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Open Thread (#2)

May 10, 2008 · 568 Comments

By request, here’s a new open thread, and it’s numbered (#2, although there are more than that). Please no Britney Spears, no American Idol, etc.

Categories: Global Warming

568 responses so far ↓

  • Hank Roberts // May 10, 2008 at 6:44 pm

    http://batch1.csd.uwm.edu/People/kravtsov/downloads/WMO_poster.pdf

    PCA in the lower left corner

  • TCO // May 10, 2008 at 7:24 pm

    Warmer is the NICE name. :-)

  • Hank Roberts // May 10, 2008 at 8:13 pm

    It’s a term used by believers who think everyone else is a believer.

    Nature doesn’t care what we believe.

  • TCO // May 10, 2008 at 8:32 pm

    I was actually being honest, when I called it the nice name. I use it instead of denier/believer. Just use warmer/colder and figure that is neutral.

  • stewart // May 10, 2008 at 9:01 pm

    How about, those who believe most scientists are fools/corrupt, versus those who think most scientists are reasonably honest/competent?

  • nanny_govt_sucks // May 10, 2008 at 9:24 pm

    How about Skeptic/Credulist:

    http://www.scottsdalecc.edu/ricker/pests/ST_definition.html

    [Response: Those who deny the truth don't deserve the name "skeptic."]

  • Hank Roberts // May 10, 2008 at 10:07 pm

    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=857#comment-52757 Dr. Lindzen, as quoted by Dr. Curry, nails this one I think — “… stooges … ”

    That covers those anywhere around the political axis whose beliefs are more important to them than the continued discovery of facts.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 10, 2008 at 10:12 pm

    Our resident asparagus eater pointed out:

    That said, if I
    read that Angliss says methane is 62x more powerful a greenhouse gas
    than CO2, whereas Archer says it’s 20x, I’m not going to be terribly
    convinced that they both know what they’re talking about

    Actually Angliss also says (somewhere else) that methane is 20x more powerful than CO2. Both values are true. They refer to different things.

    62x is the ratio between radiative forcings (RF) per unit of ppmv. See IPCC AR4 WG1 Table 2.1.

    20x (actually, 21x according to the SAR, 25x in the AR4) is the “global warming potential” (GWP) relative to CO2 computed for a time horizon of 100 years. This takes residence times into account, shorter for methane. See IPCC AR4 WG1 Table 2.14.

    A little humility goes (would have gone) a long way…

    (asparagus, anyone?).

    Munch.

  • Dave Andrews // May 10, 2008 at 10:40 pm

    “Those who deny the truth don’t deserve the name ’skeptic’”

    Does that mean that people who are not followers of Al Quaeda or Hizbullah, both of whom are certain they are purveyors of the truth, cannot be said to be sceptical of that approach ? Must they accept that they are just unbelievers, kafirs, and infidels who deserve no more than to be purged?

    Has climate science really come to this?

    [Response: Denialists have sunk so low that they'll resort to making analogies between those who accept the reality of science, and followers of Al Qaeda. Burying your head in the sand isn't skepticism.]

  • dhogaza // May 11, 2008 at 12:22 am

    Has climate science really come to this?

    Oh, yes, and so has evolutionary biology, physics, and geology.

    It’s just religion. Nothing more. We’re all worshipping Satan’s greatest heresy - knowledge of the world based on observable fact, rather than the wisdom of Genesis. Science was responsible for the Holocaust and Stalin’s murdering of millions of Soviet citizens. I know this, there’s a movie out about it.

  • Hank Roberts // May 11, 2008 at 12:57 am

    Dave, read the whole thing. Here’s an excerpt:
    ——–
    … “industry stooges” as a separate category, people who were interested in obfuscating the issue towards supporting their own agenda, as opposed to people that are interested in the scientific truth. This is an important distinction, separating the Marshall Institute type reports (many of which are of the stooge nature), vs the more credible scientific scepticism. The challenge is for a bona fide skeptic to steer clear of being associated with stoogedom….”
    ————————

    Try to grasp this, Dave. What’s called
    “scientific truth” is probability based on best evidence so far.

    Try this, it may help you understand that “truth” as you use it is not what we’re talking about in a science forum. You’re talking about religion.

    from http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_8.html

    ——-excerpt follows——

    LEONARD SUSSKIND
    Physicist, Stanford University

    Conversation With a Slow Student

    Student: Hi Prof. I’ve got a problem. I decided to do a little probability experiment—you know, coin flipping—and check some of the stuff you taught us. But it didn’t work.
    …
    Student: Aw come on Prof. Tell me something I can trust. You keep telling me what probably means by giving me more probablies. Tell me what probability means without using the word probably.

    Professor: Hmmm. Well how about this: It means I would be surprised if the answer were outside the margin of error.

    Student: My god! You mean all that stuff you taught us about statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics and mathematical probability: all it means is that you’d personally be surprised if it didn’t work?

    Professor: Well, uh…

    If I were to flip a coin a million times I’d be damn sure I wasn’t going to get all heads. I’m not a betting man but I’d be so sure that I’d bet my life or my soul. I’d even go the whole way and bet a year’s salary. I’m absolutely certain the laws of large numbers—probability theory—will work and protect me. All of science is based on it. But, I can’t prove it and I don’t really know why it works. That may be the reason why Einstein said, “God doesn’t play dice.” It probably is.
    ————-end excerpt——-

    Again, click the link. Read the whole thing in context.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 11, 2008 at 6:08 am

    Hank, another pertinent link (and all-round worthwhile read): http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/SelfApptdExp.htm

    Fun quote:

    Once professors get tenure, it pretty much takes a thermonuclear weapon to
    remove them. That protection is there because a significant part of our job
    is to tick people off. We tell them things they don’t want to hear, like the
    earth is 4.6 billion years old, there is a finite amount of oil in the
    ground, you can’t provide government services without taxes, we really did
    go to the moon, or they didn’t learn enough to pass the course. So when a
    university grants tenure, it basically makes a lifetime commitment.

