Hand back your science degrees Trenberth et al.
Thirty eight of the worlds top, most consequential climate scientists sought to slap down the Nobel prize winner, astronaut and glitterati of science, and all they could come up with was a logical fallacy and a single paragraph of incohate, innumerate, and improbable evidence. It’s hand-waving on stilts.
Is that the best they can do?
Trenberth and co try to rebut No Need to Panic About Global Warming, but those 16 eminent scientists quoted evidence and pointed out major flaws in the assumptions of the theory. They described forms of scientific malpractice, and called for open debate. In comparison, the 38 climate “scientists” offered hardly more than argument from authority, “Trust Us: We’re Experts” they said as if the lesser beings, who were mere Professors of Astrophysics, Meteorology, and Physics, were too stupid to know the difference between a doctor and a dentist. I mean, sure the 16 skeptics could be wrong, but if the evidence is so overwhelming, why can’t the 38 experts find it?
Q: What kind of doctor is a scientist who can’t reason?
A witchdoctor.
First — the Fallacy
1. “Do you consult your dentist about your heart condition?”
If my dentist tells me that my heart surgeon was caught emailing other surgeons about how to use tricks to hide declines, that he broke laws of reason, that his predictions are basically all wrong, or that his model of understanding is demonstrably wrong, then I’m listening to the dentist.
Try this out: My dentist has no vested interest, but has provided years of trusted service and medical training — and he warns me there are doubts about my heart surgeon and I need to get a second opinion (say from a Dr Lindzen, Dr Christie, or Dr Spencer*). So I tell him to “go jump”, “what would he know”, and keep returning to the same heart surgeon even though my blood pressure doesn’t change and the pills cost $3 billion a month. Sure.
Eight reasons to dump your doctor:
1. His predictions fail.
2. He uses fallacies to reason — like “argument from authority” instead of empirical evidence.
3. He’s been caught cheating “hiding declines”, trying to get dissenting doctors banned from publishing their work, and worrying what will happen if his patients realize how little he knows: “They’ll kill me probably.”
4. He refuses to debate his radical treatments publicly. “It’s beyond debate”.
5. He calls people names — “denier”
6. He doesn’t appear to understand the scientific method – when data disagrees with his theory, he throws out the data and keeps the theory.
7. When you ask him for evidence that the treatment works he keeps saying “Trust me, I’m an expert”.
8. The numbers don’t add up. Where’s the cost-benefit sums? (Like this or this?) His treatment plan means the nation needs to lower it’s quality of life now, … so … our children’s children will live ten minutes longer in 2100?
Second – the hand waving attempt at evidence
1. “long term warming has not abated”. Since when? With no timeframe this is meaningless. The world has not warmed significantly in a decade. It started warming long before our CO2 emissions ramped up. The world was warmer 1000 years ago, and for most of the last 8,000 years. (See this graph from this page).
2. “In fact, it was the warmest decade on record”. Our records are woefully short (120 years) and badly disorganized, the original raw records are lost, 89% of the current stations are thermometers near air conditioners or car parks, or near tarmac. See point 1.
3. “Observations show unequivocally that our planet is getting hotter”. Correlation is not causation. Another logical error. Where is the cause and effect link? It’s been warming since 1680, but Napoleon didn’t drive to Moscow in an SUV.
4. “And computer models have recently shown that during periods when there is a smaller increase of surface temperatures, warming is occurring elsewhere in the climate system, typically in the deep ocean.” Marvel at out how CO2 the atmospheric gas traps heat in the deep ocean.
5. “Such periods are a relatively common climate phenomenon, are consistent with our physical understanding of how the climate system works, and certainly do not invalidate our understanding of human-induced warming or the models used to simulate that warming.” Blah blah blah. Spot the evidence. Translated this says: Sometimes we see things that fit with our view, actually, we can’t even say that, we can just say that the real world doesn’t invalidate our “understanding”. It’s as weak as that. They have nothing.
Those who are not Scientists
All of those named below belong in the National Academy for Sorcery (NAS), for they are not real scientists. A real scientist argues with observations and theories that match predictions, and data has primacy over theory. A witchdoctor argues that “Storms are coming. Trust me, for I am one of the Chosen Ones. Pay us your tithe and I will stop the tempest! “
Distinguished Senior Scientist
Kevin Trenberth, Sc.D, Distinguished Senior Scientist, Climate Analysis Section, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Richard Somerville, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego
Katharine Hayhoe, Ph.D., Director, Climate Science Center, Texas Tech University
Rasmus Benestad, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, The Norwegian Meteorological Institute
Gerald Meehl, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Michael Oppenheimer, Ph.D., Professor of Geosciences; Director, Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy, Princeton University
Peter Gleick, Ph.D., co-founder and president, Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security
Michael C. MacCracken, Ph.D., Chief Scientist, Climate Institute, Washington
Michael Mann, Ph.D., Director, Earth System Science Center, Pennsylvania State University
Steven Running, Ph.D., Professor, Director, Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group, University of Montana
Robert Corell, Ph.D., Chair, Arctic Climate Impact Assessment; Principal, Global Environment Technology Foundation
Dennis Ojima, Ph.D., Professor, Senior Research Scientist, and Head of the Dept. of Interior’s Climate Science Center at Colorado State University
Josh Willis, Ph.D., Climate Scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Matthew England, Ph.D., Professor, Joint Director of the Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Australia
Ken Caldeira, Ph.D., Atmospheric Scientist, Dept. of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution
Warren Washington, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Terry L. Root, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University
David Karoly, Ph.D., ARC Federation Fellow and Professor, University of Melbourne, Australia
Jeffrey Kiehl, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Donald Wuebbles, Ph.D., Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois
Camille Parmesan, Ph.D., Professor of Biology, University of Texas; Professor of Global Change Biology, Marine Institute, University of Plymouth, UK
Simon Donner, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Canada
Barrett N. Rock, Ph.D., Professor, Complex Systems Research Center and Department of Natural Resources, University of New Hampshire
David Griggs, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University, Australia
Roger N. Jones, Ph.D., Professor, Professorial Research Fellow, Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, Australia
William L. Chameides, Ph.D., Dean and Professor, School of the Environment, Duke University
Gary Yohe, Ph.D., Professor, Economics and Environmental Studies, Wesleyan University, CT
Robert Watson, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Chair of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia
Steven Sherwood, Ph.D., Director, Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Chris Rapley, Ph.D., Professor of Climate Science, University College London, UK
Joan Kleypas, Ph.D., Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research
James J. McCarthy, Ph.D., Professor of Biological Oceanography, Harvard University
Stefan Rahmstorf, Ph.D., Professor of Physics of the Oceans, Potsdam University, Germany
Julia Cole, Ph.D., Professor, Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona
William H. Schlesinger, Ph.D., President, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Jonathan Overpeck, Ph.D., Professor of Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona
Eric Rignot, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Professor of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine
Wolfgang Cramer, Professor of Global Ecology, Mediterranean Institute for Biodiversity and Ecology, CNRS, Aix-en-Provence, France
*people with long publication records, prizes, awards, and a track record of honest work, excellent data and good reasoning.
Heh Mikey, do you consult dendrochronologists or statisticians about your paleo reconstructions?
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No, Mikey doesn’t consult the dendrochronologists or statisticians but he will contradict himself! He pontificates that scientists should stick to their area of expertise and then he drones on about the economic paradise in store for us all by going green. If his area of expertise is climate, why is he blathering on about economics?
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I think it’s probably a good time to review what real statisticians McShane and Wyner said in the peer reviewed literature in 2010 about Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, and Scott Rutherford (SMR). Hope everyone is siting down if they haven’t heard this before.
We could probably go on forever but I think everyone “gets it” by now. Unfortunately, Schmidt, Mann and Rutherford don’t “get it”. In fact, here’s a big surprise, they say “The MW rebuttal focuses a lot on SMR and we will take the time to look into the specifics more closely, but some of their criticism is simply bogus.”
So Mikey, how does that argument from authority work again?
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Slightly off topic, but congradulations for being nominated for top Australian climate blog.
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“Do you consult your dentist about your heart condition? ”
In fact dentists are well placed to give advice about a patient’s potential for cardiovascular disease as the following study in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) shows.
http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c2451.full
Climate science is multidisciplinary. It is simply daft for those studying the climate, or any other field, to use an analogy which claims that only scientists from specific scientific disciplines may comment on or contribute to the development of human knowledge and understanding.
And we have the same tired old predictable examples about smoking and cancer being trotted out. Have these people no imagination? Thankfully the doctors I know do not use computer models to make a diagnosis.
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Hmm … I like the list.
I particularly like the number asterisks indicating those people who just might have a clue.. Mind you, I have always had an affinity for “round” numbers.
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Cheap shots hidden behind an asterisk don’t enhance this blogs claim of the debating high ground made in the first few paragraphs.
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weird that this was sent while editing the one below… I like the version below
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Cheap shots hidden behind an asterisk don’t enhance this blog’s debating credentials in comparison with lamentable effort detailed in the first few paragraphs.
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How about 2 cheap shots hidden behind “a weird” double post?
Lamentable……
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It is noticed that there is a concentration of “Climate Science” workers in one influential NEW South Wales University.
This group was particularly active in the Media prior to the last Climate Change Conference (CanCun?) and so illustrated their primary function.
🙂
It’s nearly over but we can’t let up until the stake is driven through the heart of this monster.
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It’s also the home of Deltoid.
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Hi Janama
I was going to ask yesterday.
Who or what is deltoid?
Just gurgled it.
I think I remember on another blogg attacking his critique of Ian Plimer’s Heavenly AGW putdown.
And he is at a very large New SW uni.
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The real question for me, is will the slow meltdown of Climate Witchdoctory have any impact on the wider philosophy of post-normal science?
I suspect that it will not. The other proponents of science-that-is-not-really-science will just keep trucking along, surrounded by their spinners and funding agents, using their wrong numbers, fudging their results, and generally keeping blogs like this one thoroughly entertained.
“It is much easier to take measurements, than it is to know what you are actually measuring”. John Sullivan.
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Doubtful, there is a funding machine already built. There will be a new reason to justify that “wider philosophy” that spawned AGW.
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You mean like this?
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Possibly, but not probably.
Humans have demonstrated, throughout history, that the are incapable of accurate planning more than one or two months in advance. Strategic planning is therefore an oxymoron. It is not planning at all, it is merely a wish list.
That is why I do not subscribe to any of the various conspiracy theories that arise from time to time. They may be wish lists, but the act of planning to achieve the items, is always doomed to failure. Any success is purely serendipitous, and may actually be counter-productive.
“No plan, however well conceived, fully survives in the face of the enemy”. United States Army Staff Manual.
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Instead of “Post-normal science”, I prefer the more accurate term “noble cause corruption.
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It is interesting that the Trenberth et al attempted rebuttal of the ‘No need to panic about global warming’ document published in the Wall Street Journal and in The Australian argues by analogy. It makes the analogy that you (supposedly) wouldn’t ask your dentist about your heart condition.
You have always got be careful in arguing by analogy because, invariably, the analogy will break down eventually. Worse still, if the analogy is clumsy, it can actually be used against you. This may be the case with the Trenbert et al analogy about dentists and heart specialists.
As I understand it, medical research is discovering huge links between dental health and the health of the rest of the body. Specifically there are links between dental health, gum health, oral health generally and the heart. The point to my mind is that the two ARE inter-related and it might actually make sense to talk to dentists about the cause and effect between one condition and the other.
So, in my opinion, the Trenberth et al Dentist/heart specialist analogy fails completely. It’s clumsy.
At a deeper level than their flawed analogy, what they are trying to say in these arguements is that we must only think in our own silos – the are advocating SILO THINKING. Isn’t it one of the challenges for science generally today to stop thinking in strict and narrow silos and to start thinking across silos?
And, in any case, what is this amazing silo they like to call climate science? Is it not made up of Physics, Chemistry, mathematics, meterology, observation, history, geology, ocean sciences, etc, etc etc? Why do the climate scientists insist that they are in some sort of silo that is totally insulated from the rest of science?
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Davie,
Good points, all.
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The missing heat response is a beauty from someone who claims to be an expert. All that cold surface water trapping the heat at such depths where, unfortunately, we can’t measure it.
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Yeah, that one’s always been a bit hard for me to swallow. The heat slowly falls down there (lessee again, how long have humans been pumping out all this heat-causing stuff anyway; thought it was supposed to take decades for deep ocean changes?), but can’t get back up. Reminds me of the ol’ “I’ve fallen and can’t get back up!”
“But when I do get back up, you’d better watch out!”
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How true.
When I did physics we were taught that heat rises.
These BS artists are now telling us all the heat is hiding at the bottom of the deep blue sea.
Yeah – RIGHT ON!!
Cheers,
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Heat doesn’t inherently ‘rise’. Heat moves. If a hot thing is moved, the heat will be moved with it.
