread it over the net. and those, who made many false accusations (remember the programmer? and all the data in the stolen mail, still waiting for “analysis”?)
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I just think it’s useful to keep some perspective on the actual impact of Climategate to the policy debate.
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the impact on the policy debate was massive. for example the stolen mail completely overshadowed the significant rise in global temperature that we currently measure in all datasets. april will be another record breaking or at least threatening month.
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this is completely contradicting “sceptic” cooling predictions. but by keeping public attention focused on misleading statements taken from stolen mail, we missed a serious opportunity to really change course.
Mr Kloor,
I do agree with you that Climategate’s influence on Copenhagen *may* have been marginal – it is hard to say. But the effect of events such as this, are insidious and long-term.
And also, imagine the situation at Copenhagen – everyone knows the some damaging email leak happened, but yet no one can talk about it. Such factors seriously damage what are basically morale, bluster and enthusiasm-driven events where everyone works themselves up and signs a joint accord or declaration.
Let us not forget the unstoppable momentum of the juggernaut that was Copenhagen, pre-November. Everything came unraveling. The contrast between pre-Copenhagen bravado and the post-conference whimpers was stark.
One cannot discount the atmosphere of suspicion created between the major powers by the leack/hack.
I am not aware of any journalists predicting the utter failure of Copenhagen. That could have been done, if geopolitics was all there was to be considered. How come, we never heard about it or saw it coming?
Secondly, Climategate is nothing but the revelation of the other side of a protracted battle over the hockey-stick, which confirmed some of the worst suspicions and misgivings of the climate skeptics. The sources of information that explain this are publicly available today.
why use the term “climategate”, by the way?
use of the term is already a sign of people taking a position. there is simply no similarity to the watergate break in.
the situation is exactly the opposite: the people who did the break in (or favour it and/or used the results) are on a different side, than in the watergate affair.
and the whole 2affair2 is a completely different level. (a scientists being not friendly in mail is different from a president being deeply involved and trying to cover up a breakin into another party headquarter!
look here: (wikipedia, watergate entry)
A taped conversation that was crucial to the case against President Nixon [17] took place between the President and his counsel, John Dean, on March 21, 1973. In this conversation, Dean summarizes many aspects of the Watergate case, and then focuses on the subsequent coverup, describing it as a “cancer on the presidency”. The burglary team was being paid hush money for their silence and Dean states: “that’s the most troublesome post-thing, because Bob [Haldeman] is involved in that; John [Ehrlichman] is involved in that; I am involved in that; Mitchell is involved in that. And that’s an obstruction of justice.” [18] Dean continues and states that Howard Hunt is blackmailing the White House, demanding money immediately, and President Nixon states that the blackmail money should be paid: “…just looking at the immediate problem, don’t you have to have — handle Hunt’s financial situation damn soon? […] you’ve got to keep the cap on the bottle that much, in order to have any options.” [18] At the time of the initial congressional impeachment debate on Watergate, it was not known that Nixon had known and approved of the payments to the Watergate defendants much earlier than this conversation.
funny, that it is not Judith Curry, who is asking to drop the term. isn t it?
The partisanship of the principal commenters on these Judith Curry threads is notable. It makes them difficult to read.
The tribalism that comes through in rebutting Curry’s contention that tribalism is a defining aspect of the discussion on climate. <i>My</i> side isn’t tribal! (and if we are, it’s their fault).
Hank Roberts has come up with some original suggestions, while writing in a way that acknowledges that reasonable people can disagree with him. I hope his ideas don’t get lost in the 600+ comments in these three threads.
It would have been better if industrial interests hadn’t bankrolled some anti-AGW Consensus broadsides.
And if the leading scientists promoting the AGW Consensus had behaved properly, throughout.
And if the IPCC AR4 had been constructed according to the procedures that had been set forth for the purpose, throughout.
And if RealClimate.org had stayed true it its stated purposes.
And if Steve McIntyre kept a tight rein on his temper at all times.
And if the authors of MBH99 had started their paleoclimate reconstructions by building on valid statistical principles.
And if the Wegman report didn’t have evidence of having copied swathes of material from other sources, unacknowledged.
And if, while promoting transparency in science, Wegman had responded transparently to Ritson’s request for data.
The list goes on.
Somewhat less than half of the commenters can clearly see some of these problems, while rejecting that the others took place (or if they did, that they were serious).
Most of the remainng commenters can clearly see the other set of problems, while rejecting that the first set took place (or were serious).
A few of those who have written in can say, yeah, there’s been a lot of disappointing and substandard behavior, at a lot of levels, by advocates of both camps.
My guess is that more readers than commenters share this perspective.
How many investigations need to clear Michael Mann before skeptics will concede he did nothing wrong? Just wondering.
#122 – J Bowers
A doctor is specifically trained to assess patients to determine the best treatment and has an ethical obligation to take into account the harms caused by the treatments recommended to the patient. In fact, doctors are specifically taught that it is better to do nothing than to recommend a treatment that might cause harm.
Climate scientists have no such training and, more importantly, do not have the proper training in the ethics of providing treatment. They are the equivalent to the biochemists that conduct tests on lab rats. They can tell us that substance X may cause Y effect but can tell us nothing about what to do about it.
You are free seek medical advice from biochemists if you like but it is kind of rediculous to expect others to do the same.
#128 – Boris
You only need one investigation but it has to one run by people that actually care about getting to the bottom of the issues. So far we have been presented by “investigations” run by people who are only interest is sweeping everything under the carpet. SteveMc has suggested a Canadian style judical inquiry where witnesses can be cross examined. That would be a good framework if the terms of reference were set appropriately.
@ Raven (#129)
Right. Ignore history. Instead of considering the clear examples I give of the Dust Bowl and the 2004 tsunami, you prefer inappropriate analogies.
#123 – J Bowers
Grass based plants are grown everywhere from the equator to 50 degN. This means farmers have found ways to get them to thrive in a wide range of climates. It is simply irrational to claim that an average temperature change smaller than the current difference between the tropics and temperate would have a significant effect on production.
The increased CO2 is the only change that is really unprecedented and that will likely require a change in the mix of plants grown but we have many tools available to use today (including genetic engineering) so it is irrational to assume that we would not be able to fix the right mix of crops that benefit from the higher CO2.
Dave H, re: Seitz
Your somewhat inaccurate points about Seitz are ad hominem. They’ve no bearing on the allegation that the IPCC report was changed from the final peer-reviewed version.
A serious reply cannot rely on such a flimsy dismissal.
Please refer to “The 1995 IPCC Report: Broad Consensus or “Scientific Cleansing?”, written in response to Seitz’s accusations.
There’s no denial of Seitz’s allegation of the changes made to the report – rather, the defensive argument was that Seitz misunderstood the procedures and obligations of the IPCC.
I notice that neither you, nor anyone else, has discussed Dr. Richard Tol’s allegations.
#131 – J Bowers
A stopped clock is right twice a day. Two anecdotes do not turn a lab rat jockey into a medical doctor.
#131 ““ J Bowers
So do you feel that ethical training for doctors is unnecessary and they should be recommending treatments simply based on identified risks even if the treatments could cause a lot of harm to the patient?
If you don’t agree with the above then you must agree that climate scientists have no business recommending treatments.
Raven, get stuck on your medical analogies all you like. I prefer to learn lessons from historical examples, and I just wish politicians would do a bit more of that as well, rather than having their ears bent by campaign contributors and snake oil salesmen.
If FDR were alive today I’d love you to be able to put your “medical case” to him and tell him Bennett was guilty of quackery. But I guess we can be grateful there’s a tsunami warning system in place…. eventually, and at a very high price which you didn’t have to pay.
I said: “I just wish politicians would do a bit more of that as well, rather than having their ears bent by campaign contributors and snake oil salesmen.”
Actually, “..having their judgement bent…” is a better description.
Keith says:
For example, Michael is guilty of this himself, because his outrage over what he sees as the overblown and distorted coverage of Climategate prevents him from recognizing that the “CRU fiasco” factors marginally”“if at all”“into the stalemated globate climate treaty talks, and the current situation with the U.S. Climate bill.
That said, the Climategate battlefield is certainly part of the larger theater of conflict. To the extent that it inflames an atmosphere of mistrust between two competing camps is not helpful.
I would claim that the “that said” reveals Keith’s discomfort with the position he has taken.
The problem is that while I put “Climategate” in scare quotes and refer to the cluster of events as the CRU fiasco, Keith happily and casually reverses it. That is, he is accepting the framing that there is an underlying scandal, something which, far from being demonstrated, has repeatedly been refuted.
In other words, he is falling into the duck fallacy so tempting to journalists, that the truth must “lie somewhere in between”. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it can’t. Either revelations associated with the CRU emails call the whole edifice of climate science as promulgated by every major scientific organization on earth into question, or they don’t.
Whether or not Dr. Jones failed to wash his hands once after sneezing just doesn’t enter into it. Even if true it doesn’t warrant umpteen government investigations and so on.
You may have missed it in the flurry of activity (for which, congratulations) but I already conceded that the Copenhagen outcome itself was probably not affected that much by this mess, though the Saudis loudly claimed that it was. I believe that similar misdirections in the past are indeed responsible for the weak outcome, and that the repercussions of the present arguments show every sign of weakening outcomes in the future even more potently.
In other words, a mountain has been made of what I still have to call an alleged molehill, quite successfully, and with the collusion of the press. Maybe we differ on the size of the mountain, but if it’s not a mountain, why has it gathered at least 500 comments here and hundreds more elsewhere? Why have you devoted so many articles to it?