    Belief doesn’t come into it. Likening this to religious belief is deeply offensive, both to scientists (me) and probably to people of faith too (wouldn’t know).

  • Robert S // May 11, 2008 at 7:41 am

    [Response: Those who deny the truth don't deserve the name "skeptic."]

    I didn’t know that science has gotten into the business of making theories into “truths”, or “realities” for that matter.

    I guess it isn’t as effective to say that a theory is very likely…

  • S2 // May 11, 2008 at 9:48 am

    I’ve just finished reading an article from skeptik.com entitled A Climate of Belief (link).

    I’d never heard of the author (Patrick Frank) before, but some of the people he claims as reviewers have familiar names.

    The article starts off quite well, but degenerates. By about half way through it’s looking rather silly - Frank claims that the uncertainty in temperature could be +/- 110°C by the end of the century, according to GCM models.

    This is patently absurd.

    But this is exactly Frank’s point - he’s suggesting that the GCMs are inherently unreliable.

    I think he goes wrong by assuming that uncertainties are cumulative. He derives an uncertainty in forcing from an uncertainty in cloud cover, and then applies this uncertainty (on an annual basis) to the temperature trend.

    If he is right, then surely any model (of anything) is worthless.

    About a year ago, I observed that although I was losing weight at about 2Kg per month, my weight varied by around +/- 1Kg per day. Using Frank’s logic I should now weigh anything between +440 Kg and -290 Kg. This is probably true, but not very helpful.

    Is he as wrong as I think he is, and should his reviewers (e.g. Ross McKintrick) have pointed this out to him?

  • Timo // May 11, 2008 at 1:47 pm

    Unfortunately, Hank Roberts forgets that this might also be true for pro-AGW climate scientists, e.g. James Hansen, William Connelly, Stefan Rahmstorf and others. They are also “politically” involved and should, according to this defenition, also be regarded as “stooges”.

    Just an observation!!

  • dhogaza // May 11, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    Just an observation!!

    We know your game, Timo.

    Just an observation!!

    And the Lindzen/Curry quote doesn’t define a “stooge” as someone who is politically involved.

    The definition has to do with allowing one’s political involvement lead to being detached from reality when reality conflicts with one’s political beliefs.

    And Hansen, Connelly, and Rahmstorf do sound science. Reality is driving their political involvement, they’re not trying to drive reality to fit their politics.

    I didn’t know that science has gotten into the business of making theories into “truths”, or “realities” for that matter.

    Trivially true, science doesn’t prove anything.

    You may wake up tomorrow morning due to being slammed to the ceiling while lying asleep in your bed, due to gravity suddenly working backwards.

    After all, gravity is just a theory, and uniformitarianism is just a prediction based on past observation.

    However, I’m fairly confident that gravity will work tomorrow just as it does today, and my guess is that you are too, though presumably you have your doubts about the physics underlying CO2’s ability to warm the planet.

  • TCO // May 11, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    Pat, pat, pat. What a bloviating paper. Why do my skeptics keep doing this sort of thing? Sound they will be hanging out with the cold fusionists and zero point energy nitwits.

  • Hank Roberts // May 11, 2008 at 3:38 pm

    Timo, you don’t bother reading what you criticize. Click the * link and read what Dr. Curry said about both sides doing this. Knee, jerk, critic — stooge

  • Timo // May 11, 2008 at 3:57 pm

    dhogaza

    “… Hansen, Connelly, and Rahmstorf do sound science.” So do Singer, Gray and others who might have a link to “industry”.

    What I want to say is that you can’t inconveniently forget the other side of the medal. If you perform sound science, you publish your findings in the literature but avoid to become politically involved, either with a politician or political party or with a NGO. You advise governments and the general public, but leave descision-making up to others. In my opinion Lindzen is a perfect example of the above, while at the other side I take Gavin Schmidt in high regard.

    I don’t have doubts about the physics underlying CO2’s ability to warm the planet if everything else remains the same. However, latter is not the case. Climate is complex and depends on a lot of other (natural and human) factors which makes it impossible to predict or even project. At least that’s my humble opinion, despite the “mounting”evidence (which I havden’t seen by the way).

  • Hank Roberts // May 11, 2008 at 4:04 pm

    > Frank, “Climate of Belief”
    Someone just asked about a similar “models can’t work” thing at the SEPP site; Gavin’s reply is helpful:
    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/04/butterflies-tornadoes-and-climate-modelling/langswitch_lang/la#comment-86406

  • luminous beauty // May 11, 2008 at 4:13 pm

    S2,

    Shorter Frank: “You can’t predict the weather more than a few days, so GCMs are worthless.”

    Timo,

    Stooges for whom? Don’t be shy.

  • steven mosher // May 11, 2008 at 4:30 pm

    TCO you should join us Lukewarmers.

    1. We don’t put up with nonsensical “violates the second law of thermo crap”
    2. We don’t doubt the physics of C02 or doubt
    that the world is getting warmer.
    3. we dont ascribe mystical properties to the sun.
    4. We are wary of papers that lack full disclosure of data and methods.
    5. We are wary of models that don’t provide metrics of forecasting skill.
    6. we are alarmed by people who use uncertainity and the precautionary principle ( pascals wager in disguise) to further their political agenda.

  • dhogaza // May 11, 2008 at 4:33 pm

    So do Singer, Gray

    Singer has done no climate science whatsoever. Gray does weather work - storm forecasting and the like - which cozies up near climate science, but still isn’t climate science.

    So - you got me! Good job! As I said, we know your modus operandi.

    Forgive me for having said “sound science” rather than “sound CLIMATE science”, and therefore allowing you to spin a lie which on the surface appears to be congruent with the meaning of my post.

    Wordplay, quote-mining, false accusations, cherry-picking, strawman-crushing … not an honest tactic among them, and denialists prove over and over that they have no case by employing them.

