My Talking Head Debut
I’m not sure which is more terrifying: Going on TV for the first time or watching yourself on TV for the first time.
Both are new experiences for me. I’m a writer, not a talking head. But at the urging of my wife, I recently accepted the opportunity to appear on David Ushery’s WNBC weekly show, The Debrief. Each Sunday, Ushery explores a newsy issue relevant to New Yorkers, or as he puts it, “the story behind the story.” After Hurricane Sandy, climate change became a topic of national conversation, due in no small part to statements made by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. I have written about that and the larger public dialogue playing out in the past few weeks, which Ushery and his producer read. Hence the invite to appear on the show.
Below are three of the four taped segments posted online. For some reason, they’re missing the introductory segment. (I think there’s a technical glitch.) When they put it up, I’ll make sure to paste it in. (All fixed–the show can be watched in full below.)
I’m the telegenic natural (not!) sitting in the middle, between NBC meteorologist Chris Cimino and David Biello, an editor at Scientific American. Both of these guys were terrific and more polished than me. To my surprise, however, I didn’t melt into a hyperventilating puddle and even managed to hold my own. Beyond an initial jitter, I didn’t really feel nervous. I have no idea why this is so. (I think the easy-going, conversational format was a big part.)
What’s more impressive is that a substantive discussion on climate change took place on local network television–for 30 minutes. How often does that happen? So kudos to David Ushery, Chris Cimino and David Biello for elevating the dialogue on one of the most important and contentious issues of our time. I’m sure people will quibble with some of the things said by myself and the other two guests, and in retrospect, I wish my brain and tongue were more in sync. But overall, I’m pleased with how the show turned out. I look forward to hearing your feedback.
Congrats on a greater media presence, it is merited and the public is well served by your talents.
Well now we can match a face to the blogger image. Not quite what I expected, although I’m not sure what I expected. I thought you did a great job, need to get a grip on the “ummm’s” and “you know’s” which is simple enough.
I thought David Biello came across the clearest, but the entire discussion was better than anything I would expect from any media ending in “NBC” would have lead me to believe. It was fair an nuanced with only one of the three pundits taking pot shots at Republicans (ha ha).
It looked very professional. I’d never have guessed it was your first time if you hadn’t said.
“I’m sure people will quibble with some of the things said by myself and the other two guests,”
Heh. I’d hope by now you can figure out what I’d say without me having to say it. Evidently you’re well-aware of what you’re doing. So there’s no need.
Yes, the mystery is gone. I had no idea I lost all that hair until I watched the TV clip. When I look in the mirror every day, I still see a handsome stud with a full head of curly locks. Yes, denial is a beautiful thing.
So they put the opening segment online and I have pasted in at the top of the order. People will like that one as well. I got a curveball in the form of one question. Wish I would have answered slightly differently.
Mr.Kloor: where could I find a transcription of the “show”? my english is not very good…thank you! (and congratulations!)
David Biello might come across the clearest but does he know what he’s talking about? His very first factoid didn’t inspire much confidence.
‘If you are 27 years old or younger, you have never seen a cooler-than-average month in the United States.’
Yes you have. The US as had lots of ‘cooler-than-average’ months in the last 27 years. For example, last month the contiguous US was 0.15 deg C colder than the October average for 1895-2012. Using 2009 as the reference period might make his statement more nearly true (I haven’t checked) but why would you do that?
Biello mis-parroted a badly expressed article in Grist, which was about the global, not US, temperature record. Anyone who can make a bad Grist factoid even worse isn’t worth listening to.
(My Internet connection is intermittent and rationed so I’ve only watched the first segment so far. Biello has put me off trying to get the others to work but I’d listen to audio-only versions. Are they available?)
Make that 1976, not 2009.
Good grief. I’m speechless. Nary a sign of healthy scepticism. Substantive discussion, not. I feel like puking.
Michael (8)
I realize that people with hardened positions are going to find plenty to object to. But perhaps you could be more specific and say what exactly is leaving you speechless.
Jorce c. (5)
Sorry, I’m not aware of any audio or transcript.
Kuze (1)
Thanks. There are a few other fun things that have been in the works for a little while, one of which I should be able to announce next week.
Well, young stud with curly hair or not, you seemed to do pretty well. There were a few technical errors (eg non-CO2 GHG’s represent ~30-35% of total man-made forcing, not a small amount), but the technical errors/misstatements were not as bad as I would have imagined. I did not expect any skepticism, of course, but I think all three of you could have better addressed the true range of skeptical opinion. For example, while I consider myself “skeptical”, I am quite sure that GHG warming is real, that human emissions are responsible, that ocean heat content is rising, that there is melting of glaciers and ice caps in response to warming, etc. What I am skeptical about is the projected magnitude of future warming, and especially the consequences of that warming. Framing skepticism as primarily a political POV (or “belief”) is simply not accurate; there are lots of technically competent people who have looked at the data in some detail, and simply doubt the extreme projections are correct.
Oh, how neat. It is great to have a face and a voice to match with the text.
Only had time for the first segment so far, but it sounded like you came across clearly and effectively to me. Good job.
Keith, I thought you did fine and it was an interesting enough discussion.I was a bit surprised though that you talked about Copenhagen but didn’t mention Doha.
Steve (10)
I can appreciate what you’re saying. I think I gave a nod to some skepticism with my reference to “uncertainty” about projected impacts and how bad things might/will get.
I also was pretty careful not throw out any technical facts. Speaking like that on camera was already a challenge in itself for me, so I didn’t want to get tongue-tied over numbers and such.
I also expressed some mild skepticism about the “new normal” frame, but I would have liked to go into that a bit more. In my head, there was timer winding down that reminded me not to ramble on endlessly.
As for the framing of “skepticism” as “primarily a political point of view,” well, like it or not, that’s what’s happened in the United States, especially since Republicans decided to actively make it litmus test to question the validity of climate change. I spoke to that at one point in the interview. Remember, the intended audience was New Yorkers (and residents in the tri-state area), with a focus on climate change/Hurricane Sandy/severe weather; the debate surrounding that and the resilience/adaptation equation part of all this.
Do you believe it is not an effective litmus test for Democrats to support climate change? It’s a two lane road, and you would be well served to look in the rear view mirror occasionally. Beyond coal state Democrats who oppose climate change solely for local economic reasons, it has become purely a party line vote. If you want to blame one side for polarization, go ahead, but better advice is to see it for what it is, political gridlock that both sides are OK with. That’s why nobody talked about it during the election, the status quo is just fine with everyone. The polarization gives Democrats cover for not taking action that will only serve to lose them votes from fiscally conservative moderates (don’t hold your breath for any new votes in the Democratically controlled Senate).
Keith – You did a fine job. However, you did not do a fine job responding to Steve F’s comment. His position (exactly mine and millions of others, BTW) is that he is skeptical about the magnitude and consequences of future warming. In other words, the validity of alarm. Wittingly or unwittingly, you subtly changed it to skepticism about validity of climate change. You thereby twist what is a highly defensible scientific position into a fringe position that is not well-grounded. We expect it from Romm, Mann, et. al. Not from you.
Tom C (15)
I thought Steve F made excellent points. If that perspective were taken by the leading voices on the Right who shape the GOP talking points on climate change, then I would have no cause to take “pot shots” at Republicans, as Tom Scharf (#2) noted.
If former Republican senator John Warner and former Republican Representative Bob Inglis were the representative voices on climate change for the GOP, instead of Rush Limbaugh and James Inhofe (who call climate change a fraud and boondoggle for climate scientists), then we’d be able to have a more sensible political debate in the United States. We could focus on the data of the projections that Steve F refers to, have it out on that, combined with a debate about risk, and see where that takes us.
Well, well – Keith with the metrosexual/radical chic open collar over the T-shirt goin’ on. Who knew?
“Michael (8)
I realize that people with hardened positions are going to find plenty to object to. But perhaps you could be more specific and say what exactly is leaving you speechless.”
You don’t think you and everyone else came across as having a hardened position? You can’t see that there was a range of opinion simply not discussed?