Thermohaline circulation (aka ocean conveyor belt) moves heat around the oceans. Is there heat ‘trapped’ at the bottom of the ocean? Yes. Does this account for the apparent energy imbalance between predictions and measurements? Partly but probably not wholly.
Given the greater than predicted loss of arctic ice, it’s possible that a lot of heat is finding itself at the arctic. It’ll be interesting to see what HadCRUT4 shows on that front when it’s released later this year
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Tristan,
“Heat doesn’t inherently ‘rise’.” – absolute bunk!! but yes – of course it moves – (I know that when I pick up my kettle and take it to the cup to make a cuppa).
Currents do move the different layers of water at different levels around (witness El Nino & La Nina).
Pity that the Argobouys are now dissing the “heat is hiding at the bottom of the ocean” myth – the only hot water at the bottom of the oceans is from hydrothermal vents – this water eventually rises to the surface but these vents also release liquid CO2 supporting diverse organisms, including giant tube worms, clams, limpets and shrimp. See here
Cheers,
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Nah Popeye,
I’ve heard that the Montgolfier brothers trick was all done with smoke and mirrors. They just used the mirrors to look at themselves, they were that vain.
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If only we had a really, really, really long thermometer
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So, in the real numbers game, it is 38 vs. 16.
Now, if we were to compare amounts and origins of the funding of the individuals of the two groups, a clearer focus on motivation might well result. Other than poor science and no adherance to the scientific method, the presentation of warmist catastrophism seems much more belief than experimental, evidence-based observation.
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But in the Climate Science game, 38 = 16, or any other number you want it to be. That is the majesty of it. It is all things to everyman (and everywoman).
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I have consulted my Sangoma. She rolled the bones and her eyes, frothed at the mouth a little and wailed a bit … the tokolosh says the tsotsi are 38 in number. They are bad people.
[fixed]
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My bad, “tsosi” should read “tsotsi”
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Sounds like something out of Wilbur Smith. Maybe Wilbur writes under the pseudonym Trenberth.
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It’s amusing to note that the 8 points you make about dumping the doctor all apply to your side of the debate.
In regard to the scientific method, why don’t you get involved with the real scientific debate instead of blogging? The real debate is played out in academia not on blogs/ Fox news. Of course we all know the reason don’t we?
As a side note, to illustrate my contention that this blog is politically motivated and not at all interested in science I see on You Tube where Jo and Monckton and others are getting together to try to get a Fox news clone going in Australia. I can’t wait to live in a country ruled behind the scenes by Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer.
It will be a scary world where the anti-science and mining magnates rule.
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Ha ha ha – Lord God Temp declares that real debates only occur in The Land of Academia – which is o-so-conveniently swept clear of skeptical brains by the utter complete lack of funding for anyone to find holes in the theory.
Where is the evidence?
Oh but then actually, Skeptics can name 900 papers of observable evidence that backup our claims, so even vastly underfunded, we still win in academia – it’s just that most academics are not allowed to admit that.
As for the 8 points applying to us, go on, name one time I have reasoned with a fallacy. One.
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the last 14 words in the first paragraph.
Do I win a prize?
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Gee Aye is correct. Trenberth’s traitors came up with multiple paragraphs of incohate, innumerate, and improbable evidence. The 97% figure surely qualifies as inchoate evidence that The Science is settled (i.e. not evidence of science actually being settled but evidence of an attempt to settle the science in a manner that is itself a crime against science).
I suggest the prize should be commensurate with the contribution. Surely Jo can afford to send the winner a picture of a piece of burnt toast?
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by the utter complete lack of funding for anyone to find holes in the theory.
plenty of debating experts there to dissect this. If someone can provide evidence or even explanation for this statement go ahead but I’d say I get the toast.
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So Jo, what if you are wrong, and dangerous warming does happen?
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So John, what if you are wrong and dangerous cooling does happen?
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John, what if you are wrong and there is a God?
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What about the Precautionary Principle?
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Johnny Boy need not fear your God if he is wrong. No God of yours would ever punish him for not believing in something for which She never provided any evidence in support. JB may, however, be in a pickle if your God is either irrational or merciless.
If your God has been busy offsetting our dangerous global warming for the last 10 years whilst humans have shown no faith in God’s capability and willingness to fix the climate for us, then for this denial of The Miracle Of The Climate Change you and JB are both going to get some extreme warming on the Last Day. 😉
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John … you’re way behind the eight ball … warming GOOD, cooling BAD! You can figure it out for yourself, but for warming to be BAD, there isn’t enough CO2 available to get it there.
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define “dangerous”
define “warming”
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John
The ‘what if’ question is often used by fiction writers to randomly speculate and make up stories. It is also a symptom of obsessive compulsive disorder. For instance people with OCD might have thoughts such as, ‘what if I leave the stove on and the house burns down’.
Logically you are using the ‘what if’ argument to suggest a consequent from an antecedent. The CAGW consequent is simply a hypothetical assumption. It is counterfactual as there is no empirically established causality that the antecedent, GHG produced by man, will result in CAGW.
CAGW is not a scientific theory as the hypothesis has not been confirmed by observation and experiment. The results of computer models are not empirical.
This question in the context of CAGW is scientific OCD, whereby a hypothesis becomes a neurosis with a question such as, ‘what if I continue using my car and the earth becomes as hot as Venus’.
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And what would dangerous warming be? Longer growing seasons? More food to feed people (and other species)? Less death by hypothermia?
Let’s just say it does warm. So? You have raised the alarm, for what? No one has proven that the warming is not natural, or that it is harmful. So instead of squandering trillions on something no one knows diddly squat about, all the while starving millions of people to death, why not spend a little to feed the people, and try to figure out if the warming is harmful or not.
Clearly, the world is a more inhabitable place today than during the last ice age. so warm is not in and of itself bad. But pouring money into the coffers of meglomaniacs has been proven to he in and of itself bad.
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John
That’s a paradoxical question.
Dangerous warming is a well-known idiom that means ‘something that can’t possibly occur’.
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Of course, the real issue is that the Scientific Journals are very loathe to publish negative research findings. “We ran this experiment two hundred times, and had a result consistent with the hypothesis on five occasions”.
Never see it. Never happens. If you conduct an analysis on the Scientific Journals, the “positive” findings far outweigh the “negative” findings. Even really smart people aren’t that smart, nobody gets it right first time, every time.
Science progresses by finding the boundaries between what works and what doesn’t work, and explaining the differences that existed at the boundaries. But the negative aspects at the boundary never appear to be documented, only the positive.
So we are left with the conclusion that the Scientific Journals are only interested in the “good news” stories, in exactly the same way that the MSM is only interested in the “imminent disaster” stories. In climate change, both factions came together to create a doomsday scenario. How convenient for the funding, and for increasing taxes.
Journals should reward academic effort rather than academic “correctness” (however “correctness” is defined). Only then will we see the removal of politics from science.
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The real debate is going on all around Australia in all sorts of areas. The decisions that are made by corrupt scientists feeding into a statist government are using everday Australian taxpayers money to fund the Chicken Littles and the serial alarmists who want to destroy our economy. From personal experience with workin in the science and engineering field in major industry I can tell you that nobody in their right mind, who wanted a sensible and practical result, would ever go to an academic in a University for advice. I believe that the Government should just stop funding all Universities and let the market decide what is essential and needed.
As for the country being ruled by Gina and Clive, at least these people have created value and wealth for a large nuber of Australians in the wages they pay, the royalities and payroll taxes their companies pay to the state governments,the land rates their companies pay to local councils and the taxes they pay to the Federal Government. They have been successfull in their endevours which is more that you can say for the leftist intellectual elites currently running the show in Canberra and influencing the leftists MSM media like the Clive (lets suspend democracy) Hamiltons of the world.
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No. Can you re-post with links to support your argument?
Obviously you haven’t been outside lately.
You might need your afdb if you decide to do so…
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As I offered Temp, debate is on anytime mate. I note that Ralph Nader offered a debate between Sn. Inhofe and a Democrat on climate change and Inhofe immediately accepted.
After which crickets chirped from the other side.
On the thread I offer this. I have not read Trenberth et al letter as I have read so many of his emails that I can’t take it anymore. But over at the Cat they point out this sentence:
Now as it happens all financial analyses of climate change mitigation that I have read have had NPV’s so negative that they’d have problems registering against the debt of any six random EU countries you’d care to name. Yet these guys say “…could also drive decades of economic growth. Just what the doctor ordered.”
I note exactly one of the estimable 39 has economic credentials, and I would challenge that one to show a positive NPV vs no action for just about any CAGW amelioration effort you can name. And he would be required to use the same discount rate I have to use, not Lord Stern’s risible 1% or so.
So, here they say green energy will save the world and make a buck too. Well I call them on it – if they can criticise a group of 16 containing professional climate scientists as not experts then 38 of their 39 can explain to my satisfaction their credentials for claiming this stupid claim.
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Lets take this seriously for a minute. In order to have a genuine debate, both parties should state, as precisely as possible, the proposition they are trying to establish. Ideally, both parties should sort out before the start of the debate, the points on which they agree, and the points on which they disagree. This surely is crucial. If, for example, you are debating the nature of the solutions of a class of equations, and you discover that your opponent thinks that 2+2=5, then at least you know where to start the argument.
Just satisfying these conditions before the debate even starts would be fun, but hard work.
The most common “skeptic” ploy is to challenge each and every starting point offered by the climate scientists. So if the scientists say, “the rising level of CO2 in the atmosphere is due to humans clearing land and burning fossil fuel”, then the “skeptics” produce a Plimer (its undersea volcanoes) or a Salby (can’t remember what he said, except that it wasn’t us). If the scientists say that measurements show the world is warming, the “skeptics” produce a Watts to say, “its the urban heat island effect”, or a Briggs to say, “your statistics are wrong, you can’t fit a trend line to a time series”. If the scientists say “CO2 is a greenhouse gas that warms the lower atmosphere”, then Nitschke & Noodle will pop up and say, “doesn’t – it contravenes the 2nd law of thermodynamics”. If the scientists say “nett positive feedback enhances the warming directly attributable to CO2”, then a Spencer will say that “the nett feedbacks are actually negative”.
You get the idea.
So Bruce, if you and Temp want to go at it, perhaps Jo can provide an open thread on which you two (and only you two) can thrash out your positions. I’d like to see that.
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JB, I guess that you have just outlined how “well understood” the “science” is to date.
You can’t seem to muster a decent proof for any of those points.
Good job for team AGW…..
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John – This was following on from a few threads ago, and Temp mentioned the word ‘debate’ again. So I was reminding. If you see the comment I made then you will find 4 links. They in essence lay out the other hypothesis, which has not been formally named, but which I call the low sensitivity/solar magnetic hypothesis. I have a tweak to this which is the one with the effect of the 60-65 year ocean oscillation cycle, which I’ve mentioned before and which I use in my rough model.
The problem mate is no IPCC contributing climate scientist other than perhaps Prof Lockwood at Reading has ever addressed the key data: the anticorrelation of previous solar cycle length (pSCL) with world temperatures. And not even he explains why it exists, he just glosses over it, talking about only SCL not pSCL, although he admits an anticorrelation. Then says in his conclusion that solar effect is amplified but then strangely says “However, these findings are not relevant to any debates about modern climate change” without saying why or giving any justification for this view.
This despite anyone being able to see it for sake of a bit of graphing. And as you’ve seen from several previous posts pSCL plus 2XCO2 of 0.7 C explains the temperature trend over centuries very neatly.
As with any area of science a hypothesis is successful if it explains all aspects of the area of science it is dealing with (hence the interest with supralight neutrinos and IHC SUSY discussions lately).
Low sensitivity + solar magnetic effects explain all the large scale climate effects we see (aside from chaotic emergent effects like exactly which cyclone appears where, and what is the weather like next week), whereas the high sensitivity hypothesis does not explain gross discrepancies like the last 15 years of flat temperatures.
However I have not been party to the discussions of back radiation, Stefan-Boltzman or lack of a hot spot, so I won’t contribute any detail on those as I have not read up on them. I don’t think they are important compared with a hypothesis which explains the overall shape of the temperature data and other climate aspects such as the Moscow heatwave and the Pakistan floods.
But I will leave it at that as all this is OT. As I said I am willing to discuss the science as I’ve said hitherto, on a thread which suits Jo and the mods.
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all right I’m game, lets outline some suggested rules:
Each debater must choose a second. The seconds will deal with moderators on behalf of the sides.
A toss of a coin will determine what side starts. The winner of the coin toss will upon their choice, either ask or receive the first question.
The opening question will be a single question with up to 25 words of framework.
Replies will be up to 100 words. After the reply, a period of 24 hours of commentary from observers will be permitted. Thence a question will be returned from the other side. The cycle will repeat.
The exchange will repeat until no more questions are asked. Moderators will have authority to ask for clarification, prune inappropriate questions from observers and keep peace.
The winner will be declared by counting thumbs up and down (context corrected) for each side.
