The Wiggy & Witty Wegman Thread
Well, that was interesting. Here are some nuggets from the discussion.
On the inconsistent standards of climate skeptics:
The symmetry of this issue is intriguing to me.
With regard to Mann we’re told all that matters is that there’s a flaw. It doesn’t matter whether correcting it changes the conclusion, it doesn’t matter whether the same conclusion was reached by other researchers. The hockey stick is flawed. Flawed flawed flawed.
With the “Climategate” emails we’re told all that matters is the intent revealed by what the scientists discussed. They said mean things and acted like they didn’t trust sceptics. They’re bad men. Bad bad bad.
Then we have the Wegman report which has now been shown to be a product of plagiarism on such a remarkable scale which is defended in such a bizarre manner it’s basically impossible to retain a belief in one of the ethics or competence of the authors. The response? Oh none of that matters, hey look over there did you see this is the result of some pesky anonymous blogger? Hey look over there they’re doing this because they can’t attack the conclusions. Oh they are attacking the conclusions too? Oh hey look over there, see it’s a report for Congress why would you apply those crazy rules of “ethics” or “correctness” all that matters is the “truth” and I know it’s the truth because it agrees with me.
Some blog love from a dear fan, who writes that
your post clearly betrays your bloodthirsty side: rile up the factions, soak up the responses and watch from the sidelines. One hopes your ratfucking Stalinist Football Club buddies don’t hang you out to dry one day. They already did it a bit, if I am not mistaken, when one of them called you an “˜inactivist’, didn’t they?
Just to clarify: I am a life-long, diehard NY Giants fan, and yes, I am often hung out to dry for my blog sins.
Mosher on why it’s all such jolly good fun:
Since I sit in the middle I’m more than happy to toss people from both sides under the bus. Its good sport. has nothing to do with the science.
On why perhaps all this Wegman stuff really matters to skeptics:
But the more technical criticisms of the Wegman report lead to interesting and unresolved technical criticisms of M&M2005, which might be felt to be dangerous for a number of positions and deeply held beliefs.
Some more observations on those oddly inconsistent standards of climate skeptics:
Skeptics and “˜lukewarmers’: Interested in whether Michael Mann forwarded an email, in whether Phil Jones deleted emails, in whether journal guidelines were followed, in whether Michael Mann trims his toe nails.
But not interested in plagiarism. Just the facts ma’am. If it doesn’t change published scientific conclusions, we’re not interested.
Keith, this is selective editing to reinforce a conclusion you had reached prior to writing your previous Wegman post. Which is fine–this is your weblog, after all.
But it doesn’t contribute much overall to the state of understanding climate science, skepticism, or the people involved in the close-knit climate blogosphere.
Tom,
Most of my climate-related posts are found wanting by C-A-S readers–be they in the climate skeptic or AGW camps.
98 percent of the people who read this blog for the climate stuff have made up their minds. I have no illusions about this, so it’s unlikely anything I say or write will contribute much to the overall understanding of climate science.
Yes, KK
The game that is played has a standard script: it is a game called ‘retractions’.
A ‘retraction’ is when an article, an opinion piece, a paper in a journal is pulled back. The reasons are usually multifarious: threat of a libel suit, complaints by activists, excessive pestering by obnoxious individuals (I’m sure you are familiar with that), pressure from above etc. But the implication derived, remains uniformly the same: ‘climate science is vindicated’. This has happened many times, and will continue to happen, because, it is the outcome of a certain peculiar way of thinking.
If the whole Wegman retraction is for the overall improvement of the quality of climate science, why not? By all means, go ahead. The facts have to be established by impartial inquiry.
Keith, I actually think it’s closer to 99%, but even so this looks more like a party mix on your iPod than a representative sample of what was said…
Keith Kloor, the first quote you provide is misleading. It is probably true some skeptics behave as described there, but many (I’d wager most) skeptics don’t.
Keith,
If this is how you summarized the discussion to yourself you just wasted your time. I expected better from you because you usually do much better. But if you choose to cherry pick more nonsensical comments, mix it with your own impressions and present is a (presumably) fair summary then … oh well. It’s your sandbox but this game is not interesting.