  • dhogaza // May 11, 2008 at 4:36 pm

    Timo: you’re right up there with Mosher, who continuously makes the case that when it comes to IPCC projections, it’s not the fault of those who lie about what those projections mean, but rather it lies with the IPCC who stated the projections in a way that makes it possible for clever but dishonest people to lie about what they mean.

    Dishonesty may help make a few libertarians feel good about the claustrophobia that comes with burying one’s head in the sand, but it’s not going to convince the vast majority of people.

  • Hank Roberts // May 11, 2008 at 4:56 pm

    Timo, it’s nonsense to say scientists can’t become involved in informing people — nobody else can. You’d leave the field to the PR spin folks.

    The whole field of Public Health is what you’re trying to avoid.

    Example, of many:

    Childhood lead poisoning: the torturous path from science to policy
    DC Bellinger, AM Bellinger - Journal of Clinical Investigation, 2006 - pubmedcentral.nih.gov
    … It was the social reform movements of the 1960s that began to bring childhood lead poisoning into the public health spotlight….”
    http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1421365

    Yes, there were many voices speaking out against the scientists who warned about this — and the warnings go back many decades.

    The industry PR telling scientists to shut up is always there. Don’t echo it.

    Read the article I linked before you claim it can’t be true, eh? Think.

  • Hank Roberts // May 11, 2008 at 5:07 pm

    Let me add an excerpt from the public health article, because it illustrates what can be lost when people ignore what they believe are “small” changes that the statisticians say are significant:

    ——excerpt——
    What if lead exposure caused a 5-point reduction in the mean IQ in a population, moving it from 100 to 95? Because this change is only a little larger than the standard error of measurement of IQ tests, some concluded that lead’s impact was within the “noise” of measurement error and thus trivial. If the other characteristics of the IQ distribution remain the same, however, a shift of 5 points in the mean results in a doubling of the number of individuals with scores of 70 or below (2 standard deviations below the mean) and a halving of the number with scores of 130 or above (25). These are not merely statistical abstractions, as empirical observations confirmed them (26). The former decline would require large financial outlays for special education, while the latter would represent a tremendous decline in societal intellectual resources. It has been estimated that the economic benefits of the IQ gain resulting from the substantial reduction in children’s blood lead levels between 1976 and 1999 is $110 to $319 billion for each year’s cohort of 2-year-old children (27).
    —–end excerpt——-
    http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1421365
    See original for full text and extensive footnotes citing the basis for statements made.

  • dhogaza // May 11, 2008 at 5:15 pm

    6. we are alarmed by people who use uncertainity and the precautionary principle ( pascals wager in disguise) to further their political agenda.

    Should kids start smoking cigarettes? After all, it’s only the Precautionary Principle that argues against the habit.

    We actually know that the planet will warm as CO2 concentrations increase with a much higher degree of certainty (100%, as a matter of fact) than we can predict that smoking will lead to any given person contracting lung cancer as a result.

    We actually know that changes in ecosystems invariably lead to unintended and unpredicted consequences.

    The Precautionary Principle in regard to disturbing ecosystems - which warming has been, and will continue to do - is established on observations.

    And Pascal’s Wager is based precisely on which observations of God, Heaven, or Hell? Cite, please?

  • dhogaza // May 11, 2008 at 5:17 pm

    Oh, and I suppose this is worth making explicit:

    Mosher has aligned himself with the camp that equates knowledge based on scientific observation - the Precautionary Principle - with religion.

    Science is not religion. Wash, rinse, repeat please.

    Or are you really as ignorant of science as astrologists, creationists, HIV deniers, etc?

  • TCO // May 11, 2008 at 5:55 pm

    Mosh: Sounds like a good list. I would also add something to the effect like wishful thinking. I see people like Watts and even McI being warped by what they want to see, so that in some cases they don’t thoughfully consider multiple hypotheses. And so that they only present things that support their meta-view. I see this plenty on the other side as well.

    It’s like in March-April03, jumping on every new “find” of WMD. Became almost comical how often the adherants would jump on new finds even after old ones didn’t pan out. Took some of them a huge amount of time to develop their critical faculty. (FYI…I was for the war…I wanted us to find stuff…when we didn’t I just accepted it. Sometimes you do an experiment and it turns out different than you expect. You have to be open to that. And the amateur, blogfever-swamp, self-licking icecream cone, self-seggregated blog world plays into this behavior.

    McI hasn’t published a science paper for 3 years!

    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Interrogative

  • TCO // May 11, 2008 at 6:14 pm

    On the lukewarm club: what are the initiation rites and where is your clubhouse?

  • dhogaza // May 11, 2008 at 6:49 pm

    FYI…I was for the war…I wanted us to find stuff…when we didn’t I just accepted it.

    Lord, it didn’t take much to know that the administration claims were bullshit from the beginning. Nor did it take an extradordinary intelligence to understand that Bush’s invasion date had more to do with the Army’s desire not to fight in the late spring/summer heat and the near certain knowledge that the inspectors wouldn’t find anything and the WMD bluff would become totally untenable than any honest belief that the WMDs were there.

    (Bush probably did believe, my impression of Bush is of a man easily manipulated by the likes of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith and the rest of the pro-invasion gang).

    Please tell me you didn’t believe that Iraqis would actually strew the ground with flowers as our troops marched triumphantly into Baghdad.

    Please …

    Ever travel much out of the country? I’m curious, as I’ve spent a lot of time in Europe (and have traveled to asia and latin america, have worked for a short while in Guatemala, etc). US conservatives tend to be provincialism personified, and most I’ve known have done little world travel or made any other significant effort to overcome their provincial outlook.