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Interesting stuff. I still think that shared understandings need to be decided before the start, so that neither party can drag in a red herring and declare that it be debated.
Still, you’ve put your hypothesis up, and it seems pretty clear cut.
Actually, given that, maybe rather than a debate, we need predictions. That is, the warmist can make predictions from their point of view, and you can make predictions based on your hypothesis. We can then just follow over time and see how each set of predictions go. It is nowhere near as entertaining as a debate, but it is far less subjective.
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Wow John! I’m impressed. Maybe continued exposure to the philosophy of the Scientific Method is contageous. Given that Bruce’s theory already explains the last century and a half much better than the CAGW theory, I don’t think there is much doubt about the outcome.
The only problem is getting the warmists to wait for events to confirm or falsify the respective theories. As can be seen, even on Jo’s blog, warmists are getting frantic about having their theories accepted before events can falsify them (more than they have already, that is).
(Well, there is another problem — letting the warmists control the data that decides which prediction is verified. This is taking care of itself, however, as they are losing their exclusive control of the data and the data they do control is increasingly suspect, thanks to Climategate.)
I wouldn’t think anything more is needed than to agree to use logic and the scientific method rather than emotion, ad hominem, and logical fallacy. (After all, there’s no point in agreeing that things are true for which there isn’t sufficient empirical evidence.)
Good luck getting the AGW side to agree to this, however.
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yes, let’s take it seriously. Forget the rhetorical preamble about “how” debates are structured. Just state the hypothesis – AGW – and now….wait for it…hang on….now!…..state the data that is unequivocal, free of chance, bias and confounding. PS. Prospective modeling of any sort is not permitted in this debate that is concerned only with the evidence.
So mate – show us the money!
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John, you say that there must be some agreement about propositions that are to be argued. Fair enough. But then you put a series of assertions in the mouths of ‘climate scientists”, and then complain that they are serially rebutted by those with the time, intelligence and expertise to do so. A scientist saying something is proof of nothing – it is simply an assertion. For it to be a proposition proofs must be supplied that can withstand scrutiny and rebuttal. That is both ordinary logic and normal scientific practice. In the end it’s really simple – provide the evidence, make only claims that can be supported by observation, and do not make extraordinary claims unless you have extraordinary evidence.
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Pretty hard to have a debate when ones comments “disappear”. They were reasonable, polite and contained no ad homs. Who were you accusing of stifling debate?
(I just approved your comment.Not that I approve of it) CTS
[Did you fix that e-mail address so that Jo can contact you to privately explain why your posts do not comply? You know so that you can freely and rudely “debate” on your host’s site/] ED
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Temp – What are you talking about? I haven’t accused anyone of stifling debate, I am inviting debate! At least on a thread which suits Jo and the mods, since its their site not mine. You could’ve repeated your post after Jo took the trouble of moving us over to the Unthreaded thread, but you didn’t.
Anyway that was only an aside to the point I was making – which is Trenberth et al are hypocritical to complain the likes of Prof Lindzen are not experts when Trenberth et al then make a naive and readily disproven statement about economics. Or haven’t you heard of Solyndra and many, many similar debacles recently?
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Bruce,
You are quite right to point out that Stern used a low discount rate. However, it was not 1% but 0.1%. This is not all that was wrong with the analysis. Others include
– Stern chose the most extreme scenarios of the economic costs consequences of warming. A more consensus approach would have reduced this.
– He did not reduce the costs of “doing nothing” by the uncertainties.
But on policy Stern made some even more extreme assumptions, ALL of which need to hold for his policy proposals to hold good.
– A small carbon tax would lead to a massive increase in research into low carbon or zero carbon alternatives – ignoring the phenomenal investment already.
– A carbon tax is highly effective. In Britain the tax on gasoline has been over 50% of the retail cost for decades, whilst car use has increased.
– It relies on every major country getting together and committing themselves to reductions. Stern ignores the scenario where a small minority commit to massive reductions, whilst the fastest growing and largest economies do nothing. So there is negligable impact on future states (even under the worst CAGW scenarios), despite the minority of states impoverishing their citizens.
– It assumes that governments can effectively deliver on large-scale, long-term projects, with no clear means to achieve the chosen objective(s). All three elements together invariably lead to a lack of delivery and a financial disaster. The CO2 reduction project is the biggest ever, and will stretch over decades.
– Long-term economic growth is linked to falling unit energy costs. Pretending otherwise is nonsense. Even the IPCC / Greenpeace economic projections say that the the wrong type of policies could see global output over 40% lower than it would have been by mid-century and world population 330 million lower by 2100.
For economists, I have put Stern’s ideas on a simple graph, with the policy issues analyzed here.
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It’s all moot. Markey will not debate Inhofe. Inhofe is extremely well versed in the AGW scam and Markey has no way to counter him and he knows it. He won’t do it because he’ll lose face big time. I will be the most surprised man on this Earth if this debate actually starts. Nader balked for the same reason. In honest debate the skeptics come out on top.
I would love to see it though.
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Yes, ManBearChicken the sequel. I really wish they’d do a debate as it’d show how thin the CAGW case is. Like when Chris Monckton debated Paul Denniss, not much science came from Dr Denniss, just a lot of handwaving and demagogic statements of
woe-ye-must-repent-sinnerconsensus.Not much sign of Temp taking up the challenge either. Oh well.
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I’m vaguely aware of the climate change in the dark heart of university faculty lounges up and down the east coast of Australia and I would describe it as more like a scene out of Hitler’s bunker.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-PI2vCA9ck
Other than a deathly silence on the topic of Climate Change, one might encounter the occasional chorus of homage to the Green party line and if any doubt about your political passions are implied by a raised eyebrow, one might toss in a gratuitously eager insult towards the sole poor isolated level B sod (whose career is going no where) in the next department who was seen collecting denialist hate propaganda he had foolishly left in the print-out bin overnight, but beyond that the topic is strictly verboten, because the news since Climategate has been so horribly tragic there really is no way to bring the topic up without inducing waves of dolorously gnashing teeth.
And Academics have horrible teeth.
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Hear! Hear!
The fastest way to become socially isolated, viewed as an ecocidal maniac or simply downright suspect, is to mutter in the hallowed corridors of academia that AGW is cobblers and the hypothesis is unproved. Throw this in with ‘rolling eyes’ or a low volume, low frequency groan whenever someone mentions ‘save the planet’ and your position will become rapidly untenable. You will gradually find yourself taken less seriously, considered to be incubating leprosy and / or to have revealed yourself as a cretinous product of extreme right wing fossil burning consumerism. You will rapidly be identified to be marching to a ‘different’ beat’ and your academic career will inexorably evaporate (at worst) or quietly be sidelined (at best). Forget robust debate or the search for truth.
From the hallowed corridors of tertiary education to the aspirants in schools trying to get to them, the mantra is the same. Reported to me recently, a teacher who, when viewing an assignment presented by a senior pupil who evaluated the evidence behind the hypothesis of AGW and arrived at a conclusion somewhat at variance with the usual institutional answer. The work was good, solidly researched and demonstrated the required processes. The mark was not. Neither was the teachers comment when she said: “I haven’t heard of anything like this before.”
So it seems, an argument based on data no longer appears to apply. The way to ‘win’ is to present a more enticing, more compelling message, one that is greater than the hackneyed ‘save the planet’ cliché, and a message that promotes the development of a much greater ‘faith’. For those that have forgotten this in their enthusiasm to comply with the directives of the Ministry-of-We-Know-Best, the word is ‘freedom’ and the message is the unquenchable quest for evidence based truth.
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Hear! Hear! for you as well … very well put … I hope you pseudonym is secure.
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You forget that the primary purpose of schools is to teach obedience, rather than teach understanding.
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Why don’t you post statements on both sides of the issue? Seems you want others to practice what you preach, but not practice it yourself.
Perhaps she posted the 8 point rebuttal because she was posting a REBUTTAL – she was not trying to post a debate.
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You just have to go back a few hundred years to when a doctor said germs caused disease, they laughed at him and poo pooed his position, because all the certified doctors back in the 1700s agreed that Germs did not cause disease because those little tiny things could not hurt a Big Person and viciously attacked the people that said they did.
from wiki: “Microorganisms were first directly observed by Anton van Leeuwenhoek, who is considered the father of microbiology. Building on Leeuwenhoek’s work, physician Nicolas Andry argued in 1700 that microorganisms he called “worms” were responsible for smallpox and other diseases.[3] Ignaz Semmelweis was a Hungarian obstetrician working at Vienna’s Allgemeines Krankenhaus in 1847, when he noticed the dramatically high incidence of death from puerperal fever among women who delivered at the hospital with the help of the doctors and medical students. Births attended by the midwives were relatively safe. Investigating further, Semmelweis made the connection between puerperal fever and examinations of delivering women by doctors, and further realized that these physicians had usually come directly from autopsies. Asserting that puerperal fever was a contagious disease and that matter from autopsies were implicated in its development, Semmelweis made doctors wash their hands with chlorinated lime water before examining pregnant women, thereby reducing mortality from childbirth from 18% to 2.2% at his hospital. Nevertheless, he and his theories were viciously attacked by most of the Viennese medical establishment.”
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I posted this on Bishop Hill’s and Judith Curry’s blogs yesterday:
Another BH commentator (“woodentop”) observed that the general practitioner “might diagnose indigestion from last night’s curry and send you home”. Touché.
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From an article in ‘Physics Today, Volume 65, Issue 2’ –
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How curious that they should need a defense fund to block Freedom of Information requests. What have they to hide (apart from the decline)? Very odd branch of science, this climatology, that so much of it has to be done in secret.
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In the spirit of our recent climatological nominative innovations, I suggest a new word:
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I hope they’ll help Tim Ball out, then ……
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Then I posted this on Judith C’s blog:
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Nice list of the defendants at the future criminal trials.
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One sincerely hopes!
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While the public doesn’t understand what science or the scientific method is, they respect the results that science can produce. And while the public likes to think that they listen to the facts, when presented with “facts” from a “Nobel Laureate/Scientist” they will fall for an argument from authority. The marketing gurus working for the UN/IPCC know that and have been advising the UN scammers to brand themselves as “Nobel Laureate Scientists”, to give weight and credence to their CAGW lies. The public needs to understand that knowing a lot, holding a Ph.D. and even be a distinguished teacher does not make one a scientist. Degrees and position do not make a scientist – only following the scientific method does.
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The IPCC is being discredited more each day. I really enjoyed Willis Eschenbith(?SP) at WUWT -quote”
“.. Since many of the opinions expressed therein( AR4) are vague, waffle-mouthed mush, loaded with ” could” and “may” and “the chance of ” and “we might see by 2050″, you can find either support or falsification within its pages for almost any position you might take….”
Quite a joke really,as soon will be every scientist still hanging on Pauchari and co’s coat tails.
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I’m with Mike. I’m looking forward to the time when we can refer back to the names on this piece of tripe, and let the retributions rip.
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Of course simple maths shows that their ideas can’t work.
We must spend our scarce borrowed funds on adaptation and more R&D and not waste billions $ for decades into the future.
Simple kindy maths proves it won’t work and will not provide any return on investment.
Even silly Flannery agrees when pressed for an answer.
http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=90&pid=44&aid=8&cid=CG6,CG5,&syid=1990&eyid=2009&unit=MMTCD
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If that should be “inchoate” in the first paragraph, and you decide to make the correction, can you also please tell us what this word means? I consider english my first language, and have seen it used many times, but I have never understood it.
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Just begun and so not fully formed or developed; rudimentary: “a still inchoate democracy”.
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thanx Janama- it does help. I have a list of words like that- not used in the home- not satisfactorily defined in dictionaries- not clear in context- least of all classically defined- that are best explained by the people who use them.
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Recently visited a friend who had stent placed in a blocked artery in a hospital.
The patient in opposite bed was waiting for heart operation but, doctors would not operate until his dental hygiene was given an all clear so, it was off to the dentist first to fill decays & clean gums as these symptoms were related. No question said the cardiologist.
Not one of these govt. funded UN-IPCC/WWF-Greenpeace climastrologers bothered to consult with a health professional before putting their names to that?
That’s a ‘F’ for fail on so many levels.
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FYI, to clarify how dental hygiene relates to cardiovascular disease: simply brushing one’s teeth allows bacteria from the mouth to invade the blood stream. If there are irregular surfaces within the cardiovascular system – classically, due to structural heart valve abnormalities such as from Rheumatic Heart Valve Damage, but potentially from any surface irregularity, and potentially produced by a graft or stent [I’m not sure about mere plaque buildup in arteries – never heard of that risk before]; then the bacteria can find an irregular surface to stick to or lodge and keep on growing there, thus further damaging the area. If it’s the already damaged heart valves which are afflicted by the infection, the condition which usually results is called “Subacute Bacterial Endocarditis” [SBE] which just keeps on grinding away until it is diagnosed and treated.