Sashka (6),
I found the thread equally amusing and revealing. Go back to the original post and see where I’m coming from on this. The comments from skeptics merely reinforced my take.
I call it the way I see it.
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m not.
Either way, like I said to Tom, I know that a good many readers of this site are going find fault with me on virtually every single post I write on climate change.
it is what it is.
Nice excuse to be wrong. ; )
Of course you call it the way you see it. And this way is most revealing.
As a frequent reader here I believe I am entitled to observe that you actually don’t get much if any flack from anybody who is not on either extreme of the issue. So, it’s not just what it is. You get what what you deserve.
Huh?
“But not interested in plagiarism. Just the facts ma’am. If it doesn’t change published scientific conclusions, we’re not interested.”
It’s pretty simple. After reading the climategate mails and the papers in question, it was a rather simple conclusion. Nothing in the science changes.
My recommendation: the scientists should frankly admit their administrative failings. CRU should employ a document control specialist. the IPCC should use the errata mechanism to address chapter 6 issues with Briffa’s chart.
With Wegman. I saw two forms of irregularity in the papers. Both needed to be addressed. My recommendation was that he withdraw the papers, fix the problems and own his mistake.
The climategate issue stays ALIVE because people still defend hiding the decline. They still defend CRU handling of FOIA.
The wegman issue will stay alive as long as stupid people still try to argue that there was nothing wrong with his teams mis use of other people’s material.
it’s not that I’m not interested in the wegman case. Its rather this. It doesnt take a lot of effort to see the wrong doing. It’s certainly not as fascinating as a 1000 mails.
It’s certainly not as fascinating as a 1000 mails.
1000 of Wegman/McIntyre/Watts/Michaels/etc climate-related emails might be fascinating – certainly more than the innocuous variety that were stolen from CRU, propagated, and spun by political hacks, of which the “worst” means nothing like what they claim it means.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Mikes-Nature-trick-hide-the-decline-advanced.htm
NYJ.
Try not to hijack the discussion by linking to an article that has been fully demolished.
FWIW the worst mails were not the mails talking about the WMO brouchure.
The worst mails were those the ICO used to determine that CRU had violated Holland’s FOIA rights. the only actionable wrong doing in all of the mails was in the FOIA case. This is WHY when I wrote to andrew revkin (nov 19th) I told him to follow the FOIA. Everything else is important ONLY to establish the context of those actions.
It all basically comes down to one chart in one unimportant chapter of AR4.
Its a fascinating story. Waay more fascinating than the wegman story.
Try not to hijack the discussion by linking to an article that has been fully demolished.
If you insist on repeating fully demolished claims, I’ll keep reminding you.
The Wegman scandal also goes well beyond basic plagiarism, and extends to your beloved McIntyre.
http://deepclimate.org/2010/11/16/replication-and-due-diligence-wegman-style/
NYJ.
the article you link to doesnt even discuss or come close to discussing the issues I raised in in my book about ch06. it basically rehashes everything I already wrote in the book. Including all the references to the divergence in prior literature. That was not the issue I raised. So, pointing me to an article that debunks arguments I ALREADY debunked back when I wrote the book, it quite stupid of you.
Wegman and McIntyre. I’m sorry but I don’t have anything vested in the correctness of mm2005. WRT short centered PCA, I’d rely on the inventor of the method. He was similarly unimpressed with Mann. But I’d go further and say that any method that screens for corellation will underestimate the variance. You can prove that for yourself with synthetic data. So, i’m happy to throw MM2005 in the trash can. it has nothing to do with my views. get it. You think Im obligated to defend papers and people that have nothing to do with my views. I’m not. They are a nullity to me.
So, have we now concluded there was no medieval warm period and no little ice age and todays temperatures are unprecedented and rising alarmingly exponentially.
or not.
kdk33. Huh, I think it’s pretty clear that its warmer now than in 1850. And I think we can find a good explanation for a majority of that warming in the added GHGs we see in the atmosphere as a result of human activity. Prior to the instrumented period I think our knowledge is far less certain. Thankfully, we dont need to know anything about that period with the same certainty. If no time existed prior to 1850, I would still believe that ghgs cause warming. That belief is grounded in physics, not paleoclimatology. As for the future, our best estimate of future warming is provided by imperfect models. That understanding should make us pause and consider the wisdom of changing the radiative properties of the atmosphere.