  • Hank Roberts // May 11, 2008 at 7:12 pm

    >clubhouse
    Here: http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/yoursay/index.php/theaustralian/comments/good_science_isnt_about_consensus/

  • Dave Andrews // May 11, 2008 at 7:54 pm

    “Those who deny the truth don’t deserve the name skeptic”

    What I was trying to say, and perhaps I didn’t do it too well, was that phrases like that smack of fundamentalism and that is dangerous because it oversimplifies complex problems and takes us into the “if you’re not with us you’re against us” territory.

    Science is NOT an authoritarian belief system.

  • luminous beauty // May 11, 2008 at 8:05 pm

    Pascal’ Wager ‘disguised’ in physical terms.

    Standing in front of a speeding bus may or not be dangerous.

    If it isn’t dangerous, one can stand in front a speeding bus without suffering any harm.

    OTOH…

  • dhogaza // May 11, 2008 at 8:44 pm

    What I was trying to say, and perhaps I didn’t do it too well, was that phrases like that smack of fundamentalism…

    Science is NOT an authoritarian belief system.

    Well hmmm interestingly, there is a sense in which it is. Our observation of the physical world is the ultimate authority. Our scientific theories are always bound by that authority, and it is that authority which determines which theories live, and which die.

    An unwillingness to abide by that authority, to deny truth (by which was meant observed natural phenomena) is not skepticism.

    And accepting the reality of observed natural phenomena is not religious fundamentalism

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 11, 2008 at 8:52 pm

    > “…the truth…”
    > What I was trying to say, and perhaps I didn’t do it too well,
    > was that phrases like that smack of fundamentalism

    Because there is no good way of doing that without questioning that something like an observer-invariant factual truth (like in: physical reality) actually exists — on some level. On that road lies social constructivism.

    > Science is NOT an authoritarian belief system.

    So you do know that, don’t you? Good start.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 11, 2008 at 8:55 pm

    HB, you may want to try and lay your hand on the RC moderators’ crib sheet. They are good. (Prompted by a recent experience over there.)

  • george // May 11, 2008 at 9:03 pm

    RE: precautionary principle.

    The Precautionary Principle does not instruct us to assume the worst. It merely says that we need to take into account the possibility of bad outcomes. The Principle does not tell us exactly how to do this”
    http://are.berkeley.edu/courses/EEP131/old_files/lectureNotes/optionvalue.pdf

    The insurance industry uses a version of this — “expectation” — all the time to deal with unlikely events that may be very costly.

    They do not simply ignore the chance of a hurricane in CT, MA, or NY, despite the fact that it may be very unlikely (and only occur once every hundred years or so). They factor it into their rates.

    Expectation has a firm grounding in mathematics — and in reality — and there is nothing the least bit mythical or religious about it.

    The people who believe as much know nothing about mathematics (and in particular, about probability).

  • Timo // May 11, 2008 at 9:03 pm

    Sorry for my late reply, but I had to enhance the greenhouse effect a bit (BBQ).

    dhogaza, I read the comments of Steven Mosher on other blogs (CA, Lucia, etc.) and he makes a lot of sense to me.
    I don’t make any distinction between science and CLIMATE science. So my comment refers to all science, especially if it is controversial. Nowadays, politics and climate science are so heavily interlinked that common sense has completely disappeared.

    Maybe a cooling period is ahead of us. We can `cool´ as well and gain more knowledge and common sense as soon as politics are out of this rat race.

    And one thing: you have to convince the general public that havoc is imminent. However, it seems that the `Skeptics´ do a better job explaining the science, the strength and weaknesses of climate models and other related issues. Of course, we do have an advantage: we don´t have to do any hand-waving. We know that we humans don´t know everything and probably know only little, especially concerning Nature, Mother Earth and Space. And in my opinion, the general public understands and acknowledge that. They are not at all surprised that we are not able to predict or even project the future.

    [Response: They're not skeptics, they're denialists, and they don't explain the science at all, they distort it. I suspect you're one of them.]

  • David B. Benson // May 11, 2008 at 9:10 pm

    In rational decision theory, one does something like multiply the (dis)utility of an outcome by its probablity.

    May I can say more after reading

    G.C. Pflug & W. Romisch
    Modeling, Measuring and Managing Risk
    World Scientific, 2007.

  • Robert S // May 11, 2008 at 10:00 pm

    “However, I’m fairly confident that gravity will work tomorrow just as it does today, and my guess is that you are too, though presumably you have your doubts about the physics underlying CO2’s ability to warm the planet.”

    Gravity seems to be a standard comparison anymore. It’s pretty amusing…

    Though you do have me wrong–I don’t doubt that increased CO2 can warm the planet, I just think it is a little more complicated than that.

    But really, my point was that theories can’t be proven, they can’t become “truths” or “facts”, and it is very misleading to label them as such. I see you don’t disagree with that.

  • Paul Middents // May 11, 2008 at 10:11 pm

    S2 // May 11, 2008 at 9:48 am notes Patrick Frank’s article dismissing climate modeling because he can demonstrate a +/- 100 degree uncertainty by the end of the century. Michael Tobis has engaged Frank on his blog over this article.

    http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2008/03/why-is-climate-so-stable.html

    Frank says that all his supporting calculations showing how he propagates uncertainty through a GCM are somewhere on the Skeptic web site. I haven’t been able to find them.

    I note Carl Wunch’s name among the “reviewers” he lists at the end of the article. This gives me some pause.

    Tobis does not feel it worth his while to detail all the ways Frank gets it wrong. I think a detailed analysis (audit-hint-hint) of Frank’s work might be worth some knowlegeable person’s while.

  • dhogaza // May 11, 2008 at 10:36 pm

    But really, my point was that theories can’t be proven, they can’t become “truths” or “facts”, and it is very misleading to label them as such.

    The basic physics are supported by observations, and observations do establish facts, which theories attempt to explain.

    And while you find the comparison with gravity “amusing”, I don’t, because they’re the same damned thing. We observe the effect of gravity. We observe CO2 absorbing IR.