[I haven’t looked into the recent hype claiming a relationship between poor dental hygiene and Heart Disease, presented as though there is something new going on or discovered. Off hand, it sounds more like a spurious correlation since I don’t think plaque gets infected or starts as an infection of the otherwise healthy internal lining of the vessel wall. However, it is known that the Syphilis bacterium, Treponema Pallidum, can take up residence in or around a healthy Aorta and destroy it!]
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The analogy with medical doctors also has a moral dimension. Physicians have a duty of care towards their patients. Where they proscribe painful and potentially harmful treatments, they must have a reasonable expectation that the patient will be better off being treated than not. When Prof Trenberth and others use their positions of “authority” to promote punitive and ineffective policies, do they morally fail in that duty of care to the human race in general, and the populations of the western nations in particular?
Another analogy is with the legal system. In basic outline
– In a legal system the prosecution must substantiate their case. They must not only produce strong evidence, but must link to the crime. Simply saying “we found the accused fingerprints near the scene of the crime” is not conclusive. Are there other explanations for the accused being at the scene? Were proper procedures used in identifying the prints?
– That evidence must be cross-examined. The accused has a right to rebut the “evidence”
– The evidence is given greater weight if direct, or strong circumstantial evidence than if weak circumstantial or hearsay.
– The central evidence if given greater weight if corroborated by other evidence.
– That if the main evidence was an opinion poll of police officers saying they believed the evidence of fellow police officers was beyond, and believed that the accused was such a dirty rotten scoundrel that they should be denied a the opportunity to rebut the claims, would the judge (and jury) suspect something was amiss?
Is not the “evidence” we are given for global warming the exact reverse of the “evidence” in a criminal trial? It is weak, circumstantial and uncorroborated evidence, which falls over if cross-examined. (In fact then corroborating evidence such as sea level rises or the troposheric hotspot, go the other way) It is backed up by hearsay evidence and faulty opinion polls. Is there not evidence of jury tampering, suppression of evidence and witness intimidation? Is much of the other “evidence” contaminated?
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There’s commos under ya beds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKR32ImWYzw&feature=youtu.be
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“Commos”? Is that a cross between “Commies” (Communists) and “Commas” (punctuation marks)?
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Lefto’s, commo’s, greeno’s. They all go around in circles, spinners.
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Looks like all the usual suspects. Mann, Karoly, Sherwood, Rhamstorf. Wouldn’t it be nice to see the emails they sent to each other concerning this op-ed.
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Yes wouldnt fraudsters prison be nice place for them. Esp in a freezing unheated cell during the next mini ice-age!
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A shocking piece has been posted at The Australian:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/study-finds-coral-reef-growth-thrives-in-warmer-waters/story-e6frg8y6-1226261278615
Government scientists have found the coral reefs off the WA coast (through to Darwin) have thrived as the sea grew warmer! To wit:
Good luck them getting more funding…
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The amazing (wonderful and great) thing about this is that it is a young researcher, apparently more concerned about the facts than about her grant. Perhaps soon science will leave the global warming intimidation behind.
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Gosh, who could have suspected that — what with all the coral reefs growing in the Arctic and off Antarctica and all? (Wait a minute…)
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Temps continue to plunge January temp comes in at -0.09C
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/02/uah-global-temperature-update-for-january-2012-0-09-deg-c/#comments
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I’m afraid i haven’t heard of the theory that undetected global warming of the surface is in fact demonstrable through increase in deep ocean temperatures. I’d be delighted for Professor Trenberth to provide some references for such. Is there seriously some data showing that when the surface isn’t warming, that deep ocean temperatures do?
Sounds awfully like the AGW version of the phlogiston theory….. Nice in principle, but where’s the data?
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Looks like the ABC was happy to post a reponse to the sceptic scientist letter posted in teh WSJ, but I don’t remember them posting the original copy when it came out:
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3809362.html
So I posted two responses, one pointing out the irony of Trenberth and co advocating people sticking to their fields and then preaching economic “solutions to climate change” as well as the following:
Why didn’t they post the original letter when it first came out? You be the judge.
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I thought they were being very daring reporting it on radio, even though they did it in terms of “climate commissioner flannery has refuted… etc.” The tent is indeed collapsing on the global warming circus when even the ABC admits there is a debate.
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I dated an Optometrist once, drove me crazy in the bedroom, it was always “better like this” or “better like that”….. ha ha ha
Cheers, Kevin.
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When will Europe wake up to this scam. How many more people have to be frozen over there before they realise that the world is not warming.
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Current toll is 163 according to this SMH story.
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Well see my links further on..it isnt!
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Jo I know this is OT, but I wonder what Tony(FromOz)has to say about this:
“From the council’s point of view, it’s been a huge success. The city’s managed to build a completely new business in one of the fastest-growing sectors in the world, which is renewable energy.
In today’s news here
BTW have given your site my vote. It is well deserved. For anyone wanting to vote, go to WUWT for details on how.
Cheers
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Ah, Nelson … that bastion of 24 hour sunshine in the land of the long white cloud. I sincerely hope that they are not disappointed in that hamlet.
“Residents would see “massive benefits” from the solar systems, and would be able to sell excess power back to the national grid. “
Except that … “the solar systems at Highfield would supply about a quarter of a typical home’s energy needs … “
They’ll never get produce enough power.
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They haven’t seen this yet, have they?
http://www.thegwpf.org/uk-news/4885-britains-p7-billion-solar-energy-fiasco.html
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I want to explain something to you about renewable power, in this case Wind Power. This is something that is so astounding, I feel sure that not many of you will even believe me, but this is absolutely correct.
Take this link to Wind Farm Performance January 03 2012
The second graph you see on that page shows a solid black line. That indicates the TOTAL power output of 24 Wind Plants in South Eastern Australia, shown in the map to the right of the graph, and listed underneath the graph, with details below the total demand on the next graph down.
Now see how the low point there is at 1400 to 1500 (2PM to 3PM) and the total stumbles along for that one hour at around 150MW.
Now that is the combined TOTAL output of all 24 Wind Plants, and that’s 965 Towers spread across 4 States with a combined Nameplate Capacity of 2003MW.
The total cost of those 24 Wind Plants came in at $5.1 BILLION, (yes, with a B)
That 150MW when correlated to the total demand for the same area, those 4 States, and at the same time shows that with the total demand of 28,500MW, then, for that one hour, Wind Power supplied 0.5% of that total demand.
Now, here comes the truly astounding part of all this that indicates just how effective Wind Power really is.
That same 150MW produced in that one full hour by all 965 Towers costing $5.1 Billion was produced by the Bayswater coal fired power plant in, and wait for this, four and a half minutes.
Read that again.
Four and a half minutes.
I feel absolutely positive that I’ll be in more doo doo than Flash Gordon, for supposedly cherry picking one piece of data from a whole lot, but hey, what is data for if not to cherry pick, just like the Warmists do hey!
Tony.
(And yes, I am going to do analysis for the whole of this year for all those Wind Plants. I’ve almost finished January’s data and analysis, and even I was surprised)
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Tony,
have you heard about this wind farm?
The farm operated at 42% of capacity, and supplied 13% of the electricity demand (against 20% prior estimate). Reported in the wind turbine manufacturers magazine.
But fuel consumption at the oil fired plant was only reduced by 4.3% because of stand by running.
This was in the Falkland Islands, where the wind blows far more often, and far stronger than it does in Australia (except Heard Island). The chances of reducing CO2 emissions in Australia by using wind turbines look very poor.
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Tony, no need to look at the low point of the graph. Use the high point of 750 MW. Even at this level it is providing only 2.5% of the total demand and Bayswater produces that much power in twenty two and half minutes. Why use the low point when the high point, the point of best productivity, the information shows that wind power is still crap.
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FijiDave,
Say, don’t you just love it when the blurb, aimed at people who really don’t understand what it means, says the following:
The systems aimed at the average punter are the babies in the rooftop system range, around $1500 for a 1.5KW System.
These require no batteries, because that power produced is just barely enough to cover what the average residence might use during daylight hours, that’s if the house is unoccupied during those daylight hours, because that might just cover the hot water reheater and the fridge. Then, after the Sun sets, the residence, now no longer powered by the Sun, consumes grid power, amounting to two thirds to three quarters of average daily household electricity consumption.
Now, those batteries mentioned in the blurb above start to come into play with the larger systems, and even then they are only an option, because, as is required by law, every residence must be connected to the grid, (where that access is available that is, and that’s 99% of every residence in Australia) Because even if you have the batteries as a backup, they would only come into use during periods when the grid that supplies that residence is down, eg a power cut or blackout.
Those batteries also come into play if you are ‘off grid’, and just try going through the rigmarole to even attempt to go ‘off grid’ anywhere outside of remote areas.
‘Off grid’ means (obviously) no feed in tariff, so the only power supply you have is that solar panel system. The residence consumes what is generated during the day, with a charging current from that system directed to charge the batteries. Then when the Sun sets, the batteries supply the power, fed to the Inverter to convert it to household supply (240V 50Hz here in Australia)
Now the crunch.
You need [note above it airily says … optional batteries (plural)] yes, batteries PLURAL.
For a large scale system to run an average residence, you will need those batteries, the associated circuitry systems, and the wiring.
That would entail, at a minimum around 8 of those deep cycle batteries.
Er, those batteries start at around $550 each.
Got the picture now.
Gee, optional batteries and you could continue running during a power cut.
See how the truth, once explained, is a little more involved than the one liner in the blurb.
Tony.
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Thanks, Tony
I knew I could rely on you to produce a simple,erudite explanation! You certainly have a knack of explaining to the otherwise dis-interested layman, the complexities of the economics of renewable energy production.
I must say that I had always taken it as a given that the pursuit of an alternative energy source was an exciting and profitable affair for the average man and for the environment until I woke up one day in February 2010 and with the smell of the coffee wafting around the room, came the realisation that there was an another viewpoint.
In Fiji one of the major internet providers blocks WUWT on the grounds that “it is dangerous”. I emphasize here that it is the ISP that blocks it; not the current government.
Then came the realisation that, although I had listened to the BBC whilst commuting to and from work for many years, I had never heard them report anything other than the CAGW meme. With that realisation, out the window went my 50+ years of implicit trust in the BBC – the bastion of truth and enlightenment in the West.
Now that I have returned to my native New Zealand and have perused the news here, I find that the local media are no better than the BBC, and that we here are merely the recipients of propaganda by omission. (Climategate II has yet to be reported).
Anyway, thanks for the explanation, and for doing the donkeywork on educating us on the “benefits” of renewable energy.
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Tony,
Don’t you know that in “green-speak”, 1 + 1 really does equal 3?
I hate to be a cynic but when people can’t even realize that the solar panel is needed most when the sun isn’t shining, what can you do for them?
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In 2010 the Australian Academy of Science issued a report on Global Warming at http://www.science.org.au/reports/climatechange2010.pdf
I wrote them as follows:
…………………………….
GHS to AAS Aug 2010
For Professor Cory as President or Professor Lambeck, past President.
Having just read again the August 2010 AAS publication
http://www.science.org.au/reports/climatechange2010.pdf
it is germane to ask the concise past reactions of the AAS to these 3 Australian advances:
(a) http://dnacih.com/SILVA.htm which is a minority view on the toxic effects or otherwise of trace lead in children, with its obstructionist difficulties of acceptance; and
(b) http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Articles/Pages/Ulcers.one.html#anchor04 the ulcers/Helicobacter story of Marshall and Warren, with its obstructionist difficulties of acceptance; and
(c) http://www.earth-prints.org/bitstream/2122/2016/1/CAREY.pdf S. Warren Carey on plate tectonics and the expanding earth (with Elliston), with its obstructionist difficulties of acceptance.
Having worked with several of the above named authors and spent many hours/days of discussion with some, it is evident that the growth of important new scientific concepts often divides into a mainstream camp and a minority camp.
Here, I am asking are whether the AAS recognises this not uncommon pattern of progress; and notes that the minority view can evolve to the more accepted view.
For example, does the AAS have a set of guidelines to assist emerging talented scientists to manage the minority view?
An answer framed around “man-made climate change” would illuminate the Academy’s stance and indicate how it has learned from past experience. I could name several test examples on request.
Yours faithfully
Geoffrey H Sherrington
Scientist, (chemist), retired.
…………………………….
There was no response, so I wrote a longer, more detailed letter in the same vein, being concerned with appeals to authority.
I remain unconvinced that the AAS has a mechanism, or even informed people, to make the sweeping statements in its 2010 report. The absence of a thoughtful response to my query was particularly insulting, because it went to the very heart of why such organisations exist.
It’s like the theme of this blog, but on an Australian scale.
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If every branch of science views it’s knowledge base as settled and incontrovertible, the necessarily all human progress will grind to a halt, new understandings and radical theories which transform our view of the universe can never occur, and the established perspective will perennially remain in force whether it is right or wrong. The end result of this is “paradigm stasis”, so no future Darwin’s, no Newton’s, no Einstein’s, no Bohr’s, no Tesla’s. Humanity was once on course for the stars, but now has been consigned to the mud by these vandals.