CS Lewis wrote a book called mere christianity. I guess you could say Im interested in what constitutes mere AGW. Those central beliefs that really cannot be questioned in an informed debate.
Unless I’ve misread, keith, you attribute a quote to Mosher that was made by Lazar? ‘But the more technical criticisms of the Wegman report lead to interesting and unresolved technical criticisms of M&M2005, which might be felt to be dangerous for a number of positions and deeply held beliefs.’
Definitely not Mosher’s writing style!
Where “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, all things are possible and Not. When we think with our nose and talk with our finger tips is anything sacred?
@16 Mosher,
I think most peole, even most skeptics, agree that GHG will in some sense warm the planet, and are likely respnsible for a portion of recent (say 20th century) warming. Most, if not all, think the imperfect models don’t make the kinds of predictions on which we ought base policy.
I think the real disagreement is over a) what are the consequences; so what if it warms a bit, cheap energy is a very good thing and b) what should we do, what can we do, about it.
The power of the HS was that is said: lookit guys, temps have been virtually stable for millenia and now, suddenly, they are skyrocketing out of control. It was powerful – both emotionally (it looked scary), and scientifically. It spoke powerfully to ‘a’ above and motivated folks to find a way, some way, any way, to tackle ‘b’.
Throw in a MWP and a LIA and the matter becomes much more ho hum. GHG warm us a bit, but it’s warmed (and cooled) before, so attribution gets murkier; plus, it’s been warm before and we all survived… Take a way the HS and lots of people fall into the wait and see camp – and for good reason.
BTW this – “our best estimate of future warming is provided by imperfect models. That understanding should make us pause and consider the wisdom of changing the radiative properties of the atmosphere” = confuses me. The less perfect the models, the less inclined I am to act on their predictions. Do you see it differently?
What I wrote about Michael Mann trimming his toe nails was of course a joke, but…
Bishop Hill would like you to know that Michael Mann writes doggerel by failing to address an editor as Sir, when responding to a newspaper article libelling him and his colleagues.
It is not yet known if this effects any of Michael Mann’s published results.
I subsequently found that all articles in the Payson Roundup including Michael Mann’s begin with “Editor:”.
I still think there should be further investigation, and this will require access to all emails ever.
Just in case there are important implications for Michael Mann’s published work.
Keith,
I suspect the reason skeptics are unwilling to throw Wegman under the bus is that it’s obvious that the plagiarism wasn’t his idea and is not something he would have done himself. And as far as the science is concerned, if there are also actual errors, news about them has been drowned in the noise about plagiarism.
I see this as a concerted campaign by an anonymous hysteric to see Wegman take the fall for something a university student did. In fact, it’s one of the nastiest ad hominem style arguments I’ve seen in this debate I think.
It has practically nothing in common with skeptic arguments over the work of Mann. While Mann & his colleagues have certainly sometimes acted unethically, the controversy has always been about the science, about the divergence problem, about statistical issues, and whether or not there is really any good reason to accept the IPCC’s rubbing out of the Medieval Warm Period.
Sure, there have been plenty of ad homs going back & forth all the time, but rarely has there been a campaign like this that begins and ends with character assassination:
‘Because this guy presided over a plagiarised report, you can’t possibly trust his expert opinion as a statistician anymore’.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a (serious) skeptic make that sort of argument. No one’s saying you can’t trust Phil Jones’ or Michael Mann’s scientific opinions simply because they’re not nice people.
So while I am not a general supporter of Anthony Watts, I have to fully support his stance on this particular issue.
Best regards, Alex
<blockquote> In fact, it’s one of the nastiest ad hominem style arguments I’ve seen in this debate I think.
…
but rarely has there been a campaign like this that begins and ends with character assassination.</blockquote>
It is the Committee to Resuscitate the Hockey-Stick (CREEH). Dirty tricks are part of the game. Dirty tricks are the game.
It seems some are not.. too familiar with papers..
The last two commenters seems perfectly happy with Wegman (or Said, or both) getting someone else to write their papers, then not credit them – and not checking the work.
Sceptic? Not a chance.
