Last week I was invited by the ABC to respond to Clive Hamilton and the Parliamentary Committee report on ClimateGate. It was published a couple of hours ago on the ABC Drum. (Or Try this link, who knows why the article moved? 14-4-09)
The issue of the ClimateGate emails leaked or hacked from the East Anglia CRU is not that complicated. The emails are damning because anyone who reads them understands that they show petty, unprofessional, and probably criminal behaviour. We know the guys who wrote them are not people we’d want to buy cars from. They are hiding information. We don’t need a committee to state the obvious.
The emails show some of the leading players in climate science talking about tricks to “hide declines”, they boast about manipulating the peer review process, and “getting” rid of papers they didn’t like from the IPCC reports. It’s clear the data wasn’t going the way they hoped, yet they screwed the results every way they could to milk the “right” conclusion. Above all else, they feared freedom of information requests, and did everything they could to avoid providing their data. ClimateGate shows these people were not practicing science, but advocacy and have been doing it for decades.
The House of Commons committee was surely supposed to be protecting the citizens of the UK from being deceived and defrauded, so what did they say when faced with obvious malpractice? Did they draw their swords and declare that honest taxpayers deserve better? Not at all. They whitewashed it.
On the accusations relating to Professor Jones’s refusal to share raw data and computer codes, the Committee considers that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community but that those practices need to change.
It’s the nice way of saying that Phil Jones really did hide the data, but everyone else in climate science fails the basic tenets of science too (so that’s alright then). Sure. Those practices need to “change”, not now, not tomorrow, but at some indeterminate time in the future. No rush boys. Yes, Jones should have his job back.
This is simple playground politics, not rocket science. Even preschoolers can come up with the Phil Jones defence: “But Mum. Everyone else does it.” The committee tries to defend Jones, and inadvertently damns the whole field of climate “science”.
From the mouth of Jones himself: no reviewer has ever asked to see the data. What exactly does the haloed peer review mean if you can just get a friend to “tick the box” without investigating the codes, data, adjustments and reasons? Remember that the next time you are unfortunate enough to read an IPCC report — they may have 2500 scientists on their books, but not one of them checked the original calculations for something as basic as global temperatures.
Indeed even today not one of them (not even Jones himself) could check them if they wanted too, because it’s been “lost”. The Met Centre says they’ll need three years to reassemble the data.
Independently Not Verified
So are the CRU’s graphs right or not? Who can say? Jones and the committee say that the graphs have been confirmed by other independent sources, which all sounds fine until you look closely. One independent source is the satellite records, but there weren’t too many satellites orbiting in 1850, and they don’t verify anything until 1979. And since 1979 there’s been an increasing divergence between the thermometers on the ground and those in the satellites. Those on the ground show more warming, and since it’s documented that they’re near airconditioning exhaust vents, concrete slabs, heated buildings and at airports, it seems likely that they’re in the wrong. Rather than verifying the surface records, satellites are suggesting the surface records exaggerate.
But what about the other “independent” verification? NASA has already admitted its data set is not as good as the flawed, bug ridden, missing one at the CRU in England, so that doesn’t look promising, and in any case, NASA doesn’t agree with NASA: as in, Hansen in 1981 shows a different global graph to Hansen 1987, or Hansen 2007. The twenty year period before satellites arrived has been adjusted and readjusted in nearly every decade since that period ended. Look at the red and blue lines in each of the graphs. These are global temperatures, and the seventies kept getting warmer for decades after the seventies! Again, the smell of advocacy.
(Click to see a larger image).
This is supposed to be “verification”? Which graph independently confirms the CRU work? (Take your pick.) “Agreement” is not the same as verification. Just because two graphs agree doesn’t make them both right. In any case, these “independent” graphs are created from overlapping data sets, and by people who email each other their “tricks”.
(Graph references )
More excuses that don’t wash
Phil Jones is “in charge” of one of the three big global temperature sets, and he admits he’s lost the raw data. All he can offer is “adjusted” data. He admits he wrote those damning emails. He makes excuses that a “trick” is a clever way of doing something, which it might be, but when it’s a clever way to “hide a decline” it’s obviously deceptive. (And deception when money is involved, as it certainly is here on a massive scale, is fraud.)
He claims that the decline they carefully hid was reported in other graphs on other papers, so it wasn’t really “hidden”, but it’s like admitting that the stock prospectus graph was made up of two different company results and the poor ones were “hidden” in the fine print of an annual report 5 years ago.
The truth is that the decline he “hid” was a decline in tree-ring-temperatures that matches what the surface temperature records used to say was real. It’s another clue that the adjustments that have been made are questionable. Or it’s a clue that tree-rings themselves might not be good thermometers. Either way, it’s potentially important.
Weasel Words
To cover up the devastating enormity of the East Anglia CRU’s unscientific failings, the committee report defends them with weasel words. All the data and methods ought to be available, instead, we’re supposed to settle for “most”.
The British Parliament apparently thinks “most” of an audit trail is OK. After all, no one would expect them to provide all their tax receipts come audit time, and no one would mind if “most” of the National Budget for the United Kingdom was online, (but the rest was lost).
Likewise, all the raw data ought to be available, but instead we’re supposed to settle for “adjusted” data. The committee asked for an assurance that none of the data had been destroyed, and seemed happy when the UAE dodged the question and replied: “none of the adjusted station data referred to in the emails that have been published has been destroyed.”
As it happens, before ClimateGate we already knew the raw data was unavailable. Phil Jones told Roger Pielke Jnr it was gone and he could not provide it. “Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites,”
If the committee really wanted to know the full story they would have made sure Steve McIntyre was there for the hearing. He was the man who the CRU team feared the most.
The bottom line
So what it boils down to is that the world is thinking of developing a two trillion dollar market to dramatically change your choices (and those of everyone you know). It will affect the food you buy, the holidays you take, the way you heat your house, the cost of your clothes… and their core reason for this is that climate models run by guys like Jones predict things will get warmer. Right now, we don’t even know if the temperature record fed into those models was accurate, and they’re asking us to go all the way with them, based on “trust” of guys who are essentially untrustworthy.
We’re supposed to “trust” that guys who wish harm on their opponents, who are hell-bent on finding support for their personal favourite hypothesis, who fear and thwart any effort to audit them, we’re supposed to believe these guys care about getting the research right?
If they were directors of a small publicly listed company that refused to give up “receipts” they would have been issued with a summons. But when the global economy hangs on their pronouncements, they don’t have to provide the data, we’ll forgive them, and they get to keep their jobs too. I say, put them in front of a jury. You don’t need to be a scientist to spot rampantly suspicious behaviour. The public is not fooled, and that’s why the Big Scare Campaign is running aground, and why pre-ordained whitewash committee reports won’t change anyone’s mind.
References
1. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6945445.ece
2. Hansen et al. (1981) Hansen, J., Johnson, D., Lacis, A., Lebedeff, S., Lee, P., Rind, D., and Russell, G. 1981: Climate impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Science, 213, 957-966, doi:10.1126/science.213.4511.957. http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/200711_temptracker/
3. Hansen, J. and S. Lebedeff (1987), Global Trends of Measured Surface Air Temperature, Jour. Geophys. Res., Vol.92,No.D11, pp13,345-13,372″
4. NASA graph adapted from Goddard Institute for Space Studies data. http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/200711_temptracker/
Great article, Jo. I’ve left several responses to some of the more idiotic posts on the site, but none have appeared yet.
AK
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Hi Jo
Nice post, I’m amazed and pleasantly surprised to see it on “their” ABC. You seem to have upset the Luvvies, but not one of them has denied or disproved the substance of your article.
You could have really gone for the throat and mentioned the “ReadMeHarry” file, but I suspect that this got editted out – a pity. In reality, this file and its blatant manipulation of the truth is worth an article by itself.
Cheers,
Speedy.
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I haven’t read the committee report, but in general it seems that a major part of the climategate gang’s defense has been the successful misrepresentation of the motives of their critics. They have labeled and stereotyped their critics as evil oil-funded “denialists”, claiming that what they have been doing is a campaign to harass them rather than an honest attempt at critical examination. So far, this seems to have worked.
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Yep I picked it up at the ABC first, and have posted a few pot-shots at the blinkered believers, but I must say I tire of the sport. There are never-ending waves of ignorance and it seems like we end up debating the same people on each blog, some of which are simply trolls.
I’d like to say I have the temper not to be sucked into the troll wars again, but I know it would be a hollow promise… 😉
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Dagfinn @ 3:
I am still waiting for my Big oil paycheque, and I bet Jo Nova is as well, let alone the rest of the “denialists” at this site and WUWT. I believe Dr Lindzen was linked to a small one-off Big oil grant once.
It takes a climate scientist to know how to graft the big research bucks:
http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/apitman-funding/
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That in 1987, 1980 became magically warmer than 1940, then became cooler again in 2007 doesn’t exactly instil much trust, regardless of whether they’re able to explain such a shift.
Life-determining policies are being made on the basis of their “science”; there needs to be a reshuffle in the lab.
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Speedy:
Oddly, I hadn’t heard of the harry_read_me file thing until now. Here’s link on CA:
http://climateaudit.org/2009/11/23/the-harry-read_me-file/
If I had any trace of trust in them before now, it has surely disappeared.
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I love when she gets her dander up.
And who is more deserving then the cretins in the UK parliament making a pretence at absolution for the criminal Jones.
It’s like a spit in the eye of honest men.
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[…] Who needs a committee report to spot rank deception? « JoNova […]
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“The public is not fooled, and that’s why the Big Scare Campaign is running aground, and why pre-ordained whitewash committee reports won’t change anyone’s mind.”
I hope you are right Jo. However, I have my doubts as there are enough brain dead people who will vote Rudd & co back in for another term. Not sure about Obama. But here I can see him with a good chance of being returned but I hope I’m wrong – for this country’s sake.
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Climate alarmism is simply not sustainable in the long run. There’s a limit to how many times you can cry wolf. They say, “we have five years to save the planet”. And then what do they say in 5 years? Logically, they should say, “ok, now it’s too late, follow James Lovelock’s recommendations and survive as best you can”. Of course, they won’t do that, and try to pretend they never said five years. But you can’t fool all the people all the time.
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Dagfinn @ 11 – I can recall David Suzuki warning us “We only have TEN YEARS to get it right.”
That was back in… ahem. 1987.
It would require exceptional shamelessness to show one’s face in public after a claim like that falls over. Suzuki is still waving his finger at us, so he obviously it in spades.
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…er, has it in spades.
10
You know that the really sad thing, or at least I find sad, is that there was probably a lot more resources utilized in researching the design and marketing of products like ‘New Coke’ or ‘Pepsi Clear’, research that was probably more scientifically rigorous and unbiased (procedurally anyway) than what we have gotten from CRU and co., as well as most social science ‘research’ that was used in formulating public policy as well.
Except that when a new product bombs and its marketing campaign fizzles, Coke and Pepsi suffered, not the rest of us. But when one of these social groups gets some law or program enacted ‘for the sake of the children’, they never get repealed or terminated regardless of the hollowness of the study or the negative impact of the law/program, and the children will suffer the ill effects for the rest of their lives, as will their children, and their children, etc.
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Gregoryn06 @ 12 – Shamelessness is a common commodity among the alarmist crew. Even Paul Ehrlich has been in the news again this year (railing against climate skeptics, of course), despite a long string of spectacularly failed predictions that would have any normal person embarassed to open their mouth or show their face in public.
So many of these folks seem to thrive on being consistently, blatantly, and demonstrably wrong. We live in a post-truth society.
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Peter of Sydney @ #10:
I must sadly agree with your comment about brain dead people voting Rudd (and Obama?) back in. We’ve had at least two generations of left-biased, post modern education and as a result the majority of the population have lost the ability to think critically. Or as Jo would put it, they have been trained to “outsource their thinking”, bowing in deference to experts and committees. We are trained to feel instead of think, to react emotionally and disengage our brains. Check the language in media, news, film and television: “I feel”, “How do you feel about that?” etc. When was the last time you heard “What do you think about that?”
I have days when I’m hopeful and days when I view the future of our education system with pessimism. How do we counter the “progressive” bias in our tertiary system? Any ideas? Will we need to get on the barricades? Civil war?
This quote comes from another blog I follow, “Gates of Vienna’:
“The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency. It will be easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to an electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails us. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.”
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2010/04/obama-is-not-problem.html
“Confederacy of fools” – great phrase; how true, how sad …
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One bit of near-honesty has come out: in an inteview in Australia, Dr. J. Hansen called Cap-and-Trade “hokey.”
Prof Jones said of the Medieval Warm that it might indeed have existed. Usually, it is said that for the Northern Hemispher it was four degrees warmer than today – twice the two degree “disaster” we are supposedly facing. So why has Jones never questioned the “hockey stick” over the last twenty years? Well, he says, there is not enough data to know the status of the Southern Hemisphere. SO somewhere it was decided that the data for that period could be made into a flat line by assuming that the Southern Hemisphere was four degrees colder? Where is that stated? Why no queries as to data?
Similarly for the Little Ice Age, with the Southern Hemisphere magically being much warmer than the Northern. No data, but it “verified” the Hockey Stick, right? Oddly, Australia, Africa, and South America were not submerged…
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It’s common practice for burglars to throw their jemmies, lock-picks, ski masks and bags with ‘SWAG’ printed on, over the nearest fence when they hear a police siren.
It’s quite usual for murderers to ‘lose’ the murder weapon in deep water after committing the crime.