There was not a single sceptic present to talk about spurious attribution of Sandy to AGW (the morphing of climate change into weather events that aren’t unique, or even specially catastophic); to challenge the glib insinuation of the editor of Scientific American that it’s man what done it, or that climategate was but a tempest in a teapot (In his dreams: even the BBC doesn’t think that:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nl8gm)
Also, having agreed that natural gas has reduced CO2 emissions in the US, he went on to proselytise for a carbon tax. WTF is the editor of a scientific magazine doing getting involved in politics? This is the new normal, my friend–so-called men of science pushing ideology.
AGW is real and a threat, it’s all down to man, the argument is over and we just have to figure out what to do about it. CO2 is the main driver, water vapour was casually mentioned, and the possibility of negative feedbacks and natural variation ignored. All the discussion was within the frame of acceptance that the science is settled, which has always been the assertion. One might be forgiven for thinking you all a smug coterie interviewed by someone who hadn’t a clue.
Republicans, apparently, oppose just for the sake of opposing, and sceptics amongst them can’t possibly be intelligent or principled and be persuaded by scientific evidence. It seemed so very patronising and patrician. I’m a Brit, by the way, and by no means right wing (I took the “political compass test” and came out as a left-wing libertarian, in the same sector as the one that Gandhi is located: http://www.politicalcompass.org/).
You all appeared to be steeped in your own belief system, even while there were assertions that it isn’t a matter of belief; to be like fish in the invisible water of prejudices, predilections and disdainful dismissiveness.
Joe Public can see right through pantomimes like this so-called discussion. Had I not been an occasional visitor to this blog and felt I owed it to you, I’d have been disinclined to sit all the way through what for all the world appeared to be a display of the overweening arrogance and complacency of the chattering classes.
I’d never detected before quite how prejudiced was your attitude to the so-called climate debate, Keith. I have nothing against you personally and you needn’t worry that you didn’t come across as reasonably articulate–you did; actually, that’s where the problem lay.
Keith – if more people talked about Tom C’s position on climate change, then the focus on Inholfe, etc would be lost, they would be marignalised, and a rational discussion could be had. BUT, some focus on these etxremes, so that they can ignore the nuanced thinking that Tom C represents..
Barry, that’s because alarmism is primarily a political point of view.
You can see that in the consensus that nobody talks about, but is obvious never-the-less: the alarmist “solution” package is dead in the water- it’s a political loser world-wide and Democrats don’t even come close to supporting it.
Right now, environmentalists are the obstacle to functional alternatives to coal and oil- gas, nukes, hydro. Because the truth hurts, they blame Republicans.
Barry (18)
The media ecosystem, being what it is, is relatively simple: Journalists report what the newsmakers say. So that’s why the political story usually gets covered along an Inhofe/McKibben angle. The pundits/bloggers play off what’s in the news, thus the vicious circle.
Jeffn (19)
There is some truth to what you say–at least globally speaking–as the situation there is considerably more complicated. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that environmentalists are the obstacle to functional alternatives (on gas, tho, it’s looking to be the case), but they sure are afraid to embrace nuclear, which I think they’ll rue years down the road.
Yes. Environmentalists have so much power, and they wield it ruthlessly. Has been that way for years. They absolutely dominate the American political landscape. They have a stranglehold on Congress and the presidency. Have for decades. You know, Lysenko and all that.
They are certainly responsible for our lack of nuclear power, and will prevent nuclear power going forward. No one has any concerns about nuclear power absent environmentalists. Incompetence from the nuclear industry? Irrelevant. Long time horizon on the return on the massive quantities of ducats necessary to have enough nuclear to make a difference (when other investments bring greater return on shorter horizons)? Irrelevant. Opposition in the US to the centralized “socialist” energy policies that exist in every country with significant amounts of nuclear? Irrelevant.
And those tyrannical environmentalists are also responsible for the lack of development of natgas (despite its significant development). I mean it’s not like anyone except environmentalists have any concerns about the safety of the technology, any potential for environmental hazards, etc. Why just look at the track record of thoroughness, transparency, and accountability from the drilling industry! Only wacko fear-mongering environmentalists would object to placing complete trust in that industry before extensive research has been conducted on the potential of negative impact from fracking.
test
It’s fair to point out that they could have invited Romm, McKibben, and Al Gore for this discussion, which is closer to what I would have expected. The fact that they didn’t is a sign of progress in my opinion. The ‘consensus’ answer that ClimateGate was a tempest in a teapot was ironic in that if there was nothing there, why are we still talking about it 3 years later? I was pleasantly surprised he even asked that question. The standard MSM debate format where you get extremists from both sides to yell past each other is tiring, and I for one like the format here much better.
Joshua, the environmentalists don’t have power now because they marginalized themselves with their painfully bad policy prescriptions. As hard as it may be for you to believe, Republicans don’t go home and kick their pet dolphin every night. They want environmental science they can trust as much as anyone, and quite simply don’t get it because of the tainted anti-corporate motivations of the green movement. It is laughable that the greens would ever give a green light to fracking under any circumstances due to their pre-conceived “motivated reasoning”. Sane people would expect the greens to embrace the move from coal to natural gas. The greens don’t want fracking investigated, they want it banned, *right now*. The day after they get it banned, they will fret and hand wring themselves into a tirade on why the US isn’t reducing carbon emissions. I suppose you can’t see any hypocrisy here? Well the rest of the world does, and thus the greens are marginalized. Where the greens have power in Europe we see nuclear plants replaced with coal plants, and their cap and trade systems are ineffective, not even outperforming the US which has almost no carbon policies at all. Give us science we can trust, and policies that support economic growth, and the greens will get a deserved seat at the table.
Tom S,
I agree with most of what you say. A seemingly small quibble- it’s time to stop pretending that the United States has “no policy” on emissions reductions. It isn’t true and never has been. What is true is that the US refused to adopt full-on dumb- Eco-redistribution, windmills and solar panels in all the wrong places and the gift to crony capitalism that is carbon trading and feed-in tariffs.
The US has experimented with wind and solar ( even under the hated Bush regime), will use them where they work and won’t where they don’t, set CAFE limits (beyond what’s likely, but the 1980s tell us what happens when you do that), and we’re switching from coal to gas despite the objections of environmentalists and now we are waiting on “the reality-based community” to discover the reality of nuclear power.
Keith- I think the insistence over the past 20 years by “the concerned” on what I call the full-on dumb plan is A) the reason for the partisanship as its reliance on top down, higher taxes, and redistribution are progressive-only goals with or without global warming and B) the reason for the focus on “the science.”
If the argument made is that “science” insists we must raise taxes on everyone and expand the state immediately then we start by alienating about half the country and the “science” better be transparent and accurate.
@10
Steve I’d be curious to hear more about why you think impacts will be less severe. Is it because you think sensitivity is low and/or natural and/or socio-economic systems are more resilient than conventional wisdom suggests?
#16 Keith Kloor,
When was the last time there was a rational debate related to any risk?We have debates of whether we should prepare for a 100 year or 500 year storm, decide on the 100 year storm, then deny all knowledge as to any such debate ever having taken place.When we find that ‘fixing the problem’ is more then we want to pay then we just focus on fixing the blame.
#28,
The focus too often is on ‘fixing the problem’. Sometimes the rational choice is not to fix it.
Mostly the mitigation problem is structured like this. You have n problems each having a solution costing some number of dollars per life saved. e.g. you have solutions offering $2/life, $10/life, $1,000/life, $500,000/life. You have £1m. How do you spend it?
The answer is, you watch a TV programme telling you about a terrible problem that’s endangering people, about how something much be done urgently, and you therefore call your congressman and spend that million saving two lives.
And if anyone criticises that decision, they’re callous, uncaring, and greedy. They’re penny-pinching sociopaths who would put a dollar price on human life. They deny the urgency, dismiss the dangers, obstruct progress. They stubbornly argue for doing nothing about what everyone can plainly see is a serious risk. Tch, eh?
The rational choice is that you spend your money on the solution with the best $/life ratio until that particular problem has gone away and then you spend your money on the next best solution, and so on. Any conversation about risk that doesn’t quantify cost/benefit is one of that other sort. But it’s the only sort of conversation we seem to have, nowadays. We have quietly got on with spending that $1m on saving 500,000 lives, a miracle in plain sight, and nobody noticed. But when disaster strikes and those two we could have saved die, it’s headline news. Our perception of reality is skewed and warped by sensationalist advocate-journalism, and we lose all sense of proportion.