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How can you possibly believe in this gobbledegook from the recent past as slippery, sliding climatologists try and weasel word out of their past models and their dire warming predictions? Anyone who believes these people can be trusted after that little lot, then I have this deal I can get you into on the ground floor. It’s the best bridge going around….
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Now that you have read the 164 pahes in my last post, here’s a 59 minute video at Oxford Uni late in 2011. Speaker is Dr Held of Potsdam PIK, breeding ground for dissent.
http://www.newton.ac.uk/programmes/CLP/seminars/120916101.html
This would scare the pants of any decent economist – but then, we are on a theme of climate scientists, are we not?
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Correction Cambridge Uni. Geoff.
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Thank you for this site Jo, it is an island of sanity in a sea of mendacity. I read that article in the Australian today which left me a tad enraged, however it occurred to me that cults also think like that, so I mentioned it in my comments. I do not expect personal abuse when commenting in the Australian but I will check tonight. I would like to apologise for using the word mendacity so often, but it is just so appropriate these days.
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Physics Today
“Climate scientists not cowed by relentless climate change deniers”
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EPIC FAIL.
In fact, you might want to consult your dentist about your risk of heart disease!
http://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/heart-disease-oral-health
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Correlation IS NOT (necessarily) causation
Participants who reported poor oral hygiene (never/rarely brushed their teeth) had an increased risk of a cardiovascular disease event (hazard ratio 1.7, 95% confidence interval 1.3 to 2.3; P<0.001) in a fully adjusted model. They also had increased concentrations of both C reactive protein (β 0.04, 0.01 to 0.08) and fibrinogen (0.08, −0.01 to 0.18).
Conclusions:
Poor oral hygiene is associated with higher levels of risk of cardiovascular disease and low grade inflammation, though the causal nature of the association is yet to be determined.
Toothbrushing, inflammation, and risk of cardiovascular disease: results from Scottish Health Survey
BMJ 2010; 340 doi: 10.1136/bmj.c2451 (Published 27 May 2010)
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shorter version: people who don’t take care of themselves are careless in a variety of ways.
———
Also, a relative risk ratio of 1.7 is generally considered far too low to publish serious research, unless you’re desperate to publish crap. The basics about Relative Risk Ratio is on Number Watch, written by the same guy who wrote the book on the misuse of numbers in society, of which I have a signed copy.
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Absolutely my point and echoed in the conclusion:
“…the causal nature of the association is yet to be determined.”
Wouldn’t therefore get too excited about seeing your dentist when you perhaps ought to be consulting your cardiologist.
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BTW (sorry don’t have time to read the comments) READ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/02/wuwt-and-other-climate-blogs-are-2012-bloggies-finalists/#more-55822
Jo’s blog is there
Follow the steps
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I thinks heres anough reading to keep ANY warmist happy! NOT
And for you John B
well it isnt..read on
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/9055933/Snow-to-fall-in-London-as-bitterly-cold-weather-grips-Britain.html
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/villagers-scramble-for-fuel-in-europes-big-chill/
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jBEzqQKh9ZjHO9wnC_uF95kBobIA?docId=CNG. 4ad67d015c2ad83e7e3426359ce3e096.681
http://news.yahoo.com/serbia-11-000-trapped-remote-villages-snow-111011184.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/9051921/Siberian-cold-front-sweeps-across-Europe-bringing-record-low-temperatures.html?image=23
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2095052/Think-cold-HERE-Beautiful-pictures-globe-world-freezing.html
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Sorry to be off topic but I must share this with all of you, especially my chicken little friend John Brookes.
“>here
Thanx to the best investigative journalist in climate Donna Laframboise
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Rajendra Pachauri should lead his lemming like followers over a cliff somewhere. That will save us from his / their constant droning on and remove another source of CO2.
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Nice work Baa. An entertaining, if somewhat misleading, article.
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Pachauri addressed a “sustainability” conference?
Is the current over-use of the word “sustainable”, sustainable?
http://xkcd.com/1007/
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Now that the warmist criminals have been totally exposed as science fraudsters run by the globalist bankers and the elite they now want to have “sustainability” conferences to replace the tired old climate conferences that have failed to get anywhere as every country (with sense) has seen through the scam. These are the continued attempt to get World Govt (as has been ADMITTED) to control all our lives with draconian eco scams and green taxes all run through the UN (NWO’s offices in NY).
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Many txs for a (as usual)very good post, Jo! 😀
Cast my vote for you – as well as for WUWT, TB & CA.
Bsrgds from very chilly, as matter of fact; ice-cold, Bestcoast of Sweden!
//TJ
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What happened to reason 5 of 8 (or 7)?
[It has been replaced.] ED
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7 is there John.
Cheers,
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Yes I can see no 7! But without no. 5, there are only 7 reasons there in total.
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I should warn you that some data we have we are not supposed to pass on
to others. We can pass on the overall theme of point 5 – which we do. Even if Jo
agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so minutes invested
in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim
is to try and find something wrong with it?
Besides, data storage availability in the
2010s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple points for some arguments, only the
argument theme after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the
original raw data but only the value-added (i.e., quality controlled and homogenized)
data.
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John, fair call, Number dropped dropped off the list sometime before I published, and when I realized, I added it back in. Thanks! you were not imagining it. Jo
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Congratulations on your nomination Jo, you’ve got my vote!
Mebbe I’m missing something, but has point 5 under the “Eight reasons to dump your doctor” heading gone walkabout?
Pointman
[thanks for noticing! A short walkabout. Now fixed] ED
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The scientific debate is irrelevant. This is now an ethical debate. The behavior of paleoclimatoligists demonstrates with remarkable clarity the ethics involved with this post-normal science.
Let me tell you how they “proved” global warming was unprecedented and dangerous. They purposely re-wrote history to disguise the fact that just 1000 years the temperatures were as warm or warmer than they are now. Wow! How inconvenient!
How do they re-write history? With the BBB theory (bullshit baffles brains).
Let’s perform some climate reconstructions based on tree ring proxies (assuming trees grow directly proportionally to temperature, even though they don’t). Let’s cherry pick the tree ring proxies we use, apply statistically invalid manipulations (cheating) and splice instrumental record to produce the famous 20th century uptick. (EVEN THOUGH TREE RINGS HAVE SHRUNK DURING THE 20th CENTURY)
The paleoclimatoligists (cheating, lying, manipulative, unethical scumbags) Should be brought to justice and imprisoned.
If you are a climate scientist that is riding the gravy train… Don’t think that your lies won’t come back to bite you in the arse.
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Is the report button working? It opens the text box but it won’t send the comment.
(Did you try again? Most report the questioned comment have been poor anyway since there is no specific complaint in them) CTS
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Yeah, tried again.
When I click the hyperlink ‘report this’ the report box opened as before, I typed into the box to explain the report. When I click on the ‘report’ button it prompts no response from the page, the text remains and the dialogue box remains open. I am using Chrome.
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It’s trying to tell you something Tristan, isn’t it?
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Tristan, we are planning to dump the report button plugin, and revert to just an email to [email protected]. We’d be grateful if you report any problem comments in need of moderation direct to that email.
Jo
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Cheers, thanks Jo.
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The Australian giving space to Ken & Co is expected. What is not expected is the readers comments.
The game is up methinks!
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Other suggestions: [snip mindless comment]ED
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9. All of your ‘successful’ surgeries were simulated on a computer, (using this software).
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http://reasonabledoubtclimate.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/kevin-trenberth-the-dishonest-scientist/
Trenberth should be prosecuted f
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http://reasonabledoubtclimate.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/kevin-trenberth-the-dishonest-scientist/
Trenberth, you and your paleo buddies will always live on in notoriety as “The Team”.
Does it alarm you that in the Wall Street Journal 97% of comments are critical of you?
What will your grandchildren think of you once the great global warming scam is finally exposed at even the primary school level, and you feature as one of the players? Will you claim that you were just following orders, or acting to ensure their financial future?
What is it like to be important enough to write a newspaper comment yet pathetic enough to be ridiculed by all your readers?
How much longer do you think the team can get away with this?
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The difference between an honest atmospheric physicist and an honest climatologist would not be anywhere near as much a difference as that between a dentist and a heart surgeon. It would be like a heart surgeon and a vascular surgeon. Each is going to know 99.99% of the same information in regard to how such surgeries are performed differing only on their individual skill-set being slightly better at performing the surgeries they each do.
So, if a heart surgeon removes the patient’s heart and does not replace it with a transplant, not only would a vascular surgeon be well within his or her expertise to declare that a murder is being committed so would an economist or engineer or computer programmer or a short order cook or basketball player or fifth grader. We all might not know exactly what is the best ‘right’ thing but most everyone can recognize when something is blatantly wrong.
You don’t need to be a pilot to know the airplane is upside down, you don’t need to be a chef to know the food is rotten, you don’t need to be a police officer to know the masked people running from the bank with bags of money just robbed the bank and you don’t need to be a dentist to know the wrong tooth was just pulled out.
Trenberth is not only blatantly wrong like a dentist who pulled out the wrong tooth, he’s being blatantly dishonest denying he did it.
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Interestingly, you may not be able to tell if the plane is upside down. A few corporate jet pilots became so proficient that when leveling off after a climb they could do a full barrel roll into level flight with no one experiencing more than normal 1G all the way through. If you were not looking out the window you could not tell it was happening. Down would always be toward the floor of the aircraft.
The moral of the story is that not everyone can tell when something is blatantly wrong. If everyone could then this would be a different world. And I say this from personal experience.
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You don’t need to be a pilot to know the airplane is upside down – while watching one from the ground.
Happy now are we?
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I left the following message after the WSJ piece and I stick to it:
Ok, I’m not a distinguished senior scientist, just a geologist who knows the geological history of the Earth enough to leave a simple challenge to the doctors above: to show up with one single piece of physical evidence that proves that the Earth’s temperatures and sea levels since the Industrial Revolution, or their variation rates (gradients), are in any way anomalous as compared to the previous ones before the XVIII century. By physical evidence I mean real world data, not computer model contrivances. If a single one is presented I’ll be glad to burn all the remaining copies of my book “The global warming fraud: how a natural phenomenon was converted into a false world emergency”, that has run three editions in Brazil.
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Nir Shaviv et al have been attacked using the appeal to authority “they are not climate scientists”. As others have pointed out, that bogus argument can cut both ways. The IPCC is headed by Pachauri, a RAILROAD ENGINEER!- we can disregard andy climate statements issued by an agency headed by a railroad engineer.
Shaviv, an astrophuysicist, has published papers indicating that cosmic rays affect climate.
http://www.sciencebits.com/myresearch
How can mere climatologists attack his views, as they are not experts in astrophysics?
The CATASTROPHIC global warming scenario is based on computer models. Mann/Hansen and etc are not programmers. The consensus among professional programmers is that Mann’s program sucked.
Climatologists are not statisticians. How can mere climatologists attack statisticians who indicate their models are statistically flawed?
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/McKitrick-hockeystick.pdf
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This of course is the sort of nonsense one would expect from an IPCC propagandist like Trenberth. His list of fellow propagandists blows a hole in his childish analogy anyway as it is about as diverse in the basic discipline of each person as the Sixteen, perhaps more highly credentialed, doubters or skeptics.
One lesson that Trenberth teaches us about propaganda is to target the widest audience. The trolls responses here are very useful in that they objectify for us that wider audience in voter land who are basically not interested in the “intricacies” of the science but are probably more receptive to the sort of nonsense Trenberth uses as a response to the “Sixteen”.
That is why Jo’s approach is a necessary supplement to the scientific debate in order to influence a wider audience, namely to show that Trenberth’s reasoning powers are flawed. That’s not a bad propaganda basis on which to attack his scientific credibility.
If he can’t think straight here does he think straight about the climate and the interrelationship of all its known parameters? How about the peer reviewers? Are they anymore capable of thinking straight than he is?
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Below is a list of the “dentists” that Trenberth sneakily had in his list of “medical doctors”. I think I’ve been generous with his medical doctors list but this deception shows just what a fraud he is.
You will note the high sounding Terradynamic Simulation Group are no more than modelers that most likely wouldn’t get a job modeling anything else except perhaps economic forecasts for say government treasury departments.
Given the lack of intellectual rigor in these disciplines ecologists and environmentalists are about the bottom of the intellectual barrel and wouldn’t necessarily know their arse from their elbow when it comes to climate science.
That means at the best 47% are not climatologists at all and given there are probably at least another half dozen who are suspect as “medical doctors” as few as 14 of the 38 persons listed or less than 40% are bona fide climatologists of any standing.
Thus Trenberth’s depleted list, once the “dentists” have been removed, makes the “Sixteen” look like the real McCoy.