So that’s OK then, not a problem!
10
I wonder if these MP’s will care a bit more when all the remaining manufacturing jobs in the uk are going abroad – thanks to ’emmissions’
bye, bye soon tens of thousands of the remaining manufacturing jobs in the UK.
Thanks to carbon ’emmissions’ – relocate elsewhere and keep on emmiting of course.
from the Guardian!
“This is death by a thousand cuts.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/11/manufacturing-carbon-emmissions-pollution
“In the next month, the European commission will decide how industry will meet tough new targets for the third phase of the EU emissions trading scheme, which begins in 2012. The scheme sets a cap on companies’ emissions by issuing permits to pollute and imposes a penalty if they exceed this. Under the scheme, which runs until 2020, the cap is tightened each year. The EU wants the scheme to achieve its targets of reducing Europe’s emissions by a fifth in 2020 compared with 2005 levels. But industry fears the extra costs will put them at a disadvantage against rivals outside the EU.
One large steelmaker in the UK, which spoke on the condition of anonymity, estimates that to maintain current production, it would have to buy millions more permits, at an estimated cost of at least €100m (£88m). The steelmaker warned that moving production overseas would be an inevitable consequence. One executive said: “This is death by a thousand cuts.”
The chemical industry in the UK, which employs 180,000 people and represents about 12% of value added in manufacturing, is likely to be similarly affected. More than two-thirds of chemical companies are multinationals with overseas headquarters, making relocation more likely.”
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[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Peter Russell. Peter Russell said: Jo Nova on the Parliamentary Committee on the CRU affair. http://bit.ly/aEogkS […]
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good piece u wrote, jo.
abc newswatch get a good result tho the story has already run, as far as the public is concerned!
ABC Newswatch: Update: Rio facts were roasted
So bad was the error that it appears that, in the tradition of Orwell’s 1984, the offending story has been purged from the ABC website …
ABC response:On review, Audience and Consumer Affairs agree that the headline of the story gave the misleading impression that the 32 deaths occurred in Rio de Janeiro. As stated in the story, the 32 deaths occurred in Santos, a city 350 kilometres south of Rio. I also understand that ABC News has been advised by AFP that the temperature data for Rio cited in the story was incorrect, and AFP are in the process of circulating an amended story. Accordingly, Audience and Consumer Affairs have found the story to be in breach of the ABC’s editorial standards for accuracy in respect to both the headline and the temperature data for Rio de Janeiro. ABC News regrets these lapses in editorial standards and is in the process of removing the story from the ABC’s website…
You also raise concerns about the story not mentioning that the 32 people who died as a result of the heatwave had pre-existing medical conditions. The story made clear that those who died were elderly, a factor that increases risk in hot conditions. Audience and Consumer Affairs believe it is not necessary to detail their medical history, and consider the descriptor of the deceased as “elderly” provided sufficient context to convey they were in an at-risk category– etc
http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com/2010/04/update-rio-facts-were-roasted.html
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worth reading all of this convoluted story.
11 April: Guardian: Mark Olden and Michael Gillard:Carbon credit documentary should not have been shown, BBC admitsCorporation acts on Observer investigation into secretive trust linked to socialite Robin Birley that funded film on his carbon credits firm, Envirotrade
Birley’s company, then sells “carbon credits” to celebrities and businesses wanting to offset their emissions. Customers who used Birley’s venture to offset emissions included the agency that handles Brad Pitt and George Clooney.
Rockhopper TV, the production company that made the documentary, knew but did not disclose to BBC executives, of links between Envirotrade and the Africa Carbon Livelihood Trust, which funded the making of the documentary. Had it done so, Taking The Credit, the documentary, would never have been shown, the BBC ruled, although it also claimed the programme was balanced…
Rockhopper, which is run by Richard Wilson, a former BBC environment correspondent, and ex-Sky News presenter Anya Sitaram, told the Observer that every indication suggested that the trust was independent.
However, the inquiry found there was a “conflict of interest [that] risked bringing the BBC’s editorial reputation into disrepute” because the trust’s managing director, Charles Hall, is also chief executive of Envirotrade…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/apr/11/bbc-envirotrade-robin-birley-mozambique
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Great job Joanne! I rate your response a “5 star” masterpiece. I can’t imagine how the public may react, but I would hope you could could give those of us without access to your ABC a short summary of audience reaction in a few days.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
_____
Here is the link to the ABC article and comments. More than 400 readers have responded so far.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2868937.htm
Editor
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Another great article o pass around
Amr Marzouk
manly beach
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On ya Jo! You’ve done a great job, and I hope that some, just some, ABC followers will think things through. But for a mind to work, first it has to be open. We can only try.
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In the 4000 emails if you could find the expression “hide the warming” then and only then would you have evidence of real science. (a willingness to find both sides in the data)
IT ISN’T THERE.
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Who is Nick Rowley from the Age? He seems to be quite sure of the potential for CAGW…..see page11 todays Age paper….captioned. Turh or fiction? connected to CO2 (manmade or otherwise)?
“Recent work from the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO reveals not only
that Australia has just experienced its warmest decade on record, but the number of days with record hot temperatures has increased each decade over the past 50 years.
These aren’t predictions. They are observed facts. And if this trend continues, we will endure between 2 and 5 degrees of warming by 2070. That is a potentially catastrophic outcome.”
I’m waiting to see these figures re-quoted by another MSM outlet.
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Wow; you’re drumming up about 100 coments per hour at the ABC.
I trust that you’re not really enjoying pointing out the obvious fallacies of the alarmists in your responses. 🙂
Keep in mind what Karl Popper said:
It may be worthwhile to address the alarmist language, such as the use of words suchas “anomaly” and “erroneous”. Implicit in those words is that “something is wrong and we have to fix it”. I can only do so much/little.
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Regarding alarmism;
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Only one guy on the Parliamentary Committee tried to prise answers from Jones and that was Graham Stringer. Bishops Hill ( http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/4/10/a-chat-with-graham-stringer.html )approached the committee chairman, Phil Willis, with some relevant questions over the outcome and he basically refused to talk.
Stringer was more forthcoming and replied to Bishops Hill. One of the things he mentioned was “the fact that several members of the committee are utterly convinced of the CAGW case”! It also did not help that with the forthcoming election, time was at a premium.
So, due to a time limit and a loaded panel, Jones managed to slime his was with sly answers like, “[N]one of the adjusted station data referred to in the e-mails that have been published has been destroyed.”
I watched the video of the question being put and came off my seat at his answer! It seemed obvious to me that he had been coached to repeat this answer and it screamed out how uneducated the committee were on the “Climategate” emails. That they let it pass without asking about the raw data drove me nuts! Even the non scientific sceptics could have done a better job of asking the correct questions and spotting a spurious answer.
Funny thing about the 80’s and storage of data Jo. I was in college then and still have all my course work so for a University department consisting of 3 people and a multi million pound budget,the excuse of storage space SMELLS!
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The general lack of response in the UK press to the Committee’s report amazed me. There were a few rather muted articles when it was released but there was no jumping up and down with glee from the warmists , even in the Guardian. I may have missed something but I think maybe everyone over there saw it as it was — a political whitewash and don’t really want anything to do with it.
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To Macha:April 13th, 2010 at 12:38 pm.
“Observed facts” indeed! Based on some dodgy homogenized data and filtering of unfavourable stations (ie drop rural stations and leave an abundance of urban growth area stations) for their grids so they will come up with their biased conclusions of AGW.
Read Warwich Hughes Web page for a background on this bias at,
http://www.warwickhughes.com/1991/targw.htm
If you follow Jo’s site as well, you will see many references to more recent worldwide independent research of surface temperature data sets on all continents, that draw the same conclusions of Warwick Hughes et al (see below).
“Our conclusion is that Australian temperatures have exhibited no upward trend over the past century. This conclusion is in contrast to the continental warming trend implicit in the East Anglia study from the stations chosen. The main reasons why our conclusions differ are that the East Anglia study:
• included a number of heat island affected city records;
• excluded other long term records from rural Australia.”
You may also like to read the paper by Ross McKitrick, on how climate scientists are so politicized they won’t accept publication of critical views in their precious journals.
http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/gatekeepingrossmck.pdf
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[…] if you want a whitewash get a committee AKPC_IDS += "5350,"; […]
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Ross:
At #31 you say:
Perhaps I am too cynical, but I think the reason it was not reported by the media is because the media has an agenda that supports AGW. They know what the emails disclose and any reporting of the Select Committee report would have provided opportunity for others to comment on those disclosures by quoting the emails.
Richard
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Nice references for this article, Jo – an old newspaper article, two out-of-date papers 29 and 23 years old respectively, and some sort of graph.
Fantastic. They’ll give Uni degrees to just about anybody these days, won’t they…
I noticed you are still quoting the unsupported and now debunked assertions from that ex-weatherman Anthony Watts. Aren’t you bothering to keep up-to-date with the science on this issue before writing these articles?
30
I see these names of the heaters again. Carolus Linnaeus, Lotharsson, Zibethicus,
and it reminds me of where the hockey team dug up Tamino aka grant foster.
Trolling for floozies at a renaissance faire.
What are the chances they’re all members of Open Mind’s green wool tight wearing traveling minstrel band?
And I mean that in the literal sense, not as a euphemism.
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Vince,
Yes, it is amazing that universities confer climate science degrees to people who don’t have a clue about physics, statistical analysis and the scientific method. One can’t begin to understand the climate without a sound foundation of these first principles, which is clearly lacking in those who insist that CAGW is a real threat.
Why is it that reality deniers like yourself make your first line of defense a personal insult?
The difference between you and I is illustrated by the nature of my returned ‘insult’. While you personally insulted Jo and Anthony, I insulted those with a specific belief (i.e. CAGW) and cited the fundamental flaw in that belief, which is that it defies first principles science.
George
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Looks like the ABC has decided to let the minstrel team have the last word on every discussion.
I’ve made several comments to various people today. None of them came up. Must have boggled the moderator with my brilliance.
Blinded them with science. 😉
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Vince,
You need to keep up with the latest science yourself. The “debunkings” I’ve seen of various of Watts’ statements have themselves been debunked.
As for Jo’s references – well, if she wants to show how things have changed over the last 30 years, doesn’t it kinda make sense that she’d need to reference things from, say, 30 years ago? Did you bother to read what she wrote, or did you just do a quick-scan for something you could condescendingly gripe about?
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Vince, you really should get clear of that whirlwind. It has you rather Dizzy.
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Mike S.
My understanding is that Menne et al which debunks Watts is the latest word on station siting bias.
My understanding is that Watts has never published any research and data analysis to support his now-known-to-be-false assertions.
Here is Menne et al, if you have anything later and greater, please share it with us:
“On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record”
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The article is being swarmed by compulsive liars. The worst is a Clive Hamilton clone calling himself Jerry G. One would hope that everyone can take some time out to at least make two adverse comments towards this cretin. Because this sort of dishonest persistence does in fact work.
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Vince~ Menne is here? I don’t see him. Can you point him out?
…oh btw, do you even know How to post a link?
(sorry everyone ‘cept vincy, I’m Snarky tonight)
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For all those that think the earth is such a stable environment see below:
[Pangaea] “A supercontinent made up of all the world’s present landmasses joined together in the configuration they are thought to have had during the Permian and Triassic Periods. According to the theory of plate tectonics, Pangaea later broke up into Laurasia and Gondwanaland, which eventually broke up into the continents we know today.”
Hmmm…. just refer any believer in the ever-present, predictable earth theories to Pangaea and see how they can explain how that fits in with their knowledge of the earth.
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Further: Ask them if they believe the earth has stopped changing naturally, then drop the bomb on them; the earth is in constant flux.
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Vince,
I’ll let Watts speak for himself on that one:
If Menne ever gets around to analyzing Watts’ latest, quality-controlled dataset with 87+% coverage of surface stations, I’ll pay attention. But it’s really easy to find problems with data when the guy collecting it tells you himself, up front, that it’s not “ready for prime time” yet.
10
‘implying that my 43% data wasn’t up to par. Well of course it wasn’t!’ ~ Anthony Watts.
Interesting, vinny. Mr. Watts points out the clear FACT that the temperature stations are Worthless to begin with, and neither you nor menne seems capable of grasping that that was the whole POINT to begin with!?!
No wonder you are hystericysts. Hilarious.
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Richard @ 34 — you are probably right with your idea.
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Vince Whirlwind:
Try this independent report on U.S. temperature records:
CONTIGUOUS U. S. TEMPERATURE TRENDS USING NCDC RAW AND ADJUSTED DATA FOR ONE-PER-STATE RURAL AND URBAN STATION SETS
by Edward R. Long, Ph.D. | February 25, 2010
http://tinyurl.com/yzk2kpn
Take a close look at the divergence between raw Rural & Urban temperature from the “sixties” on graph on page 10, compare that to the comparison graph for adjusted Rural and Urban temps over the same time frame on page 12, no divergence between rural and urban. It’s UHI that’s having the major influence you “willy willy”. If any non Australians are confused. (willy willy, a small hurricane like wind, capable of picking up leaves and small pieces of paper, usually last no longer than 30 seconds.)
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Vince #41:
I have read the abstract of the Menne et al paper and he contends that NCDC has adjusted the readings of the USCHN network so that poor siting is not a problem, since temperatures have been “adjusted”
Does this really “debunk” Anthony’s survey?