Tom S. Your fantasies about what I do or don’t think (in this case specifically about what Republicans do or don’t do, believe or don’t believe) are not accurate. I’d suggest that if you want to know what I think, ask me.
Well I’ve watched it again having read the criticisms above and it still strikes me as being very middle of the road (bland even), distinctly non-alarmist discussion with plenty of caveats, acknowledgements of uncertainties etc. The bit I found most interesting was the final brief discussion about resilience.The fact is not everyone gets to have their own viewpoint represented in these discussions, there is no particular duty to give a platform to fringe views just for the sake of it. Just because a particular group of people are talking about subject x it doesn’t mean everyone else wants to.
Keith!!!!!
dude I pictured you as a fresh faced long haired youngster, full of piss and vinegar. Man did I get that wrong. I guess when we talked I sensed some idealism ( about the profession ) that one typically finds in younger folks. good to see that a few years has not turned you into an old cycnical white guy.
on the performance. You beat 99% of all newbies I have ever watched.
On the substance. Glad that some people are questioning the wisdom of rebuilding.
should be one ugly disucssion
#16 KK
In the reams of literature I have from the various Republican Election Committees ‘Climate Change’ is not mentioned even once. We don’t talk about ‘Climate Change’. We talk about ‘clean affordable energy’.
‘Clean’ is a word that our more ‘environmentally concerned’ members like to hear and ‘affordable’ is what our more fiscally conservative members like to hear. We passed legislation in 2005 and 2008 to accomplish those goals. Unfortunately, Harry Reid doesn’t bring any of our proposals to the floor anymore.
Sorry, but the talking points of the GOP you believe to exist don’t actually exist. They are the talking points the DNC would like you to believe are GOP talking points.
Yes…the RNC…just like the DNC have designated ‘safe seat’ members that tell some of our more extreme members whatever it is they want to here.
If I send in $20 with a letter demanding that the US invade China to the RNC then I will get a letter back from some Republican stating that he is ‘working hard’ on starting a war with china. The same is true if I send $20 to the DNC.
They are not ‘leading voices’, any more then the animal trainers in a circus are the ‘circus leaders’.
harrywr2 (33)
First, let me say that I value very much your contributions to this blog. I often learn something from your comments.
That said, I don’t know what Republican party you belong to. Here’s an excerpt from a recent Atlantic piece:
Climate change denialism remains a powerful current within the Republican party, and is a stance honored by most of the candidates who sought this year’s GOP presidential nomination. Though Romney argued for reductions in carbon emissions when he governed Massachusetts, he changed his tune on the campaign trail. He said at one point that he thought the world was getting hotter, but added, “I don’t know that, but I think that it is.” As to human contributions, Romney allowed, “It could be a little. It could be a lot.” On another occasion, Romney stated outright, “My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet.”
This attitude from the GOP standard bearers stands in stark contrast from just four years ago.
Before I read past comment #10 let me say I agree with Steve Fitzpatrick that you failed address the range of skeptical opinion, indicating that the science is settled and skeptics are being unscientific or worse. You did one thing that leaves me almost speechless- dismiss the importance of the climategate emails as merely private emails. The climategate emails provide evidence that there was “gatekeeping” and subversion of the peer review process and other unethical behavior. Until you alarmists own the bad behavior of your rogue climate scientists (some prominent ones!), you appear as hypocrites when you denouce and blame others for the inability to find the common ground I think we all agree is necessary for implementing policies based on the precautionary principle. Keith, in your blog you often present a more balanced and nuanced approach than you did on “The Debrief.” Scientific American, on the other hand, like the New York Times (except for Revkin), tells only one side of the global warming controversies, thereby making a conversation about global warming impossible with anyone who obtains their “facts” from those once illustrious publications. Similarly, anyone trying to learn about climate science and politics from “The Debrief” would come away with a one-sided and biased message which is bound to create more ill will from scientifically literate persons like myself. And by the way, I am a life long conservationist and environmental educator (lukewarmer in the climate science controversies) who votes Democratic- just so you can’t so easily dismiss my “crimes against humanity” as from an oil shill or someone who just fell off the turnip truck.
#34,
Partly that’s still what Democrats pick out and highlight from what Republicans say, but I think partly the way you’re interpreting it – due to the tendency to interpret disagreement with any part of the message as disagreement with all of it.
I would interpret the first of the three Romney quotes as expressing the cautious, caveatted belief of a non-scientist who hasn’t looked into the science in detail but nevertheless accepts it. It’s actually a far more ‘scientific’ attitude than blind faith in whatever (approved) scientists say.
The other two are discussing the question of attribution, determining the extent to which the observed warming was anthropogenic, which even the IPCC acknowledges as very difficult and far from proven. The IPCC essentially say that unequivocal attribution is impossible, (implicitly) that their conclusions are reliant on the validity of the models, that they are unable to quantify all the uncertainties involved, but that it is their expert judgement that given their current understanding at least 50% of the observed warming is likely to be anthropogenic.
The scientific position is that there has been warming over the past century (albeit with any quantification requiring a lots of caveats about data quality) and there is reason to think a large portion of it may be anthropogenic, but we don’t really know for certain. There will certainly be an anthropogenic contribution to warming, but we don’t know how big compared to all the other contributors. It’s certainly reasonable to think the anthropogenic component is more than half the magnitude of what was observed, and that’s the IPCC expert’s opinion.
Politicians and journalists simplify all this nuance, but in different ways. I think you have read his acknowledgement of the nuances your side normally leaves out as outright denial that any of it could be anthropogenic. But “we don’t know” isn’t the same thing as “it ain’t so”.
Romney’s statements are somewhat mealy-mouthed, about what you would expect from a politician who does not want to engage on this issue because there is no upside. But I will take that any day over the bald face lying that wins Nobel prizes and Academy awards for Gore.
Well, as we all know, the Republicans are only against it because the Democrats are for it. The right, being anti-science on all subjects, is incapable of independent critical thinking. All enlightened thinkers out there know there are no flaws in the AGW theory, or else the enlightened thinkers would be discussing these flaws openly and transparently. That’s how science works.
Keith, I thought you were fine–you did a heckuva lot better than I did my first go-round (and I never got any better, sadly).
I’m disappointed in the content you provided the viewers. Not that anything you said was wrong, but you could have included a lot more that was both right and ‘new’ to them.
Perhaps the real reason I’m disappointed is that I saw no evidence that the three year’s of experience at CaS informed anything you said. Surely Joshua’s voice should have counted for something?
On the positive side, I think you ‘qualified’ for future opportunities–you passed the audition with flying colors. Well done.
@ 36
This appears to be an insinuation of some kind. Who is ‘approving’ scientists? For what ultimate purpose? Sounds awfully like the usual conspiracy theory dreck to me.
Unlike most, I did expect Keith to be balding but I admit he exceeded my expectations in that respect. Holding steady voice while first time in front of the camera is surely not easy for most people. Only occasional “you know” betrayed some tension.
The content was mildly disappointing. Surely it could have been much worse if hard-core alarmists were invited but then again it could have been better.
Keith’s opening statement was a bit disappointing. Surely he knows that ClimaGate was more than tempest in a teapot WRT what we now know about behavior of Mann and Jones. It’s not nothing.
Let me just point out a few areas where the discussion was below par:
1. What was really special about Sandy was not the strength (it didn’t even land as a hurricane) but the precision and timing. Both are random and independent of any large scale climate trends, for all we know.
2. Chris Cimino was technically correct in that every weather event bears a climate change imprint. But we have no idea what it is so the statement is for all practical purposes content-free.
3. It is true that the hurricane can get an extra “oomph” from the ocean of it’s warmer than usual. It is also true that the ocean has been on the warmer side in Western Equatorial Atlantic. What wasn’t said was that we don’t know whether this is really related to GW (if yes – to what extent?) vs. being just a temporary regional fluctuation. Either way, ocean temps are far from the only important variables. El Nino / La Nina cycle, for example, affect vertical wind shear which in turn affects the hurricane strength. Nobody mentioned that the hurricane peak of 2005 never repeated, not nearly. In short, GW-hurricane link was way overplayed.