Keith, you are hardly in a position to say that I am being tribal by suggesting this is important, given the amount of importance you are attaching to it.
What I am saying is that it should have been unimportant. The success that the amateur blogs have had in making something important out of it is a problem. It reveals fundamental failings in how society collectively examines evidence. That is the story.
Curry’s bridge building may concede too much. Many reasonable people think so, and though I agree Curry on some contentious points, I have to agree with them. But either way it’s very far from timely. It attends to the wrong question.
The crucial issue is how, given that nothing of real substance has been revealed, there has been such success in discrediting not just the process of science (where I would to acknowledge real problems) but its results and consequences.
Absolutely nothing has been revealed to alter the results and consequences of science. Fortunately, in this world of wild and absurd accusations, much of the public hasn’t noticed. Orly Taitz to some extent has saved our hides. But this isn’t for lack of effort on the part of people working backward from their conclusions. And it isn’t for the press’s backbone in saying “hey, we’re being manipulated again, maybe the truth doesn’t always lie halfway between what the two parties are saying”.
The successful manipulation of the press is the real story.
#135 – J Bowers
If you want to look at the history of doom mongers you will find that they are completely wrong in the vast majority of cases. i.e. the problem did not exist or it resolved itself without any special intervention. There are obviously cases where a doom monger was correct but it happens in all fields. For example, the recent financial meltdown was predicted by a few. But that does not mean we should automatically accept everything a doom monger comes up with.
What we have today is a situation where climate scientists have identified risks but the obvious remedy (i.e. reduce CO2 emissions) cannot be pursued because the harms caused by the remedy could easily exceed the harms caused by the identified risk.
This creates a moral dilemma that is not easily rectified. More importantly, it is not up to climate scientists to tell us how to resolve it. It is a dilemma that must be resolved by the wider society where many people have different and often competing value systems. The way forward is to dispense with the notion that this is a scientific question.
#138 – Michael Tobis
Climategate matters because it demonstrated that climate scientists are not objective professionals who care only about the truth. They are humans with their own prejudices and their own blind spots. The actual scientific questions raised by climategate are relatively unimportant.
Why did people begin to lose trust in the pronouncements of climate scientists? It doesn’t seem that mysterious.
For years the public (at least in the UK) have been repeatedly informed eg. that melting glaciers in the Himalayas are “virtually certain to disrupt water supplies within the next 20 to 30 years” (BBC), and that in certain African countries, “yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50% by 2020” (same article). This stuff was standard fare.
The public were assured that the IPCC was the very pinnacle of climate understanding, and was the most peer-reviewed and reliable assessment in history, or something like that. Critics were dismissed, laughed at, or ignored.
Then it turns out that these enormous claims of catastrophe were not supported by scientific evidence.
As Dr. Tol commented at RealClimate, in response to Gavin Schmidt’s inadequate “Whatevergate” article :
Wishful thinking. It takes years to build a reputation, days to destroy it.
More worryingly, I note that you are set in your way: Ridicule those that do not agree with you. That worked, sort of, until November. Not any more.
If you care about climate policy, it is time to change your tune.
Raven:
“Climategate matters because it demonstrated that climate scientists are not objective professionals who care only about the truth. They are humans with their own prejudices and their own blind spots.”
What a crock. (The Brits have the perfect word for this but I’m not sure whether it exceeds the bounds of propriety. I wanted to say b******s.)
You might have just asked. Anyone familiar with science would have conceded this point.
How science progresses despite the fact that its participants are not themselves emotionless automata is actually a very interesting question. But, you know, the fact that scientists are in fact human and subject to human foibles has in fact been raised before somebody hacked into CRU’s mail server.
If that is the whistle that is being blown, the “whistle-blowing” defense is ludicrous. Perhaps parliamentary and congressional witch hunts are not the way to respond to a felonious act that only reveals something already universally acknowledged.
Raven says: “What we have today is a situation where climate scientists have identified risks but the obvious remedy (i.e. reduce CO2 emissions) cannot be pursued because the harms caused by the remedy could easily exceed the harms caused by the identified risk.”
Spoken like a true dirt farmer or beach hotel owner. It doesn’t matter that over 97% of climate scientists say the warming is down to us and we need to mitigate because they’re ALL doom mongers. Oh yes, they’re also pious, or religious, or corrupt, or unobjective, or incompetent, or in on an attempt to subjugate the world under a New World Order, or in it only for the funding (Hansen’s 14 year old Volvo is testament to that), or incapable of advocacy, or just all of those things and then some.
Let’s just sit back and see what 3 degrees C does to a cosy world. Of course, the last Glacial Maximum was only 6 degrees C lower than today, but clearly that wouldn’t affect us in any way either.
Tell me something: If mitigation cost only a single dollar, would you say we should do it?
#142 – Michael Tobis
As discussed earlier the science can progress in any way it wants because it is largely irrelevant to the discussion that we need to have now. Climategate was only necessary because one side of the debate tried to suppress the legitimate debate on policy by putting scientists forward as an authority that could not be questioned.
I am still waiting for you to explain why a weighted risk analysis based has any merit if it does not take into account the risk of economic collapse triggerd by aggressive anti-CO2 policies.
#143 – J Bowers
If mitigation could cost a lot more than a single dollar and I would support it based on the evidence available.
The trouble is mitigation is absurdly expensive and may be technically impossible. Therefore we have no choice but to turn to adaptation as a policy response.
My analogy is fine, Raven. We have a possibly malignancy. Nine experts agree it should be taken out. One says to wait – it’s not certain it’s malignant. Is it preferable to treat it now, or wait until we get full blown cancer, which will probably be more expensive?
(Your analogy is premised on there being no evidence of a lump – it might have been applicable a hundred years ago)
Wow. Two straw men in two paragraphs!
“Climategate was only necessary because one side of the debate tried to suppress the legitimate debate on policy by putting scientists forward as an authority that could not be questioned.”
Climate scientists an authority on policy? Not seriously proposed by anybody.
“I am still waiting for you to explain why a weighted risk analysis based has any merit if it does not take into account the risk of economic collapse triggerd by aggressive anti-CO2 policies.”
I make no such claim and don’t know of anybody even half-serious who does. Anyway this is woefully off topic. So you can keep waiting. Explain to me why you claim there is a real scandal worth noticing. I will try to resist the temptation to respond to your other provocations. You are engaged in classic herring-mongering and I am not buying.
#146 – barry
As I mentioned above climate scientists are NOT qualified to be giving advice on treatments. The can identify risks. Nothing more. That makes your ‘appeal to authority’ analogy irrelevant.
You analogy is flawed in another important way. When a lump is found doctors can point to numerous case studies where such a lump turned into cancer. When it comes to CO2 there is no such evidence. The claim that more Co2 will lead to problems is a purely hypothetical claim that is not backed up by any experimental evidence.
Barry, following up on your request, i sent an email to Anthony Watts. He sent me the following text which he said i could publish over here.
As per email from Anthony Watts:
“After NOAA/NCDC violated my trust and my right to publish first with my own
data with Menne et al, I stopped updating surfacestations.org to protect my
rights until my own paper could be completed. NOAA/NCDC erred badly in both
PR and scientifically by using data at 43% of the network surveyed, which
was so poorly spatially representative that it didn’t show the siting
signal. Rushing science is a fools errand, but that is exactly what NCDC
did. They also used a method which hid most of the siting signal.
The data now is at 88% of the USHCN network surveyed, well over 1000
stations. I have two separate teams doing data analysis independently. The
first team has completed its task and the conclusions are in, the second
team is within about a week of finishing. All that remains then is to finish
the narrative. There are a number of well known names in the scientific
community coauthoring this paper with me.
A paper is forthcoming very soon for submission to a journal. When the paper is published, all current data and
analysis methods use will be made public online.”
I also know of an additional independent analysis of this issue that is being conducted. So stay tuned . . .
#147 – Micheal Tobis
Try reading almost every argument you write. You spin it different ways but it always comes down to the same thing: climate scientists say CO2 is bad so we must reduce it no matter the cost and anyone who questions that is “denying” science. It is a rediculous appeal to authority argument that makes no sense because he authorities are not qualified to recommend the policies you are pushing.
As for you own comments you said this:
If more evidence comes in and things are not as bad as they currently appear, I will be among the first to celebrate. In that case, we may have wasted some expense developing energy in a direction that would otherwise have been sub-optimal
That makes it pretty clear that you think economic harms caused by CO2 policies can be ignored. Feel free to repudiate that statement if you have changed your mind.
Judith Curry Says:
May 2nd, 2010 at 2:01 pm
Barry, following up on your request, i sent an email to Anthony Watts. He sent me the following text which he said i could publish over here.
.
Judith, you didn t understand the problem.
Anthony watts has been making false claims, based on this data for years now. he should be in a serious hurry, to get results out.
.
Anthony is doing exactly those “tribal” things that you complain about. instead of doing an analysis, BEFORE he makes wild claims, he did the opposite.
.
why didn t you call him out on it?
Michael (138)
The problem is with your black & white context:
Either revelations associated with the CRU emails call the whole edifice of climate science as promulgated by every major scientific organization on earth into question, or they don’t.
So that’s it, then? All or nothing? What about this position, explained you to by Roger Pielke, Jr., over at a thread on his blog:
So those who accuse the CRU folks of fraud and misconduct are just wrong, and you and others who are ready to elevate them to sainthood are equally off base.
This is where nuance comes in. It is possible to at once understand that no research misconduct took place and at the exact same time be offended by the intentions and actions revealed by the emails.