Your choice of words implies that clear photographic evidence of national and international standard’s violations such as the proximity of BBQ grills, AC exhausts, the surface type and maintenance, etc., is incorrect.
I think you owe an apology to Anthony Watts.
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Vince Whirlwind: #35
April 13th, 2010 at 9:40 pm
And at #41
I just love it when these stoooopid alarmists come here thinking they know everything, making stooooopid claims before checking the facts SPOON FED to their LEMMING SELVES
Hey LEMMING, there is an UPDATED version of the WATTS paper published on-line last Thursday the 8th.
DID YOU BOTHER TO READ THIS? There’s an EXTRA 87pages in pdf. (It’s over 5megs). Go read it first at the below link then come back here for an intellectual beating, you foolish LEMMING you.
LINK TO WATTS UPDATED PAPER
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You can write long treatises with heaps of graphs but at the end of it all one single email does it for me. “The fact is we cant account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it’s a travesty that we cant.” (AGW climatologist Kevin Trenberth in email dated 10/12/2009) When a rusted on AWG advocate makes that admission it is clear proof that the science isnt “settled”. I cant see why I should put up a couple of trillion dollars of my tax money on the off chance they can come up with another tricky fix down the road some time.
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These people are turning incredibly feral at unleashed. Worse than usual.
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Meanwhile, whitewash number 2 is out.
This ‘Independent’ report, headed by Lord Oxburgh, who has his snout deep in the trough of the global warming/renewable energy industry, allegedly reviewed CRU’s research and wrote a report about it in just 3 weeks.
It sets up a classic vague straw man about “various external assertions” about data being “dishonestly selected” without saying exactly what these assertions are or where (presumably, like most cowardly alarmists, they are scared to mention Steve McIntyre for fear of giving him publicity). Then concludes that there is no evidence for these assertions.
The only slight slaps-on-wrist are
1 a bit disorganised
2 should involve more statisticians
That’s two whitewashes down, one still to come.
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The fact is we cant account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it’s a travesty that we cant.” (AGW climatologist Kevin Trenberth in email dated 10/12/2009
A confession in writing. How sweet!!
I suspect vince whirlwind doesn’t understad the e-mail.
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Thanks to all the familiar names who venture over to the ABC site. I note one commenter exclaimed “where are the warmists?” – That was back in the first 300 comments, when more than half were rational calm voices of reason (you have to scroll down). The warmist comments were almost all text book ad homs, or baseless assertions with nothing to give them substance.
Clearly someone got worried and the usual alarmist rabid commenters were called in to make sure the conversation didn’t accidentally get too polite or too honest. Then Bluster took over and baseless unsupported allegations became de rigeur.
Amusingly once I (and others) pointed out the ad homs, people started to find them in everything I wrote (which only tells you that they don’t understand an ad hom). The only one with any point was the one who claimed an ad hom with my paragraph about “we’re supposed to trust these guys who cheat and lie…” But that barb turns 180. Since Jones et al hid or lost the data, we can’t possibly discuss the evidence, all we have is “trust”. The irony is they’ve forced us to analyze their trustworthiness. It’s all they’ve got.
Graeme is right, they are feral. They’re using all the dirty dishonest tricks in the book. Shamelessly picking up non-points and declaring me a proven liar, then when they’re debunked, they just wait 24 hours, and post the same non-point again.
I tuned in for five and just added this below in response to yet another unidentified moniker attacking me and making a claim that a committee has declared the “evidence was all available”:
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Ha Ha… little side note. On the main ABC unleashed page, http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed
the most popular HOT topic has under 400 comments, and our article with over 1000 comments has completely disappeared, (lest it bring any new traffic in). But the ‘Soapbox’ links to the latest comments anyway and 2/4 head directly to the invisible post anyway. In comparison, “Letters From Athens” was published the same day and has a mere 54 comments but still shows on the main page… The petty tricks they stoop too.
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Henry chance: @ #55
April 15th, 2010 at 12:02 am
P’rhaps he was just being ironic.
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54PaulM:
April 14th, 2010 at 10:14 pm
Damning indeed…
Our Science is fine. It’s the IPCC what misrepresented it, guv’.
From Para. 7.
Gasp, Splutter,… but who was it that prepared the IPCC’s (mis)-representation of their (own) work ???
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The delay in the appearance of the “warmists” at the drum was probably due to them waiting for instructions. RC’s puppeteers are about 12 timezones behind.
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Actually Joanne received some very relevant criticism. She failed to retract some of her statements in response to the criticisms that:
– She shows graphs from 1981, 1987 and 2007 and claims they have been manipulated. She does not explain that the 1987 graph is in a paper that begins with a statement about the additional base stations included in the analysis. The articles in question are extraordinarily detailed in their discussion of how they did their calculations and what data was used. See http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ for some more information on this.
– Joanne also failed to respond to corrections of her statements about the BOM redoing temperature records because the CRU data could not be trusted. In fact they are not redoing temperature data because of any perceived fault in the CRU measurements. The Times online article is not to be trusted. Here is the actual “PROPOSAL FOR A NEW INTERNATIONAL ANALYSIS OF LAND SURFACE AIR TEMPERATURE DATA”:
http://66.102.9.132/search?q=cache:lfnb4Hyy3JYJ:ftp://ftp.wmo.int/Documents/SESSIONS/CCl-XV/English/DOCs/pdf/inf15_en.pdf+New+International+Analysis+of+Land+Surface+Air+Temperature+Data&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a
Have a look at the Drum stuff anyway.
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Webster, learn how to use the link button.
It’s real easy, but if you need a walkthrough I can do that.
Sure reads like they’re in the middle of a cya do-over to me.
Maybe you can explain how thermometers, which are not accurate enough to measure to tenths of a degree much less hundredths of a degree, and rely on quantity of averages rather then quality of measurement to supposedly reach that accuracy, are somehow improved by subtracting the majority of stations?
Then ask Bom why they did it.
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Webster, there’s not much point in replying (again) to the ABC comments, honest conversation is easily sabotaged by the upside down posting. They comment, I reply, but then having been debunked, they just post the same point back at the top, then claim I haven’t debunked it. The threads are hijacked.
I mean, it doesn’t matter what anyone says to anonymous commentators. They have no need to back up their claims, no fear of looking like a fool, no need to be honest. It’s like a form of communication pollution, regardless of the substance, they then announce with every irrelevant non-point that someone is a liar. It’s religious. I am flattered they think what I write is so important that they have to spend so much time trying to find “antidotes”.
Curiously, though I am accused of it, no where in the article or comments did I actually say “Hansen manipulated the graphs”. The article was about the CRU. In the post I was merely pointing out how the three Hansen graphs disagreed with themselves. How can you call anything “independently verified”? With every new study, some new stations are in or out, or adjusted. Even if all the changes are legit, it begs serious questions about the poor state of our global temperature records and our ability to “calculate” global temperatures.
In this and many other measures, almost all the adjustments are non-randomly in favor of trends that agree with the models. It may not be deliberate dishonesty, but it ain’t credible science, normally adjustments go up and down. People are paid to find things that suit their predetermined goal, and hardly anyone is paid to find the other side of the story. The system is biased.
But thanks for coming over here Webster. I don’t have time (unpaid) to read all the illogical non-sequiteurs put up to fish out one or two ones that might be worth reading.
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Webster, I just looked at that Met Office link about redoing data. If you’ve found some info there that makes the Times Online article incorrect you can spell it out here and tell the Times too. But I really don’t see anything there other than a nice “glossy” version of what the Times said.
How would you know? They based a lot of their work on the CRU. They stand to look pretty silly for not asking for the raw data themselves.
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You wouldn’t be saying that if an individual posts anonymously they must necessarily be writing fallaciously I hope…. you know what THAT would be, right (quite apart from damning of a lot of your supporters also)?
Those 4 words do not appear in succession in your article, no…… What you DO say is as follows:
(emphasis mine). Moreover, when people interested in seeing a version of the graphs they can actually read follow the links you supply to your blog it is quite clear that you do believe that this figure of yours demonstrates dodginess.
ARE you willing to actually defend this claim in a scientific manner, or will you now retract the accusation?
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Why would anyone retract when these criminals have been caught redhanded rigging the data?
Now lets have your identity. To see what a compulsively dishonest person such as yourself is costing us in terms of your public service salary.
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I’ll read your nonsense Oxspit. You can talk to me and I’ll talk to you anytime you want to argue some point on my blog. But I’m never going to be able to respect you fella. Because if you are going to take this inquisitional approach without personally vouching for the data yourself, then you are not to be taken seriously. Not even as a human being. Vouching for this data means putting your word, your identity and your reputation on the line to support this data and to say clearly why you think its not dirty.
Until I get that I have no choice but to assume you are some Gramscian automaton that needs to be tracked down and separated from the public teat.
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Vince Whirlwind:
April 14th, 2010 at 8:10 am
If you really want to see some analysis of just how bad the world temperature records have been manipulated have a look at The Chiefio’s site. It shows RAW DATA. Of course you won’t believe it, will you?
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[…] [L'intégral (anglais) se trouve ici]. Traduction libre en gras italique. The issue of the ClimateGate e-mails leaked or hacked from the East Anglia CRU is not that complicated. The e-mails are damning because anyone who reads them understands that they show petty, unprofessional, and probably criminal, behaviour. We know the guys who wrote them are not people we’d want to buy cars from. They are hiding information. We don’t need a committee to state the obvious. […]
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News from stupidtown. That is to say from ABC Unleashed in this instance. Two of the dummies, Glen Tamblyn and Lotharsson, rushed to assure everyone that the effects of the sun were only local. That big ball in the sky only has local effects in their view. She shines on all of us, but only affects some of us.
What this response, which seemed a bit panicky, was all about is that someone called Chris made a link to do with someone showing that solar strength predicted cold winters in England.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627564.800-quiet-sun-puts-europe-on-ice.html?full=true
Panic response 1 from Lotharsson:
“That’s certainly important, but it’s about the influence of the sun on *regional weather*, not *global climate*……”
Panic response 2 from Glen Tamblyn.
“Yes Chris, I read this with interest. However, remeber to qualify your comment with “the influemce of the Sun on A REGIONAL climate”.
Note the commonality of the response, wherein each idiot pretends to take the information onboard.
1. That’s certainly important
2. ..I read this with interest…
I never used to meet people this stupid when I was a kid. Or at least they didn’t manifest this level with dumb. Even the ones that habitually held up maths class. At least those kids knew that they were having problems. Actually I now regret thinking mean thoughts of such people. Because now we have real dummies that don’t understand at all how stiupid they are. The commonality of the response makes one believe that there is somewhere a school-for-stupid. One wonders if that school may be called “Deltoid.” Or could that school be called “real-climate.”
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Yes Graeme, it is almost funny….Lets think this through the Sun and all her effects only can be regionally felt……Yup that is brilliant. (sorry about the pun)
Only by complete indoctrination can one be so frigging stupid. If you see them would you tell them I said so?
Where is Mattb when you need him?
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Add to that, data entry error so alarming that Tony Watts concluded
It’s all to do with a coding error. In the so-called METAR system widely used to store temperature data, a negative temperature, say -5degC, must be entered as “M5”. If entered as “-5” or “5”, it will be stored as +5degC. Already, Watts has found glaring examples where that has happened. At many climate stations around the world, data is entered manually by an operator, so the errors may be systemic and far reaching.
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Graeme, Graeme, Graeme.
You’d be surprised how little sleep I’m going to lose over the loss of your good opinion, or of how little relevance to reality your opinion of me is.
We are not arguing over data, we are arguing over a trend. I did not estimate this trend, and it is not my model used. Hansen et. al. HAVE put forward their case and detailed their methodology quite explicitly. Joanne seems to think that the cut-paste-erase & add some pretty red & blue lines is a meaningful debunking of it.
It is not.
In and of itself, the picture is completely meaningless and can only really serve to confuse the ignorant. The ONLY demand I am making is that this ‘science communicator’ accusing others of fraud actually makes a case that this is so in a manner that at least shows some indication that she has read and understands the work she claims is fraudulent, or withdraw the accusation until such time as she can. If Joanne and yourself think that unreasonable, well it says a lot more about your standards of rigor than whatever mindless insult you feel like throwing at me might say about the work of unrelated parties.
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OXSPIT I am tired of you
Prove there is warming
YOU CANNOT.
SHUT UP AND GO AWAY!!
[Various SNIPS]
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“We are not arguing over data, we are arguing over a trend.”
You complete moron. The trend is based on faked data. Now can you vouch for the data or not. What a blockhead you are.
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We’re also not arguing over whether or not you’re capable of throwing mindless insults, Graeme. Whether or not you’re capable of doing anything else… now that would be an argument.
Stating that data is faked is not the same thing as providing a case that it is… and showing an alternate estimate of a trend isn’t, in and of itself, even an argument that the raw data has even changed. Do you comprehend yet why the distinction is relevant?
What possible relevance to anything could my personally vouching for the data be? Are you actually asking for an argument to the authority of ‘Oxspit’ from me? Would that actually constitute a reasonable argument to you? Let’s try it! Graeme, I personally vouch for the fact that you are a lunatic.
Have you actually any evidence that the data is faked or is this yet another argument by vigorous assertion from Graeme Bird? Is it really so unreasonable to ask that you actually read & understand the work you claim is fraudulent before you make the claim?
MarkD, I’m terribly sorry my presence here upsets you so much. There, there.
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Can you vouch for the data or not? If you think you can put your name and your reputation behind it.