4. There was little to no nuance on attribution or uncertainty. Perhaps we did have 4 most snowy winters in the last 16 years but we don’t know to what extent it is related to GW, much less to man-made component of it. There is no way to know how much snow we’ll see in the future.
#34 KK
So what are Charles Grassly or Lindsey Grahams positions?
We live in a ‘Representative Republic’. A major contributor to the success of our republic has been in being successful in maintaining ‘civil order’.
One of the ways we maintain ‘civil order’ is to minimize the size of disaffected citizenry.
Politically we do this by making sure ‘every position’ is ‘voiced’ by someone in power. The South Korean Parliament has fist fights to insure every citizen feels that their ‘beliefs’ are being ‘fought hard’ over.
It’s called ‘governing’.
You may recall the Patreus hearings a few years ago where Hillary Clinton outright mocked him. There was a ‘General Betrayus’ ad running in major newspapers. Was Hillary voicing what she actually believed or was she voicing what a considerable number of her constituents believed? I hardly believe that Patraeus would have ended up serving 4 years in the Obama administration if Hillary really believed what she was saying in 2007.
We currently live in difficult economic times. On the right we have the Tea Party…they believed they had ‘no voice’ in Government.(They didn’t with the majority that Nancy Pelosi had) On the left we have the ‘Occupy Movement’ that believes no one is hearing them either.
Either of those movements could easily morph into civil unrest.
Political leaders on both sides of the aisle are out in force trying to calm down disaffected constituents by giving loud voice to whatever their perceived grievances are.
As far as ‘action on climate change’ I haven’t heard anyone from the Republican side complaining about the 1/2 billion dollars that Obama just committed to spend to license a small modular nuclear reactor. I’m pretty sure Romney would have made the same decision.
The target market for SMR’s in the US is rural electric co-ops…the ‘Red States’. Don’t expect any big movement on ‘climate change’ from the Republicans until SMR’s are a lot closer to being licensed.
News just in from Wyoming…Red State Central and the Saudi Arabia of Coal…
http://www.casperjournal.com/business/article_e0d78ba3-73ab-5dc7-9521-eb5a0f5da685.html?comment_form=true
State legislators continue to support the development of nuclear power generation in the state
#40,
I only inserted the caveat because the unquestioning faith in scientists seems to vanish like the mist when we come to Lindzen, Christy, Spencer, Svensmark, Shaviv, Loehle, Idso, McKittrick, Pielke, O’Donnell, Singer, Choi, Michaels, Balling, Seitz, Morner, Braswell, Soon, Baliunas, Gray, Essenhigh, deFreitas, Douglass, Koutsoyiannis, D’Aleo, Easterbrook, Goklany, Reiter, Graybill, McShane, Pudovkin, Kirkby, Wyner,…
I was under the impression that you was in charge of approving or disapproving of them. Do you mean to say you’re not?!
The next time the TV people say “let’s have a scientist on to talk about global warming” do you suppose nobody would disapprove if Dick Lindzen or Fred Singer popped up?
#39, #41,
To be fair, I wouldn’t really expect Keith to represent anyone else’s opinions other than his own, unless he was specifically asked on the show to represent what ‘the climate blogosphere’ was saying about it or something. The issue is with the show’s producers, rather than the guests. You don’t get long to talk, and you can’t do the complexities. Plus, Keith says he deliberately stayed away from the ‘technical facts’, which is probably not a bad idea in the circumstances.
There were a fair number of scientific and historical (?) errors in the show, but I thought Keith was far from the worst offender in that regard. I thought more could have been made of the “Schneider’s dilemma” aspect of the Sandy debate, and the Climategate bit was somewhat disappointing, if predictable, but it could have been a lot worse. Considering that it was a show lining up three people all on the same side of the debate as part of an effort to capitalise on a classic weather-is-climate scare story for politically partisan purposes, that is.
@ 43
Very few actual climate scientists in there nullius. Or hadn’t that fact registered with you? And most of this lot have published flawed and much-rebutted studies. Hence the lack of confidence actual climate scientists place in their statements and (rare) published studies. Kirkby is an honourable exception, O’Donnell too, Goklany isn’t a scientist, and Pudovkin I’ve never heard of.
Wheeling this lot out consigns you straight to the dustbin of debunked contrarianism. For the nth time. Fare thee well in there.
Marlow Johnson,As to why I think the warming will be less that projected: there are multiple reasons, the most important of which are a) measurement based estimates of sensitivity consistently are near or below the low end of the IPCC range, b) climate models use a series of very uncertain parameters for key factors like cloud influence, c) models use aerosol offsets as a blatant kludge to fit the historical trend, d) there is an obvious ‘green culture’ that dominates climate science… my experience is that is unhealthy if ‘health’ is dispassionate analysis of data.I also think that a wealthy society is more capable of withstanding a wide range of stresses, including the consequences of warming. The rapid economic development evident in much of the developing world means ever more people will be better able to deal with future warning.Finally, I thing the tendency is to grossly underestimate the positive effects of technological development. Technology has lifted humanity from poverty and hunger to relative wealth. That process is not going to stop.
#44,
You see what I mean? I name a few scientists, and we suddenly get a list of reasons why those particular ones shouldn’t be listened to. Joe Public, with no expertise in science at all, can dismiss without consideration the words of Richard Lindzen, with a lifetime of research and awards, based on your assertion (you having no expertise in science either) that they’re not to be trusted. While we should all Believe because the consensus of thousands of unnamed scientists says so, who we mere mortals are unworthy to question or judge.
There are quite a few scientists who have published “flawed and much-rebutted papers”. Besides the obvious jibes about certain Hockeysticks, many scientists would say that was precisely the purpose of publishing papers. Papers are published in order to seek rebuttals, which attract rebuttals in turn, and thus test and challenge the evidence. It’s called the scientific method.
And you think that’s a reason not to listen to them?
# 46
The reason not to listen to most of them is that most of them aren’t even climate scientists. Why they are making so much contrarian noise is a proper subject for investigation.
The few who actually are climate scientists have published a tiny handful of controversial studies all of which have been demonstrated to be flawed.
That’s the reason we don’t listen to them.
#47,
Well fortunately, since you’re not even a climate scientist, we don’t have to listen to you. That’s a relief! 🙂
Indeed, most believers in global warming “aren’t even climate scientists”.
Argumentum ad Verecundiam went out of fashion in scientific circles back during the Enlightenment. The only people who practice it now are anti-scientists, confidence tricksters, and political activists. Flawed and well-rebutted.
nullius
We listen to the scientists. Who, en mass, disagree with *you* about virtually everything you say. I agree with the scientists, the experts.
BBD does get a little circular, doesn’t he?
#32.. Mosher,”I pictured you as a fresh faced long haired youngster, full of piss and vinegar. Man did I get that wrong.”Seems most who are interested in climate science are, um, shall we say.. more mature. There are a few who are younger, of course, but look at the average reader profiles for climate blogs… mostly oldsters, but still full of piss and vinegar. 😉
BBD,”We listen to the scientists”Whoa. After 35+ years in science, I can tell you for certain that scientists are, well, completely human, and subject to the same kinds of foibles, errors, frailties, and prejudices as everyone else. And like everyone else, the more famous the person, the more subject they are to believing their own press releases. I do listen to scientists, of course, but I listen very carefully and critically, whether I am reviewing a paper or just reading one. You might consider doing the same.
SteveF
ya, I know the demographic, but a couple things led me to think of him as younger. Mostly it was the couple of times he shared the joy of raising young ones. That an a couple other nice things about him that life hasnt beat out of him. So, lets say young at heart
#49,
“We listen to the scientists.”
But most scientists are not climate scientists, and therefore according to your very own reasoning, we shouldn’t listen to them.
#50,
Yeah. Like some sort of toroidal knot.
There’s only intentional confusion here. But if we are going to play childish games, then I will disambiguate. Climate scientists, en mass, disagree with contrarians and deniers and lukewarmers and fake sceptics.
This is not circular reasoning. It is a statement of fact. Once again nullius demonstrates that when you have nothing, you are forced to resort to creating confusion and exploiting the most trivial ambiguities for argumentative advantage.
Same old same old.