JC quotes AW: Rushing science is a fools errand, …
Thank you for that gem.
Actually Watts has already published (and republished) – although I use the term paper loosely – subtitled “Policy Driven Deception”
I quote from his first version, released just this January:
———
5. There has been a severe bias towards removing higher-altitude, higher-latitude, and rural stations, leading to a further serious overstatement of warming.
——–
Does anyone here believe that Watts and D’Aleo provided the proof in that publication which supported that claim? Heck no. Even Watts couldn’t defend it and removed it in his updated version (at least from the summary which is where the above quote resided). Thank goodness he didn’t rush the science. 😛
And Anthony, you should take the time to thank those who pointed out your errors. It’s only ethical!
Michael Tobis says: “…The Virginia AG is proposing to harass Mann on the grounds that he once committed willful acts of research using Commonwealth funds…”
It seems to have come to light that:
Only one project was funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Mann wasn’t the PI.
All others were federally funded.
Virginia’s AG has no business with the federally funded projects anyway.
He gone fishing perhaps?
That’s right, Keith, all reasonable people know that the proper application of nuance will lead all reasonable people to the only reasonable position, which is in the center, and, conveniently, the fact that it’s in the center is the test for reasonableness. Just ask any reasonable person.
I define reasonable a little differently. Reasonable, in this case, is what the AP did. They carefully investigated all the charges, found them wanting, published their analysis, and subsequently ceased to give both the deniers and the “reasonable center” traction in their coverage. Compare that to the journalistic train wreck of Andy Revkin’s initial page one story, which never got suitably corrected. Okrent’s Law was then, the scandal of the day is now, hmm?
Of course it is possible to “be offended by actions that don’t rise to misconduct”, though even there we are offered mighty thin gruel.
Still, that would come under the category of “not calling into question the scientific edifice” and therefore, presumably, not especially worthy of being described to the public as a threat to the scientific edifice.
Indeed, it’s hard to see the reason for such a thing being reported at all. I mean, “scientist perceived as rude”, frankly, is not front page news. If it were, we’d need a mighty big folio.
Mr Tobis
Your persistent mischaracterization of Climategate as a harmless non-event is, shall we say, due to a lack of curiosity on your part.
Steve Bloom, got a peer reviewed source to back up this claim?
“It inspired someone to take a closer look at the obscure paper RP Sr. based everything on, and voila: it turned out to be crap”
“Your persistent mischaracterization of Climategate as a harmless non-event is, shall we say, due to a lack of curiosity on your part.”
This allegation of a lack of curiosity is untrue. I have been asking repeatedly on my blog for some specific allegations. So far everything anyone has been submitted has been strikingly unconvincing.
Keith and RP Jr and Curry are all saying something is dislikable but there is no malfeasance. You can bet they’d be saying more if there were more.
None of the investigations has come up with anything, because there is nothing. It is easy to be confident that there is nothing, because the motivation toward willful misrepresentation is a fantasy which bears no resemblance to the actual context of climate science.
Nothing.
Sure, PT, this review paper devotes a whole paragraph to pointing out why it’s conceptually wrong. Given the nature of the error I wouldn’t expect to see much more, although that may change if RP Sr. has the cojones to try to publish a defense of the Watts effort based on P&M (2005). For a more detailed albeit non-peer reviewed refutation, see the fourth post here. The rest is informative about RP Sr.’s excessive tendency to self-cite. Nothing wrong with that, of course, unless the bottom turtle paper is crap.
Turtle in that last was struck out, but for some reason it didn’t come through. Trying again, out of curiosity.
Nope, strikeout doesn’t seem to be working.
While I’m on the general subject, Keith, with IE at least the comment numbering gets partially cut off. Only the rightmost 1-1/3 numbers show, which makes it difficult when things reach double digits and more difficult when they reach three.
Mr. Kloor re-quotes Pielke Jr.
“So those who accuse the CRU folks of fraud and misconduct are just wrong, and you and others who are ready to elevate them to sainthood are equally off base.”
The problem with this remains that it’s a false equivalency.
On *this very thread* we’ve had someone calling Mann a ‘fraud’ and a “liar” . None have called Jones or Mann ‘saints’ or synonyms to that effect.
The fact is, across the blogs, and in the press, the number of people using grossly intemperate language to tar Mann, CRU scientists, and climate scientists generally, simply overwhelms the number of folks claiming Jones, Mann et al. are spotless (a claim not even Phil Jones is making for himself). It’s ridiculous to suggest that a balance of rhetorical extremes exists on this matter, as Pielke Jr. does in that quote.
Judith, thank you. Much appreciated.
Raven, the analogy is unusable in the way you’re trying to frame it. If 9 out of 10 oncologists say you have cancer, you don’t ask a policy analyst how to treat it. I thought you were trying to analogise the risk. Seems your point is about delineating jobs.
Barry,
Just for the record, an oncologist is not the one qualified to tell whether or not someone has cancer
I have enjoyed this series of threads. In the more purely political arguments I follow, Judith Curry would have been quickly labelled a concern troll & covered with abuse.
The valiant attempts to come to grips and extract some meaning from her various admonitions is probably why that happens.
In pre-internet terms her posture reminds me of the session chair who comes in at the end of some lively exchanges and emits a genial fog which signals lunch.
As I say, I have enjoyed it, and passes the time while the scientists are doing science.
The one pernicious aspect, just mentioned by J Bowers[#121], is the claim that scientists should stay out of politics. Just what does she think she is doing here?
Also, I congratulate Mr. Bowers on his valiant attempt to nail something down — I look forward to Mr Watts “forthcoming” paper & the “additional independent analysis”
Shrub:
Oncology (from the Ancient Greek onkos (ὄνκος), meaning bulk, mass, or tumor, and the suffix -logy (-λογία), meaning “study of”) is a branch of medicine that deals with tumors (cancer). A medical professional who practices oncology is an oncologist.
Oncology is concerned with:
The diagnosis of any cancer in a person
Therapy (e.g., surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and other modalities)
Follow-up of cancer patients after successful treatment
Palliative care of patients with terminal malignancies
Ethical questions surrounding cancer care
Screening efforts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncology
Sod, J Bowers – indeed. Watts replied to me a year or so back (the last time I heard from him on it) that it was “premature” to draw conclusions without enough data. Yet he’s been publishing his conclusions that the US temp record is “unreliable” for some years, as well as rubbishing the scientists that produce it, without ever doing the analysis and well before reaching the sample target he himself stipulates is necessary. How can bridges be built without some significant, responsible concessions from him? If Judith could get the skeptics to publicly issue some reasonable retractions, I can think of nothing better that would encourage mainstream climate scientists to re-engage with them. Of course, mainstreamers could raise the tone, but it has to cut both ways, and the skeptical canon is much more egregious.
#169 – barry
The scientists that investigate a links between genes are cancers are not medical doctors. They likely collaborate with doctors but it is a different specialization. It is a specialization that is also much more appropriate analogy to what climate scientists do. And like climate scientists they are not qualified to recommend treatments to patients and their opinion on treatments is quite irrelevant.
Here is a link to one such non-medical doctor to illustrate my point:
http://www.findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/researcher/person23857.html
Raven, if your point is that scientists should do science and that politicians should do policy, then we don’t much disagree. I thought your analogy was about risk assessment.
If scientists say that adding CO2 to the atmosphere causes warming with destabilising effects on the biosphere, and that the way to prevent this is reducing CO2 emissions, then that’s not policy, that’s advice – even when the outcomes are not precisely certain.
The point is often made (Pielke Snr, for example) that it is not because we know what will happen that we must act: it is because we don’t know. Things could be better or worse than recommended. Prudent politics is to plan for the worse scenarios, not wait for them to eventuate. We’d be scratching our heads til the crack’o’doom if we waited for perfect knowledge.
So, a question for you – how do you determine the point at which there is enough evidence? If we’re supposed to play a waiting game, nominate the conditions (mathematically, if possible) under which it would be reasonable to take action.
I ask because no skeptic ever does this. The entire and complete message is ‘ too soon’, but never ever is that accompanied by some kind of target. Essentially, the skeptics seem to want research forever and no action at all.
What’s the cut-off point for delay, exactly? Have you even considered this issue?
#172 – barry
If scientists say that adding CO2 to the atmosphere causes warming with destabilising effects on the biosphere, and that the way to prevent this is reducing CO2 emissions.
Change that to this and I can agree.
If scientists say that adding CO2 to the atmosphere causes warming with possible destabilising effects on the biosphere, and one way to deal with this risk is to reduce CO2 emissions.
To be policy neutral scientists provide options. Not advice. Too many climate scientists forget that rule and too many political activists pick the policy option they like and try to claim that rejecting their pet policy options means that your are ‘denying science’. It is a dispicable tactic.
My position is quite simple. I do not believe we have the technical or economic resources that will allow us to significantly reduce global CO2 emissions over the next 40-50 years. I know that others disagree but I have seen no argument that does not involve believing in a magic technology fairy that grants wishes. I will change my mind when I see someone come up with a large scale power source that emits no CO2, is economic without government subsidies and is not opposed by environmentalists.
What this means is I see any money spent trying to meet fixed targets for emission reductions as a shameful waste of resources. The same is true of money spent on power sources which are not commerically viable today.
So to answer your question: the scientific evidence is irrelevant because emission control is not an option. If there is a risk then adaptation is the only option. Adaptation is also a superior strategy from a political point of view because it does not require any global treaty.