Michael Oppenheimer, Ph.D., Professor of Geosciences; Director, Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy, Princeton University
Peter Gleick, Ph.D., co-founder and president, Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security
Steven Running, Ph.D., Professor, Director, Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group, University of Montana
Terry L. Root, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University
Jeffrey Kiehl, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Camille Parmesan, Ph.D., Professor of Biology, University of Texas; Professor of Global Change Biology, Marine Institute, University of Plymouth, UK
Simon Donner, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Canada
Barrett N. Rock, Ph.D., Professor, Complex Systems Research Center and Department of Natural Resources, University of New Hampshire
David Griggs, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University, Australia
Roger N. Jones, Ph.D., Professor, Professorial Research Fellow, Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, Australia
William L. Chameides, Ph.D., Dean and Professor, School of the Environment, Duke University
Gary Yohe, Ph.D., Professor, Economics and Environmental Studies, Wesleyan University, CT
Robert Watson, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Chair of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia
Chris Rapley, Ph.D., Professor of Climate Science, University College London, UK
James J. McCarthy, Ph.D., Professor of Biological Oceanography, Harvard University
Stefan Rahmstorf, Ph.D., Professor of Physics of the Oceans, Potsdam University, Germany
William H. Schlesinger, Ph.D., President, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Wolfgang Cramer, Professor of Global Ecology, Mediterranean Institute for Biodiversity and Ecology, CNRS, Aix-en-Provence, France
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Lack of astrophyicists is the problem..well their problem full of eco nutters who are in love with their own BS.
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All an astrophysicist will say is ‘Jupiter’s gravitational effect on Earth is negligible’.
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The comment about Terradynamism’s scientific attachment is relevant to an attack on Ian
Plimer’s first book “Heaven and”.
I suspect that the Terrordynamos are similarly qualified to the, so called, Plimer
destroyer Tim Lambert.
All computer code and no basic science.
The fact is, that science in Australian schools has been at such a low level for so
many decades that you would be lucky to find anyone capable of reading “Heaven”.
Many warmers claim to have read “Heaven” and offered criticisms but like the comments
from Tim, they were basically a showcase for the lack of erudition on the part of the
critic.
The most damning comment on “Climate Scientists” is their absolute refusal to
interact with other disciples such as geology, orbital mechanics, thermodynamics,
meteorology, oceanography, physics and chemistry.
They have “contained” all of the above disciplines within “Climate Science” to prevent
scrutiny.
It only works for a little while.
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Pachauri, like many personnel of the IPCC, is basically an administrator. He is not, as you point out, a climatologist. The IPCC reviews the state of the scientific literature and reports on it.
Both sides have attempted to argue from authority. One of the authorities has the backing of the vast majority of those practicing climate science and the vast majority of scientific papers. To me, that represents a credible authority. The other side is supported by a bit over 100 papers of limited scientific impact published by a handful of people.
Citation?
The range of statistical understanding among scientists (including climatologists) varies a lot. Most science requires at least a rudimentary grasp of stats, some papers are fairly stats heavy, in climate science this usually takes the form of time-series analysis. Many climate science projects require a multidisciplinary team. (eg Foster and Rahmstorf 2011, Rahmstorf is a boss climatologist and Foster is a boss time series analyst).
Environmentalists are people who support the socio-political environmental movement. Environmental science is practiced by environmental scientists.
Only someone who doesn’t know those names could say that. For instance, the first two names you cut, Hayhoe and Somerville…they’re top of the food chain climate scientists. Between them there’s something like 100 peer-reviewed papers. Hayhoe (interestingly an evangelical republican) focuses on regional impacts and Somerville probably knows clouds better than anyone alive.
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If you check you will find Richard Somerville and Katherine Hayhoe are not on my list. I gave those two IPCC alarmists the benefit of the doubt as they were meteorologists or climatologists.
My list consists of those who appear to have no formal training in climatology and going by their CVs, are in fact biologists, economists, ecologists or environmentalists.
As Trenberth had claimed, in reference to the WSJ article by sixteen scientists including an highly qualified engineer and several climatologists/meteorologists, only qualified climatologists were equipped to discuss the findings of the IPCC oriented climate scientists, then none of those I listed should have been on his list.
That confirms that apart from his mathematical manipulation or torturing of the data to fit his preconceived biases and obvious environmentalist activism he is basically a dishonest practitioner of his craft.
A corollary of that is his assumption that his audience are fools. You are giving a pretty good indication by your naivety that some of them obviously are.
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Sorry, my bad!
Just from looking at the first two ‘dentists’ I can tell you Oppenheimer has a pretty illustrious research career in climate and Gleick is a water resources guru. They’re totally legit members of the climate science team.
Of the 16 naysayers however, only 4 have ever written a climate science paper and of those 4 it’d be a stretch to call anyone but Lindzen a legitimate climate scientist. That’s why I feel that the respective appeals to authority are of disparate quality.
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Of course!
Now lets talk about one climate scientist: James Hansen. Do you think he can separate his movements from his practices?
SO if you have a “green” climate scientist do you get “green” papers and green conclusions?
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“Do you consult your dentist about your heart condition?”
If the doctor keeps having patients (theorys) dying on the operating table and then writes his own autopsy reports, I would!
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I’ve already said this before because this comparison with doctors diagnoses and Catastrafarian activists keeps coming up:
Of course if my oncologist was explaining that the cancer is somewhere – he doesn’t know where, but thinks they should operate anyways because we’re running out of time to find the hot spot, but s/he would like to take out a lung and a kidney just in case it was there and besides him and his mates said the cancer must be somewhere the last time they discussed my case at cancun– I would be getting a second opinion – wouldn’t you?
Of course you would seek a second opinion. Of course, a diagnosis like the one above would be Dr Death behavior and the doctor would eventually be on manslaughter charges (at the very least).
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I simply cannot believe that the alarmists have quoted that completely discredited 97% figure AGAIN. Have they no shame??
http://probeinternational.org/library/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/012009_Doran_final1.pdf
And my apologies if this has been posted previously on this discussion thread.
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What about it has been discredited?
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Well, Tristan, obviously pretty-much everything.
Once John
CrookCook has had to write an op-ed piece defending something over at Septic Science, then you just KNOW it’s already dead and gone to the Great Tropospheric Tropical Flop Spot in the Sky to join all the other failed climastrology claims, notions and potions..
By the way Tristan, planning to entertain us tonight with your long awaited Plan B?
No?
Then how about the much-anticipated result of your talk with John
CrookCook on the subject of censorship, the “disappearing” of skeptical posts, and even the alteration of articles and posts – sometimes months after the fact – over on Septic Science?Oh, and I’m on my way to cast my votes in the “Best Blog” competition. To save me time, could you tell me in which section I can find John
Crook’sCook’s Septic Science?Fantasy fiction perhaps?
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Ten nBillion for a Climate Commissioner, zilch for sanity, Dams.
Those times are a-changing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oU7M4OeSRM
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Did anybody miss this?
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3809362.html
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I don’t bother with their ABC Labour party Drumline.
They have long since blackballed my comments there -even though I have allways been civil.
It’s a pity I can’t get a rebate on my taxes going to fund them because of this. What is it about $1 Billion per year of taxpayers money goes to fund that lame excuse for a media institution?
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Absolutly right you are MudJak, the old auntie could use a good…..
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MadJak, a significant portion of that money goes to the privately owned company that broadcasts the ABC TV and Radio signals from over 600 sites across Australia. The ABC probably should spend more on content …
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I have another reason to fire that scumbag doctor: hypocrisy.
The messy topic of.. erm.. ambitious immigration… arose again…
Two words, Penny: “Treasury Modelling“.
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As I read all this I was struck by just how much the past really is prolog. It’s déjà vu. There’s a new outrage from one of the usual suspects and then we’re forced to counter it…endlessly. It’s just like I’ve been here before.
I have to keep reminding myself that this is getting out the message to more and more people. It’s even having some impact on the diehard acolytes of AGW in the MSM (slight though it be).
Still, the fight looks long and hard. We may win the science debate but “green” and “carbon footprint” have become part of pop culture. It’s everywhere. I don’t know how much the average person buys into it but it’s now selling nearly everything. And worse, it’s now part of the school curriculum for nearly every child in America.
It will die very hard.
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“It will die very hard.”
But die, IT WILL.
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I just finished reading
“Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel in Economics.
The title of Chapter 21 is “Expert Intuiton: When Can We Trust It?”
Kahneman’s argument goes like this:
If the environment is sufficiently regular to be predictable, and one
has had an opportunity to learn those regularities through prolonged
practice, one can trust expert opinion.
Chess and poker are extreme examples where you can trust expert
opinion. Firefighters, nurses, airplane pilots all fall into
categories of a regular predictable occupation with an opportunity to
learn from practice.
At the other extreme are political scientists and economists. They
may be just as knowledgeable in their fields as firefighters, but
economics and politics are chaotic and unpredictable. Meteorology
is another field which becomes chaotic – no predictions are reliable
more than a few days in the future. A meteorologists prediction of
what the weather will be like 15 days from now is likely no better
than yours.
Where do climate scientists fall on this scale? Climatologists have
NOT had the opportunity to observe and learn to predict NUMEROUS
climates and numerous climate changes, and Earth’s climate has fluctuated
irregularly and unpredictably over historical and geological time, Not only haven’t
they had the time to learn about any regularities, but in all
likelihood climate behaves chaotically, making it IMPOSSIBLE to
predict over extended periods.
Meteorologists KNOW their field is chaotic and unpredictable,
climatologists don’t know their limits.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/02/us-climate-weather-idUSTRE81120K20120202
– A. McIntire
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The dominant missing ingredient in the experience of most of those named is Benefit:Cost analysis.
The whole IPCC report process should be reviewed, before new issues, by a number of experienced business people known for expertise in Benefit:Cost analysis.
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I just read Nicola Scafetta reply on Judith Curry’s site, as to argument from authority. I tend to like that reply.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/04/argument-and-authority-in-the-climate-fight/#more-7017
I hope you do not mind my reproducing it in full – please Edit or link if you consider the post too long.
Nicola Scafetta | February 5, 2012 at 12:32 am | Reply
Dear Judith,
I believe that the issue is a little bit more complicated than what you summarized.
First, it is not reasonable to request that so-called “climate scientists” be granted the special privilege of not being challenged by other scientists in different fields. This is highly inappropriate, in science in particular. Everybody has the right to challenge the claims of everybody else in science.
What makes a person a so-called “scientific expert” in a specific field against other people is not the tag-name than he/she has on his/her business card such as “Dr. Tim Brown, climate scientist.” But it is his/her capacity of showing that he/she does perform better in its profession than those who may challenge his/her understanding of a specific phenomenon.
History of science is filled of examples of people challenging the “consensus” in a specific discipline coming from another discipline. For example, the field of microeconomics between the 19th and 20th century was greatly developed by Vilfredo Pareto who strongly challenged the economists of his time. One may think that Vilfredo Pareto too was an economist by profession, but he was not. His personal formation was physics (!) and engineering (!). He simply succeeded in showing that his understanding of economical phenomena was superior to that of the professional economists of his time. In the same way, for example, the 11-year solar cycle was discovered by Samuel Heinrich Schwabe. One may think that Schwabe was a professional astronomer or astrophysics by formation. He was not. He was, by formation, a pharmacist (!) who simply succeeded in showing that his understanding of solar data was far superior to that of the professional astronomers. And innumerable examples like these exist in history.
If a scientist or a category of scientists are challenged by somebody else in their specific field of expertise, what they need to do is very simple. They need to show that they understand the phenomenon under discussion better that their opponent by using valid scientific arguments, or if they do not have valid arguments, they need to welcome their opponent’s ideas and acknowledge them and praise him/her.
What is happening in the specific topic of climate change and global warming is that a group of scientists, calling themselves “climate scientists”, has proposed an explanation based on a theory focusing on the anthropogenic GHG emissions. The problem is that, by just looking at internet, these scientists have failed to convince a lot of people with different expertise that their theory is solid and accurate. The challenge is mostly based on the analysis of the same data used by everybody, for example global surface temperatures, which the AGW critics claim to contain evident patterns which are not reproduced by the AGW theory.
For example, in my last publication in this field
N. Scafetta, “Testing an astronomically based decadal-scale empirical harmonic climate model versus the IPCC (2007) general circulation climate models” Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, in press. DOI: 10.1016/j.jastp.2011.12.005.
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/Scafetta_models_comparison_ATP.pdf
I have shown that the global surface temperature appears to be characterized by a set of harmonics (~9.1, ~10-11, ~20, ~60 years period, at least). Although the physical causes of these harmonics are not fully understood (I have argued that these are astronomically induced harmonics), I could prove that none of the General Circulation Models (GCMs) used by the IPCC is able to reconstruct these oscillations, which make most of the observed climate variability.
I could also prove that GCM are currently overestimating the volcano signature by a significant factor, and I could show that the use of natural harmonics can be used to bind the net anthropogenic effect on climate to a magnitude that is about three times smaller than what the GCMs have assumed. Finally, I have shown that this harmonic model plus the corrected anthropogenic effect (which were all calibrated on the period antecedent 2000) is quite able to reproduce the global temperature standstill since 2000 and some other dynamical pattern observed in the temperature. On the contrary, all GCMs of the IPCC have predicted a steady warming during the same period.