I guess that ‘childish’ might describe name calling rants as well, BBD. You ought to learn that people of good will can, and often do, disagree. Insulting and questioning the motives of those who disagree with you serves only to harden their position and make reasoned compromise less likely. Maybe no compromise is acceptable to you, but if this is the position of those who want to publicly address GHG emissions, then political progress is very unlikely. Name calling rants also make people question your motives, as well as your judgement.
Nullius, it’s important to remember that BBD notes there is a difference between “climate science” and science.
Climate science tells us hurricanes and storms are worse than ever and Sandy is proof of AGW.
Science says “wrong, again.” http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/landseanaturepublished.pdf
When you have to create special branches of science and certify only those willing to produce “careful studies” that tell you what you want to hear, you end up with something very like the state of today’s “climate debate.”
Steve Fitzpatrick
How is nullius’ deliberate twisting of what I say evidence of ‘goodwill’? Any more than your deliberate mischaracterisation of what I write as ‘name calling rants’ is evidence of ‘goodwill’?
It’s funny how the ‘sceptics’ rely so completely on distortion, misrepresentation, rhetoric and of course, incessant complaints of victimhood.
But of course this is what you are reduced to in the absence of an actual scientific case.
Climate scientists–Michael Mann, Peter Gleick, Phil Jones.Hmm.
BBD: It’s funny how “˜climate scientists’ rely so completely on distortion, misrepresentation, rhetoric and of course, incessant complaints of victimhood.
But you don’t see that, do you? Willfully blind.
# 59
Personalise, demonise. Have we forgotten so soon, Tom?
Scharf’s *really stupid* comment actually underlines how you have attempted (and failed) to smear an entire field by association.
Still, it’s the thought that counts with you lot, isn’t it? After all, it isn’t the scientific case for ‘scepticism’ because there isn’t one. Something all-too-often overlooked in ‘sceptic’ circles.
BBD
The damn IPCC is a luke warmer position.
To repeat. We think it is more likely than not that the ECS is less than 3C.
That is the probability that the ECS is > 3C is less than .5
That my friend is the IPCC position. Now, they dont highlight this. They frame the PDFs other ways, scary ways.
BBD, I was just told yesterday by certified climate scientists over at RC that there is no recent plateau in global temperatures. I submit it for support for #60.
And for the record, I have the necessary training and education to know how to read a graph and identify a plateau. This is not rocket science.
stevenPlease, don’t misrepresent the ‘damn IPCC‘ 😉
@ 63
Perhaps this is what Rahmstorf is talking about? What do you think?
#56,
Thanks, but BBD and I have history. I was winding him up deliberately, for the amusement value.
The conversation started at #36 where I contrasted the common argument-from-authority belief in global warming catastrophe of the non-scientist layman “because science/scientists say so” with Romney’s cautious scientific scepticism. If you haven’t checked the science, the scientific thing to do is to say “I don’t know.” I inserted the caveat because there are sceptical scientists, who are not included. BBD knew perfectly well what I meant – it’s a point I’ve made often enough before.
But BBD can’t let me get away with posting valid and persuasive points unopposed, and so he deliberately misinterprets the caveat as evidence of me being a conspiracy theorist. If he can paint me as such, he can argue for dismissing me. (Like he thinks that would be remotely plausible or would stop people reading what I say.) The logic is tenuous and twisted. I proposed that only an approved subset of scientists are implicitly trusted by climate believers, approval implies somebody is doing the approving, hence I believe in a global conspiracy that secretly accredits which scientists are trustworthy and distribute that list to the man-in-the-street believer without any sceptics finding out about it. I’m not quite sure what sort of ‘conspiracy’ BBD imagines I’m thinking, but something like that. Or perhaps he doesn’t have anything specific in mind, he just figures if he makes the accusation in a sufficiently vague and opaque way the mud might stick.
I found it mildly amusing, mainly because it was such a weak and transparent effort that nobody here would be dumb enough to take seriously. BBD can usually manage much better than that. But I clarified anyway, taking the opportunity to emphasise the point, with a list of scientists that I knew BBD was sure to disapprove of and raise objections to. Thus demonstrating that somebody was indeed approving selected scientists as trustworthy and that person was BBD!
This point flies straight over BBD’s head, and he tries to claim his categorisation is objective by telling us about his argument-from-authority criterion. They might be scientists but they’re not climate scientists. Only climate scientists can generate opinions, which the rest of us (including us scientists) have to accept. It’s a particularly silly criterion, since most of the IPCC are not climate scientists, most enviro-journalists are not, most environmental NGOs and climate activists and politicians are certainly not. Even most scientists are not. It’s a convenient excuse for dismissing any inconveniently credible scientists/experts who disagree, but it’s not a rule they apply universally. (And of course it missed the point that a number of those I listed are climate scientists.)
So of course I take the mickey out of it by applying it to BBD himself, who is not a climate scientist and is therefore not to be believed. BBD tries to repeat himself, but forgets the qualifier and simply says “scientists”, so of course I point out that these don’t meet his criterion either. BBD can’t do anything but claim I am “misinterpreting” him.
I’m simply expanding on the illogical consequences of BBD’s own argument. He’s quite right that I knew perfectly well what he meant – I’m just not letting him get away with spouting that sort of nonsense. And I was having a bit of fun while doing it.
I suggest you should just ignore it when BBD and I get going. It’s a sort of game we play. I apologise for the disruption.
BBD, “But of course this is what you are reduced to in the absence of an actual scientific case.” An odd comment for a non-scientists to make to a someone who has worked in science for 35+ years. But whatever, it seems you are not really interested in “the scientific case”, nor even in reaching a consensus. You pretty much always say same thing, over and over: “Climate science is absolutely right and you are absolutely wrong”. I suspect that you can’t really appreciate how naive that POV is about any field of science, let alone a relatively new field like climate science. And yes, comment #55 and many others you have written are best characterized as ‘rants’, IMO.
In other words, nullius, you were resorting to tedious rhetorical trickery. Which, as I have pointed out many times, is all you’ve got since there’s no coherent, widely-accepted and growing body of work challenging the scientific consensus on AGW.
In your your preening self-regard you forget how absurd you actually are.
#67
This was crap the first time around. Please don’t repeat yourself. It’s boring.
#65 BBD, he was referring to the sea level altimeter readings here.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/2012rel4-global-mean-sea-level-time-series-seasonal-signals-removed
His paper claimed sea level is now rising at 60% faster than expected from the IPCC. Satellite readings show no acceleration at all, an in fact are decelerating (slightly). This directly contradicts that conclusion with what should be more reliable data.
To say “I believe the recent temp plateau is due to suppression from natural forces, specifically ENSO” is something I can live with, to say “The idea of a recent plateau in global temperature is ill-founded” is misleading in face of the observations and temperature records.
@ 70 Thanks Tom
I’ll have to look at what Rahmstorf has been saying about SLR in more detail. I know that CU is *overdue* bringing out its updated SLR analysis – perhaps Rahmstorf was referring to the new data set?
Tom # 70No, he wasn’t referring to the delayed CU SLR data. But he does have a point. Did you look at the new paper? See Fig 2 and text:
BBD,”This was crap the first time around. Please don’t repeat yourself.”Wow, sage advice from the non-scientific king/queen of mindless rants… “We are doomed, it’s the oil shills. We are doomed, it’s the reactionary right. We are doomed, it’s the deniers. We are doomed, it’s the luke-warmers!” Get a grip. We are not doomed, unless people start listening to the wild eyed nut cakes.Get over it son/daughter.
Steve–did you just tell BBD to get the grippe? Harsh–but maybe justified… Did you sign up for the thank you gifts from the people at Bishop Hill? Since BBD was expelled unceremoniously from BH, a lot of us get thank you notes, tickets to shows, etc.
#66,
I enjoy watching you wind up our little friend. If you really want to get him going, suggest that 20 years of European energy policy efforts to raise fuel prices had any affect at all on “fuel poverty” when it got cold.
He has a “careful study” for that one too. You see, gas prices were high in the UK because the government is so hands-off, but gas prices fell dramatically in the United States because… well, they’re still working that one out. I think the plan is to ban fracking and blame the resulting price hike on “greed.” It works on their planet.
#72 That doesn’t make sense. Why would the IPCC estimate 2 mm / year when it had been growing at a rate of 3 mm / yr since 1993?