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Over at abc-unleashed I’m asking for the reasons why its good, if not mandatory, statistical practice to use Mikes nature trick to hide the decline. Now I know the answer to this. Its straight science fraud. But if Oxspit thinks he has a better answer, then why doesn’t he show up under his own name, and tell us why this is specifically MIKES nature trick?
If it was important to apply this procedure surely we would be talking about a standard procedure hallowed by time and usage with its merits proven as being the best you can get under statistical reasoning.
Or it could be that Oxspit is an idiot.
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Oxspit: @76
Actually I did that as a “sacrifice play” so that Graeme didn’t have to.
In all seriousness it was over the top and I apologize. I see the worst parts are snipped.
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Jo,
it is clear from the link that I posted that the Met Office feels the CRU records are very accurate and are not the reason for the need to update recording techniques.
I quote the following from the link I posted to the Met office propposal:
and:
and:
I don’t think I need to debunk the Times article as the Times has been shown to be unable to correct errors of fact in their highly misleading climate related articles in the past.
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“The current surface temperature datasets were first put together in the 1980s to the best standardsof dataset development at that time; they are independent analyses and give the same results,thereby corroborating each other.”
You don’t believe this do you? Its a lie. All this is saying is that Hadley, Noaa and Goddard all back eacother up. Its a bit of a stretch to say they corroborate eachother. They are all three part of the same racket. They are not independent of eachother at all.
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So there is no-one who is putting their name to these outrageous series of lies right? We are talking yet another case of someone using an organisational brandname. We now have the Met Office, no such person, vouching for Hadley, Noaa and Goddard.
I want to know how they do this? How does one movement capture all these organisations, to the extent of being able to make statements on their behalf, without any actual individual having to take responsibility? This is really very disturbing this trend. Its no problem to know that their scientific work is crap. The problem is trying to figure out how any movement could have co-opted official statements in this way. It means that standard assumptions about the way the world works must be brought into question.
Does anyone have any theories about this sort of thing? Any complex understanding of group dynamics? This planet has never been through this before. This is only our first time. We are like the young preacher in the exorcist. We have never had a situation where we have so many people feeding off the taxpayer, and coalescing together; an international brotherhood of parasitism. I don’t think we have any historical precedent to guide us through this maze. I think we are in very deep trouble here.
The sort of people doing this. They don’t even have any pride. They don’t even try to be clever about the sort of lies they put over. For example, the US geological survey. Trying to JIVE everyone that undersea and above ground volcanic output was in any way comparable.
Am I the only one who finds this sort of thing deeply disturbing? It as though we have to worry about the safety of anyone who becomes effective at spreading the truth.
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Graeme,
I’ve just been looking at your blog. It seems that you also want to deny Einstein’s theories of relativity despite their widespread experimental and observational verification.
So I wonder if there is anything left to discuss scientifically with you.
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Your entire case for fraud, then, Graeme is as follows: When someone hacked the emails of the CRU, they found an email with the words ‘trick’ and ‘hide’ in it. The email itself does not make clear what the ‘trick’ was, or what was being ‘hidden’, nor could they determine this by a search of the 1000’s of other emails they hacked, but we all know what ‘trick’ and ‘hide’ mean, so they must therefore be engaged in systematic fraud and all their data must be faked. Is that a fair characterization? If not, why not?
Your general strategy in ‘arguing’ this, and any other ‘case’ appears as follows: You have a strong personal conviction what the truth of the matter is, and have no inclination to check any related matter for yourself or even present a line of reasoning most of the time. You then demand that any (and every) random person you meet who disagrees with you exhibits the expertise you lack and does the work you refuse to and then present, to your own vague standards of satisfaction, the entire counter-case every time you ask for it. If one person refuses or is unable to do so (you will actually find responses over at the drum right now), your case is proved. Fair?
As to your rather irrelevant request that I personally vouch for the data… and acknowledging that you appear so intellectually bankrupt as to consider this a victory, of course I cannot personally vouch for data I have not been personally involved in collecting. To do so would make a mockery of the words ‘personally vouch’. There are many, many unconnected professionals who DO do so, however. Your argument is with them. Most of the posters you sit back and make your boorish, lazy demands of are merely pointing out that you haven’t actually made any form of argument against them. You can, of course (as you seem to do) decide that any data you have not personally compiled yourself should be discarded. This quasi-solipsism, unfortunately must lead you to discard almost all scientific discoveries (which actually does seem to be your position, strangely enough) and makes scientific progress almost as impossible as actual solipsism. Science simply cannot function without collaboration.
Finally, as to your ‘Nature trick’… It should be perfectly obvious that some manner of statistical ‘trick’ is necessary to estimate global trends from often idiosyncratically distributed spatial data even of the same type. There is no such thing as a mandatory statistical practice – especially when dealing with reconciling qualitatively different data sources. But, of course, the actual approach used, and hence the ‘trick’ you assert is fraud is to be found (as far as I can tell) here. This paper is peer-reviewed. Your ‘argument’ is with it, not per-se with me. Reading and understanding what you are arguing is fraud may be a nice place to start in making a case of fraud, Graeme. This may come as a shock to you, but ‘Oxspit failed to explain & reconstruct this procedure to me in a manner going back to the work of Gauss’ isn’t actually an argument that it is either bad or fraudulent.
I cannot imagine I will be bothered responding again on this thread (failing to see the point), so I guess I’ll just leave you to make a closing ‘Oxspit is a big stupid-head’ response. Have fun with it!
MarkD: apology accepted.
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Graeme Bird:
April 20th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Here’s the latest example of the disease, Graeme. Like you, there are millions who are deeply disturbed by this global assault on Science.
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Graeme,
I can offer you precedent for the current situation you are seeing.
Galileo made important scientific discoveries that threatened the established power structures of the day. He too was faced with organised denial, and was imprisoned:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
In 1858 Darwin published his theory of evolution. Yet we still in the 20th century have evolution deniers trying to teach creationism in science classes.
Recently we have people who believe that the moon landings were a hoax, and that September 11 was a fabrication.
Your own responses to the science and evidence for climate change follow very much the template used by Joe McCarthy who’s photo you use.
Joe McCarthy is now reviled as someone who caused a great deal of damage to the American people and to the world by promoting a non-existant communist conspiracy in every part of American life that he didn’t approve of.
You also use this same conspiracy propaganda to promote your ideological agenda.
We can only be thankful that you will never enjoy a position of power.
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Don’t be a fool Webster. Comparing these reptiles at realclimate to Galileo’s is a bit much even for your crowd. No in fact we have no precedent for this level of international parasites all sharing parastitical values. Seldom do taxeaters in two differnt countries assemble together but to plot further depredations on the taxpayers of each of their nations.
Yeah its true that special relativity isn’t what its cracked up to be. You seen any space-time lately? You got any NOTHING about you that you can bend and stretch like it had shape? You solved Dingle’s refutation yet?
Its not just the CO2-bedwetters that don’t follow the scientific method. Its a more general problem with socialist science.
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Graeme,
a scientific theory is valuable in how well it makes predictions that can be verified. The General theory of relativity has made many predictions that if shown to be incorrect would have falsified the theory. The theory is solid as it has been shown to have startlingly accurate predictive power.
I assume by socialist science you mean science conducted in Government institutions. So Howard Florey’s development of penicillin, or Barry Marchall’s discovery of a bacterial cause for stomach ulcers, or all of Rutherford’s discoveries at the Cavendish did not follow the scientific method?
So in fact what you are saying is that the vast majority of all modern science is incorrect due to socialism.
Wow!
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“So in fact what you are saying is that the vast majority of all modern science is incorrect due to socialism.”
… and postmodernism.
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“The General theory of relativity has made many predictions that if shown to be incorrect would have falsified the theory.”
The General theory has been falsified by its failed predictions. You have to be clear as to what you mean by “prediction”. We already had all the measurements of orbits and things before this stuff came along. So “predictions” is a bit of a misnomer. In fact its all falsified now in view of the theories inability to account for the fast rotation of the outer stars in the galaxy. Falsified right there.
Secondly this is not what makes a good theory. A good theory is proven by convergent evidence. Not by how smoothly they manage to put the mathematical calculations together. We would have the mathematical calculations refined no matter what the theory was. If the theory was about little green men working behind the scenes for gravity and light we would still have the mathematical calculations refined and perfect. But this would say nothing for the existence of the little green men. Talk about something you understand. Like knitting or something. In any case my blog is for discussing relativity. Make yourself useful and make good with the evidence for the likelihood of catastrophic warming if you want to talk to me here. You can talk about anything on my blog. But don’t distract me with your general lack of education here. Get busy with the evidence for why we ought to be in a fear and trembling, at a tiny bit of wholly-hypothetical human-induced warming, during a brutal and pulverising ice age.
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“So in fact what you are saying is that the vast majority of all modern science is incorrect due to socialism.”
Seems that way. “Socialism never works but sometimes it takes a while to fail.” If you look at the fields of study locked into, or influenced greatly by, commercial endeavour, thats where you will often find people who are pretty sound. The rest are mostly public servants. I don’t mean that in a good way.
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Michael Webster you make several logical mistakes. You have also slipped the denial word in two instances. If you continue you will get the moderator(s) ticked. For now you just have me ticked;
Galileo was a vanguard of sane science. It was the status quo (compare to your consensus group) that were the deniers.
Darwin brought us a THEORY and it stands today with several problems namely vast missing evidence of evolution in progress. New species are not found daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. There is ample room to consider additional theories.
Joe McCarthy is perhaps reviled in your leftist circles because he was right. Today the softer socialists abound and we need to stop them with the same energy that McCarthy applied.
You mentioning moon landing and 9-11 hoaxers as an ineffective attempt to slander science skeptics something that asshole warmists try to do regularly. You can’t fight the science so you have to attack the messenger. Right out of Saul Allinski’s book. That will work well here keep it up!
As for conspiracies, well, just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Simple observations of human nature proves conspiracies happen all the time. You are in denial of this fact. (funny how that word works on you too?)
Finally, and this will keep you up at night in a cold sweat: WE ARE IN A POSITION OF POWER! enough so that you feel compelled to be here. WE ARE changing the minds one day at a time, one voter at a time.
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Graeme,
I just wanted to establish that the logical basis you use for denying the evidence of global warming, is consistent with your denial of the verified theory of relativity.
Mark D. Yes Galileo is very like the sane vanguard of climate science which is being suppressed by vested interests.
It is legitimate for those of us who having accepted the proposition of AGW on the basis of the vast evidence, to question why others should attempt to ignore or misunderstand the evidence so that they do not have to change their beliefs.
The kinds of misinformation we see are similar to those held up about the Moon Landing and used to argue against evolution. There are also people who see conspiracy behind everything that happens in the world that they don’t agree with, despite conspiracy being the least likely explanation in a most cases.
Joe McCarthy was able to divert attention away from real communist infiltrators by victimising a whole number of people who were simply US citizens, and should have enjoyed freedom of speech because of that. In a similar way, the current campaigns against science are based on victimisation and scapegoating.
Your arguments that we need to employ McCarthyist methods again to suppress scientific evidence that doesn’t agree with you, shows how unsuited you are to be involved in a civilised debate in a civilised society.
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Mark_D – you forgot to finish that one with MUHAHAHAHAHAHA!
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Oh the old wolf pack approach, Gee I am flattered…
Mark D.
NOT WHAT I SAID.
ALSO NOT WHAT I SAID. RE READ WHAT I SAID
Michael Webster, I will accept your claim that the AGW supporters are socialists however.
I also would like to know from what authority do you have power to judge civilized debate?
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Mark D,
most people were taught how to discuss things without getting angry and swearing by their parents. So I judge civilised debate to be where both sides of the debate are able to state their case without resorting to too much agression.
But back to your argument, I would ask you, as I have asked Graeme before, to show me some backing for the statement that the 97% of published climate scientists who accept the evidence for AGW are also members of some far left political movement – perhaps the Communist party.
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I bet that’s not what he said.
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I don’t have to explain your claim, it is your claim silly.
As far as aggression and civilized debate perhaps you could get lessons from MattB He is good at it
Mattb: you are right.
Lastly, MW you said: @93
Now there is a conspiracy! you are on your way to being a card carrying denier!
You must mean what us skeptics go through every day?
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From Wikipedia: The term McCarthyism, coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy’s practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist pursuits.
There you have it, the warmists are guilty of McCarthyism.
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“But back to your argument, I would ask you, as I have asked Graeme before, to show me some backing for the statement that the 97% of published climate scientists who accept the evidence for AGW are also members of some far left political movement – perhaps the Communist party.”
Your contention that 97% of climate scientists support this unscientific bilge is a lie on your part.
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“Graeme,
I just wanted to establish that the logical basis you use for denying the evidence of global warming….”
See you are useless mate. Why pretend you can cope with this controversy when you cannot so much as speak English? The globe warms. And it cools. Then it warms and it cools and it warms. So its ridiculous to say I don’t believe in global warming. When the globe continually warms and cools. Since the temperature always oscillates, you’ve made a false and lying accusation right from the getgo. And I don’t expect things to get any better from here.
People my age were probably amongst the last to get some sort of reasonable education in the English-Speaking world. You ought to admit your inferiority and comprehensive lack of decent schooling. Its the only way you could have a hope of a prayer or improving.
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“Your contention that 97% of climate scientists support this unscientific bilge is a lie on your part.”