    And one thing: you have to convince the general public that havoc is imminent.

    I’m childless, and 54 years old, so I don’t have much motivation to convince anyone of anything.

    Ain’t my kids and grandkids who are going to deal with the consequences of self-interested liars.

    The public can fry by 2100 for all I care. If they’re unconvinced, they will deal with reality.

    Their being unconvinced will not CHANGE reality.

    Tough, that, ain’t it?

  • dhogaza // May 11, 2008 at 10:38 pm

    But really, my point was that theories can’t be proven, they can’t become “truths” or “facts”, and it is very misleading to label them as such.

    The basic physics are supported by observations, and observations do establish facts, which theories attempt to explain.

    And while you find the comparison with gravity “amusing”, I don’t, because they’re the same damned thing. We observe the effect of gravity. We observe CO2 absorbing IR.

    And one thing: you have to convince the general public that havoc is imminent.

    I’m childless, and 54 years old, so I don’t have much motivation to convince anyone of anything.

    Ain’t my kids and grandkids who are going to deal with the consequences of self-interested liars.

    The public can fry by 2100 for all I care. If they’re unconvinced, they will deal with reality.

    Their being unconvinced will not CHANGE reality.

    Tough, that, ain’t it?

  • Paul Middents // May 11, 2008 at 10:53 pm

    I looked a little harder and found Mr. Frank’s supporting information:

    http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v14n01resources/climate_belief_supporting_info.pdf

    He has challenged Michael Tobis to find anything wrong with it.

  • David B. Benson // May 11, 2008 at 11:09 pm

    I realized my previous attempt to find quasi-periodicities in the GISP ice core temperature record for the Holocene was only looking for actual cycles. There are none at the periods of interest, 35 to 190 years.

    But by, in effect, chopping the record into short segments and averaging I find quasi-periodicities in the 45–90 year band. The marker is finding, with very high confidence (according to the usual Lomb game), oscillations in more than 80% of the short records. As a control, for none of the longer periodicies studied do the markers occur in as much as 80% of the short records.

    I’ll attribute these oscillations to the PDO. If correct, then the variation of ‘period’ of the PDO during the Holocene is considerably larger than the usually given 60–70 years.

  • Hank Roberts // May 11, 2008 at 11:22 pm

    Tobis is good.

  • JCH // May 11, 2008 at 11:32 pm

    “Though you do have me wrong–I don’t doubt that increased CO2 can warm the planet, I just think it is a little more complicated than that. …” - Robert S

    Good to see you agree with James Hansen.

  • TCO // May 12, 2008 at 12:40 am

    dhog: I trusted the reports on the WMD, because I felt they would not have made such a strong case without having at least overwhelming circumstantial (or perhaps methods-classified) intel. The big thing was that in the first Gulf War (btw, I was on active duty), I had thought that the WMD claims were wishful thinking. But then we found out that they were true. So this time round, I thought they were right. Wrong both times…

    I have an immigrant parent and relatives overseas, that I’ve lived with at times. I can see both sides. I think this is a great country. And hate when liberals try to ingratiate themselves with Europeans by talking this place down.

    [Response: I protest the sins of my country because I love it and I want it to be a better, more moral nation; pandering to Europeans has nothing to do with it. I hate it when conservatives paint liberals as traitors. I *really* hate it when conservatives excuse sin in the name of patriotism.]

  • Joel Shore // May 12, 2008 at 1:16 am

    S2: One of the important things that Frank doesn’t account for in his article is the power of subtraction. I.e., essentially all climate models are run by either explicitly or implicitly subtracting the warming with greenhouse gases present to the warming without greenhouse gases present. Fortunately, that yields a result that is much more robust than if that were not the case because most of the error appears in both terms and thus mainly disappears in the subtraction process. (I say that this is done often implicitly in climate models, because as I understand it, some quantity will be tuned in order that the model is in radiative balance and thus does not produce any warming or cooling when the external forcings, such as the level of greenhouse gases, is held constant.)

    It is sometimes amusing to see non-modelers encounter computational modeling for the first time. They seem to think that we should be shocked…yes, shocked…by the fact that uncertainties in radiative forcings due to things like clouds are not known down to a few W/m2…so how could one possibly determine the effect of something of that order!?! In reality, the number of physical systems that can be modeled down to an absolute accuracy in all the terms that is greater than an effect of changing one term of interest is really not that large…and certainly is unlikely to include any physical systems at the forefront of current science.

    I often like to say that is quantum field theory had as controversial policy implications as global warming, we would have the Patrick Franks of the world asking how we could possibly believe a theory where you have to subtract two quantities diverging to infinity in order to get the (finite) result for some physical quantity like the mass of a particle!

  • Rattus Norvegicus // May 12, 2008 at 1:19 am

    Hank,

    Tobis has been whacking moles since the days of USENET. I have long respected him.

  • Robert S // May 12, 2008 at 1:24 am

    “The basic physics are supported by observations, and observations do establish facts, which theories attempt to explain.

    And while you find the comparison with gravity ‘amusing’, I don’t, because they’re the same damned thing. We observe the effect of gravity. We observe CO2 absorbing IR.”

    What exactly are you arguing about? I say theories can’t be called facts or truths, and you say theories attempt to explain facts. Ok…

    Theory: Increased CO2 is the main driver (more than 90%) of the recent warming, and could lead to catastrophic outcomes if left unabated.

    Fact: Lab experiments have shown that CO2 has IR absorbing properties.

    Are we still in disagreement?

    P.S. JCH,
    If James Hansen agrees with that point, then fine. Was that mean to be hurtful?

  • Lost and Confused // May 12, 2008 at 1:39 am

    To clarify points from my last post (in the previous Open Thread), a few examples. On the issue of archiving, there are many examples of data not being archived. The two examples which come to mind immediately are Lonnie Thompson’s ice core series, as well as Osborn and Briffa’s data sets. In both cases, the authors have refused to archive underlying data. Refusal to archive data always seems dishonest to me, but when doing so violates the publisher’s (Science) requirements, there can be no doubt.