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-6-5.html#table-10-7
Tom Fuller #74,No, grip, not grippe. I look forward to the day we can have a reasoned discussion about a prudent course(s) of action. The likes of BBD push that reasoned discussion ever further away.
steve you’re concern trolling. just sayin’
care to provide some evidence that informs your views on sensitivity, impacts, and resilience?
as i said before to BBD many moons ago, it’s rare to find someone that is competent in all these different areas of climate change as they span the hard sciences, as well as interdisplinary fields like ecology, economics, S&T studies, poli sci. etc. so forgive me when i say that i am *skeptical* of the depth of your opinions (sorry).
show me the money!
@ 74 Tom Fuller
I’ve always meant to ask: why do you spend time at a denialist blog like BH? It wasn’t to dispute with the loons in comments – I never once saw you there doing that. So what are you doing there? Enjoying the company of like minds? I think we should be told!
😉
Tom Scharf, #76. Exactly. The Rahmstorf paper is playing games. AR4 explicitly said that it could give no best estimate for 21st century SLR and that its projections were likely too low and it acknowledged the discrepancy between observations and models. The claimed ‘best estimate’ in the paper was grabbed from a time series published by CSIRO 5 years after AR4. So SLR is currently 60% faster than an estimate the IPCC didn’t publish or endorse as accurate; it is 3% faster than the IPCC’s actual published best estimate – the 3.1 mm/yr that, oddly, the paper never got around to mentioning.The paper has, predictably, got people gabbling about SLR speeding up by 60% just in time for Doha. (The British Labour Party’s climate change expert said exactly that.) There’s also a lot of nonsense about how the paper spells doom for island states and suggests that global warming has passed a tipping point. Such interpretations are being described as laudably correct by Guardian journalists like Leo Hickman – and in the next breath he’s tweeting about how the Leveson report is critical of exaggerated coverage of climate change.What a mess the climate ‘debate’ is. Everyone’s wearing blinkers. (Except me, of course.)
Incidentally, Andy Revkin touches on this in his latest blogpost:
But when you dig beneath the headlines and paper abstracts, you see that we’re still stuck with the same plausible range of coastal retreat
that’s been posited for many years.
# 78,I’m not sure what you are asking for. I guess I could be called a Jack of all trades. My formal training is in chemistry. When young I worked in research and development for a large chemical company, followed by an extended stint in production engineering and management (where I had to frequently deal with environmental compliance and sometimes deal with the EPA on non-compliance). I later became a technical consultant, where I worked under long term contract with companies in many different countries; my consulting work was essentially problem solving, covering everthing from water treatment to new product development to production workforce management. In parallel with consulting, I cofounded a company that produces laboratory instruments used to measure the size distribution of micro and nano size particles; these instruments are sold through distributors around the world. I develop electronic circuitry and software for our instruments, and provide technical support for customers and distributors, and even sometimes join reoresentatives on sales calls. I am fluent in English and Portuguese, and get by in Spanish. I have been granted a number of patents, and I will submit a couple of new applications over the next 12 months. I have spent time in places that range in wealth from under a dollar a day to very wealthy, and seen malnourished toddlers who live in mud huts…. and very wealthy spoiled teens who drive new cars. I have worked with Israelis and with Saudis. I do not know if my background is long enough or broad enough to qualify me in your eyes to hold opinions on the technical aspects of GHG driven warming, or on the human impacts of future warming, but hold them I do. What is your background Marlow?
steveF it sounds like you’ve had quite a successful career. congratulations :). Like you I’m a jack of all trades. part wally broecker, part nordhaus, part Romm, part Levi. all climate change. sad really, if it all turns out to be a hoax 😉
Of course there is nothing wrong with having an opinion. the problem comes when your opinions run contrary to the prevailing views of people that have far more expertise than you (which isn’t me btw). shouldn’t that give you pause to consider the possibility that you’re missing something? the prevailing view among WG I-III is far less sanguine than yours appears to be. why is that?
@ 77
The likes of BBD push that reasoned discussion ever further away.
Pointing out that there isn’t a coherent, robust, growing body of work supporting the contrarian position is a statement of fact. Pointing out that contrarians rely on rhetoric (as you are doing here) rather than science is a statement of fact.
Marlowe is quite correct to suggest that you should question rather than assert your apparently unsupported assumptions.
I think what you are really saying to me is “f*** off with your inconvenient truths!”;-)
#80 Vinny Burgoo
Isn’t the real problem with the WG1 SLR projection that it is a linear extrapolation that does not factor in the expected non-linear contribution from the WAIS and GIS later this century? Is it not the case that expert opinion is that the WG1 projections are excessively conservative as a consequence?
#83, “the prevailing view among WG I-III is far less sanguine than yours appears to be. why is that?” WG-I is, IMO, the group which produces the most sound, defensible, analysis. WG-II and especially WG-III selectively draw upon information which is far from robust. As to why I am more sanguine, perhaps it has to do with a different perspective based on different experiences, perhaps it has to do with experience in dealing with and resolving a wide range of challenging technical problems, and perhaps it has to do with having seen just how terribly mistaken groups of like-minded people ‘on a mission’ can (and do often) become. There is an old expression: “A rational belief demands a reasonable doubt.” When you find someone who seems to not have reasonable doubts (and this is often someone who is called ‘an expert’) it is my experience you should compensate with added doubt of your own about whatever they say. Doubting ‘experts’ usually leads to progress.
#84, “I think what you are really saying to me is “f*** off with your inconvenient truths!”” Nah, I am saying that you wouldn’t the truth if it ran up and bit you in the behind.
That should have been “wouldn’t know the truth”.
@ 87
Nah, I am saying that you wouldn’t the truth if it ran up and bit you in the behind.
Now, what did I just say about ‘sceptics’ lacking a scientific argument being forced to rely on rhetoric? Shall we leave it here? I’m sure you have better things to do.
#83,
“Of course there is nothing wrong with having an opinion. the problem comes when your opinions run contrary to the prevailing views of people that have far more expertise than you (which isn’t me btw). shouldn’t that give you pause to consider the possibility that you’re missing something?”
Absolutely. It should make you ask them why they believe as they do, and lead you to check their reasoning against yours to identify the critical differences of opinion and resolve them. A contrary opinion based on knowledge of the opposing reasoning and analysis of their validity/quality/certainty is fair enough.
The ‘prevailing views of experts’ appear to be based on ‘Harry read me’ science. And few to none of them seem to see anything wrong with that. I’m comfortable about what I might be missing, and I confess a little mystified as to why people still have faith.
However, given finite time and limited interest to divide between the infinitely many possible opinions, I personally don’t place any limits on the justifications to be used exercising freedom of belief so long as you’re not claiming your opinions to be infallible and/or scientific; i.e. as anything more than opinions. The scientific option is not to go with the ‘experts’, it’s to say “I don’t know.”
#85,
“Isn’t the real problem with the WG1 SLR projection that it is a linear extrapolation that does not factor in the expected non-linear contribution from the WAIS and GIS later this century? Is it not the case that expert opinion is that the WG1 projections are excessively conservative as a consequence?”
Good question. The answer is that expert opinion is that the contribution of the ice sheets is no more than speculation at the moment, the models are unvalidated (and in my view incorrect) and unable to offer any reliable minimum or range. They leave out of consideration what they have no evidence for. (But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen either, and they properly note the caveat.)
If even the IPCC won’t defend it, it would probably be worth finding out the reasons why.
# 90
The “˜prevailing views of experts’ appear to be based on “˜Harry read me’ science. And few to none of them seem to see anything wrong with that.
Complete bollocks or utter bollocks? What do you think Marlowe? I can’t quite decide.
Good question. The answer is that expert opinion is that the contribution of the ice sheets is no more than speculation at the moment, the models are unvalidated (and in my view incorrect)
Are you a climate modeller? 😉
If even the IPCC won’t defend it, it would probably be worth finding out the reasons why.
Does anyone know if AR5 will address this issue?
#89, ” I’m sure you have better things to do.” First sensible thing you have said on this thread. Some people are worth communicating with, some are not. Sadly, you fall into the ‘not’ category. It is easy to understand why Bishop Hill banned you. Since it is clear that you always appeal to authority and never offer a reasoned argument of your own, further communication would be much like attempting to communicate with a monkey. The only rational course is to say, as they say in Brazil,… a Deus. And I will leave it at that.