Not a lie Graeme:
href=http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/climate_scientist_consensus_global_warming_real_other_scientists_not_so_much
“See you are useless mate…”
What you are admitting by claiming the theory of relativity is false, and in fact falsified is that you do not have the ability to engage in a scientific argument. 100% of people who have studied physics at University level would accept that the theory of relativity is established and proven.
I can tell that you never passed a physics examination at University, so I don’t feel in the least out of my depth with respect to my education.
Back to Global warming, here is a list of national science acadamies that have released statements that support the AGW theory:
– Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroon, Royal Society of Canada, the Caribbean, China, Institut de France, Ghana, Leopoldina of Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Accademia nazionale delle scienze of Italy, India, Japan, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Royal Society of New Zealand, Russian Academy of Sciences, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda, The Royal Society of the United Kingdom, the United States, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
So rather than commenting on my education you should explain why your education is such that you can understand the science better than all these people in the same way that you understand physics better than the entire physics community of the 20th and 21st centuries.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#Statements_by_organizations
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Gee i didn’t say that either…
Hey Webster do you know about propaganda? In all your stupid learnin did they explain ARGUMENT FROM AUTHORITAY?
Oh yes you must have skipped that class in favor of smoking dope.
By the way do you work for a living? if so does your employer know what you are doing?
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And what about you Mattb? Does the university know how much time you spend blogging? Is it conspiratorial to suggest that academia is behind this Pro AGW crap? You warmists are constantly harping on big oil and other counter conspiracies how about you two come clean and admit who or what is behind your time spent here and there?
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While I am at it what about Oxspit? JM? You all post at the same time of day, it is working time in club AU. Lets have a confession shall we?
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Mark D,
I see we are getting to the basis of your arguments now Mark, villification and threats.
Its a shame that noone here can provide a reasoned basis for their denial of the evidence.
An argument from authority is not proof. It is however evidence. It is also important to look at the credibility of those who put a point.
Graeme has shown that he has no credibility to be taken seriously because he fails to acknowledge established proven physics. You and Graeme both seem to wish to resort to silly personal attacks rather than engaging in any reasonable debate.
I am very disappointed that you have no evidence or logic to back up your claims that AGW is not occurring. I put that against the clear evidence that the so called “authorities” have produced to show that AGW is indeed occurring, and is likely to have a very severe impact on our civilization.
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Precisely what is the threat? You have now stepped into a lie. Go ahead and answer any one of my questions liar. You either don’t care or don’t notice that you are guilty of exactly what you claim “deniers” do. Either way you are demonstrating psychopathy. (of course that is my opinion)
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Mark D,
I’ll leave it to others to make their own minds up about your posts. Clearly you are used to bullying rather than debating, and you seem a little frustrated that it isn’t working in this instance.
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Great debate you wanted. NO you wanted to be disruptive, you wanted you slander, you wanted to play tedious mind games.
You got none, you got no game. Now answer what was my threat?
You have moments to defend that statement otherwise it was simply slander.
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As I said Mark, I’ll leave it to others to evaluate that. It occurred somewhere in your post 103.
It is clearly a threat, and just what I would expect from someone who won’t engage with the evidence that shows:
– Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets melting at increasing rate,
– The Arctic decreasing in mass and extent over ~40 years,
– Sea level rise at an increasing rate,
– Changed energy balance detected by satellites in the bands absorbed by CO2,
– Melting of all most all glaciers world wide,
– Increasing temperatures in line with modelled predictions.
– Decreasing rainfall in Southern Australia.
– Increasing release of methane from melting permafrost and the Arctic Ocean floor.
In fact you have to ignore a mountain of evidence to be able to sustain your view that AGW is not occurring.
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Where is your back up buddy?
103 has no threat. Copy it and past it into any of your warmist blogs and see if they can find a threat.
with regard to the following:
– Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets melting at increasing rate,
– The Arctic decreasing in mass and extent over ~40 years,
– Sea level rise at an increasing rate, Wrong any rise has not shown an increase.
– Changed energy balance detected by satellites in the bands absorbed by CO2, WTF? there is no such thing
– Melting of all most all glaciers world wide, Duh explain how that happens when they are still in well below freezing temperatures? Never mind that it has to do with precipitation not temperature.
– Increasing temperatures in line with modelled predictions. Oh yes what about the last 10 years? where the models predicted vastly warmer temps. (Wrong again)
– Decreasing rainfall in Southern Australia. Uh that would be weather and by the way increases in other areas of AU. Wrong again.
– Increasing release of methane from melting permafrost and the Arctic Ocean floor. Bullchit at a preposterous level. Wow you are new to this aren’t you?
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I could post links to evidence for all of these, but what would be the point. You and Graeme are arguing at such a juvenile level, that any evidence you are shown will just be contradicted without any support.
So I’ll just post links for the last point, the had you saying “Bullchit at a preposterous level. Wow you are new to this aren’t you?”
From 2005:
href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2005/aug/11/science.climatechange1″
From 2010:
href=”http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100304142240.htm”
Please provide evidence to the contrary, and then perhaps we will be able to have a civilised discussion.
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Why do I bother:
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2009/10/08/the-ups-and-downs-of-methane/
Yes there is your IPCC failing.
Then there is this reality: Do you know what parts per billion means?
By the way your links don’t link but I’ll assume that they (and you) KNOW empirically that any modest methane increase is due to changes in permafrost.
In the interest of civil debate please provide such evidence.
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Yes of course its a lie. For starters your link doesn’t work. Secondly if you claim that 97% of scientists are backing this unscience racket you are lying. The claim will turn out to be something else entirely. It is likely to be the case that the question was to do with net warming or net cooling no matter how tiny. And it may be that most of the climate scientists thought that there may be some tiny net warming effect.
This does not mean, if thats what the survey is about, they support this science fraud. Many peoples best guess is that there may be some tiny warming effect. This by no means proves that they are signed up for this science fraud that you believe in. Chilingar thinks there is a net cooling effect. A tiny one. Others think there might be a tiny net warming effect. No-one who thinks the effect is tiny can rightly be said to be supporting “the global warming thesis” as such.
See you are a liar on every constituent point of this matter. Even sometimes you may appear to be telling the literal truth. But really you are still lying. Such has been the Orwellian abuse of the language during this whole sorry saga.
So you can stop lying about this 97% rubbish right now.
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You are just going to have to back away from your 97% lie. Putting up links that don’t work is stalling for time.
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Just as I thought. You are now proven full of shit:
“Doran and former graduate student Maggie Kendall Zimmerman sought the opinion of the most complete list of earth scientists they could find, contacting more than 10,200 experts around the world listed in the 2007 edition of the American Geological Institute’s Directory of Geoscience Departments.
3,146 responded and were e-mailed invitations to participate in the on-line poll conducted by the website questionpro.com. Only those invited could participate and computer IP addresses of participants were recorded and used to prevent repeat voting. Questions used were reviewed by a polling expert who checked for bias in phrasing, such as suggesting an answer by the way a question was worded.
After examining the results of the nine-question survey was short, Doran and Kendall Zimmerman conclude that “the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.” The challenge now, they write, is how to effectively communicate this to policy makers and to a public that continues to mistakenly perceive debate among scientists.”
You have two or three sampling biases for starters. You don’t know what the questions were. So all you have is an assertion on the part of these two dummies.
So you can stop lying about this 97% right now. We can only guess at what it is that could get you classified as part of the 97%. Lindzen thinks this is a big fat corrupt racket. But Lindzen merely assumes some initial warming from extra CO2.
Is Richard Lindzen part of the 97%???? Yes or No?
You don’t know. So you are talking nonsense right from the start. If you are putting Lindzen in your crowd, or if you do not know for sure he is excluded then clearly
you are lying in your use of this 97% figure.
But you are going to use this lie again, because thats the sort of person you are.
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Sorry about the broken links guys. I’m a little surprised that you were incapable of following them regardless.
Anyhow:
– 97% of climate scientists…
– 2005 – methane release from permafrost.
– 2010 – methane release from Arctic Oceans.
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Try here.
See figure 1. All sources (peer-reviewed) are cited, although unfortunately you would need a subscription to read the papers in full (figure 1 is from Nature). A number of the cited surface measurement papers are online & free, however.
P.S. This:
and this:
would probably have to be the laziest excuse for not reading a citation I have ever seen. As should be blindingly obvious, Webster has supplied a web address but just appears to have not correctly converted to hypertext. Copy the link into your browser and you’ll get there. It worked for me.
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Right so we’ve established that the 97% claim is a lie. Lets have that retraction.
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Graeme,
there’s no need to get so upset. Here is some more information.
– 97% of Climatologists who are active publishers on climate change anserw yes to the question: Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
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Unbelievable. You guys cannot even define the set of what could get you in the 97% group and yet you just lock it in, run with it, and are lying about it all over the place. This is where YOU are coming from. This sloppiness and tendentiousness is what YOUR MOVEMENT is about.
And you are lying about it even though its a cul de sac argument. It wouldn’t matter if you were right and moreso. It would make no difference if it were 99% and they all really were full-blown believers. Because you could go to every one of them and none of them could find you the evidence, making their religious protestations irrelevant to the scientific question.
So even when some point or other is entirely irrelevant to the science at hand you are still willing to lock in the lie, prosletize the lie with great vigour, and filibuster about retracting the lie when the lie has been exposed and proven as a lie.
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Graeme,
can’t you calm down for a second.
The problem you would have in asking for the evidence from all the climate scientists is that you would call the rigorous documented data and calculation they showed you a lie before you’d even read it. After all you claimed to have pre-judged Jones et. al. before reading any of the emails.
I can only conclude that you are incapable of the logic, and honesty required to participate meaningfully in this or any other debate about objective reality.
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No the problem is you are a liar. You make claims, and you give out links, and the links do not back your claims. Now retract. Admit you don’t have the evidence to make the strong claims that your are making.
It might well be that 97% think that CO2 is a net warmer. This is not powerfully relevant if a great proportion of these people think that the warming is probably tiny. We have reason to believe that almost all of them will be overestimating this effect if positive. See my post to do with p-holes, solar winds, and electrical currents in the other thread.
Its a simple matter of you taking this rather murky survey, locking in a blatantly unjustifiable line of chit-chattery based on it, and when caught you fail to back down.
You must understand. This is THE REASON WHY you are a CO2-bedwetter. The people who would not behave this way would not now be CO2-bedwetters after all these years.
Now start playing it straight. It goes like this. Clear hypothesis. Don’t claim you have evidence that is just floating about in some untidy morass of insinuation. Evidence is not evidence until it is related, through reasoning, to a specific and unambiguous hypothesis.
Now if you cannot exercise some sort of method like this, to reign in your natural inclinations towards bullshitartistry, stop getting in the way. You are just a big fat piece of useless trash, blundering into an argument that you have no capacity to contribute to without that sort of discipline.
The other thing is I’m always getting things wrong and I back down when I’m shown to be wrong. But you have been busted and you are trying to double down on your lies. This is not acceptable.
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Hypothesis: 97% of currently publishing climatologists support the proposition that human activity is a significant contributing factor. Evidence: In a survey 97% say so.
I’ve already responded to your p-holes, solar winds etc. post in the other thread. I would note that you do not have any coherent theory or observations that allow you to draw any relevant conclusion from what you have said. And yet you say it.
I really think you should calm down.
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Well you are lying. And its clear that you are going to keep on lying. You don’t have the evidence. You have established yourself as a hardened liar.
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Michael Webster:
April 21st, 2010 at 2:45 pm
That survey was conducted way back in 2008. Even so, the results are interesting.
10,257 “Earth scientists” were invited to participate in that survey “designed to take less than 2 minutes to complete”. It was administered professionally to “maximise the response rate.” Even so, only 3,146 bothered to respond. So 7,111 (69%) of Earth scientists either
(a) attach no importance to the subject of global temperatures or
(b) considered the questions too vague or ambiguous. That’s understandable. The primary questions were
1. Have mean global temperatures risen compared to pre-1800s levels?
(Ans. They have risen since the Little Ice Age but they have fallen since the Medieval Warming.)
2. Has human activity been a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures?
(Ans. What human activity? What change in temperatures? How significant?_
No wonder more than two-thirds of Earth scientists wouldn’t give that survey 2 minutes of their time, Michael!
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Graham, I had read about this “survey” a few weeks ago and agree fully with your observation.
As Michael says at 120:-
His statement is absolutely not supported by his reference. Further his distortion of the number of scientists responding is reprehensible.
Yet another example of blow hard appeal from authority and not a very good job of it either.
Interestingly I responded to JM with a question a while back lets see what Michael says in response:
Michael Why are your appeals better than mine?
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He’s a proven liar. Were he coming from a righteous point of view, even if a secondary school kid, he’d lose his current name, and his belligerent idiocy, and come back with an attitude of enquiry and an authentic wish to learn stuff.
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Umm… how not? Of the sample taken, 97.4% of climatologists actively publishing on climate change answered ‘yes’ to the relevant question. You can, perhaps, argue over confidence levels based on sample size if you like and, assuming you would know where to start, I would invite you to do so. It would be a refreshing change to see something that looks like a scientific discussion on this blog.
People are capable of scrolling can check whether or not he has distorted the response rate. Actually, there’s a nifty ‘find’ option in all modern browsers, so sequentially checking his posts is a possibility too. I’ll be interested in your producing the post where he made this distortion, because it will show my browser to be faulty.