What I noticed about this discussion was that absolutely no one changed their beliefs on e iota. KK’s remarks above are exactly the same as he made at the beginning of the discussion
The participants in the discussion were talking (yelling) but not listening. They were only looking for confirmation of their beliefs and were deaf to everything else.
Some people (me) say that climate science is useless. This is one major reason why.
kdk33.
I’m encourage by your acceptance of the core principles of AGW. On my view you believe in AGW And you ought to say so. Basically, I refuse to let other people dictate what belief in the science means. On my view if you believe that GHGs warm the planet, then you believe in the core science and should say so. You can still hold that the warming might be less than the IPCC holds or at the lower end of their estimates. I think if more people took this stance inside the science the debate would change.
Now
BTW this – “our best estimate of future warming is provided by imperfect models. That understanding should make us pause and consider the wisdom of changing the radiative properties of the atmosphere” = confuses me. The less perfect the models, the less inclined I am to act on their predictions. Do you see it differently?
Yes. I see it differently. But read my words carefully. Pause and consider.
Further, as it stands we have models that predict a .2C increase in temperatures per decade. That is our best estimate. I am not going to plan for ZERO increase when the best estimate says .2C. Even if that estimate may be off by half. We know from the core science that GHGs will warm the planet. Our best estimate should be our guide until we have better estimates. The uncertainty in that estimate effects the kind of actions I will take. That is, i want to focus on actions that are reversible if my estimate is way off and on actions which are no regret options:
1. Nuclear
2. stop subsidy to industries that destroy the environment
3. stop subsidizing people to live in places prone to climate related disasters.
4. Invest in decarbonization.
@26
” You can still hold that the warming might be less than the IPCC holds or at the lower end of their estimates.”
Really? On what basis? I continue to find the lukewarmer position among non climate experts ridiculous. the only intellectually honest positions for people that lack sufficient expertise agnosticim or acceptance of the consensus. Otherwise you’re in tinfoil hat territory.
” Our best estimate should be our guide until we have better estimates.”
Weitzmann makes a compelling argument that it is our attitudes about risk and worst case scenarios that should be our guide, not central estimates of sensitivity. Why else do people buy fire insurance?
#1
The first one of your no regret options should be efficiency (vehicles, buildings), not nuclear. Some would say that nuclear power is like herpes. Once you’ve got it you’re stuck with it…hardly a no regrets option 🙂
#2
No more heavy industry then or just big oil?
#3.
I’ve heard Ken Green from AEI talk along those lines. Catnip for libertarians. Good luck getting those FEMA reforms through the Senate.
#4
Such as….?
marlow Johnson writes
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#1The first one of your no regret options should be efficiency (vehicles, buildings), not nuclear. Some would say that nuclear power is like herpes. Once you’ve got it you’re stuck with it”¦hardly a no regrets option
==============
So we reshape our cities to improve transportation efficiency. We eschew low density housing as wasteful and move everyone into high density neightbourhoods. We then have the possibility of Jane Jacobs type developments with many social issues. And once we got it, we are stuck with it – hardly a no regrets option
Grand plans were what Jane Jacobs saw as destroying cities.
@28
Don’t be an idiot. You buy a v4 instead of a v6. Your loss? about 2 seconds on 0-60 and $400 in fuel savings.
Well, Oystein, let us strike a deal. You accept that there was just the hint of duplicitiousness in the creation and the pushing the hockey stick as it was, and sticking to the same basic tricks right upto the Mann 08 paper, that there was just the wee bit of trickery involved in splicing temperature data to tree-rings, in hiding the decline, in hiding the incline, and that there was just a wee bit of skittish possessiveness toward research data, that there is a little bit of copying going on by Bradley when he wrote his textbook and ‘we sceptics’, will in return, will admit that Wegman’s colleagues committed the earth-shattering fraud that you say they did.
The more simpler point is, none here have been ready to concede that, although they defended passionately their favorite scientists, there might have been some wrong things done by them. Not conceding an inch is your game. It is the warmist game, to begin with. If you want to take the sceptics stick and beat them with it, beat yourselves with it first.
Thanks for informing us what the only intellectually honest opinions are available to us lukwarmer types. Whew! For a minute there I thought I would actually have to form my own view on the issue.
re 29
Marlowe Johnson writes:
===============
@28Don’t be an idiot. You buy a v4 instead of a v6. Your loss? about 2 seconds on 0-60 and $400 in fuel savings.