#92
<blockquote>It is easy to understand why Bishop Hill banned you. </blockquote>
Apparently dissentients afflicted with the malady of thought were not welcome.
😉
steveF
can you provide a ‘reasoned’ argument that supports your pollyanish view on climate change impacts and mitigation policies?
as a chemist, it would seem that you may have some insight into some aspects of global biogechmical cycles, but other than that not much. to be clear this isn’t meant as an insult, but rather as a suggestion that your skepticism of the prevailing views of WG II and III amounts to nothing more than a ‘gut’ feeling. a less charitable interpretation would suggest that you’re letting paranoid conspiratorial or ideological biases cloud your judgement.
@91
feel free to file NiV’s contribution @90 under the ‘credibility killer’
in other news, broken fingers take a ridiculously long time to heal. consider yourselves warned.
#85
At 3 mm / year, the linear interpolation is about 1 foot / century. The theory is it will accelerate. Well my question is looking at the altimeter readings from 1993 to present, is where is this acceleration? Hint: It’s not evident…yet. It may show up, later. The summary of my position is: call me back when it does show up and we will talk about it further. And no, I’m not buying the “it will be too late then” argument. Sea level rise is not unnatural, 400 feet since we had ice sheets a mile thick in the heartland.
A problem is that alarmists like to just make up numbers here 5M! 20M! 80M! (or even worse they state nothing and just infer it will get real bad, real quick, for sure). Even at 3x, which I wouldn’t call unreasonable is 3 feet in 100 years. It is not very scary and something that would be simple enough to adapt to. Try that argument at the Greenpeace meeting.
There’s a bunch of press on new studies showing that the glaciers melting is worse than we thought(TM). My question is: Where is this melt going?…Because it is not showing up in the sea level altimeter readings.
It is clear that measuring melt rates is a difficult business. It is done indirectly. The estimates vary. Measuring the rate of melt change is even harder.
# 96 Tom
At 3 mm / year, the linear interpolation is about 1 foot / century. The theory is it will accelerate. Well my question is looking at the
altimeter readings from 1993 to present, is where is this acceleration? Hint: It’s not evident”¦yet. It may show up, later.
Yes, the ongoing energetic imbalance that presumably caused global OHC to increase might not melt ice in the future.
I hesitate to mention the summer Arctic minimum this year.
#97 The sad fact is that nobody cares if the Arctic ice melts. And OHC is a big don’t care. These are talked about now mostly because the big items, temperature and sea level, aren’t following alarmist orders. The meaningful point is whether these secondary items signal future changes we care about. Maybe they do, but the jury is out on this. I care about the primary indicators.
# 98And OHC is a big don’t care.
for f**k sake, if ocean heat content isn’t a primary indicator then what is?
Keith,
You did well enough. You looked nervous, but the set looked awful. Big. Static.
A Talking Heads video might be needed to celebrate, but which one?
Perhaps Joshua should choose. He’s the metro specialist.
Meanwhile, here’s this one, to celebrate the fact that you might never look that young again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI
94,The reason I doubt many of the WGII and III conclusions is that they are based on weaker science, including much that is unpublished or not peer reviewed. What is peer reviewed is often drawn from the “soft sciences” like economics…. They are called soft sciences for a reason. The fact that you choose to add insulting words like polyanish, and then move on to acusations of paranoia and conspiratorial bias simply means you are wrong, and I strongly suspect subject to those biases yourself. Based on the kinds of comments you make, it seems to me that your motives are primarily political, and your description of your background seems to confirm that. In any case, it is clear to me that you are not interested in a constructive dialog about sbstantive subjects, and so not someone worthy of spending time on. A Deus.
Adieu.
#100 OHC has not been monitored long enough or accurately enough to be very useful at present. That may change, we’ll talk in a few decades. Certainly oceans are a big driver in climate.
@ 104
Asserting that the OHC record is useless is data denial. OHC data collected since ~1970 show an upward decadal trend larger than the annual measurement error bars.
#105,
Those aren’t the real error bars. (There was little data collected below 1500 m before the Argo era, and what there was was not spatially homogenous. You can’t have narrow error bars when there’s virtually no data.) It’s heavily smoothed. And that data has been subjected to all sorts of adjustments and splices, which aren’t mentioned on the graph. Same as usual, really.
#104,
Did you see Bob Tisdale’s video yet? He seems to think it is useful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lmjaNO5DD_Q
Levitus et al. (2012).
NODC OHC 0- 700m
#107,
Yes, I know.
#108,
Let’s see. The volume of the top 700 m of the oceans is ~2e17 m^3 with a thermal heat capacity of roughly 8.4e23 J/K. So the accuracy with which that heat content was measured back in 1955 (3e22 J by eyeball) corresponds to a temperature measurement accuracy of 0.036 C. That’s remarkably accurate, considering how many data points are available from back then.
Isn’t climate science marvellous!? We can measure the average temperature of 200,000,000,000,000,000 cubic metres of water to an accuracy of 0.036 C using the measurement technology of 1955 extrapolated from a tiny handful of data points covering a small fraction of the North Pacific!
I still find it funny that a graph labelled “heat content” has negative values plotted on it. What, one has to wonder, would negative heat content actually mean?
@102
your butt hurt is amusing and – if i’m listening to BBD – entirely predictable. Your ‘argument’ re your lack of trust in the conclusions of WG II & III is wholly illogical however. It would be different if you merely said that specific finding of these working groups is subject to more uncertainty than WG I in part because they rely on ‘soft’ sciences 🙄 . That would be a relatively uncontroversial POV. However, you can’t take the leap from ‘more uncertain’ to ‘it won’t be as bad as they say it will be’ without providing evidence and expect to be taken seriously.
One more thing. Your views on climate change are pollyanish relative to mainstream science on the , which is defined as:
Perhaps you’d prefer to be lumped in with the Julian Simon’s of the world as a cornucopian? or do you find that adjective insulting as well?
nullius
Start from 1970 if you prefer and step forward, year by year. Or not. Just deny it all.
Still confused by negative anomalies from a baseline I see.
Marlowe Johnson Says:
“if ocean heat content isn’t a primary indicator then what is”To quote from the European Environment Agency as of November 2012. http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/ocean-heat-content/assessment
The European Environment Agency probably can’t be considered a ‘sceptic’ organization.
nullius
On a more general note:
And that data has been subjected to all sorts of adjustments and splices, which aren’t mentioned on the graph. Same as usual, really.
Suspicion and distrust are your leitmotif. You deny being a conspiracy theorist, yet continually insinuate that climate science is deceptive. Why do you think there is an intent to mislead?
harry-coal-bot,
consider the word ‘primary’ in conjunction with the word ‘indictor’. here’s a hint from your linky:
# 112
I don’t think anyone serious is projecting a sustained decrease in OHC over the next century.
Rather the opposite, in fact. Unless some alternative explanation for the increase in OHC since ~1970 can be found. Alternative to GHG forcing, that is.
If not, and the atmospheric fraction of GHGs continues to rise, then OHC will continue to rise, with natural variability on a decadal scale, over the course of the century. Why would it not?
@109
you need to up your game on the sophistry thing. it’s getting boring. and your effort @109 suggests that you’re lazy, or think us incompetent. Which is it?
Marlowe
We all know that nullius knows he is the smartest guy in the room. Which makes his intense and irrational suspicion of climate science even more puzzling.
#111,
I’ve stepped through it all already. I’ve even seen the video.
Not confused. Just amused at the inability of some people to label a graph correctly.
#113,
I haven’t implied any motive to mislead. I simply noted that there are all sorts of adjustments and splicings and heavy smoothing behind that graph, because I know there are, and that they’re not mentioned on the graph, because they’re not. And that’s not unusual.
If you think this is ‘deceptive’, I’d question why you seem so certain that there is no such intention. How do you know?
#115,
Alternative explanations have been offered. Tisdale, for example, proposes that the warm El Nino dumps a lot of warm water across the surface of the world’s oceans, while the cold La Nina reduces evaporation and hence cloudiness, recharging the heat with more sunlight. The asymmetric effect of the two in combination means that the temperature ‘sawtooths’, as long/multiple La Ninas build up sub-surface heat, which gets dumped on the ocean surface in an El Nino pulse, and then slowly declines in between. A sequence of closely spaced pulses – a predictable consequence of the PDO warm phase – have resulted in a net increase over the 20th century. But the process is quasi-random, and in the nature of a random walk. It depends on the vagaries of the weather in the West Pacific.