Graham Dick:
Yes, putting words in the mouths of non-respondents to a survey and making wild unsupported guesses about why they didn’t respond is a much better way of determining the reality of the situation. Do you have any idea what the usual response rate of this kind of voluntary survey might be? Do you have any idea how large the population size is, and hence what the resulting confidence intervals might look like? Or are you, as would appear to be the case, just making stuff up and pretending you have anything at all constructive to add to the conversation?
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“Umm… how not?” For the sake of intellectually handicapped people everywhere GO AWAY. WE ALREADY KNOW YOU ARE A LIAR.
Its really just a matter of tracking you down and getting you sacked should a righteous government somehow gain power.
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I wasn’t addressing you, Graeme. Unless you actually start responding yourself to requests that you produce evidence/arguments to your own claims (you might start, for instance, in at least stating what you believe I have lied about) or indeed offer some form of ‘argument’ other than some vile insult or threat I shall continue not to do so (other than here, to point this out).
Happy invective!
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On this I agree with Graeme.
I’ll even add that if you think that the “logic” you demonstrate in 129 is to be sold to the masses you are a fool.
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Go away Oxspit you are a proven liar.
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Sold to the masses? Possibly not.
To those who are not statistically illiterate? Why not? Which camp do you fall in?
I suppose I will simply note that you really do appear incapable of showing where Webster has distorted the sample size, or of defending your claims that the link fails to support the stated claim against the blistering assault represented by actually reading what it says.
If you agree with Graeme that I am a liar, I suppose that you can state what you believe I have lied about? Or do you also side with his belief that abusing someone to the point they go away is the same as arguing your case successfully?
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In summary on this thread; None of the questions posed to Michael Webster, Mattb, Oxspit, or JM, were answered. These are the pro AGW trolls that we here put up with every day. They are likely professional trolls, placed here by their employers. The evidence of that is in their lack of response to the question of their employers’ complicity in the time spent here. Further, they have no interest in the skeptical viewpoint. Since they are here on a known skeptical blog site, they would do better to ask questions framed in a friendly tone. They do not. They are here to disrupt, obfuscate, and tell untruths. If you have just found this site, please read carefully the previous posts. Pro AGW trolls are very predictable. They rarely answer questions, they always are rude and then expect the hosts to behave better. They ALWAYS use propaganda techniques and especially Argument From Authority. Do not buy into their bluster, smug attitude and lack of evidence.
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Graeme, I believe our work on this particular thread is done. Cheers to you and see you on the next front!
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What questions.
Look Mark I’m just a person who wastes a bit of time (perchance too much) a day on the internet – sue me. I am certainly not placed here by my employer – absurd. Surely they could find someone better qualified for the job.
Not that I’m worried – but your 103 is a threat to identify posters and dob them in to their employers. Dobber.
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JM has been banned, as far as I can tell. As for the rest of ‘us’….
Any sane reader can check to see if any questions were unanswered, and who it is that refuses to supply evidence for claims. Your statements regarding ‘friendly tones’ is, of course, laughable in light of the insults you throw almost every time you post. A reader can see for themselves that you are declaring me a liar without reference to a single statement you claim is a lie. A reader can check to TRY and find the unanswered questions you allude to, and see that your last post was actually a way to avoid answering mine. I, unlike you, invite any such interested reader to scroll up and check for themselves both about your characterization of this ‘argument’, and the issue of AGW itself. I, unlike you, AM a skeptical person and would encourage others to be so also.
Have a nice day!
P.S. This is anything but a skeptical website……
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JM may be “moderated” which means if he wanted to speak he would have to abide by some easy rules. He, like many Trolls, can’t seem to muster what it takes. Certainly he can READ here and if necessary apologize for his past behavior so that he could speak. So far that hasn’t happened.
Mattb……naw
I am done.
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Just checking if I’ve been banned.
In any case my last post might have been a little hurtful to Graeme and Matt D, though only because it was a correct summary of their debating style.
[Michael, Please don’t use the word ‘denier’. Posters using that word may be edited and repeat offenders are moderated. ED]
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I wonder why the d word is banned, and yet the constant unsupported accusations of lying are tolerated from Graeme and Matt D.
I also think that certain types of debating that simply consist of abusing anyone with a different (evidence based) view, should be able to be called for what they are.
However, your blog, your rules.
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Sorry guys, getting Matt B and Mark D confused as Matt D.
In the above post, when I say Matt D I mean Mark D.
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So to defend my reputation: I have no interest in “dobing” you or anyone else. If your employer tolerates you (and the others likewise) That is their problem. My question: “By the way do you work for a living? if so does your employer know what you are doing?” Is based in my theory that academia and certain vested businesses are tolerating, condoning and perhaps offering incentives to employees that blog offensively on skeptical sites.
That makes your “dobber” charge exactly wrong. Why would I “turn you in” to an employer that I believe asks you to be here?
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Cool glad that’s sorted Mark D. I’m happy to now understand that you were angling to find out if my employer requests or encourages me to do this. They do not. I am not an academic.
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No Michael. This site would never ban or moderate you without notifying you by email.
Unfortunately there just isn’t somebody sitting at their computer monitoring/moderating the posts in real time.
If you have a complaint about another blogger, you’ll need to alert Jo by email.
Now to what seems to be the crux of this heated debate, the 97% claim.
I can’t find who first made the claim that 97% of climatologists support AGW, based on the Doran and Zimmerman poll.
Irregardless, that claim is at best overreaching, at worst misleading.
From the link provided…
For the 97% claim to be true, then 10,200/100*97= 9894 climatologists should have given a positive response to the question.
But ONLY 3146 responded, 97% of which is 3052.
Because we have no idea what the other 7054 climatologists think, (10,200-3146) the only correct statement can be…
97% of respondents agree etc etc. Not 97% of climatologists, 97% of RESPONDENTS.
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Actually no – appropriate sample size and statistics means that you don’t need a 100% response rate to make a statement like 97% etc etc… you see this all the time in polling – they just need to get enough responses from a randomly selected population to get statistically meaningful results.
You could crunch the numbers to give some confidence level to the 97%. As an example we are doing a transport survey at the moment and need to survey 3000 people, with an anticipated response rate of 50%, which will allow us to say that x% of people do this or that, within a particular margin of error. That is to say that it is highly unlikely that a different response would be generated even if 100% of the population had responded to the survey.
I’d suggest, however, that they would have got a better statistical answer had they identified the population, and then taken a random sample from within that population, rather than just surveying them all.
But in summary “For the 97% claim to be true, then 10,200/100*97= 9894 climatologists should have given a positive response to the question.” is incorrect.
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MattB: #146
April 22nd, 2010 at 4:20 pm
I actually started to cover that expected response but decided not to to see who would bring it up. MattB!!!
No Matt, what we see in polling like that of Neilsen for example, is a “representative” spread of respondents. Representative in relation to the specific poll. e.g
In measuring voting intentions to determine which party may win the next election, samples of people are taken from various “seats”. these people are also carefully selected to represent the age and gender spread etc.
No such thing was done in the Doran and Zimmerman survey. You hint at this by saying..
Therefore, how do you reconcile your statement that the 97% of CLIMATOLOGISTS is correct (or more correct) than the FACTUAL statement 97% of RESPONDENTS.
If as you suggest, they should have taken a better representation…then the results extrapolated statistically is meaningless. Example..
The crowd over at CRU, Tyndall and GISS come across this survey and all decide it’ll be good to respond. (e.g. All Labor voters decide to respond) But the sceptical ones laugh off the survey. (e.g. liberal voters laugh off the survey)Any extrapolation from that can necessarily only be the extrapolation of the views of the folks at the said institutions,(or the views of Labor voters) hardly that of the general climatology fraternity (or voters in general).
(The above is an example, not my belief that that’s what happened)
It is a fact that we don’t know who responded and why, who didn’t and why and that most didn’t respond, makes this survey an item of interest to some but certainly no solid indicator of what climatologists believe.
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Incidentally the 97% only applies to active climatologists, which only made up 77 responses in the survey. http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/97_of_active_climatologists_ag.php
Personally I’d assume that any skeptical climatologist would have jumped at the chance to say “NO”.
If you were a stats guru (and I’m not) it would not be that hard to, based on the sample size, say how likely it is that say only 80%, or 60% of climatologists may have answered NO.
97% is pretty resounding, on a 30% response rate, however.
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Baa Humbug @145,
I actually posted the 97% point. I haven’t looked, but I’m sure I would have posted it in response to some other appeal to authority.
I think your points are valid that it is not possible for us to determine how truly representative the survey is. I guess by providing the link I was trying to be transparent about that.
In any case I think your response, on which I can agree, is a vastly superior one to the shouts of liar and other vilifications.
The point I was making in the post that got moderated is that there is a distinction between those who debate like skeptics and people who just yell liar. I also pointed out that the true skeptics would not be proud of that style of debate. Unfortunately I labelled the type of debate that I objected to as a prototypical case of that banned word.
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MattB is, more or less, correct. It is standard practice to say things like ‘the employment rate is 5%’, or ‘97% of climatologists publishing on climate change believe X’ when this is an estimate based on a sample.
The pertinent question to ask is as follows: What is the probability that you could survey 1/3 of a population and obtain a distribution which is significantly different from the real one? Or, more generally, how much of the population must I sample to get within a reasonable confidence interval of the expected mean (A 95% interval being the usual shot for for reasons of the central limit theorem ). Depending upon the distribution you may be surprised how small a sample you actually need to take (does it never astonish you how soon they can call seats in an election based on small vote counts, for instance?).
Baa Humbug’s response goes to the question of sample biasing. If you read the supplied link, you will find that this was a ‘by invitation’ survey, and that they have based their sampling of invitations, at least in a manner aimed at being representative (and they have cited the manner in which they compiled the invitation sample). You will also find that 97% of respondents did NOT answer ‘yes’ to qn.2, incidentally. Approximately 97% of responding publishing climatologists did., however Of course, they are not in the position to FORCE respondents to reply and, as with any voluntary survey, most people will not be arsed to respond. This is a problem for a great many surveys.
It is simply false, however, to make the claim that this is not evidence (and strong evidence at that), that the vast majority of climatologists publishing on climate change believe that human activity is a significant
contributing factor in changing
mean global temperatures, and that the best estimate we currently have is 97%.
You will simply need to do better than to state ‘there is the possibility of sample biasing’ to dismiss it outright. It seems to me to be the strongest indicator we have of scientific opinion.
The statements made by Graeme and Mark were, quite simply, false.
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Is Webster has intimated, of course, this was never meant to be an argument for AGW, per se. It merely goes to show the skewed nature of the debate.
It wasn’t the only supplied piece of evidence ignored, it was just the one Mark and Graeme chose to argue over.
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Michael Webster:
April 22nd, 2010 at 5:15 pm
And also covers Oxspit #150
The ONLY reason why I put in my 2 bobs worth was to act as a circuit breaker. The debate wasn’t going anywhere.
I can’t help but maintain (irregardless of what statistics were used) that a correct term like “respondents” would have (possibly) led the debate in a better direction.
I did not choose or support a side in this debate. I can see why a level of 97% is importantly indicative to some, and I can also see why others protest by saying it is NOT indicative of climatologists as a whole. The latter is my view
Oxspit, just further, the distribution of the sample is critical, viz ask the people of saudi Arabia if they prefer cooler climate, their answer would most probably be an overwhelming yes. Ask the same of the folk in Siberia, their answer would most probably be no.
Which of the two should we ask to determine what the global population would prefer?
You say…
Well in fact, a survey, such as the one being discussed here, is the worst possible way to get a reasonable distribution. Examples abound. Just recently, a similar survey was conducted by 2 newspapers, one a right wing, the other a left wing. They got precisely the opposite result. In other words, the result from this survey can be nothing but a topic of interest. I would discourage people from using it to make a solid point.
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Oxspit: #150
April 22nd, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Oxspit, this statement is just not accurate. I’m at the link now, it says…
No reputable pollster would frame questions like that.
The first asks about RISING T’s
The 2nd about CHANGING T’s
And the survey omits to ask about the level of affect. This is important because you and I know, scientists can be very pedantic, it’s their nature. They are pedantic about their work. No self respecting scientist would have treated such a survey seriously.
Do you really believe this survey is “strong evidence”?
By the way, human activity was introduced in the 2nd question, the result of which was 82% NOT 97% as you just claimed is the best estimate. Am I being pedantic?
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Its not a matter of opinion Oxspit. You’ve just been caught lying. Simple as that. This is the standard by which you judge the emails that imply science fraud. No wonder you would give them a clean bill of health.
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Lets commission a poll of professional pollsters and see what percentage of them believe this was a properly designed poll. Could we have a MattB type bet on the outcome?
This line of argument is faulty isn’t it? It is a detailed dissection of an Appeal from Authority: “My scientists are smarter, better educated, don’t believe in Creation, more ethnically diverse etc. than yours.”
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Mark D.: #155
April 22nd, 2010 at 11:56 pm
Good find that Fowler quote mark. Kudos 2u
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For the record, I’d prefer it if everyone uses the term “liar” carefully. If someone (from either side) can’t back it up, they should acknowledge that and retract it. If posters with a real name have been baselessly called a liar, I will delete the comments – please report them to me. (Those with a pseudonym can email me too, I might still feel motivated.)
Jo
BTW: The blanket rule against the D- word is exactly the same. You can use it in any situation where you can back it up. If it’s used as an insult: name and explain the papers or scientific law we “deny”. (Since there are no papers we “deny” exist, and none that we won’t discuss, the term is just meaningless name-calling.)