    On the issue of IPCC editing. A number of responses from chapter authors (who are responsible for editing in response to reviewer comments) are dishonest. I would point to the responses to (and results of) reviewer comments 3-33 and 6-1122 as strong examples of this.

    As for “moral equivalence,” I argue for no such thing. I note most “denialists” are not members of the climate science community, nor are they particularly involved with it. Rather then compare them to scientists, it would seem a more appropriate approach would be to compare them with AGW activists. I would certainly hold the scientific community above “denialists,” just as I would hold them above the activist I saw on a college campus yesterday proclaiming, “Global warming will kill a million people every month we do not stop it!”

    The climate science community has its flaws and problems. They are largely on a different level than the activist flaws and problems (on either side). It just seems silly to me to compare a random person with no real education on the subject to people who have been publishing on it for years.

  • dhogaza // May 12, 2008 at 1:56 am

    The two examples which come to mind immediately are Lonnie Thompson’s ice core series

    You forgot to say “not archived to Steve McIntyre’s satisfaction”, which is something else altogether.

    We’ve been over it. Forget it. The people who count have no problem with how he’s archived data.

  • TCO // May 12, 2008 at 3:08 am

    I don’t know about Thompson’s ice cores, but the level of archiving of dendro stuff, the use of grey data, the poor attribution of EXACTLY which series, versions of series, and adjustments to series are being used…is a real failing in dendrochronology.

  • Paul Middents // May 12, 2008 at 3:37 am

    So TCO/Mosher, how about moving on from bristlecones and such. Do a really thorough audit of Patrick Frank’s article. He has provided all the background in the link above. Michael Tobis has highlighted the obvious problems. Unfortunatley some of us may not be sophisticated enough to immediately see the flaw in summing errors throughout a modeling run.

    I think there might be one two more bits of red meat in Frank’s work worthy of your analytical skills.

    Give us your insight and help us explain this apparently paradigm shifting work to our skeptical friends. Write it up and I wouldn’t be surprised if our host might not devote a whole thread to it.

  • Rattus Norvegicus // May 12, 2008 at 4:10 am

    On a completely different subject…

    My dad used to call biologists who would work for developers, etc. “biostitutes”. I think we should call people with scientific pretensions “climostitutes”. I think that captures the sins of the S. Fred’s, Ball’s and Michaels’ of this world.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 12, 2008 at 4:11 am

    > I was for the war … I wanted us to find stuff …
    > when we didn’t I just accepted it

    TCO, did you learn anything from this? Like, proactively seeking the truth, rather than waiting for it to bite you in the butt?

  • Lost and Confused // May 12, 2008 at 4:18 am

    Why would I have said, “not archived to Steve McIntyre’s satisfaction”? Only a portion of some of the Thompson series is archived. There is no issue of anyone’s “satisfaction.” The data simply is not available.

  • Hank Roberts // May 12, 2008 at 4:51 am

    > archive
    Name one researcher in the field who you know has asked for access and cite your source at the grant agency responsible. With no cite, all you’re doing is repeating slurs, third hand, claiming someone somewhere complained about something.
    Concern troll.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 12, 2008 at 5:12 am

    > The two examples which come to mind immediately are … Thompson …

    Dhogaza: remember I predicted the first example would be a lie?

  • Timo // May 12, 2008 at 6:27 am

    Hank Roberts at May 11, 2008 at 3:38 pm

    “Timo, you don’t bother reading what you criticize. Click the * link and read what Dr. Curry said about both sides doing this. Knee, jerk, critic — stooge”

    First, I did read the whole link and much more. Secondly, I do have my own opinion which I expresses in my post. Maybe you don’t like it, but that’s part of life.

    “Timo, it’s nonsense to say scientists can’t become involved in informing people — nobody else can. You’d leave the field to the PR spin folks.”
    I didn’t say that. I said: “You (scientists) advise governments and the general public,…..”. This means that every scientist should be entitled to express his or hers professional opinion. Even if either side doesn’t agree. In the end it is the general public who decides which scientist)s should believed. The general public will than “instruct” the government to define a policy. That’s the way it (or at least should) work in a democracy. We the people decide what is important and less important. And surprisingly, some polls in the US but also in Europe seem to indicate that Global Warming is not much of a concern for the general public. And don’t try to convince me that the general public is ignorant and stupid. Most of the time they are bright and clever, making balanced decisions every day.

    I read the link re childhood lead poisoning and I see what you try to explain. However, I am not sure whether you make a direct comparison, i.e. the threat of lead of one element in nature against the health of a child or adult. Lead poisoning was already known for centuries and the link between lead and health is/was well understood. To a certain extend, the same is true for the link between smoking and lung cancer/heart diseases, although I still see a lot of healthy older men and women who have smoked almost their whole life.
    Climate change however has always been considered a natural event, until recently. Now climate change is caused (mainly) by man. This is true from a regional perspective, mainly by land use etc. as perfectly explained by Roger Pielke Sr. People understand that concept. However, in order to arrive to the same conclusion on a global perspective it requires a lot of imagination.

  • Sojourner for Truth // May 12, 2008 at 7:34 am

    @Robert S

    Theory: Increased CO2 is the main driver (morethan 90%) of the recent warming, and could lead to catastrophic outcomes if left unabated.

    Fact: Lab experiments have shown that CO2 has IR absorbing properties.

    You obviously think all the warming is due to CO2 absorbing IR. Its not. A fairly small proportion of it is. Find out about feedbacks.

  • Armagh Geddon // May 12, 2008 at 12:26 pm

    For TCO:

    Dude, you are clearly a very talented fellow, who knows all there is to know about climate science (and probably many other areas).

    But. Why do you spend so many column inches castigating the (to me at least) sincere efforts of others, and particularly give poor Steve McI a hard time for not publishing papers.