” My position is quite simple. I do not believe we have the technical or economic resources that will allow us to significantly reduce global CO2 emissions over the next 40-50 years.”
You might have saved time by articulating this in the first place. Everything else you’ve said, including torturing analogies to death, is purely academic and rooted in political ideology. Thus, “the scientific evidence is irrelevant”, as are, presumably, actual economic estimates on mitigation/adaption. It must be the ultimate denial – science is of no use on the issue (or non-issue) of climate change.
You have precedent, of course. International treaties failed to ban CFCs and the hole in the ozone layer is growing. Clean Air acts beggared economies. Other environmental regulations effectively killed off industry. Unleading petrol toppled the oil industries. Entrepreneurs and innovators were unable to come up with alternative technologies when these regulations were passed. Government doesn’t subsidise fossil fuel industry.
For the record, I think the nuclear option has to be on the table – but you realize this will be subject to regulation and government subsidy?
A completely free market approach would inevitably result in little to no self-regulation. Companies have a lot more to make selling adaption technologies, but I doubt they’re that far-sighted.
#174 – barry
I had said numerous times that the decision about what to do about CO2 emissions is a question of values, economics, technology and politics. More importantly, all of these questions need to addressed in the political realm and the science of climate is of peripheral interest.
Frankly, I am amazed that you cannot comprehend that someone could rationally look at the evidence available and come to the conclusion that mitigation a waste of resources. For you such a conclusion is “denial”. All that reaction shows is your own opinions are primarily driven by ideology.
The short version of my decision making process is this:
1) Accept that climate change is a real risk that is worth doing something about.
2) Recognize that the science tells us nothing more than adding CO2 will cause the the temperature to rise. We do not know how much and we do not know the effects. Climate models claiming to be able to predict the effects are really nothing more than wild guesses. There are simply too many variables. Can say nothing other than ‘it might be really bad’.
3) Recognize that all of the technologies that we need have been the holy grail of the energy/vehicle production for a century or more. Anyone who could have come up with an economic solution would have made lots of money. Therefore assume there no magic bullet just waiting for a government sugar daddy.
4) Look at prior technical successes. Clear air act, ozone, acid rain. In all cases technologies existed before they were phased in. Cannot find a precedent for non-existent technologies being developed as a result of a mandate. That makes technology mandates an extremely risky choice – not likely to succeed.
5) Look at politics. Chinese, Indians have no interest in emission control. This means an regulations will simply accelerate movement of wealth and production to these countries. Trade war a possible consequence. Trade wars created the Great Depression. So emission control comes with large economic risk.
6) Do math on renewables with existing technology (assume it actually works – unlikely). Huge capital requirements. Meeting 80% reduction by 2050 would require upwards of $400-$800 billion a year for the US alone. US decifit exploding, unemploment high. No chance of that money being spent. Mitigation almost guaranteed to fail without unexpected technical breakthrough.
7) Look at technologies required for adpation. Dams, sea walls, hybrid crops, large scale water diversions. All technologies exist. Much lower techinical risk. Human ingenity can accomplish many things more confident that it will rise to the adaption challenge than the mitigation challenge. Barriers much lower.
8) Look at evidence of fraud, manipulation and pork barrelling within the existing carbon control frameworks. Recognize that giving politicians such economic power would be like letting dracula guard the blood bank. Increases risk that mitigation will fail. All academic studies on carbon pricing flawed for the same reason – all assume perfect implementation (i.e. politicians that care about achiving the objectives).
9) Side risk: peak oil. Mitigation might help some but would deny access to coal – a criticial resource that would allow economy to whether the peak oil storm. Conclusion: must not adopt a mitigation policy in order to hedge against peak oil. Cannot afford to deny outselves access to coal/oil sands energy.
10) Summary: mitigation unlikely to succeed and could cause huge harms but worth hedging bets. How? R&D subidies. Perhaps some large scale proof of concepts. Investments in ‘energy highways’. No subsidies per kilowatt because they create vested interests that can never be taken off the teat (corn for biofuel case in point). Nuclear loan guarantees fine assuming money is paid back.
#174 – barry
A bit longer than I expected. However, it should make it clear that have not come to my opinion without some thought. Trying charactize it as ‘denial’ is quite insulting but I have gotten used to that crap from alarmists. My hope is there will be some people who will come to understand that this is not a problem that can be reduced to a question of “accepting the science’. There are too many other variables that must be factored in and each person does those calculations in different ways.
Raven,
Understanding the science and risk calculation is primary. Policy comes second. Like CFCs, the problem is global. It makes sense that an international body should consider it.
Your proposal puts no cap on continued emsissions, and therefore we must wait until the pie-in-the-sky technologies you mention somehow materialise – with little incentive for the people with the most money to invest in it. We’d be doomed to playing catch up with no end in sight.
Wind, wave, solar, hydro, geothermal, nuclear… these are some of the headline technologies that already exist and can be developed and deployed further. How can you possibly assert that there are no pre-existing technologies?
The purpose of capping or taxing emissions is (also) to foster R&D and implementation of cleaner technologies. Energy companies are already deploying these technologies. It is not as profitable as fossil fuel, and the reason this is happening is because of political pressure and incentives (and social mores on the subject). This would not happen if the market was left to conduct business as usual. Look at the recent disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The government wanted tighter regulation, BP successfully fought it, now 11 people are dead and hundreds of square kilometers of ecology is drowning in oil. Corporate power is more interested in exploitation (the neutral sense) and short-term profit. The bottom line will always be prioritized over the long view.
There is near unanimity in economic forecasts on the issue. Mitigation will be much less expensive that adaption. And there are externalities like quality of life and heritage. If one agrees that the science is sound and that the economic forecasts are as robust as possible, then this is the place to start weighing risks and implementing policy. There is no non-governmental solution to mitigation. If we have to adapt in line with mid-range scenarios, you can be sure that governments will have to step in. If you are worried about potential pork-barreling now, how do you feel about the possibility of even more down the road?
#173 Raven says: “#172 ““ barry
If scientists say that adding CO2 to the atmosphere causes warming with destabilising effects on the biosphere, and that the way to prevent this is reducing CO2 emissions.
Change that to this and I can agree.
If scientists say that adding CO2 to the atmosphere causes warming with possible destabilising effects on the biosphere, and one way to deal with this risk is to reduce CO2 emissions.”
______________________________________________
A negotiation point? Did that really happen?
Negotiation – a much overlooked word.
If you wanted to continue in that vein, it would be a useful exercise for many individuals to stop saying that scientists should be thrown in prison and accusing them of being criminals and worse. As long as that continues, there will be no productive dialogue IMHO.
Every time I see a Cuccinelli type of fishing expedition, or a claim of whitewash when these people are cleared of wrongdoing, my p**s boils. The same happens when I see calls for scientists to be publicly flogged, to be thrown into jail, to be drawn and quartered, their families threatened. For what? For losing their temper now and again or making a mistake with their stats there are those who would see them thrown into a federal prison with murderers and rapists? Puhleeeaase!
If anyone is really interested in how these things are resolved I wholeheartedly suggest they read up on Northern Ireland and the road to the Good Friday Peace Agreement. Speak to Mo Mowlam. You’d probably garner far more sage and salient advice from her than you’ll ever get from a subscription to Nature. But to do that the usual suspects need to stop calling for the physical harm, the incarcerations, the criminal investigations, and on and on. Could it not be a case of being “ever so slightly” over the top? I certainly think it is.
Recognising any tribalism in the debate is a tiny step, but there will never be any leaps until there is a real understanding of what tribalism actually is, how it fundamentally affects a debate and inter-tribe relations, and how differences can actually be reconciled. It’s as much the domain of anthropologists and historians as it is of scientists… if not more so. So far Frankie Goes to Hollywood seem to have had more of a clue than some of the smartest people on the planet.
How do you start to do that, I don’t know? But, I could offer a humble suggestion.
Language.
Blogs from both sides of the fence set a common standard, and ban inflammatory words and names in a draconian manner, with a mutual statement at the head of each blog post. Words such as: Denialist; Sceptic; Believer; Fraud; Criminal; Warmist (yes, that word is really insulting); Cult; Religion; Dumbass; Commie; Pinko; Idiot; Denidiot; Alarmist; etc, etc, etc. Feel free to add to the list. It’s no use getting offended if you don’t spell out what you actually find offensive. If the blogs actually agreed to do that and held each other to it, we may just see a more civilised dialogue between each garden and less sticks thrown over the fence. Personally, I think the most contentious word of all is ‘sceptic’. One side thinks it’s a valid description of themselves, the other feels it’s a hijacking and bank robbery all rolled into one. How about ‘pro-AGWT’ and ‘anti-AGWT’. But of course, we could no doubt get into the “It’s not a theory, it’s an hypothesis” territory. How about some compromise on that one? Uunless details are identified and agreed on (it surely has to happen sometime) there will be little if any progress in the debate IMHO. It may well require a biting of the tongue and some yoga to bring the blood pressure down, but this is grownup land isn’t it? Isn’t it?
Anyway, I probably just wasted half an hour of my bank holiday, I’m not that naive. But at least I got it off my chest so no apologies.
One thing I really am coming to believe: WG1 needs to be separated from WG2 and WG3. I think that could avoid a lot of confusions of the issues, and deny the more cynical participants a stirrer to muddy the waters with. Keep things as simple as possible.
Barry,
Surprised you claim near unanimity on economic forecasts that mitigation is cheaper than adaptation. References? The classic economist’s reaction would be to have some of each. And remember that overall cost depends on how you value future costs against present costs, which is a value judgement not a technical question with a right or wrong answer.