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Thanks Baa,
I had to go to bed and I see you have been left alone with the dragons. Personally I thought this thread would be dead by morning (USA) but alas I was wrong.
I doubt the Fowler quote will do much to the warmist belief though. Another element of bias that would be very hard to uncover is the “fear of retribution”. Recognize the way most skeptical scientist are treated and you could imagine why there was a low response.
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Jo Nova,
For the record I stand ready to defend my use of “liar”.
In the post above I was accused of making a threat. There was no threat, it was a rhetorical question:
“By the way do you work for a living? if so does your employer know what you are doing?”
A question that I didn’t really expect an answer to but that expresses my belief lately that “professional” bloggers are afoot. I (think I) know why I am here in a “friendly” skeptic blog, but I don’t understand why (other than if paid) these persistent pro AGW Trolls come here.
I have posted here in sufficient volume to show that I am capable and willing to offer reasonable and reasoned debate. When pushed by bad behavior I admit not being the best example (but I don’t think I am the worst either). Why the trolls demand better manners than they demonstrate is beyond me. Purposely misquoting, purposely not answering when the debate doesn’t suit their purpose and plenty of other offenses is bound to get bad reaction (perhaps that is their intent?).
Also for the record, I don’t ever intend to use my full name here (for good reason mentioned before). If that gets my posts cut or edited when arguing against a “full name” blogger so be it, although it will mean I spend no more time here. Something I am sure the opposition would be slightly proud of.
I think that it is perhaps unwise to make us “second class blogizens” just because we don’t want our privacy or safety (remember Farnish) compromised. Besides that, is no easy way to know if someone is using a real name even if it “looks real”.
I think I understand the need to keep the blog from descending to mayhem but I hope that interest doesn’t squelch commentary to the point of uselessness.
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Not quite “everyone”. 97.4%!
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Baa Humbug.
I agree. It was going nowhere from the start. Mark and Graeme seem in the habit of ignoring evidence based argument.
Which would have been why they asked earth scientists in general…. Climatologists publishing on climate change being a very small proportion of those polled. Not being sure how many such individuals exist I am not in a position to pass judgement on their sample or it’s significance. I’d be very surprised if the number was large, though. That’s a pretty strict category.
Which is a statement that further study might be nice, not that we gain no information from this one.
That’s a pretty sweeping statement. I fail to see why. I would submit that a self-respecting scientist would not devote any time to second-guessing the likely conclusions or purpose of a survey before deciding their answer, especially since they would know it likely that it would not be stated purpose anyway. They would simply answer honestly.
I would agree that you had a point if it weren’t for the fact that more answered ‘yes’ to question 1 than to question 2. 90% of the general population, and 96.2% of climatologists publishing on climate change. It would be wrong to have drawn any conclusions about what ‘changing trends’ meant otherwise.
BTW I, and others, have been quite explicit that the 97% figure applies to climatologists publishing on climate change, not to the general polled population. You’re certainly being no more pedantic about that than anyone else.
In light of which…
That the vast majority of climatologists publishing on climate change believe that human activity is a significant
contributing factor in changing
mean global temperatures? And that our best estimate is 97%?
Yes. For the reasons stated.
I am still a little curious as to why this poll is the major point of argument here… I have my theories, but….
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Mark:
I have no objections… go ahead.
And yet you just argued to the authority of Fowler 😉 (BTW this was a web-based survey, and they cited their sources to studies on web-based surveys, you can easily check this).
On the argument to authority, though… If framed as ‘X said Y, therefore Y’, it is fallacious. Moving beyond 1st order logic, however (as science must), the argument ‘X said Y, therefore probably Y’ is not necessarily fallacious.
If you know nothing about diagnosing cancer, poll 100 specialists and are told by 98 of them you have bowel cancer, by 1 that you do not and by the other that they are uncertain, I would submit that you would be foolish to argue to the authority of the one dissenting doctor.
And to repeat ad nauseum. This is easily the weakest evidence for AGW (nor is it presented or meant to be evidence for AGW per se, as has been stated) which was given you. I would guess that this is why it’s the only piece of evidence you chose not to completely ignore.
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A brief note to Graeme (ALAS in contravention of my stated policy). Seeing as the great JoNova herself has just spoken on the issue, will you agree that, in as much as a liar must lie, you need to follow the 3 following steps to make a case that someone is a liar.
1) Find a statement you claim is false.
2) Demonstrate is IS false.
3) Demonstrate that the speaker believed 2) to be the case.
You are currently stuck on 1). Keep going! I believe in you Graeme! You may learn to make a case for something yet, it isn’t too late!
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Jo:
Baa Humbug, I’m afraid that you, too can be declared a liar with impunity. In any case, I would have no wish to have comments deleted. I’d rather people were able to see how bankrupt the allegations were for themselves and judge the accuser accordingly.
I imagine it’s still hoping against hope that you, yourself, might apply the same standards to the word ‘fraud’….
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Mark, I missed you other post….
Yeah, it’s difficult to respond to accusations of lying when you fail to make clear what the lie is. I will admit my interpretation of the statement in question was a veiled threat also, rather than the obscure claim at conspiracy that I am willing to believe it was on your word.
So, for what it will be worth to you, let me say that I, too am not a professional blogger, and that no employer of mine knows or endorses my presence here.
If this really were a friendly ‘skeptical’ blog, I can’t imagine why it would be an issue to have people with dissenting views to the author present. I would have thought an actual skeptic would welcome dissent.
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Hi all
I need to post a correction regards my earlier posts.
Having read thru the Doran Zimmerman paper (rather than the comment on the paper provided by Webster I think) I wrongly assumed that Webster and Oxspit were claiming that 97% of scientists (of the 10,000 odd sent a survey form) agreed AGW was happening.
Re reading thru the comments, it is clear that they were referring to published climatologists who made up 5% of the respondents (79)
The paper does refer to 97.4% of this 5%
Sorry for the misunderstanding.
p.s. though the body of my comments that this survey is not representative and that it is merely a point of interest stands.
regards
off to work now
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Oxspit, if you don’t mind I’ll respond in reverse. First may I caution you that there is another poster here that uses Mark. That is why I use Mark D. I don’t mind that you use the less formal (sans D) but I wouldn’t want that Mark to take blame for my foot in mouth.
I am perfectly willing to work on any differences you and I have on virtually any matter. I wouldn’t be surprised that you and I actually agree on one thing or another if we talk long enough. (I like the color blue).
With regard to comments in 165, I would think for there to be a threat, one would have to be in a position to be a threat. Since that is highly unlikely given my assumption that you are in AU and that we are about as far apart as the globe permits, I am in no position to be a threat. I also don’t believe Oxspit is your real name (I didn’t search that however) so a personal advertisement “looking for the employer of Oxspit” would not yield many returns.
As to dissenting views from the author (usually Jo) I can only say you must not have read here much. Even I had a dissenting view just a few posts back. Regardless, it is not dissent that causes problems here it is a whole list of behaviors and attitudes that cause problems. Arrogance, condescension, propaganda, and personal insults is a short list of what causes problems. Keep in mind this is not a pure academic setting nor is it pure science being discussed. The blog is also not yours (or mine) so we don’t get to behave as though it is (and sometimes I do forget). A while back you said it is not a Skeptical site (I think it was you) and perhaps that is true to the extent you find it but you must agree it is not a site that is Pro AGW either. With this in mind, anyone that “drops in ” and starts off insulting the home turf is asking for and going to get some trouble. As long as I have been reading here no one has been turned away for polite dissent. I can also say that no person offering dissent has remained polite either! but there could be a first. Now I have also come to know the grizzled veterans of the AGW wars here too. Those folks don’t always show much patience (that could be me too). I can apologize for them but in the end in a week or two they’ll still be here and the offensive ones will usually be gone.
On to the “poll”. Interesting that you would say at 162; “This is easily the weakest evidence for AGW…”. If you had said something near that early on I’m pretty sure you could have saved all of us a lot of typing. I’m going to go into this deeper because it is an interesting example. Speaking for myself, I don’t have an unlimited amount of time to “volunteer” here. As such responses have to be abbreviated. I suppose I could have been more patient and polite but you know if someone puts that poll up here as any “evidence” they probably are “unrecoverable” with regard to AGW. So instead the thread goes the way it did.
Now at 162 I don’t have problems with your reasoning, I have a problem with the fact that you bothered at all to debate the subject the poll). But referring to what I said earlier about time constraints it would be impractical to dissect this poll at all. Instead (and since I have seen it here before) I tagged it as worthless. I still feel that way, it makes tabloid news quality but as polls go I am not impressed. No I did not want to argue about it I thought it ridiculous to be posted as a talking point at all. I will say that MW posted just about every propaganda talking point the AGW skeptic loathes. I suggest he did so on purpose. As to why I didn’t explore the others? No time was left. By all means, go ahead and lets hear your theories on why we didn’t. Now you might be sincere in that you don’t argue down dead end paths just for the fun of it. You might really be here to discuss the science. I hope you are.
Now if any of this sounds reasonable to you lets carry on. In the course of future discussions, if another new warmist poster starts off down the same path as MW, maybe you could save Graeme and me some time and gently have a warmist to warmist “talk” about what is a waste of time and what is worthwhile. I’d appreciate it.
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Sorry one more thing:
Aah but what if it was a hang nail (not bowel cancer) and that the 98 doctors insisted that the treatment was arduous and would mean the loss of both legs and a lobotomy. How would you feel about that one dissenting doctor?
Now that is a good analogy!
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“For the record, I’d prefer it if everyone uses the term “liar” carefully.”
I use it very carefully. And these two are indeed proven liars, the evidence being directly in this thread. The other alternative is that they are winging it and are just hopelessly unaquainted with normal traditional pre-global-warming-fraud standards of statistical practice. If so their tone ought to be totally different. They ought to be people of an enquiring disposition. Not idiots who are pretending to know what they are talking about when they truly have no idea.
The threads on this subject have been endless and are essentially one multi-billion word thread going on and on for seven years at least. The reason they continue is that by sheer repetitive dishonesty the fraudulent side of the argument gets people to constantly meet them halfway. Thus embedding a whole string of unworkable and unworthy compromises into proceedings. The matter can never be resolved while lies, half-lies and Orwellian language is injected by this method into proceedings.
Oxspit is a liar. Webster too. This claim caveated by the possibility that they may be appallingly ignorant.
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“Yeah, it’s difficult to respond to accusations of lying when you fail to make clear what the lie is.”
How Clintonesque of you. Lying idiot.
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Its clear you are liars but I can prove it over if you don’t waste time and answer these questions. Would you put Lindzen in the 97% claim that you are making? If Joanne were a climate scientist would you place her in the 97%.
Since I already know the two of you are committed liars I’m not really interested in a whole lot of evasive behaviour to do with this question. Its a pretty simple question. Joanne has stated that her best guess would be that the extra CO2 has some minor warming effect. I hope I’m not misrepresenting her. Lindzen merely assumes approximately a 1 degree increase in temperature from a doubling of CO2. He doesn’t bring evidence to bear for this. He merely assumes this is the case. He then goes on to show that the feedbacks this inspires are negative and not positive. So that his view is that a doubling might, at a pretty good estimate, bring up temperatures an average of 0.4 degrees.
My own view is that it may be negative or positive but if positive its tiny. Probably a lot less than how Lindzen would have it. I have many reasons to believe this. Although I’m not ruling out cumulative effects since I don’t think primarily in terms instantaneous radiative heat balance.
Now supposing all three of us were practicing climate scientists. Who would go under your dishonest 97% figure?
The reason being that you have taken that 97% figure, which is nonsense and in any case ought to be highly caveated. And you just run with it to make utterly absurd claims. Bearing in mind that it doesn’t make a bit of difference what the real figure is. Science not being a matter of polls but of evidence and reason.
Now either you sidestep this question or you answer it. Either way you two will be proven yet again to be liars.
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In general the big lie here, quite independent of these two is the relentless yet not explicit implication that if you agree that there may be some AGW effect you’ve signed on for the whole racket. Few actually say this outright. But these two have come pretty close to saying this, only their general evasiveness not catching them out.
Of course being in a brutal and pulverising ice age, the implication is just absurd. The original gentleman who came up with the warming hypothesis wasn’t the idiot that so many people who rely on him are. He thought rightly that any such warming would be a good thing. He hoped that the extra supposed warming would help stop us slipping into a new glacial period.
When I heard about this global warming gear in the 1980’s I had no reason to believe that there was nothing or very little to it. I believed in it sure. And obviously, not being a moron, I concluded it was a good thing. Perhaps the best piece of dumb luck the human race has ever experienced. Clearly this was a positive thing and to be encouraged.
The greenhouse effect, if it were to work as advertised, would increase average temperatures, simply by reducing the heat differentials. The differentials between night and day, winter and summer, the equator and the polls. Clearly this is a good thing. Its not going to happen in the real world by any substantial amount. But were it to happen it would be good. And we ought to welcome it. No-one has brought forth the slightest smidgen of evidence that I am wrong about this.
Temperatures have been on a downhill tragectory for 5000 years now and they are expected to keep going downhill. Barring unexpected catastrophes, (which incidentally ought to be expected), the temperatures ought to continue this slide downhill. A non-catastrophic view would have each new little ice age with a greater than 50% chance of being more severe than the last.
In this situation, if CO2 were to work as advertised this would mean THE SLOWING OF CLIMATE CHANGE. Or didn’t you get that far in school? So if it “works” it will SLOW climate change. I hope everyone understands this.