    My question to you is, if you are so smart, why don’t YOU prepare a paper, subject it to peer review, and publish it in a worthy journal.

    Clearly your tremendous talents are being wasted, dribbling on blogs that will have you.

  • steven mosher // May 12, 2008 at 12:35 pm

    TCO, the lukewarmers hang out mostly at Lucias
    there isnt any Co2 nonsense or magical sun stuff, just data and methods. i like atmoz, although I dont think he would call himself a luker. but he does like looking at the details. iniation rites, you’re already there. take fire from both sides.

  • steven mosher // May 12, 2008 at 12:52 pm

    Paul middents, I started to read Franks paper, and
    had to stop, its just dumb. the chalenge and fun is taking something that is accepted, lets say parkers paper on uhi, and looking at it in detail. There’s plenty of smart guys like tammy to take the nonsense stuff and find the mistakes in stuff that hasnt been accepted as truth. The errors in the stuff that has been accepted are harder and more fun to find. most of the time the errors are small and inconsequential. still fun to find.

  • steven mosher // May 12, 2008 at 1:16 pm

    dhog, .2C per decade, let’s see what gavin says
    “We can characterise the variability very easily by looking at the range of regressions (linear least squares) over various time segments and plotting the distribution. This figure shows the results for the period 2000 to 2007 and for 1995 to 2014 (inclusive) along with a Gaussian fit to the distributions. These two periods were chosen since they correspond with some previous analyses. The mean trend (and mode) in both cases is around 0.2ºC/decade (as has been widely discussed) and there is no significant difference between the trends over the two periods. There is of course a big difference in the standard deviation - which depends strongly on the length of the segment.”

    I have to get back and finish reading it, the error bars on the projections are exactly what lucia has been looking for.

  • steven mosher // May 12, 2008 at 1:30 pm

    dhog, gavin has a great post today addressing the short term variability. i site some of it above. good stuff

  • Hank Roberts // May 12, 2008 at 1:38 pm

    Timo, lead and tobacco and coal are all natural products. All now are industrially used, all have large businesses, political lobbies and PR firms busily pushing against the scientists who are warning of problems. So?

    Of course you see people smoking who don’t have lung cancer. What do you think this means?

    Of course you don’t see the warming from CO2. What do you think this means?

    Of course you don’t see what people’s intelligence is like without the 100x natural background of lead currently in everyone. What do you think this means?

    Epidemiology, and climatology, the sciences, are ways of seeing events that don’t fit in one person’s short lifespan and brief narrow experience of the world.

    What alternative is available to understand how the world works? Why bother?

  • Hank Roberts // May 12, 2008 at 2:19 pm

    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/312/5779/1485
    http://www.isse.ucar.edu/kleypas/PUBS/caldeira_etal_grl_2007.pdf

  • dhogaza // May 12, 2008 at 2:41 pm

    Dhogaza: remember I predicted the first example would be a lie?

    In other earth-shattering news, it is raining in Portland, Oregon today.

    Sojourner:

    You obviously think all the warming is due to CO2 absorbing IR. Its not. A fairly small proportion of it is. Find out about feedbacks.

    No, I don’t, nor did I say I do. But any refutation of AGW theory will have to begin with a satisfactory explanation of how this extra heat being retained does not result in warming.

    Not with head-in-the-sand handwaving like the “CO2 concentration is only 380 ppm - parts per MILLION, I say! - so can’t cause warming!” crap we still see being spewed forth by the denialist camp.

  • steven mosher // May 12, 2008 at 2:44 pm

    save us hank. use google scholar

  • dhogaza // May 12, 2008 at 2:50 pm

    Why, yes, Mosher, Gavin points out exactly what has been said for a couple of months in response to lucia’s handwaving:

    Claims that GCMs project monotonic rises in temperature with increasing greenhouse gases are not valid. Natural variability does not disappear because there is a long term trend. The ensemble mean is monotonically increasing in the absence of large volcanoes, but this is the forced component of climate change, not a single realisation or anything that could happen in the real world.

    “not a single realisation or anything that could happen in the real world”. Combining results from model runs smooths out much of the variability but ummm … doesn’t cause weather variability to cease in the real world.

    And why anyone would think the modelers have ever, in essence, predicted that weather variability has disappeared (which in essence is what lucia’s effort assumes) is beyond me.

  • george // May 12, 2008 at 3:32 pm

    Steven Mosher says: “the error bars on the projections are exactly what lucia has been looking for.”

    I guess that’s why she claimed some time ago to have “Falsified IPCC at the 95% confidence level”, because she is still “looking for the error bars”, right?

    Silly me, I thought one had to know the error bars beforeone drew sweeping conclusions and made claims like “IPCC falsified at 95%”.

    BTW, how’s that reading of the AR4 going, Mosher?

    Did you manage to actually find it yet at that link I provided here and in an earlier thread?

    Do you still believe it says

    The IPCC clearly says this. Starting from 2001 the warming we can expect to see will be .2C per decade for the next 2 decades, regardless of emissions.

    as you previously claimed here?

    Or are you also now looking for error bars to bolster your previously unsupported (ie, BS) claims?

    In case you missed it before, here’s what IPCC actually said in AR4, Section 3 (It’s simple: click the link and read)

    *For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emissions scenarios.
    Even if the concentrations of all GHGs and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1°C per decade would be expected. Afterwards, temperature projections increasingly depend on specific emissions scenarios (Figure 3.2).