Bloom@161, you show why your scientific knowledge can fit into a thimble. “A whole paragraph”? Wow. For a literature review that is pretty thin gruel. You’d hink that if Parker could discredit the arguments as easily as you suggest, he’d have done so, rather than misdirect in “a whole paragraph.”
Why don’t you try to explain “the error”? (Probably because you can’t. )
But hey, why try to understand when you can just make stuff up on the innertubes?
#177 – barry
I was trying to be brief so may of my statements are not adequately explained.
1) CFCs was a trivial problem in the sense that there were only a couple large manufacturers of the chemicals involved and they stood to profit from selling the replacements. There was a cost to customers but is only affected a small set of products. In short the precautionary principal was easier to sell in this case. CO2 is a much more intractable problem.
2) Science is important to identify risks but we it comes to climate we have no tools that can tell us more than we already know. More data helps but that takes decades to gather when it comes to climate. The climate models are dangerous because they create the illusion of knowledge when there is none. Over reliance on computer models just cost the EU billions – that should be a lesson that we should not forget soon.
3) Wind, wave, solar, hydro and geothermal have been available for a century but they are not widely used because they are either a resource limited by geography, deliver too little power per dollar invested or are unreliable and require fossil fuel backup. Nothing is likely to change soon. Nuclear is great if you can get the environmentalists to shut up.
4) Capping emission is a dumb policy that will NEVER work because the pratical alternative technologies do not exist. Trying to do it simply creates and environment ripe for manipulation by fraudsters. Carbon taxes will never be set a level that will have a significant impact on emissions. All they can do is generate revenue and as I said above I have no issue with funding R&D and one off projects. I only oppose the creation yet another government entitlement program.
5) There is no unanimity about the cost of mitigation vs adaption. And even if there was we are talking about economic models projecting the economy 100 years in the future which means they have zero credibility. However, if you really want to use the peer reviewed economic literature as a reference for costs then I can show you many papers that peg the cost of doing nothing is no more than one year’s economic growth 100 years from now – a price which I can live with.
One paragraph is all it took, PT. That’s the thing about fundamental errors of the sort RP Sr. made. It’s perfectly sufficient for anyone who understands the concepts involved, which I do and apparently you don’t. As I said, though, if you want more detail look at the other link I provided.
I don’t know what all the gobelly gook that Judy Curry and the other commentator are passing around -so lets get to some real scientists- the physicists. The physicists say that the greenhouse gas effect violates fundamental laws of physics and thermodynamics – the work of Gerlich and Tscheuschner which has been peer reviewed and published in the International Journal of Modern Physics. below is a set of references including the reference to R.W.Wood who in 1909 showed that the greenhouse gas effect is pure bull. I am also including the abstract to G&T. if it fits.
List of references:
The paper “Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 greenhouse effect within the frame of physics” by Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner is an in-depth examination of the subject. Version 4 2009
Electronic version of an article published as International Journal of Modern Physics
B, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2009) 275{364 , DOI No: 10.1142/S021797920904984X, c World
Scientific Publishing Company, http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb.
Report of Alan Carlin of US-EPA March, 2009 that shows that CO2 does not cause global warming.
Greenhouse Gas Hypothesis Violates Fundamentals of Physics“ by Dipl-Ing Heinz Thieme This work has about 10 or 12 link
that support the truth that the greenhouse gas effect is a hoax.
R.W.Wood
from the Philosophical magazine (more properly the London, Edinborough and Dublin Philosophical Magazine , 1909, vol 17, p319-320. Cambridge UL shelf mark p340.1.c.95, if you’re interested.
The Hidden Flaw in Greenhouse Theory
By Alan Siddons
from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/the_hidden_flaw_in_greenhouse.html at March 01, 2010 – 09:10:34 AM CST
The bottom line is that the facts show that the greenhouse gas effect is a fairy-tale and that Man-made global warming is the World larges Scam!!!The IPCC and Al Gore should be charged under the US Anti-racketeering act and when convicted – they should spend the rest of their lives in jail for the Crimes they have committed against Humanity.
Web- site references:
http://www.americanthinker.com Ponder the Maunder
wwwclimatedepot.com
icecap.us
http://www.stratus-sphere.com
SPPI
many others are available.
Abstract
The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that many authors trace back to the
traditional works of Fourier (1824), Tyndall (1861), and Arrhenius (1896), and which
is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in
which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is
radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrate to the atmospheric system. Ac-
cording to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist.
Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary
literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a rm sci-
entifc foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying
physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws
between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric green-
house effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature
of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 C is a meaningless number
calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the
assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction
must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.
Electronic version of an article published as International Journal of Modern Physics
B, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2009) 275{364 , DOI No: 10.1142/S021797920904984X, c World
Scientific Publishing Company, http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb.
Judy Curry is aware of this paper but wants to still not believe that the Greenhouse gas effect is a fairy-tale. I have asked her to supply scientific proof that the ghg effect exists . Let her respond on this web-site if she has found any proof.
Definition: climatologist-1. a temperature historian
2. a flat screen fortune teller
3. a suto scientist that can not prove their projects into the next 50 or 100 years.
Results
“A common finding of cost-benefit analysis is that the optimum level of emissions reduction is modest in the near-term, with more stringent abatement in the longer-term (Stern, 2007:298;[50] Heal, 2008:20;[51] Barker, 2008).[52] This approach might lead to a warming of more than 3 °C above the pre-industrial level (World Bank, 2010:8).[53] In most models, benefits exceed costs for stabilization of GHGs leading to warming of 2.5 °C. No models suggest that the optimal policy is to do nothing, i.e., allow “business-as-usual” emissions.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_global_warming
“The climate models are dangerous because they create the illusion of knowledge when there is none.”
That sentence is virtually meaningless to me. All models are ‘wrong’. No one says climate models are crystal balls. They project changes into the future based on various scenarios and give results with envelopes of uncertainty. The results are qualified – by the technicians and scientists that work them, and by the IPCC.
Models are used in the application of science in all manner of areas. The car you drive, the plane that carries you aloft, and the means by which you and I communicate have been fashioned using models. Safety features for various machines are modeled. We get into planes because modeling tells us that it is pretty safe to do so. All these models are ‘wrong’. They do not make a perfect mirror of reality or of what may happen. If a model is ever perfect, it won’t be science any more. I don’t understand the negative fixation on short-comings with models since so much of our technology is a result of them.
I don’t even know why you bring models up. I’ve already conceded that the future is uncertain. But we’re talking about risk management and the best ‘knowledge’ we have is a 3C rise by the end of the century. It’s not certain. It could be less. It could be more. If we wait to find out and it is more, and the damages are as most economic stuides project under that scenario, then we’ll have wished we risked 1 – 3% of GDP in the short-term.
Cost damages are most likely to affect poorer countries (according to economic estimates). The richer countries will cope better. House does your view compass this? That the countries most able to adapt will be the ones who put most of the CO2 in the atmosphere?
We’ll face the cost of adapting whether we mitigate or not. And what of the 22nd or 23rd century under emissions as usual? When do we start taking responsibility for the unplanned global experiment?
Steve Bloom: “Sure, PT, this review paper devotes a whole paragraph to pointing out why it’s conceptually wrong.”
No, the review paper doesn’t dispute P&M2005’s conlcusion, but says that it’s only true for local forcings at the surface. P&M2005’s conclusion applies to local measurements eg. surface temperature measurements. (These will have also have some effect on indices calculated from local measurements, such as global surface temperature averages.). There’s nothing in the paragraph that invalidates the P&M paper.
Perhaps try again, Steve Bloom, this time with facts instead of crude innuendo.
#183 – barry
Start here for Richard Tols take on the mitigation vs. adaptation issue:
rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/03/summary-of-richard-tols-look-at-ipcc.html
If you follow the links and read his arguments he makes a good case. Here is a link to a literature review my Tol:
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.23.2.29
From the paper:
Global average impacts would be comparable to the welfare loss of a few percent of income, but substantially higher in poor countries. Still, the impact of climate change over a century is comparable to economic growth over a few years.
IOW – the cost of climate change is a lot less than we have been led to believe by the IPCC.
As for the poor: My belief is the best thing we can do for them is help them get rich so they can take care of themselves. Making them poorer by denying them access to cheap energy or our markets will hurt them more than any climate problem.
22nd century humans will be able to take care of themselves. They are not even a blip on my priority radar screen.
>> conceptually wrong
> doesn’t dispute … conclusion
> only true for local forcings at the surface
> nothing in the paragraph
You have to both read _and_ understand.
“only true for local forcings at the surface” is the key there.
You seem to want to believe that’s not a problem; it’s the flaw.
This may help; read it slowly several times:
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2009/08/pielke-and-matsui-2005-revisited.html
Post with links just trapped by the spam filter.
Are there special tricks to getting links past the filter on this site?
More generally, all these:
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/search?q=Pielke+Matsui
@Bloom, OK, I’d don’t suppose you’d care to explain the “atmospheric boundary layer” and why Parker’s explanation of uniform warming is irrelevant to the dynamics being discussed by Pielke/Matsui? Hint: the answer is implicit in my question. For extra credit you can explore how Parker’s paragraph doesn’t even mention the larger dynamical forcing presented in Pielke/Matsui, which is not greenhouse forcing but dynamic instability. Missed that one, eh?
Come one, Bloom, show us you got something. Anything.
#188 – Per Term
I know you are having fun with Bloom but if you have a short summary of a Pielke’s rebuttal to Annan I would really like to see it because I have had a tough time sorting that debate out.