So, at this point, the scientists who have promoted the AGW theory using a set of GCMs can do one of the two things: 1) contradict my calculations by proving that their models reproduce the oscillations observed in the temperature, or 2) acknowledge that these natural oscillations exist and that their physics is not yet implemented in their models, and that this missing physics needs to be developed yet (that is the science in not settled yet).
In the latter case, it cannot be claimed any more that CO2 does what the AGW advocates have thought because such a conclusion is based on climate models whose outputs have not passed the observational test. In fact, their GCM models have failed to properly reconstruct the observed dynamics and structure of the temperature data from 1850 to 2012, which these models were supposed to reconstruct, and since 2000, forecast.
Some of the figures I have produced are in my web site
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/
Evidently, the fact that I am a physicist by formation is irrelevant; it does not make my results better or worse. In the same way, if other people develop arguments that questions ideas held by other people, the validity of their arguments is in the arguments themselves, not on the kind of doctorate one holds. So, criticizing the meditated opinion of a set of people by simply claiming that most of them are physicists working in fields different from climate science, is not valid.
These physicists very likely have sufficiently studied the relevant literature and concluded that the AGW theory is not as robust as the majority of climate scientists have claimed. The advanced reason is very simple: there exists a significant mismatch between the data and the predictions of the theory, everywhere.
There is nothing wrong for experienced physicists to express such a professional opinion; that is what physicists do all times.
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Hi considerate, Nicola says;
Evidently, the fact that I am a physicist by formation is irrelevant; it does not make my results better or worse. In the same way, if other people develop arguments that questions ideas held by other people, the validity of their arguments is in the arguments themselves, not on the kind of doctorate one holds. So, criticizing the meditated opinion of a set of people by simply claiming that most of them are physicists working in fields different from climate science, is not valid.
When Nicola first produced his work on 9.1, ~10-11, ~20, ~60 planetary alignment harmonics, the main stream climate consensus holders basically ignored it, as they have done with many fine arguments. They have inhibited our knowledge of the climate machine to such an extent, it has crippled energy advancement in the modern world.
Many worthwhile scientific papers and empirical evidence have been given new light and cannot now be considered as sceptic divisions.
The pieces of the climate puzzle have had their edges blurred by the force used to jam them in the wrong spot. Now sceptics have tipped the pieces back on the floor and have a clear picture of how they should be re-assembled.
The likes of Dr Scafetta will hasten its reassembly, as all of those physicists learned in the nature of the universe will do. Hope for the scientific method has been reborn.
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Quotes from a couple of shady denialist characters /sarc off
“The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement” — Karl Popper
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts” – Richard Feynman
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Hi Baa Humbug. Do you get a sense that the mop up has started?
Scientists have to get hypothesis past the gatekeepers of the Philosophy of Science. The central question in the philosophy of science is distinguishing science from non-science. Co2 theory ran and never faced us, but we have now caught them.
The sceptics have slammed the gate on Anthropogenic Global Warming, for good.
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Markus I firmly believe sceptics have the science on their side.
However the politics of AGW is a very different animal, a hydra if you will.
Unless we can get conservative parties with balls in to parliaments of USA Australia and a number of EU countries, fraudulent and false science will appear to have the upper hand.
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Been unfortunate enough to have come across some of those politic critters and the odor of fear they omit, when confronted, is a perfume known to my senses.
The politics of AGW is no different from any other, the most vicious dog wins. Frankly, after what sceptics have been put though, I’m confident there are now many bull terriers in the ranks.
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I wonder how much money has been wasted simply because the time the first satellites went up coincided with the bottom of Dr Shaviv’s ~60 year cycle, and 1900 AD happened to correspond with the bottom of the previous cycle? And that you can’t easily do a sloped sine regression curve of best fit in Excel?
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Unexplained 20 and 60 year cycles on top of an unexplained linear temperature increase are preferred to GCMs that reflect the huge body of climate research because the fit over the last couple hundred years looks nicer?
I’ll stick with the GCMs. (They are unverified models) CTS
I wonder how much utility will be lost because yet another scientific front has become an ideological battleground.
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“I’ll stick with the GCMs.”
That is the crux of the matter, Tristan.
You are stuck with GCM’s in the bush with no tucker or water and no bloody idea where you are.
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Actually, we know roughly where we are, and our idea is getting better every year. It’s a comforting feeling.
I wouldn’t find much comfort hanging my hat on an unexplained pattern. But then I’m a details man.
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Tristan
Are you referring to this paper:
???
Do you assume a constant incremental forcing year-on-year???
You stated this arguement many months ago?
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Yes Dave, that one.
Forcings over the past 40ish years have varied a little from year to year. On top of that there’s a lot of ENSO clutter.
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With all their arbitrary parameters that control feedbacks and other effects that cannot be currently modeled from physical principles, the GCMs are nearly equivalent to a polynomial fit. Like a polynomial fit, they don’t do a very good job of modeling cycles — tending to diverge after the fit range.
Since none of the GCM parameters are explained either (except as being necessary to improve the fit), I would go with the models that actually produce the superior fit, and don’t “predict” rapid divergence in the future.
A great deal of utility would be gained if climate scientists were to rediscover the Scientic Method.
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The GCMs bind their parameters to the most likely estimates that physical principles and observations have been able to provide. Whenever a parameter is tweaked it is tweaked such that it still remains within the likely range. It is the curve-fitters that let their parameters roam freely about (eg Spencer’s mixed ocean layer of 700m) to better fit the slopes.
(Regularly tweaking unverified models is not a valid pursuit to science research) CTS
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Tristan, stop your nonsense.
“The GCMs bind their parameters to the most likely estimates that physical principles and observations have been able to provide”.
Mate, can you see the differences in the 2 principles below? Can you see the relative difficulties of the first one? Can you see the logic in the second one.
The Greenhouse focus on radiative physics is analogous to an attempt to determine the path of steel balls, solely from the way they ricochet from post to post in a pinball machine.
MacroClimatology in contrast is the study of how the force in using the plunger (solar radiation) and the slope of the playing surface (atmospheric pressure) combine to define the action in the climate machine. Planetary long term equilibrium near-surface temperature is determined by solar irradiance, itself a function of distance from the sun, together with atmospheric pressure at the surface.
You are like a steel ball in a pinball machine, bouncing never ending from post to post.
I think it GCM’s can only to model one such behavior. Guess which one Tristan?
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Markus, I’m not sure what you just said.
Then we agree that Archibald and Scafetta and Spencer’s curve-fitting fitting games are not scientific research. Good.
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You are Phobic Tristan, who said anything about those three?
If you cannot comprehend what I just said, then you aren’t really in the game. I’m wasting my time trying to learn anything from you. No more talkies with you, in case I get dumbed down.
Dr Scafetta took observations and reported those against known climates, what bloody curve fitting are you talking about?
Roy Spencer has pioneered satellite measurements and discovered a trick/fraud the modelers used. So what?
Archibald has identified that empirical evidence has diverted from GCM’s and has reported at large. So what?
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Markus
He is a spacer; it is always grab what you said, rephrase it and ask a dumb question.
Good practice for his legal courses where that sort of thing is valued.
Also might get him a job at the IPCC.
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Legal course KK? A lawyer’s stock in trade is lying (on behalf of clients …. of course) but it seems to be a pretty hard habit to break even when not practicing law. Eg par excellence: PM Gillard.
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No probs bru.
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Reminds me of a quote from Krugman – he was talking about economists, but.. -”we seek models, not trends; concepts, not vocabulary; and analysis, not analogies”?
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Not a bad list of do(s) and don’t(s) depending on the validity of the modeling. Only wish Krugman, the Keynesian economist and CAGW propagandist, would follow his own advice.
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Tristan
February 5, 2012 at 1:35 am ·
…(eg Foster and Rahmstorf 2011, Rahmstorf is a boss climatologist and Foster is a boss time series analyst).”
Foster, blogging under the pseudonym “Tamino”, has his shortcomings.
Mann created the “hockey stick” using non-centered
Principal Component Analysis. McIntyre and McKittrick, and later
Wegman, stated
that Mann’s use of non-centered Principal component Analysis was
flawed, and that the algorithm in effect was “searching for hockey
sticks”.
Mann et al at “realclimate”, on January 6, 2005, stated that McIntyre
and McKittrick were mistaken, and cited “Jolliffe” as an authority
on PCA, stating that
non-centered PCA was a valid procedure.
Tamino later posted a series on “PCA” on his blog, “Open Mind”. Part
4 was posted on March 6, 2008. In this posting he asserted that
non centerd PCA was perfectly okay, stating,
” You shouldn’t just take my word for it, but you should take the
word of Ian Jolliffe, one of the world’s foremost experts on PCA…”
Finally there’s a reply from Ian Jolliffe himself, who in effect
said McIntyre and McKittrick’s criticism was correct, and Mann’s
hockey stick
was based on dubious statistics.
From the January 6, 2005 “realclimate” post,
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/on-yet-another-false-
claim-by-mcintyre-and-mckitrick/
“6 Jan 2005
On Yet Another False Claim by McIntyre and McKitrick”…
“McIntyre and McKitrick (MM), in one of their many false claims
regarding the Mann et al (MBH98) temperature reconstruction, assert
that the =3D93Hockey Stick=3D94 shape of the reconstruction is an artifact
of
the =3D93non-centered=3D94 Principal Components Analysis (PCA) convention
used
by MBH98 in representing the North American International Tree Ring
Data Bank (ITRDB) data series. “…
“Contrary to MM’s assertions, the use of non-centered PCA is well-
established in the statistical literature, and in some cases is shown
to give superior results to standard, centered PCA. See for example
page 3 (middle paragraph) of this review. For specific applications of
non-centered PCA to climate data, consider this presentation provided
by statistical climatologist Ian Jolliffe who specializes in
applications of PCA in the atmospheric sciences, having written a
widely used text book on PCA. In his presentation, Jollife explains
that non-centered PCA is appropriate when the reference means are
chosen to have some a priori meaningful interpretation for the problem
at hand.” ….
On March 6, 2008, “Open Mind” defended Mann’s hockey stick.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/03/06/pca-part-4-non-centered-hockey-stick=
s/
“First let’s dispense with the last claim, that non-centered PCA isn’t
right. This point was hammered by Wegman, who was recently quoted in
reader comments thus:
“The controversy of Mann’s methods lies in that the proxies are
centered on the mean of the period 1902-1995, rather than on the whole
time period. This mean is, thus, actually decentered low, which will
cause it to exhibit a larger variance, giving it preference for being
selected as the first principal component. The net effect of this
decentering using the proxy data in MBH and MBH99 is to produce a
hockey stick shape. Centering the mean is a critical factor in using
the principal component methodology properly. It is not clear that
Mann and associates realized the error in their methodology at the
time of publication.”
Just plain wrong. Centering is the usual custom, but other choices are
still valid; we can perfectly well define PCs based on variation from
any origin rather than from the average. It fact it has distinct
advantages IF the origin has particular relevance to the issue at
hand. You shouldn’t just take my word for it, but you *should* take
the word of Ian Jolliffe, one of the world’s foremost experts on PCA,
author of a seminal book on the subject. He takes an interesting look
at the centering issue in this presentation.”
And finally we get a reply from Jolliffe himself:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/08/10/open-thread-5-2/#comment-21873
“Ian Jolliffe // September 8, 2008 at 9:36 am
Apologies if this is not the correct place to make these comments. I
am a complete newcomer to this largely anonymous mode of
communication. I=3D92d be grateful if my comments could be displayed
wherever it is appropriate for them to appear.
It has recently come to my notice that on the following website,
related to this one, my views have been misrepresented, and I would
therefore like to correct any wrong impression that has been given.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/03/06/pca-part-4-non-centered-hockey-stick=
s/
An apology from the person who wrote the page would be nice.
In reacting to Wegman’s criticism of decentred PCA, the author says
that Wegman is “just plain wrong” and goes on to say “You shouldn’t
just take my word for it, but you *should* take the word of Ian
Jolliffe, one of the world’s foremost experts on PCA, author of a
seminal book on the subject. He takes an interesting look at the
centering issue in this presentation”
It is flattering to be
recognised as a world expert, and I’d like to think that the final
sentence is true, though only toy examples were given. However there
is a strong implication that I have endorsed decentred PCA. This is
just plain wrong.
The link to the presentation fails, as I changed my affiliation 18
months ago, and the website where the talk lived was closed down. The
talk, although no longer very recent it was given at 9IMSC in 2004
is still accessible as talk 6 at http://www.secamlocal.ex.ac.uk/people/staf=
f/itj201/RecentTalks.html
It certainly does not endorse decentred PCA. Indeed I had not
understood what MBH had done until a few months ago. Furthermore, the
talk is distinctly cool about anything other than the usual column-
centred version of PCA. It gives situations where uncentred or doubly-
centred versions might conceivably be of use, but especially for
uncentred analyses, these are fairly restricted special cases. It is
said that for all these different centrings it’s less clear what we
are optimising and how to interpret the results.