===========
NO), you pass zoning laws in new neighbourhoods restricting parking. You pass by laws that enable intensification. You build condo towers in existing neghbourhoods. You create bike lanes and use traffic calming and tolls to make commuting more efficient by duscouraging passenger car use. All in all you make cities more efficient and use GHG and oil independence reductions as a way to sell the idea.
Urban planners told us that the “Cities in teh Sky” vion would work. They were wrong and people suffered. Now they say that dense mixed use neghbourhoods are the way to go. They assure use quite emphatically that they are right this time. However as the”Cities in the Sky” experiment showed, even peer reviewed experts can be wrong and once you’ve got it you’re stuck with it”¦hardly a no regrets option
Sorry about teh typos –
re 29
Marlowe Johnson writes:
===============
@28Don’t be an idiot. You buy a v4 instead of a v6. Your loss? about 2 seconds on 0-60 and $400 in fuel savings.
===========
NO), you pass zoning laws in new neighbourhoods restricting parking. You pass by laws that enable intensification. You build condo towers in existing neghbourhoods. You create bike lanes and use traffic calming and tolls to make commuting more efficient by duscouraging passenger car use. All in all you make cities more efficient and use GHG and oil independence reductions as a way to sell the idea.
Urban planners told us that the “Cities in the Sky” vision would work. They were wrong and people suffered. Now they say that dense mixed use neghbourhoods are the way to go. They assure use quite emphatically that they are right this time. However as the”Cities in the Sky” experiment showed, even peer reviewed experts can be wrong and once you’ve got it you’re stuck with it”¦hardly a no regrets option
@ Tom Gray
Your paranoid fantasies about urban planners are amusing.
Tom,
I happen to know a little about urban planning (can you guess what my favorite urbanist book is–it’s a classic and remember I live in NYC). I’m not clear on what you’re saying.
Wrong Tom here (and where’s Matt Yglesias in this conversation?), but if I understand Tom Gray correctly, he is quite correctly saying that the evil men do, or the mistakes urban planners make, live long after they do.
(And they named him after a man of the cloth–called him Robert Moses…)
@ Mosher,
I’m not willing to act on our best guess until I’m convinced that guess is good enough to matter – So, i guess we disagree there. Further, I’m more interested in consequences than change in temperature. .2C per decade is 2 per century. Is 2 degrees really dangerous? And planning out beyond a century seems to me pointless.
@ Marlowe,
I’ve asked before if you would be willing to describe in some detail exactly what qualifications are required before one can hold an opinion and who has to wear a tin foil hat. Perhpas this time you will take me up on that.
New urbanists are promoting their vision of dense transit oriented communities, in part, as means to reduce green hose gas emissions.
Jane Jacobs rose to prominence with her book “Teh Death and Life of Great American Cities” pointing out the flaws in the previous urban vision of high rise developments. These “Cities in the Sky” were envisioned as a new way of urban living. They failed in the ways that Jacobs pointed out and became crime infested slums. Now new urbanists oppose such high rise rental developments and urge the development of dense transit mixed use communities. people will live work and play in the same area. I suppose that time will tell if these areas will become the new slums. They are supposed to be different but the condo towers look just like high rises to me. Jacobs identified that the inability of people to control therir environment in the high rise rental buildings led to the break down of order, Teh cndois are now owner occupied but if they evolve into rental buildings then, perhaps, we will witness teh return of teh high rise slums that Jacobs described.
Thsi is all just to point out that adaptation of AGW will not be easy. it will not be about buying V4s instead of V6s. It will mean that the way we live will change. I am old enough to recall when most families could not afford a car. people lived differently then, People adapt. Communities change. That was one of Jacob’s main points. However she had an intense distaste for planners and planning sivne grand visiosn ahve a way of blowing up and hurting people and once you’ve got it you’re stuck with it”¦hardly a no regrets option
It looks like even Jerry North agrees that this is just a smear campaign by ‘Deep Climate’:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/18/nielsen-gammon-iinterviews-north-and-others-on-wegman-plagiarism-may-be-related-to-a-cultural-misunderstand-by-foreigh-exchange-student/
Jerry North:
Ed Wegman is the very guy who testified alongside (but against) me in Congress in 2006. We sat side by side for four hours under the gun. Ed and his former [student] Said wrote a contrarian report to the NRC Committee (“Hockey Stick”) report that I chaired. Then later they published it in the journal referred to in the articles.