Shub @126: Few journalists predicted success in Copenhagen, I don’t know what media you were reading. “Business has little expectation Copenhagen will produce a breakthrough, acknowledged Bjørn Stigson, president of the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD), in Geneva, Switzerland. ” — June 15 2009
There is compelling evidence of we are changing the climate and that is not a good thing so what are we going to do?
Mitigate.
We have no real idea what we will have to adapt to or what it will cost or even if we can adapt to things like extreme weather events. Moreover most of the world can’t afford to adapt — is the US going to give $billions to Africa when it is too hot to grow most crops?
I see Annan is going on about Curry not understanding “climate sensitivity” — pretty damn rich for a guy who has no knowledge of “boundary layer dynamics” — Pielke responded to Annan on multiple occasions:
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/?s=annan&searchsubmit=Find+%C2%BB
Annan’s criticisms were simply off target. You can be sure that if there was an error Annan and Schmidt et al. would waste no time taking Pielke down a notch or two in the literature. That they made noise on blogs and slinked away never to be heard from again is probably enough for the casual observer to know.
If you still don’t understand, PT, I’m sure James Annan would be happy to answer a question or two as long as they’re sans POV and it appears you’ve made some effort to understand the material. You have the link.
Steve Bloom, we’re still waiting for some evidence that Pielke & Matsui 2005 is “crap”, as you put it.
PT, why treat something unimportant as if it was important? Unimportant errors generally get very little attention in the literature. That may change if RP Sr. can succeed in raising its profile by e.g. using it as the linchpin for a multi-author defense of the Watts effort. Don’t hold your breath waiting for that, though, as journal editors seem to be tightening up on this stuff.
(From the peer-reviewed literature, please)
Oh, evidence. Well, this being science, we would have to start by asking what evidence there is for it. You tell me.
Just asking you to back up your claim. The paragraph you mentioned in Parker 2010 doesn’t do that.
Here’s the paragraph :
“Pielke and Matsui concluded that increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases should raise calm-night temperatures more than windy-night temperatures, because the extra heat would be stored in a shallower layer on calm nights with a thermally stable boundary layer and restricted turbulent upward heat transfer. However, this is only true for a local forcing at the surface. A global greenhouse forcing warms the oceans, which in turn warm the entire troposphere until the outgoing longwave radiation at the top of
the atmosphere increases sufficiently to balance the net solar input. There is then no greenhouse-gas-induced disequilibrium at the surface.”
There is a vast body of literature on heat transfer within the atmosphere. The AR4 WG1 report would be a good place for you to start.
All,
Just a quick reminder: if you have a comment with multiple links, there’s a chance it’ll end up in the spam filter. I don’t check that regularly (though I have these past few days), so if your comment doesn’t appear soon after you posted it, email me and I’ll fish it out.
Also, for those interested in a change of climate topics, please see the current post, with a new Q & A.
Steve Bloom : “There is a vast body of literature on heat transfer within the atmosphere.”
Which paper or papers support this statement of yours : “[..] it inspired someone to take a closer look at the obscure paper RP Sr. based everything on, and voila: it turned out to be crap. “
Is your one paragraph in Parker 2010 all you’ve found? It doesn’t refute the P&M paper, you know.
Berthold Klein,
Regarding Gerlich and Tscheuschner, see this website, i couldn’t say it any better.
Nice timing, Judy. People trying to keep RP Sr. afloat should take a lesson from l’affaire G&T.
oneuniverse: “It doesn’t refute the P&M paper, you know.” I think you’re failing to understand the role of review papers. To repeat, we’re not likely to see an explicit refutation of P&M 2005 unless RP Sr. succeeds in escalating things in the literature. But anyway, James linked to more than enough material to satisfy anyone wanting to know why P&M 2005 is wrong.
Actually I should be more precise: P&M 2005 is only wrong insofar as it attempts to take a probably real but minor effect and transform it into something that undermines the validity of the surface trend and measured greenhouse warming. That’s a bridge too far.
Thank you Judy for the link -there are just as many pros and cons- there is one major problem that it and you have not address -Where is the experiment that shows that CO2 or Ch4 or any other “greenhouse gas ” can cause warming of the atmosphere. As the “world temperature ” data has been shown to have been MANNipulated , and that the real data shows that there is a temperature decline , use of circumstantial evidence will not win anyone’s case.
the one comment on the main link that makes any sense is :
The paper by G&T was classified as a “review” article, which means it most likely appeared by invitation of an editor and did not necessarily have the normal full peer review process applied.
You can read a description of the journal at “Aims and Scope”: http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb/mkt/aims_scope.shtml
You will note that the journal describes a “unique feature” being the review section, which “contains articles with permanent research value besides the state-of-the-art research work in the relevant subject areas”, and “To ensure top quality, review articles are by invitation only and all research papers undergo stringent refereeing.”
It seems that G&T was a “review” article, which would suggest a problem with the protocols by which they invite articles. The topic of G&T is, after all, not the focus of the journal and neither of the authors have any publication record in atmospheric thermodynamics either.
All in all, it seems to have been something of an aberration for the journal. But to their credit, they have also subsequently accepted and will shortly publish a paper which has been through the review process and points out some of the major errors in G&T.
It should appear within a couple of weeks, I think.
I am interested”¦ what made you notice this article now? I am a minor co-author of the rebuttal, and am interested to see the paper starting to be noticed again as the rebuttal approaches a publication date.Cheers “” Chris Ho-Stuart
If G&T are correct then one does not need to be a “climate scientist to understand why R.W.WOOD was able to show that the greenhouse gas effect does not cause global warming. (1909) . As the other three proponents of the Hypothesis of the greenhouse gas effect were not able to prove it’s existence and all the “climate scientists” since have not been able to prove its existence.
Paraphrasing Albert Einstein after the publication of his Theory of Relativity- it only takes one scientist with the correct answer to refute the consensus of 1ooo scientists that don’t understand.
Thanks, Berthold, for illustrating so neatly the persistence of cranks
Mr Barry,
Just for the record, let me repeat,
an oncologist is *not* the person qualified to tell whether someone has cancer or not.
Wikipedia just won’t cut it.
🙂
I think you should leave your medical misunderstandings out of the climate debate.
Steve Bloom: “Actually I should be more precise: P&M 2005 is only wrong insofar as it attempts to take a probably real but minor effect and transform it into something that undermines the validity of the surface trend and measured greenhouse warming. That’s a bridge too far.”
Thank you for walking back your initial accusation, but your diminished version of the accusation is still false.
P&M 2005 presents an additional potential uncertainty to be considered when determining surface temperature trends. They attempt to quantify the effect (Fig 3/Table 1), and they raise, in the concluding paragraph, the question of what is being discussed when we speak of a “surface temperature trend”. This isn’t unreasonable, given their finding that
Steve Bloom: “To repeat, we’re not likely to see an explicit refutation of P&M 2005 unless RP Sr. succeeds in escalating things in the literature.”
An alternative explanation is that the paper is sound within the current framework of our understanding, and so will not be refuted within that framework.
Steve Bloom: “People trying to keep RP Sr. afloat should take a lesson from l’affaire G&T.”
I’m not trying to keep it afloat – I just objected to your false accusation against the paper.
—-
Steve Bloom: “Actually I should be more precise: P&M 2005 is only wrong insofar as it attempts to take a probably real but minor effect and transform it into something that undermines the validity of the surface trend and measured greenhouse warming. That’s a bridge too far.”
Thank you for walking back your initial accusation, but the reduced accusation is still unfounded.
P&M 2005 presents an additional potential uncertainty to be considered when determining surface temperature trends. It attempts to quantify the effect (Fig 3/Table 1).
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-302.pdf
The paper does raise the question, in a single sentence of the concluding paragraph, of what is the definition of a surface temperature trend (I take it that this is the sentence you’re objecting to) : “More broadly,
the issue of the influence of winds on the vertical temperature stratification with respect to the temperature trends raises the issue as what is actually meant by the term “˜surface temperature trend.'”
I think this should have been expanded upon, and better expressed (the issue is our physical interpretation of the measurements and their statistical trends, not the measurements and trends themselves), but it doesn’t invalidate the paper.
Steve Bloom: “To repeat, we’re not likely to see an explicit refutation of P&M 2005 unless RP Sr. succeeds in escalating things in the literature.”
An alternative explanation is that the paper is sound within the current framework of our understanding, and so will not be refuted within that framework.
Steve Bloom: “People trying to keep RP Sr. afloat should take a lesson from l’affaire G&T.”
I’m not trying to keep it afloat – I just objected to your unfounded accusation against it. Why not come up with real points, instead of fake ones?
Oops, sorry for the editing snafu – second version is correct.
The point is that there’s nothing especially interesting or significant about the paper other than the criticism of the surface record and greenhouse warming, which note RP Sr. continues to defend. For him, they’re the point of the whole exercise.
BTW, the paper isn’t very good even within the more limited context since its model becomes unphysical at low wind speeds. Sloppy, don’t you think?
You may wish to believe that a paper that’s been trashed in a review paper (the proper sort, not the G&T kind) might still turn out to be right, but it’s not the way to bet.
Also, I start to suspect you may not have been reading all the linked material, e.g. the first post here which gives a sense of how RP Sr. likes to construct a scientific edifice on foundations of sand (P&M 2005 being the bottom-most bit of sand in this case).
@Bloom, if that paragraph in Parker counts as “trashing” in your book, then you ain’t been much in academia. That is a paragraph that you write when you don’t in fact have any trash to talk.