I can’t claim to have read more than a tiny fraction of the vast
amount written on the controversy surrounding decentred PCA (life is
too short), but from what I’ve seen, this quote is entirely
appropriate for that technique. There are an awful lot of red
herrings, and a fair amount of bluster, out there in the discussion
I’ve seen, but my main concern is that I don’t know how to interpret
the results when such a strange centring is used? Does anyone? What
are you optimising? A peculiar mixture of means and variances? An
argument I’ve seen is that the standard PCA and decentred PCA are
simply different ways of describing/decomposing the data, so
decentring is OK. But equally, if both are OK, why be perverse and
choose the technique whose results are hard to interpret? Of course,
given that the data appear to be non-stationary, it’s arguable whether
you should be using any type of PCA.
I am by no means a climate change denier. My strong impressive is that
the evidence rests on much much more than the hockey stick. It
therefore seems crazy that the MBH hockey stick has been given such
prominence and that a group of influential climate scientists have
doggedly defended a piece of dubious statistics. Misrepresenting the
views of an independent scientist does little for their case either.
It gives ammunition to those who wish to discredit climate change
research more generally. It is possible that there are good reasons
for decentred PCA to be the technique of choice for some types of
analyses and that it has some virtues that I have so far failed to
grasp, but I remain sceptical. ”
Ian Jolliffe’
What could be clearer than that? Mann used non-centered PCA,
Tamino defended Mann by citing Jolliffe as a source, Jollife replied
by saying McIntyre was correct, Tamino was wrong.
– A. McIntire
00
Sorry for the late response but I just saw your comment now. Jolliffe was also asked to referee a comment to Mann 03. Jolliffe later admitted he was anomymous referee number 2 and his comment is here. He basically states that Mann’s RE verification method is essentially meaningless.
00
Interesting.
It would be interesting to know the magnitude of the impact using decentred as opposed to conventional PCA had, and whether other paleo reconstructions (which broadly adhere to the hockey stick shape) also use decentred PCA.
I will try to find out.
He basically states that Mann’s RE verification method is essentially meaningless.
What he actually says is:
My preference would be not to rely on a single measure.
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If you are interested in this issue, you should broaden your data sources beyond places like SkepticalScience, OpenMind, and RealClimate which are unabashedly pro-AGW.
The website a-skeptical-mind is not a bad place to get low key discussions of verifiable facts on the issue. In particular, here is a discussion of the “Hockey Stick”. Reading between the lines, it is easy to see that there is a lot more than just science going on.
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Hi BobC
“”If you are interested in this issue, you should broaden your data sources beyond places like SkepticalScience”
I wish you luck in getting that to happen.
🙂
PCA or not PCA a hockey stick made of several disparate data sets from different
measuring and estimating methods is dud science.
And that’s even before you start to distort the data.
No amount of “trying to find out” is going to change that.
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I spend more time here than anywhere else! :p
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Why don’t you make good use of the time and read some of the background information then?
00
I’ve read loads of those. I just interpret most of them as baloney.
00
Whether an argument is right or wrong is not based on interpretation, but on evidence. If you would learn that, you might be more effective (or, you might change your mind — a risk you have to take if you take evidence seriously).
If aeronautical engineers indulged in “reasoning” as sloppy as climate scientists, air travel would be as safe as Russian roulette. The climate science community is loath to subject their work to the same kind of audit that always preceeds the commercial use of a new airliner because they realize, at some level, how flaky it is. Dodging certification regarding an airliner would be a crime, because of the potential consequences of failure. It’s only reasonable to put climate science claims through a similar rigorous process of verification, due to the potential disasterous consequences if the prescriptions are wrong.
And no, “peer reviewed” publication is not an audit. If it were, the Food and Drug Adminstration would just ask the pharmaceutical company’s scientists if their drug worked (or Boeing’s engineers if the plane was safe) and leave it at that.
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Whether one accepts an argument is based on interpretation. We don’t have an inbuilt ‘objective truth meter’.
Based on my various cognitive constructs relating to science, math and credible expertise, I reject most of which Jo posts in support of her viewpoint.
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No wonder you’re so confused — you haven’t kept up with the progress of science and the Scientific Method over the last 4 centuries.
You might also read up on Francis Bacon’s Empiricism philosophy, and the methodology he developed to determine facts about the world.
Bacon’s 4th fallacy, Idols of the Theatre (Idola theatri) particularly applies to you:
Just about all the progress the human race has made in the last 4 centuries has been due to the development of empiricism and the scientific method of inquiry. You ought to try them, they work really well.
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Yet without a way to discern truth from perception, it’s moot.
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What are you saying? That the philosophy of Empiricism, and the Scientific Method (including replicability) are moot if you can’t just perceive the truth with some kind of “gut feel”?
Did you actually follow any of the links in my previous post? I beginning to think that you are uneducable.
“There are none so blind as those who will not see.” (1714, Thomas, Chalkley)
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I’m afraid this may be like trying to teach a pig to sing, but are you (Tristan) aware of the concept of Scientific Due Diligence?
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Of course we try to gauge the veracity of a scientific claim via the principles of log and the method. But we’re still trying to gauge something. That’s why you and I could read the same thing, with the same intention and come up with two different interpretations.
In non-ideological instances, you and I would usually reach the same conclusions. Unfortunately, powerful ideology often trumps perception. The ideology becomes the reality.
Is there an easy way for two people to determine which of them is being the ideological one? Nope. Even more confoundingly, there’s usually some degree of preconception from both sides. It’s certainly possible to think about, but I’m still looking for self-verification resources.
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OK Tristan, this is my last attempt: I know you’re not stupid, so it must be that you are simply refusing to look.
The progress of science does not depend on any method of determining truth by some magical way of perceiving or gauging someone else’s claims. There is no way to gauge the truth of a scientific (or other) claim by simply looking at the claim itself through some special filter of perception — so you can quit looking for one.
The truth of a scientific claim is established by the Scientific Method:
A scientific claim does not pass this test just because someone says it has, or claims that the debate is over. It passes if there is verifible information that it has.
For example, step #4 for the AGW hypothesis could be the prediction of future climate states given certain future concentrations of GW gases. You can find plenty of excuses as to why the AGW hypothesis doesn’t meet this requirement (or shouldn’t have to), but no evidence that it has.
I have previously given you logical examples (which you seemed to agree with) that the Divergence Problem rules out Dendoclimatology as a reliable source of past temperatures. The climate scientist cabal has yet to admit this, since they don’t follow the Scientific Method, but act more like an advocacy group.
Here is some remedial reading (which, based on past experience, will do you no good.)
Highly unlikely, given your aversion to logic and data and reliance on magical means of perception.
A rare, if inadvertent, moment of self-diagnosis.
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I also note, that in the Scientific Method, “Data” must be empirical data — not some theoretical calculation or a computer model. Empiricism, the tested method of determining truth about the world championed by Francis Bacon, holds that only the world itself can establish what is fact — not your perception or beliefs or any theoretical structure.
And a fact in Empirical philosophy is always provisional. Many people (you, I think) reject Empiricism because they need certainty. They essentially make the decision that it is better (for them) to be certain, but wrong, than approximately right.
It is better for everyone, however, if engineers involved with dangerous technology (airplanes, medicine, etc.) avoid this faux certainty, and stick with empirical data. Since Climate Scientists have ventured into this realm (by proposing dangerous changes to world civilization — just ask those people in Europe now how they feel about ‘alternative energy’), it is past time they learn about Empiricism and the Scientific Method. Until they do, their prescriptions should be ignored.
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Hypothesis: If C02 influences temperature, there will be a divergence between predicted temperatures accounting for natural forcings and recorded temperatures in a reconstruction of the past century.
Collect ENSO, Volcano, Solar data, surface temperatures for the past 100 yrs
Detemine surface temperature forcings via application of physics, ocean and atmospheric sciences.
Plot vs temp.
Analyze!
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Hi Bob
Tristan has it all bottled up and ready to go:
“hypothesis: If C02 influences temperature, there will be a divergence between predicted temperatures accounting for natural forcings and recorded temperatures in a reconstruction of the past century.
Collect ENSO, Volcano, Solar data, surface temperatures for the past 100 yrs
Detemine surface temperature forcings via application of physics, ocean and atmospheric sciences.
Plot vs temp.
Analyze!””
got that”?
That’s what they’ve been trying to do.
Problem is they are too stupid, or maybe money focused, to understand that you just can’t work it all out.
It is too complicated.
Having a bigger computer wont help.
The basic physics is very plain: man made CO2 is not able to influence world temperatures.
You don’t need to do all that rubbish. It’s camouflage.
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KK, quite right you are. Tristan stops at the “Hypothesis” step and forgets the “test” step, which the AGW hypothesis has failed. If climate scientists were using the scientific method, they would now modify their hypothesis, but they can’t do that because the grant money would dry up.
And, of course, the hypothesis that you can successfully enumerate and quantify all the forcings of the climate system for the last 100 years (or even for last year) has never stood the test of producing falsifiable predictions. Tristan thinks (if that’s the word) that, if you add up all the theoretical forcings (and feedbacks) that you ‘know’ except for the theoretical forcing of CO2, and it doesn’t add up, then the remainder must be CO2.
If that’s what you think using the Scientific Method is, Tristan, I’m going to have to reconsider my statement that you aren’t dumb. That kind of reasoning is called the “Principle of Exclusion”, and it has a long history of being wrong, especially when the various inputs are themselves theories or models and are empirically unverified. Science fiction novels are as likely to be correct.
I’m officially convinced now that Tristan’s a hopeless case and will never learn to think (perhaps he doesn’t want to).
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Oh yeah … The people who have been successfully making falsifible predictions about the climate (and selling them commercially) think that the Sun’s influence is dominant, and the effect of CO2 is trivial and too small to detect.
Corbyn is available for public debate anytime, but the government-funded purveyors of falsified climate predictions understandably don’t want to let their version of fraudulent science be exposed to light.
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It seems to me that the above step is the easy part. Particularly when you consider how big the “system” really is.
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As you will, love. 🙂
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For the last decade not to have been the hottest ever , temperature would have had to decline faster than it rose in the previous decade .
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“”For the last decade not to have been the hottest ever , temperature would have had to decline faster than it rose in the previous decade.”
Only in your lifetime, and those of paleontological proxies.
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No, it’s the National Anthropogenic Sorcery Academy (NASA)
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The long term trend (going back over 100 years) is still increasing at a rate of 0.05 degrees C per decade, but declining. See the plot of gradients at the foot of my Home page. I expect it to pass a maximum (about 0.4 to 0.8 deg.C above present levels) within 50 to 200 years, then decline for about 500 years.
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“I expect it to pass a maximum (about 0.4 to 0.8 deg.C above present levels) within 50 to 200 years, then decline for about 500 years”.
Good, that gives me 700 years to squirrel away all the coal.
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Black coal on the ground doesn’t assume a different electromagnetic spectrum, by its composition, as the energy around it interacts with single atoms and molecules, its behavior also depends on the amount of energy per quantum (photon) available.
Solid, liquid or gas, mass cannot retain more photons then the energy balance around it allows. Hence, Co2 cannot add heat by its composition to the atmosphere.
I thought is was akin to the universal nature of things. Now that there are other perspectives on how the climate works, e.g. the planetary harmonics, solar isolation, galactic energy flows, a complex coupled atmosphere/ocean system, are being seen in a new light.
Not to mention Nikolav & Zeller knockout, United Theory Of Climate hypotheses. A killer punch to AGW, if there ever was going to be one.
Who would think, the force of pressure was the enclosure regulating energy flow through the atmosphere? Seems better than having a roof over my head, there is blue sky above now. I wonder if Baron Fourier owned a greenhouse?
———————————————————————————————————————
The pressure of the atmosphere and bodies of water, has the general effect to render the distribution of heat more uniform. In the ocean and in the lakes, the coldest particles, or rather those whose density is the greatest, are continually tending downwards, and the motion of heat depending on this cause is much more rapid than that which takes place in solid masses in consequence of their connecting power. The mathematical examination of this effect would require exact and numerous observations. These would enable us to understand how this internal motion prevents the internal heat of the globe from becoming sensible in deep waters.
General Remarks on the Temperature of the Terrestrial Globe and the Planetary Spaces; by Baron Fourier.
—————————————————————————————————————-
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Donna Laframbois has a link to a paper in progress:
http://climatescienceinternational.org/images/pdf/post_modern_science_ipcc.pdf
It is a critique of the IPCC methodology.
Oh yeah! I see it now. The author, a Dr. Arthur Roersch, is not a climate scientist (whatever that really is). What would he know?
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Did you mean inchoate?
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