While I cannot excuse the academic crime of plagiarism, I do feel somewhat sad that this episode has reached this stage. I think Wegman is a well meaning person who was a victim of plagiarism by a foreign student who probably did not understand this “˜strange’ American custom. Having just read a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, I can feel for someone who is being vilified perhaps more for the (perhaps foolish) position he has taken in the past than for the “˜crime’ itself.
Could this be a “˜gotcha’ for ClimateGate? Institutions cannot take this kind of heat without throwing someone under the bus. I hope George Mason University can take it.
Shub
No deals with you until you learn to read. And stop trolling.
Is 2 degrees really dangerous?
kdk33, is this a serious question? Do you have any idea how much energy we are talking about here? This basically means saying bye-bye to the cryosphere. And you really think nothing will happen to climate patterns and sea level?
On-topic: The Wegman Report was promoted to Congress by Representatives Joe Barton and Ed Whitfield as “independent, impartial, expert” work by a team of “eminent statisticians.” It was none of those.
The retraction of this paper is just a prelude.
Neven,
Do you consider that a serious answer?
Do you have any idea how big the earth is? Temperatures have increased 1C so far – are you feeling threatened? Is sea level rise accelerating? Are hurricanes worsening? Storms, floods, droughts? Do you think climate patterns are static? Would you feel better if it was getting colder?
Have you the faintest clue where we would be absent readily available low cost energy? Have you any idea the cost – both in dollars, lives, and living standards to eliminate fossil fuels? Never mind it is an almost intractable global political problem. How much colder or less hot will be even if we suceed?
Do you have the hubris to know today the proper energy choices for people in 100 years?
Human prosperity, Neven, has never been better; so why am I supposed to terrified of warming. And the spector of more precipitation, falling over expanded crop ranges during a longer growing season,with free fertilizer, doesn’t exactly seem daunting to me.
And bye, bye to the cryosphere?! Please. This is the kind of Gore-ish scary story that killed the movements momentum in the first place.
kdk33, it’s pretty obvious you still have a few steps to go in your thinking about AGW. It is not about 1 degree warmer on your garden thermometer every day.
But you and many others have decided that everybody must wait for the signal to emerge unequivocally. So I guess we’ll just wait for that then. To distract myself I’ll keep focusing on Arctic sea ice. And you’ll keep expanding your house built on sand.
A la prochaine…
“It is not about 1 degree warmer on your garden thermometer every day”
Actually, that is exactly what it is about – or more precisely that is exactly the first step. The follow on question is: and what will this cost (SLR, Storms, etc).
“it’s pretty obvious you still have a few steps to go in your thinking about AGW”
Actually, I agree.
“But you and many others have decided that everybody must wait for the signal to emerge unequivocally”
Yes, Neven. I will wait for firm evidence before deciding what, if anything, to do.
When you have your firm evidence, it will be too late and too expensive to do anything. But you and your merry band of pseudo-skeptics have decided this for all of us, so I hope you’ll be able to live with yourself when you see that you were wrong. This is your responsibility now, and Fuller’s, and Watts’, and Mosher’s, and Wegman’s, and McIntyre’s, and many, many more.
You are winning, the delaying is working like a charm. It’s on your shoulders now.
I don’t know if there is much interest in this in this forum but here goes.
The old cliche about humanity perfuming a great experiment with the atmosphere and environment is brought forth constantly. However in addition to its one planet, humanity has one economy and one social strcutre and doing experiments with them can be just as dangerous.
Previously urban theorists had a consensus position on teh benefits of high density rental buildings. A high desity buildign would be set in the midst of a park like setting with other buildings of its type. Residents would ahce tehir own suites cna could enjoy the common ground with others. In reality, residents had their own suites but had no control of the common areas. These evolved into crime ridden no go zones and residents retreated to their suited. Jane Jacobs saw this in her studies of urban life in New York.