You have been unable to support you assertions by simply writing in a few sentences what is wrong with the analysis. Rather you blow smoke and hand wave. Then you walk back your original assertion.
It is exactly this sort of uninformed overstatement that gives you guys such a bad reputation on blogs. the P&M paper does not invalidate your views, it just adds some much needed nuance, but yet you can’t have that can you?
Some reputable climate scientists openly urge the embrace of dogma to counteract the problem of AGW.
This debate is not about science. It is about the rush to embrace religious dogma and safeguard intense personal ‘interest’.
My future is finished. The frenzied desperation to rush in and embrace certainty because it must be so sickens me to death.
I have always hated dogma. Subjective experience is manipulated in a very contrived self-serving manner.
The widespread manipulation of the appearance of credibility needs to be brought to an end.
So be it.
Shub
“an oncologist is *not* the person qualified to tell whether someone has cancer or not.”
That’s weird, my mother was diagnosed by an oncologist for her cancer, and he recommended and oversaw treatment.
Oncologist: A physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer
(medterms.com)
The branch of medicine that deals with tumors, including study of their development, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention.
(answers.com)
A medical doctor that specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Some oncologists treat patients with all forms of cancer, and others specialize in only one type of cancer.
(lungcancerabout.com)
An oncologist is a physician who is expert in diagnosing and treating diseases related to tumors or lumps. An oncologist deals with the cause, prevention diagnosis, biology and treatment of cancerous diseases.
(theoncologist.info)
Oncology
““noun
1.
the branch of Mediacl science dealing with tumors, including the origin, development, diagnosis, and treatment of malignant neoplasms.
2.
the study of cancer.
(dictionary.reference.com)
I could find no alternative definition anywhere. Perhaps you can straighten me out with a decent reference. You can have the last word on this odd diversion.
Nice try, PT. Better luck next time.
#214 – barry
Does not change the fact that climate scientists are not qualified to recommend treatments for the problems they identify because they have no training in the need to balance the potential harms of a treatment against the harms caused by the putative disease.
Did you read the Richard Tol links I provided above. You may not agree with him but it is pretty clear that economists are not united on the costs of mitigation vs. adaptation. This makes it very hard to justify mitigation policies when there is an extremely high probability that they will fail like the Kyoto protocol.
Barry,
I don’t want any last word. I do not wish to disturb any notions you might have in this matter as well.
Sincerely
Shub
Judith Curry (FYI – not a request this time)
Checking Anthony’s emailed reply, it’s not quite accurate.
“NOAA/NCDC erred badly in both PR and scientifically by using data at 43% of the network surveyed, which was so poorly spatially representative that it didn’t show the siting
signal.”
NOAA/NCDC did the analysis at 70% of the network surveyed, which yielded (by coincidence) 70 ‘good’ stations for the analysis. 43% was the spatial coverage, not the percentage of surveyed stations.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/about/response-v2.pdf
Perhaps it’s simply a case of lazy semantics in Anthony’s email.
I did some further investigation on the demise of the open analysis of surfacestations data at Climate Audit begun late 2007. I think Watts’ reason for restricting access was partly because preliminary results defied his ongoing claims. Here is a conversation from December last year with John Vliet, who did much of the work at CA late 2007.
John Vliet: “I second that motion. When is Anthony going to un-hide his station data and actually do some analysis with it? I did some work with it before he hid the data. NOAA did some work before he hid the data.
What’s up with the mysterious quality control Anthony?
REPLY2: People have been telling me that the work doesn’t matter unless it’s published in a peer reviewed journal. So that’s what I’m doing. As primary investigator and lead author that’s my right and that how it will be done like other papers. The data will be published in the SI and here too. Don’t like that wait? Sorry. People like JohnV want it early so they can draw their own conclusions before I get it published, and Mr. V has a track record of doing so. He did an early analysis with limited stations and poor spatial representation which was rushed to completion weeks after I started the surfacestations project. After publication, beat it up and much as you want using the data I provide. ““ Anthony”
(post 170 this thread – http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/09/picking-out-the-uhi-in-global-temperature-records-so-easy-a-6th-grader-can-do-it/)
That conversation continues at post 177
John Vliet: “Anthony (in response to your REPLY2 above):
Keep in mind that when I first looked at trends derived from your best stations in comments at Climate Audit (back in September 2007), you said:
“Hello John V.
Thanks so much for doing this analysis, your detailed effort is appreciated.
I had planned on doing something similar, and I know Steve McIntyre is also working on something along these lines.”¦”
You encouraged my work for a while, but then changed your mind at some point.
REPLY: Yes, when I learned the sample at 25-30% was still inadequate, even though others insisted it was and that your analysis was being held up by alarmists as proof of falsification. BTW you’ve never lifted a finger to have other people remove the claim, who took that early rushed work of yours based on that inadequate sample and used as a basis for falsification of the surfacestations project, before it was even completed… Anthony”
It seems to me that Anthony encouraged open analysis of his ongoing project – until the preliminary results ran counter to his ongoing (and little tested) claims of warm bias in the US surface record, and ‘alarmists’ made use of this analysis. His characterisations of John Vliet’s contribution are grossly off the mark. Vliet at Climate Audit consistently advised that his results were preliminary and needed more work, and frequently acknowledged that the data was limited. He made all his work open and specifically invited people to test it. He even created a short-lived blog space (opentemp.org) where people could play with the data and his codes.
Anthony could have worked up a paper while others played with his data. He didn’t need to restrict it to publish. Controlling the message, rather than abiding by the process, seems to have been a factor in his decision to shut down access to his data.
I loof forward to his upcoming paper. Hopefully he will present a robust analysis to finally support his long-held and oft-published opinion that the official US climate records – and the people who produce them – are biased towards warming. However, this will do little to diminish the fact that he has made conclusions and maligned GISS and NOAA before doing the necessary analysis. It appears he will not make any amends for this perversion of normal process. Judith, if you mean to get mainstreamers to engage with Anthony Watts, you face a difficult task. I’d say success is dependent on getting the skeptics to retract some slander and vow to proceed with respect to persons and process. That’s not to say mainstreamers are innocent of snark, but the skeptical milieu have been smearing climate scientists for longer and louder and far more bluntly. They have much work to do to win back trust, assuming standards apply both ways.
Raven,
“Did you read the Richard Tol links I provided above. You may not agree with him but it is pretty clear that economists are not united on the costs of mitigation vs. adaptation. This makes it very hard to justify mitigation policies when there is an extremely high probability that they will fail like the Kyoto protocol.”
I’ve read Tol’s recent paper. It’s a good one, gathering together a good sample of the literature and pointing out uncertainties on knowns and avenues to unknowns. Here’s an online version of the full document.
http://www3.amherst.edu/~jwreyes/econ77reading/Tol.pdf
He makes the point that I do – that climate change could be worse than mid-range scenarios and that risk-management policies must take that into account.
Pertinent to our discussion he says:
“However, more recent studies also tend to assume that agents have perfect foresight about climate change, and have the
flexibility and appropriate incentives to respond. Given that forecasts are imperfect, agents are constrained in many ways, and markets are often distorted””particularly in the areas that matter most for the effects of climate change such as water, food, energy, and health””recent studies of the economic effects of climate change may be too optimistic about the possibilities of adaptation and thus tend to underestimate
the economic effects of climate change.”
In his conclusions:
“The best available knowledge””which is not very good””is given in Table 2. A government that uses the same 3 percent discount rate for climate change as for other decisions should levy a carbon tax of $25 per metric ton of carbon (modal
value) to $50/tC (mean value). A higher tax can be justified by an appeal to the high level of risk, especially of very negative outcomes, not captured in the standard estimates (Weitzman, forthcoming). The price of carbon dioxide emission permits
in the European Union was $78/tC in January 2009. The United States has no federal policy specifically to reduce carbon emissions, although many utilities apparently factor in the likelihood of a carbon tax of $15/tC in their investment
decisions (Richels, personal communication). This pattern suggests that the European Union may be placing too high a price on carbon emissions, while the United States is placing too low a price on such emissions. Outside the high-income
countries of the world, essentially no climate policy exists”” although these countries are most vulnerable to climate change, and some of them like China and India are major emitters of carbon. Many of these countries subsidize fossil fuel use, rather than taxing it.”
His final comment in the conclusion:
“There is a strong case for near-term action on climate change, although prudence may dictate phasing in a higher cost of carbon over time, both to ease the transition and to give analysts the ongoing ability to evaluate costs, benefits, and
policy mechanisms.”
How is this different to what I’m saying?
#218 – barry
I don’t think you really understand what the paper is saying.
The paper is attempting to calculate the social cost of CO2. He came up with a wide range but settles on $50/tC which works out to about $0.12/gallon of gas. You can double or triple that and you still get a social cost which is trivial.
IOW – he agrees with the likely cost of climate change is small and that we can afford to wait (hence the word “prudence”).
I take his argument further by looking at the technical and political problems that make it very likely that mitigation policy will fail. This makes mitigation an extremely bad bet.
The only policy that makes any sense to me is a modest carbon tax and use the proceeds to fund R&D but not private capital costs or energy generation. I would also streamline the regulatory process. Japan can build a nuclear plant in 4 years from concept to generation. The US should be able to do the same. In fact, if the US can’t fix the nuclear regulatory process then that is pretty compelling evidence that any grander schemes are pointless.