I only offer that to demonstrate that alternative hypotheses exist, not to say that’s what’s actually going on. But your persistent argument that because we don’t know of an alternative that there therefore is no alternative, or that we should assume so, is invalid reasoning. It’s confirming the consequent.
#116,
The latter, obviously. 🙂
you certainly are precious NiV. Keep on Truckin’
Classic nullius: insinuate incompetence in the study:
Not confused. Just amused at the inability of some people to label a graph correctly.
Except the graph is not labelled incorrectly. It’s an anomaly graph. Anomalies can be positive or negative. As Marlowe observes, it’s getting boring.
Re # 113
Denying it now are we? Please.
Re # 115
Reduced to using Tisdale as an example? 🙂
I only offer that to demonstrate that alternative hypotheses exist, not to say that’s what’s actually going on.
Disclaimer discounted. You have nothing or you wouldn’t be waving Bob T around. Arguing that we should ignore increased forcing from GHGs and carry on looking for mystery forcings is risible, as you must know.
Re # 116
Well you would say that, wouldn’t you? Being the smartest conspiracy theorist in the room.
#120,
It’s not labelled as an anomaly graph…
Gosh. Do you think it confused other scientists? Or maybe they just knew that it was an anomaly graph and would have been puzzled by your behaviour here?
Let’s talk about nullius’ misrepresentations …
No, let’s not play the game. Let’s look at the data instead.
OHC 0 – 700m
#122,
No. I’m sure other scientists would have figured out it was an incorrectly labelled anomaly graph, too.
It’s a graph, like any other graph, with axes labels to indicate the actual quantity being shown. By scientific convention, if you’re plotting heat content then you label it “Heat Content” and if you’re plotting heat content anomaly then you label it “Heat Content Anomaly”. You always label a graph with a complete and accurate description of the quantity being plotted. This is not a hard concept.
In fact, it really ought to be labelled with the specific type of anomaly – noting the base interval and seasonal period. There really is no excuse for this sort of sloppiness in published work.
Conspiracy? No. Just perverse incentives acting on fallable humans.
Dear God nullius – just listen to yourself. Your fake objections to inconvenient data are laughable. This has to be the most obvious misdirection by nitpick I have ever seen. Just… stop it. Please.
From the introduction of Levitus et al. (2012):
This is the second time we’ve been through this farcical exchange about your data denial and we aren’t going to have this conversation again.
Here is the 0-700m OHC anomaly again. It will not go away simply because deniers like you want it to.
#120 BBDArguing that we should ignore increased forcing from GHGs and carry on looking for mystery forcings is risibleA recent paper published in the Geophysical Research Lettershttp://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2012GL052885.shtml
What can change sea level…land ice/ocean water balance and what else? Oh yeah..heat content.At the moment science can not explain ‘why’ there is a 60 year signal in the tide gauge records, only that it exists.
BBD:
Are you in denial that there exists a significant political forcing in climate science? You are so anti-political science. 97% of political scientists agree that there exists a substantial anthropogenic policy forcing in climate science, and that humans are the sole cause.
Compare and contrast:
And this:
Observe how the first version renders all the responses quite moot.
Adepts of the copycat strategy should stick to copycats.
For a formal introduction:
https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~martin/Research/Oldpapers/gamesemantics97scan.pdf
From the abstract of Harry’s cite:
Emphasis added to underline that the authors were concerned with the fact that there is an oscillation, not that it can’t be interpreted. Perhaps science’s best explanation as to “˜why’ there is a 60 year signal does not meet Harry’s standard, but to claim that science has no explanation does seem to go a bridge too far.
Who needs the Bible when we can play the same game with scientific papers?
#125,
“We use the term “ocean heat content” as opposed to”ocean heat content anomaly” used by some authors because “ocean heat content” is an anomaly by definition.”
No it isn’t. This is incorrect, to the point of being scientifically illiterate. The total heat content of a body is the total amount of heat that would be released by cooling the body to absolute zero Kelvin. It has well defined units (Joules), and it doesn’t depend on the temperature scale. (Or rather, the only valid temperature scale to use in any sort of thermodynamics calculation is the Kelvin scale.)
What he is alluding to is that the total heat content of the oceans is an utterly uninteresting variable that is rather hard to calculate, and they’re only really interested in the changes in it. Which means you can use the anomaly, or any other convenient fixed offset, and the changes in this other quantity will be just the same. But that does not at all mean that the quantities themselves are the same, any more than a temperature anomaly is the same thing as the temperature, or a pressure anomaly is the same thing as the pressure.
It’s not enough to be able to cut-and-paste; you have to be able to understand the meaning of the words you’re using in an argument. It can help you spot when your source has got it wrong.
Nullius, you are a joke. Bullshit yourself to death. The data remain unchanged. You remain a denier. I remain full of contempt for your shitty little rhetorical diversions.
Write to Levitus. Seriously. Every time you start up with this bullshit about how the scientists have got it wrong and you know best my blood boils. Write. Post the response – if any – here.
Remember last time you tried this crap on? With Annan? Remember that? Well I’m calling your bluff again.
You need to be shown up for the contemptible bullshitter that you are.
BBD, #80. Yes, the WG1 projections did exclude any rapid acceleration of ice-sheet melting and, yes, expert opinion is and always was that the projections were conservative – so where was the scientific novelty in the new Rahmstorf paper and why did none of its authors correct newspapers’ misinterpretations of it? (I’ve been away from t’Internet for a few days. Perhaps they have now, but I doubt it.)Rahmstorf et al were playing Doha games and the press played along.
It’s not enough to be able to cut-and-paste; you have to be able to understand the meaning of the words you’re using in an argument. It can help you spot when your source has got it wrong.
First sentence of the paper:
[1] We provide updated estimates of the change of oceanheat content and the thermosteric component of sea levelchange of the 0″“700 and 0″“2000 m layers of the WorldOcean for 1955″“2010.
I understand the meaning all right. Just as you do. I understand something else too. Only deniers like you misrepresent stuff like this and you only do it because you have nothing whatsoever else to offer.
Vinny Burgoo
I have no idea why. I have no doubt that increasing OHC (see above) will result in a non-linear response from the WAIS eventually and that currently conservative linear extrapolations of C21st SLR are misleading. I have no idea why contrarians misrepresent this stuff. It’s much, much worse to do that than what you claim has happened here. I have to say that I saw none of this press misrepresentation.
Hmm. Scrub that last comment. There hasn’t yet been the sort of ice-sheet melting that the projections excluded.
I’d have to read the paper and the relevant bits of AR4 again to come up with a more sensible response and I’m not in the mood.
Though, from memory: I think the projections also excluded what was taken at the time to be natural variability and I think the paper claims to have excluded what it takes to be natural variability from its comparison. Maybe that’s where the novelty lies. Perhaps the paper has proved to its satisfaction that AR4 overestimated natural variability.
If so, you wouldn’t guess that from reading the newspaper reports.
(And, if so, I wouldn’t be able to evaluate such stuff even if I felt like re-reading it.)
BBD: Crossed in the post. See the stories in the Mail and (I think) the Guardian: sea level rising faster than expected.Maybe more later. I’ve gotta eat and sleep.
#110,I suppose it is mildly amusing. I offer you a perspective based on experience, you counter with a mindless perspective based on .. well.. other people’s experience, which, for whatever reason, you choose to believe. In any case, time will tell. The only issue which really matters for public policy is climate sensitivity. I believe it is probably between 1.6 C and 2C per doubling.. you believe… no, strike that… you parrot the IPCC value of ~3C per doubling. Fair enough. Time will tell.
# 138
You offer a perspective based on experience that leads you to believe that 2xCO2 ECS is probably between 1.6C – 2C. What experience? You have none that is relevant.
MJ references the scientific consensus on ECS and you accuse him of parroting. Perhaps your perspective is skewed. Perhaps you over-estimate your ability to provide a reliable range for 2xCO2 ECS.