Now with the AGW issue, we hear of new proposals to adapt our housing and social life to the needs of a de-carbonized world. The high density dream has been adapted by urban planners into a model of dense transit oriented communities. These would be areas containing a mixture of housing along with offices and shopping. This would be built surrounding a town center or square with a park, shops and restaurants. People would have their own residences and share the common areas. High speed transit would link the communities and people would not need cars since they were within walking distance of amenities and work. This would be a low carbon paradise
Perhaps this new vision will work but to e it sounds very like a horizontal version of the previous “Cities in the Sky” model. However urban planners assure us that they have it right this time. However the world that Blade Runner posited was rich, dense and diverse just like urban planners talk about. It was hardly a paradise. We have only one social structure. Rashluy changing ity to meet virtuous goals can be very dangerous.
kdk33 @ 19 has it exactly backwards.
“Throw in a MWP and a LIA and the matter becomes much more ho hum.”
Wrong. The key argument for “skeptics” – including kdk33 who in several other comments argues that global warming won’t be rapid or dangerous – is “climate sensitivity is low”. If it’s not low, the “skeptics” are wrong, period, and we’re in big trouble.
The hotter the MWP and the colder the LIA, the more sensitive the climate is to radiative forcings, be they solar or volcanic or GHGs. The fact that there were large climate changes in the past is bad news. If the original, flatter hockey stick were correct, we would have less to worry about.
As I noted in the comments on the other post, “skeptics” are shooting themselves in the foot by arguing for Wegman and M&M and arguing against Mann et al. ’98 and ’99. They can’t seem to get past this oversimplified “past natural climate changes mean that current climate change could be natural” delusion to the underlying physics of the situation, which is decidedly not on their side.
re 47
The hooter and colder the MWP and the LIA are teh more doubtful the predictions of climate science are and the policies that fall out from tehm are less useful
================
As I noted in the comments on the other post, “skeptics” are shooting themselves in the foot by arguing for Wegman and M&M and arguing against Mann et al. ’98 and ’99.
============
You have just written that if the Mann hockey stick is incorrect than that has serious implications. So if MM show that his hockey stick is wrng then that would be a major contribution would it not?
Why on earth does this all have to be a shouting match between sides???
Does anyone else think that one of the primary lessons of Clmategate was the bunker mentality of these scientists and the effect that this has had on turning the climate change issue into a shouting match among the deaf?
Sorry about the typos in 48
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
re 47
Dana writes
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The hotter and colder the MWP and the LIA are the more doubtful the predictions of climate science are and the policies that fall out from them are less useful
================
As I noted in the comments on the other post, “skeptics” are shooting themselves in the foot by arguing for Wegman and M&M and arguing against Mann et al. ’98 and ’99.
============
You have just written that if the Mann hockey stick is incorrect than that has serious implications. So if MM show that his hockey stick is wrong then that would be a major contribution would it not?
Why on earth does this all have to be a shouting match between sides???
I don’t agree with Dana’s position on what a flat temperature reconstruction means, but it does raise an interesting question. If Mann’s work being wrong means things are worse than previously thought, why are people so set on defending it? How come so many climate scientists have put so much effort into defending junk science when doing so makes the global warming issue seem less important than it is?
If you accept Dana’s position (and I doubt many do), it would seem defenders of the consensus are putting a great deal of effort into harming their own cause.
Dana’s position seems rather simple. If the hockey stick is correct, we are in big trouble. If the hockey stick is wrong, it’s worse than we thought. I’m not sure how to carry on a rational conversation under these rules.
To be somewhat fair, a kinder interpretation is that Dana has considered the radiative properties of CO2 and extrapolated that we are in big trouble; everthing else is secondary. If we wait until we can measure the dangerous changes, it will be too late.
At least this argument is self-consistent, though I personally (obviously) find it very weak.
Neven.
I Look at the evidence that was available WHEN THE IPCC WAS FORMED, decades ago. Based on THAT evidence I would argue that there was reason to act back then. There was ample evidence. The mistake was believing that global treaties was the right path. That’s been tried now for decades. The folks who support that are the real culprits. You want to blame me because I wrote a book and suggested that the IPCC fix one paragraph and one chart.
nice.