I also note that, despite Tol indicating exaggeration in the IPCC review of economics, he replies in comments at the link you gave:
“-15-Bill
Agreed. The case for climate policy is as strong now as it was in October.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/03/summary-of-richard-tols-look-at-ipcc.html (comment 18)
I also just remembered he quoted a climate change bill of 1 trillion dollars up to 2100 (with mitigation expenditure of 46 trillion). And lo, I found a web page criticising him for it.
“The bill for hurricane Katrina was nearly $100 billion. So we can blow almost 10 per cent of our impacts budget for the whole century in one storm. And Munich Re reported global weather-related insurance losses in 2008 at $200 billion, up from $82 billion the previous year.”
http://www.desmogblog.com/lomborg-argument-today-proof-tomorrow
I may have to revise my opinion of his skill.
“The only policy that makes any sense to me is a modest carbon tax and use the proceeds to fund R&D but not private capital costs or energy generation.”
Then we agree generally but not on specifics. I also favour a carbon tax, but probably higher than you would prefer.
#220 – barry
The devil is in the details because you also said you wanted to see carbon caps and international treaties – policies which I absolutely oppose because of the potential for corruption and serious damage to the economy.
I never said what I wanted til my last post.
All treaties, caps, regulations – any wide-ranging government or intergovernmental policy provides opportunities for corruption. So do non-governmental policies. Corporations are hardly immune from corruption. Neither are individuals. Why single out climate change policies?
Raven, is your resistance on climate change policy based on a general dis-ease with government oversight?
Many researchers rush in to hide behind the dogma of ‘forbidden discussion with the religious zeal of knowing spiritual ‘certainty’.
Other researchers join the team for the sake of fiscal backing and group support.
You expect to stand up to these groups and prevail Dr. Curry?
They have no interest in the science. They are fully committed to their adopted group of interest and support. Others believe they know for certain and can do no wrong. The end justifies the means.
They have become fanatics.
#224 – barry
I am a pragmatist. If money is to be invested I want to see it invested in things that have a chance of accomplishing the stated goals. I am also not naive. I expect people to abuse systems unless the systems are designed to be self-policing.
Carbon permit trading is not self-policing because it creates an market in an imaginary commodity that has no value outside of government regulation. The fact that the imaginary commodity has no value means that the seller, the buyer and the regulator have the incentive to cheat and create counterfeit credits. This is not the case with any real commodity (i.e. a buyer of gold will not accept fakes – a buyer of carbon permits will accept permits that represent no real reduction in CO2 as long as they are “UN approved” and the regulator has an incentive to approve fake credits because it allows them to grant favours).
IOW, carbon permit trading in any form will not accomplish the stated goals and will simply take money away from the average citizen to line the pockets of market players.
Also, there are no comparisons to be made to SO2 trading system because that system was based on real reductions in SO2 output. There were no credits offered because of hypothetical emission reductions when compared to an imaginary baseline scenario.
Barry, Raven is a) an unusually pig-headed version of the sort of libertarian whose ultimate good is what he sees as the personal benefit to him, and as a consequence b) frustrating and ultimately uninteresting to debate (unless you’re a sociologist doing field work on libertarians).
Steve Bloom: “You may wish to believe that a paper that’s been trashed in a review paper (the proper sort, not the G&T kind) might still turn out to be right, but it’s not the way to bet. ”
The review paper didn’t challenge the findings of the paper, but attempted to argue that because the effects and therefore uncertainties described by P&M2005 are local, they didn’t apply to the analysis at hand.
Steve Bloom, you’ve mischaracterised Raven’s attitude – like any sane person, she or he doesn’t want resources misallocated.
Your description of Raven as “frustrating and ultimately uninteresting to debate” applies to you rather than Raven, at least in my opinion.
BTW P&M2005 isn’t the only paper studying additional uncertainties that need to considered when using a set of surface temperature measurements as proxy for other variables (such as interpolation of temperatures for areas with no measurements, or estimations of the thermodynamic state of the climate system).
Raven, Lewis and oneuniv have made excellent contributions to this thread
Mr Bloom, only those who firmly believe in anthropogenic warming also seem to that believe libertarians are ‘pigs’.
#221 – barry
The desmog comment on Katrina is a perfect example of how alarmists use bogus arguments to exagerrate the cost of climate change.
In this case the faulty logic rests in the claim that the entire $100 billion for Katrina is due to climate change. Hurricaines happen with or without climate change so the cost of damage related to hurricanes is the DIFFERENCE in damages between the BAU scenario and the emission reduction scenario.
In the case of hurricanes the DIFFERENCE is close to zero because global warming might slightly increase the intensity of hurricanes but that will be offset by reduction in frequency cause by the same warming.
What you need to do revise your opinion of desmog blog.
DC’s analysis of the Wegman report is a crock. Its no wonder why Judith hadn’t heard about it. Its an esoteric piece that hasn’t circulated far outside of the true believers. Its 6 months old and only has 60 something comments.
His piece is a self fulfilling hit piece. Wegman says some basic things about proxy analysis and DC attributes them to Bradley who wrote something similar.
Now I’ve never read the source that DC was citing from Bradly but I had read those same points numerous times. Ive read them on real climate, I’ve read them on Climate Audit. I’ve read them all over. They are part of the general knowledge on dendroclimatology and cannot be attributed to any one author. I could have as easily made the same hit piece and attributed it all to McIntyre because he has made the exact same points.
Shub Niggurath wrote:
“Raven, Lewis and oneuniv have made excellent contributions to this thread Mr Bloom, only those who firmly believe in anthropogenic warming also seem to that believe libertarians are “˜pigs’.”
I can disprove that claim easily.
Judith Curry firmly believes in AGW — i.e., that recent global warming is real, and driven significantly by human activity. Yet there is no evidence she believes libertarians are ‘pigs’ — quite the contrary. She is striving to build bridges to them.
But not using “strikingly similar” phrasing as the legal term of art has it, Tom. Plus the problems go way beyond just the Bradley material.
Judy herself has libertarian leanings, although not of the culty variety.
Shub is apparently not a native English speaker. “Pig-headed” means stubborn.
Steve, it was a rhetorical swipe. You couldn’t resist using the word pig as a part of your rhetoric, which is a Freudian slip 🙂
I find it funny that communists and libertarians use each others’ labels as abuse terms.
I hope you are tracking what I am saying, instead of practicing reverse-psychology.
Dear Tom,
If Deep Climate’s analysis of the Wegman report is a crock, why do the lights start flashing and the words plagiarism appear on the screen when you plug it into various student plagiarism detecting programs? Extensive parts of the report can be traced back to books and articles published substantially before the Wegman report was published.
And, oh yes, you read those words before mostly AFTER the Wegman report was published when it was extensively quoted on sites like Climate Audit.
For heaven’s sake, can we all agree on the following:
A. Yes, plagiarism is serious.
B. Plagiarism does not disprove the contents of a writing.
Even if Wegman committed the serious offense of plagiarism, and I will neither dispute nor confirm that, the facts that he wrote (or “borrowed”) still may be perfectly true.
In contrast, many of the climategate emails show behaviors which actually do cast doubt on climate science, because they show both an agenda and a willingness to bend the rules to keep out opposing views.
TA says: “In contrast, many of the climategate emails show behaviors which actually do cast doubt on climate science, because they show both an agenda and a willingness to bend the rules to keep out opposing views.”
Bend the rules? Nah, sorry. Read on from…
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/2010/04/23/an-inconvenient-provocateur/#comment-4311
TA, the mystery is why Wegman, Said and Scott wandered off into the weeds where they are clueless. If they had presented a three or five page analysis of the statistical methods it would have been one thing (although they should have looked at the difference between what Mann Bradley and Hughes ended up with and what their report would get from the same proxies, basically what the NRC report did).
Instead we have endless nonsense on social networks, dendrology, etc. where their capabilities were zilch and they plagiarized.
Eli is looking for a good explanation other than they shopped the writing out to Steve Mosher and Anthony Watts.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/06/climate-science-open-letter is interesting. Curry’s name is not on it. It would be interesting to know if this is because she disagrees with it, and if so, in what way.
Mr Connolley,
Can you please tell me why Gordon Bell agrees with it? That would be interesting too.
If WUWT is such a great “science” blog, I wonder what Dr. Curry would have to say about this post at WUWT. My favorite quote from this one is:
“It is just as hot during their very long (1400 hours) nights, so the 485C temperatures can not be due to solar heating and a resultant greenhouse effect. The days on Venus are dim and the nights are pitch black.”
Hmm….
Wm. Connolley writes: “Curry’s name is not on it.” Is she a member of the NAS?
Deech56 asks: “Is she a member of the NAS?”
I searched the membership directory at the NAS website and couldn’t find Dr Curry’s name. This is from her CV:
http://curry.eas.gatech.edu/currycv.html
NAS/NRC
re: #243
I am curious, Shub: why pick Gordon Bell out of that list?
Keith,
Would you be willing to ask Dr. Curry to comment on her suggestion that “pro-AGW” (my words) proponents spend more time on “anti-AGW” blogs after the recent two Venus posts on WUWT by Goddard?
It would be interesting if she had some suggestions on how to respond to Goddard and the numerous commenters who think they have overturned science.
Keith,
Would you be willing to ask Dr. Curry to comment on her suggestion that “pro-AGW” (my words) proponents spend more time on “anti-AGW” blogs after the recent two Venus posts on WUWT by Goddard?
It would be interesting if she had some suggestions on how to respond to Goddard and the numerous commenters who think they have overturned science.
[…] such as Joe Romm felt like she was no longer the Judith Curry he thought he knew. (A third and final Q & A, trying to make sense of all the criticism of her prompted by the first two interviews, shortly […]