Since we can find no warming single for CO2 what we do know that if it has a positive warming effect it is TINY.
Therefore we know that any warming from extra CO2 must be GOOD!
This position is unassailable in logic. And no-one has overcome the logic of this position yet, even once.
Now there is more good to it then simply warming as such. Since if it works as advertised it will warm specifically by reducing heat differentials:
See the little calf born on a frosty spring morning. See how she shivers in the cold. Were she adapted fully to the cold morning of her birth, she would expire in the heat of her first summer. We see that while animal species may adapt to many different temperatures, what we know is that there is no way to fully adapt to heat differentials. Hence the reducing of heat differential makes the planet more liveable. All in all we conclude from the above, that if CO2 has a warming effect this is an unequivicol benefit to both man and landed nature. This position is impossible to overturn. I am right in what I say here, and anyone who disagrees is wrong.
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Graeme,
it’s interesting you mention using CO2 to prevent the next ice age. Some have suggested we need to save our coal for a few thousand years and burn it then to mitigate the effects of the ice age. I have no way of knowing if this is good or not.
The other point is that we are simply not in an ice age as you claim. The ice ages do tend to have multi-kilometre thick glaciers over much of North America and Europe, as well as parts of Australia.
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Oxspit: #161
April 23rd, 2010 at 9:37 am
Hi Ox
You reply to my comment…”No self respecting scientist would have treated such a survey seriously”, with the following…
Yes a sweeping statement but I think I can back it up with reasoning.
No point anyone 2nd guessing the likely conclusions of a survey by anybody. But the PURPOSE of a survey? you betcha, scientist or not, no self respecting person would put their name to a survey without knowing what the purpose of it is. Afterall, this wasn’t a blind anonymous survey.
Do you put your name to such things without knowing what it will be used for?
Although making ASSumptions can be dicey, I think I can understand if someone assumes that this survey was conducted to further the AGW consensus. The document says as much.
you further say..
We can gain information from just about anything. The very first writings of a child, the dissertations of Newton or the rantings and ravings of a lunatic. The key question is, how useful is this information? Both you and Webster have intimated that this isn’t all that useful to the debate here. We agree.
Also…
If I was asked question 1, I would answer yes and It’d be a safe bet that almost all who are familiar with the climate debate would answer yes. The question is totally pointless and an irrelevant indicator. We are still coming out of a little ice age, what other direction will T’s go?
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“The other point is that we are simply not in an ice age as you claim.”
Get your terminology straight. Ice ages are broken up into glacial and interglacial periods. We are in a particularly brutal phase of an ice age. Our average temperatures have been falling for 55 million years. No evidence exists that this trend is turning around anytime soon. Nothing could be more moronic then closing down our energy production now, and then mindlessly burning things later. We are falling into a new little ice age right now. Right now. Doing expensive things for only one reason is foolish. Plus there isn’t the evidence that CO2 warms by any serious amount in the first place. Not being able to reason these things through might be an inability of memory. Already you’ve forgotten that the effect of CO2, if positive, must be tiny.
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I’d still think he was wrong, I just wouldn’t care that he was……
I ‘came in’ on the poll ‘debate’ in direct response to the false posting of others.
‘Weak evidence’ does not mean ‘no evidence’. Of course, Webster posted links to a lot of things and cited much stronger evidence for AGW itself. These were, for the most part, completely ignored. The defense of the 97% figure was a direct response to the vile hyperbolic nonsense of Graeme Bird.
GRAEME. For the last time, and in reverse.
You really could have just posted that. It’s your entire case for everything.
The ‘argument’ to which you refer is indeed unassailable in logic, for the simple reason that there is no logic in it. It is just a bald assertion. Your ‘argument’ is just premis, premis, premis. ‘Graeme is insane’ is also unassailable in logic for the same reason.
Indeed I did not. ‘Stuff made up by Graeme Bird’ has never been, is not presently and, God willing, WILL never be a subject taught at any learning institution.
I’ll be charitable one last time and assume you really can do what you claim in the following quote…
I did not administer the poll. I haven’t the least fecking clue whether or not Linzdzen was even in it let alone what he answered if he was, and the 97% figure is not mine, but the studies. Joanne’s answers would put her in one category or the other not me or anyone else. You will note, of course that it is asked whether human activity is a significant factor, not just a factor….
Goodbye, Graeme. Enjoy your ‘proof’.
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Mark D in 168 – what if the doctors all tell you it is bowel cancer, but you find this one homeless bloke with no teeth sitting an a park bench with a 95% complete bottle of cheap whiskey who says it is a hang nail… now THAT is a good analogy.
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MattB @177,
I like that one. I hadn’t laughed so hard … oh … since Graeme’s last post.
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Go away Oxspit you idiot. Not only are you dishonest, you are simply unable to get to the core of an issue. Here you are making a crap job of a cul des sac argument. You are wrong and a liar and yet you are obsessively obstructing matters by focusing on an argument that has no bearing on the issue.
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Graeme @175,
Graeme, in keeping with the skeptical attitudes here, I decided that I couldn’t just take your word for it without checking with Linzen and Spencer. Unfortunately they don’t seem to have anything about the actual definition of “Ice Age”.
So without much hope for any information beyond Marxist Dialectic, and other propaganda, I went to the Communists main source of information, Wikipedia.
Imagine my surprise when I found that you are indeed correct in your terminology, at least as far as that admittedly hopelessly compromised socialist tome was concerned.
It appears that we are indeed still in an Ice Age. So collect your cold weather gear, because we could be back in another glacial within the next 50,000 years.
So I completely retract.
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50,000 years? If we aren’t in a glacial period much sooner than that then we will have to assume that the humans are doing good things. Where do you get this 50,000 years nonsense from? The default position of our planet is glacial. Did you know that? The interglacials are thought to make up a tiny part of the overall picture. 10% of the time by some definitions. We live on a planet with a one-way catastrophic COOLING bias. Make no mistake about it. The global warming fraud is total idiocy. The most stupid thing the media and government bigshots have ever created.
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Graeme @181,
I got the 50,000 years figure from the Wikipedia Entry on Ice Age.
Note: there are a number of possible periods for the occurance of the next glacial there.
I don’t understand this 1 way cooling bias. I agree that for the majority of its history the Earth might have pretty much been a snowball, but there is no doubt that it warms periodically and cools periodically.
There is also evidence of catastrophic climate change in both directions from the past – precipitated by asteroid strikes or volcano’s along with feebacks.
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I have two words for you. William Connelly. Someone is lying. Either you or Wikipedia. It sounds like one of the many entries that William Connelly has rigged up. So don’t take it seriously. You ought just assume you are witnessing William Connelly lying again.
You are just going to have to go with what we know. The cycle is currently about 100 000 years. Most glacial periods are only about 10 000 years long. One book, by its title, referred to the Holocene as “The Long Hot Summer.”
We would have to assume that if we ourselves aren’t altering matters, that we are already on borrowed time.
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“I don’t understand this 1 way cooling bias. I agree that for the majority of its history the Earth might have pretty much been a snowball, but there is no doubt that it warms periodically and cools periodically.”
Well of course the temperatures oscillate all the time. But we haven’t had anything that could be considered to be catastrophic warming for 55 million years. Whereas we have catastrophic cooling all the time. No the globe isn’t in snowball most of the time. But if you think of the last 2 or 3 million years we are usually iced over. I didn’t say a one-way cooling bias. I said a one-way CATASTROPHIC cooling bias. When we warm its a benefit. Never a catastrophe. This is the idiocy of the global warming fraud. Or at least one part of the idiocy. We are talking brain-dead drooling idiocy. The dumbest mass movement ever.
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Graeme @ 184,
So let me get this straight. Are you saying the the AGW theory is not intelligent?
There seems to be some ambiguity, and I wouldn’t want to misinterpret you.
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See the bottom graph. Now you will notice that it peaks. Its really only the upswing and downswing of the peaks that is interglacial. We are on the down-sweep. The interglacial is very much the smaller part of the total time.
You might notice that even during the glacial periods you can see these mini-peaks wherein we briefly have good conditions but still a lot of ice cover.
But that aside glacial periods are really short. And we have definitely been going downhill for 5000 years.
East is East and West is West but there was no such dividing line 5000-8000 years ago. There wasn’t those land barriers then. Since the planet was so much more consistently warm and habitable.
The 20th century was a one-shot reversal of trend if the known history of solar activity is anything to go by.
http://www.sahfos.ac.uk/climate%20encyclopaedia/images/img9.jpg
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Here is a graph which shows a partial solution to the problem of glacial periods. We lose warming momentum when we have obstructions to oceanic circulation. We can see why this is the case by applying the logic of the Stefan Boltzmann law to show that ease of oceanic circulation means a warmer equilibrium temperature.
We see this from these Heinrich events. The lead up to these events disrupts circulation and so bring down the temperature. We keep losing warming momentum because of ice buildup obstructing cirulation, and also when the ice breaks off and lands on the gulfstream. So we cannot stop these nasty little ice ages, like the one we are about to fall into. But we may be able to stop the glacial period from locking itself in.
http://theresilientearth.com/files/images/heinrich_events-science.jpg
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Graeme @ 187 & 186,
I’ve seen graphs like that before. I do not have a good understanding of them, so I’ll spend a little time looking into them over the weekend.
Thanks.
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Well you gotta admit at least there is humor here now.
Ox, I spent two hours typing that tome and all you have to say is: “I just wouldn’t care?” I guess I’ll go back to short slams instead.
I think you could have spent a few more minutes refining that and it would have been much funnier.
How abou this one: I think it is 98 out of work Enron Stock salesmen named Bernie Madoff, trying to get me to believe my hang nail is cancer of the bowel. The cure proposed is as ineffective as doing nothing so I bring a really good bottle of whiskey to the park and sit next to the homeless bloke (who really is Al Gore) and drink 5 or six slugs and then smash the 1/2 full bottle at his feet. Then as I skip merrily away, I call the police and report the drunken littering idiot.
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Hey guys, don’t you love it when karma hits in a timely fashion?
We’ve had a debate about surveys, and lo and behold what should arrive in my in-box? A frakking survey from Science magazine lol
I’m also reminded of the East Anglia e-mail no: 0876437553 from Joe Alcomo to Mike Hulme
No comments necessary really.
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“I am very strongly in favor of as wide and rapid a distribution as possible for endorsements. I think the only thing that counts is numbers. The media is going to say “1000 scientists signed” or “1500 signed”. No one is going to check if it is 600 with PhDs versus 2000 without. They will mention the prominent ones, but that is a different story.
Conclusion — Forget the screening, forget asking them about their last publication (most will ignore you.) Get those names!”
I’ll make a comment anyhow. Redundant yet strong further proof that this crowd are full-time frauds. But it casts further disrepute on their followers. Who just don’t care about the quality of these peoples claims. The appalling Oxspittsles and Michael Websters of this world.
“Goodbye, Graeme. Enjoy your proof”
Total moron unable to say anything that could undermine what was not only authentic proof, but what is in any case obvious.
Here is the moron Oxspit:
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What I”m talking about is the menace of people like Oxspittle or Michael Webster. Here we have wasted all this time on this bogus 97% lie, because they don’t care a hoot about the veracity of the claims they are making. So Joe Alcomo and the other frauds can rely on people such as this to help with propaganda momentum, and general obstruction.
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Graeme Bird: #192
April 25th, 2010 at 7:03 am
Graeme you tend to put things more forcefully than I would, but I don’t disagree with you
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I would consider any lack of clarity, or anything short of the best uses one can put statistics or graphs to, as being horribly devastating.
Suppose you were short of time. Suppose you set up these graphs and after you publish them or hand them on you think to yourself “Well if I was doing it over I’d have used a different scale. And I would have separated this information rather than superimposed it.” Thoughts like this. Well thats not so bad. Work has to get done on time and one cannot dither forever on presentation. But even the tiniest effort to go the other way and put over something less than the best and most honest presentation and use of data is totally unacceptable. “A bit dodgy” then would become almost a sacking offense right there.
People are belligerently trying to minimise the enormity of using Mikes nature trick to hide the decline. They try to make it sound as though its perhaps “a bit dodgy” but sort of understandable. No its fraud. But on the other hand why would you do dodgy stuff? Why would you not always try and make your graphs as revealing and as straight-up, as you can possibly muster?
These public servants have a mentality where they accept a faulty product, without question, and then tag their own dysfunctional efforts to it. They then then push the ever more idiotic Frankenstein information along the conveyor. “Thats not my department” says the economist. “I’m a consumer of climate science. Not a producer. I’m an economist” they say. But in reality the last claim is even a stretch for such people.
Any distortion gets built upon. So if these guys aren’t making the best and most honest use of statistics that they possibly can this is an outright disgrace right there.
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Well constructed argument, Jo. (Do you sleep?)
I came to it too late to comment, but a reply from GrumpyOldMan (20 Apr 2010 11:50:06pm) to Graeme Bird was particularly galling. Grumpy made much of the oh so modest warming since the mid 1800’s as proof positive of scary AGW. As you have shown, that warming began all on its own well before the onset of industrial CO2 emissions and continues in fits and starts oblivious to a relentless increase in CO2. How grumpy would the old man be had that warming not dragged us out of the Little Ice Age?
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/10/is-the-western-climate-establishment-corrupt-part-4-past-temperatures/
Bless you, Jo. Please keep up the good work.
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