  • duwayne // May 12, 2008 at 4:38 pm

    I’d be interested in your view of my Global Warming trend prediction for the rest of this century using the UAH anomaly as the measure.
    Current 0.3C
    2037 0.3C
    2067 0.7C
    2097 0.7C

    I arrive at this prediction as follows ( I’ll call this the MaxCon 1.0 Global Climate Model prediction):

    Combine all Global Warming “Forcers” into 2 categories, (1) Ocean Currents (PDO, AMO, ENSO) and (2) All Others. Over the 30 year period 1977 to 2007 Global Temperatures increased 0.4C (least squares fit) with Ocean Currents forcing up. NASA says Ocean Currents have about a 60 year cycle with an up leg which just ended followed by a down leg. And, according to NASA, during the current down leg, Ocean Current forcing will tend to totally offset the All Others forcing resulting in flat temperatures. The Ocean Currents oscillate such that up leg forcing roughly offsets the down leg. Therefore the Ocean Current half cycle alone causes ½ of 0.4C or 0.2C of warming on the up leg and 0.2C of cooling on the down leg. All Others forcing causes a steady 0.2C warming per 30 years. As a result there are alternating 30 year periods of no warming and .4C warming.

    The forecast above is the Trend Forecast. Monthly (and yearly) surface temperatures are temporarily affected by ENSO by as much as +0.7C in a strong El Nino in any given month and -.7C by a strong La Nina. Thus during ENSO events actual temperatures will oscillate widely around the trend. For example, the current trend anomaly for March 2008 is 0.3C from a least squares fit of the last 30 years. But a moderate La Nina has pushed the temperature below trend by about 0.3C to nearly zero. A strong El Nino month in 2037 could show a 1.0C anomaly and a strong La Nina month could show a minus 0.4C anomaly. There are other smaller Ocean Current fluctuations which will cause smaller deviations from trend in any given month, but they are insignificant in the longer term.

    Since CO2 forcing is in the All Others category which forces at 0.7C per century and there was a significant Global Temperature increase trend prior to the recent uptrend in CO2 concentration, it’s likely that the CO2 forcing is less than 0.5C per century. This would be logical if there is no significant positive “Feedback Effect”.

    If the sun “dims” for a number of years (fewer than normal sunspots and reduced overall solar activity) as some believe or there is prolonged volcanic activity or a large meteorite hits then Global temperatures could be much lower than predicted above.

  • Hank Roberts // May 12, 2008 at 5:28 pm

    That’s definitely dim. You omit the change in temperature (over time until the planet’s back at radiative equilibrium) and this time begins when the CO2 increase stops.

  • George // May 12, 2008 at 6:23 pm

    Steven Mosher says: “the error bars on the projections are exactly what lucia has been looking for.”

    Lucia may have been “looking for” the error bars on IPCC projections, but she apparently did not look very hard — and did not bother to look for them in AR4 as I indicated in a previous comment

    Had she done so, she would have realized that her “IPCC projections falsified at 95% confidence” claim was not justified.

  • steven mosher // May 12, 2008 at 6:40 pm

    Dhog, My own personal stalker

    Access to the actual ensemble runs is what we have been asking for. Now, the link gavin gives is one I have visited in the past. I tried to register to get the data but was denied. So, I’ll keep trying. Luckily gavin and Giss are open enough to give access to their averaged esembles. You’ll see me post on the performance of modelE versus observations over at CA, and Lucia used the data as well. I think ModelE does quite well at hindcast, and I said it nailed the trends from 1940 to present. facts are facts.

    The problem is you and SOME others see every question as a threat. every request for data as threat. I started looking at this probably four years ago. Why, because I was concerned about global warming. And the first sites I ever visited treated my simple requests for data and methods as some kind of capital denialist crime. After a few months of that I looked around and found a place where people actually agreed that data and methods should be open.

    Do the people on the denialist side have wacked out stupid beliefs? Yup. I dont see them as denilaists. they have wrong beliefs. beliefs about physics that happen to be wrong. So I ignore their nonsense about the sun and their nonsense about C02, because we share a different belief.

    Data and methods should be open and freely available. That’s my choice. They ignore the fact that I believe in AGW, because we share a commitment to open science. You ignore the fact that we agree on AGW because I demand that the data and methods be open. Shrugs? Peace be upon you.

    On the warmist sites, I share their view of physics, but they dont share my view of being open with data and methods. Is it getting warmer? yes. Are GHGs the cause? yes. Should the data and methods of scientific reasearch be open and freely available? I say yes, you and others say no.

    It pains me that SOME people with truth on their side refuse to release data and methods.
    It makes them look like republicans.

  • Hank Roberts // May 12, 2008 at 7:27 pm

    Poppycock. Read the grant terms. Research data costs money and time. Typically grants nowadays — not previously — will require data be made available to other researchers in the field who share the cost of acquiring it.

    You’re not in the field. Get a track record of data collection and publication, to be credible, and know what it costs so you can get your own grant to pay for some of the work done.

    While you’re at it, find a way to get the petroleum geologists working for the big companies to disclose the data they’ve collected, with the big tax breaks provided by the citizens to keep them in business.

    Good luck with this.

  • Robert S // May 12, 2008 at 7:57 pm

    Sojourner,
    I don’t think I said that all warming was due to CO2. Please reread my post.

  • Dave Andrews // May 12, 2008 at 8:21 pm

    Dhogaza

    “An unwillingness to abide by that authority, to deny truth (by which was meant observed natural phenomena) is not skepticism.

    And accepting the reality of observed natural phenomena is not religious fundamentalism”

    But there is no ‘observed natural phenomena’ relating to anthropogenic CO2, there is a theory, based on physics admittedly, but there is no physical proof.

    BTW, in relation to your earlier post (May 11 12.22am) I have no problem with people believing in religion as long as they don’t take it to extremes and thereby do harm. For myself religion is no big deal.

  • Paul Sh // May 12, 2008 at 8:55 pm

    Gosh, I go away for a few asparagus-laden days and all this happens. With respect to the final comments in “Open Thread Mk 1″ my abiding impression is one of closed minds, rather than open. Rather than point out my errors (if that they be) you would rather resort to hitting well below the belt. As I said, I am not privy to the “corrections” (yes, fear the apostrophes) made to the satellite data. However, I’m not going to take your word for it. Ever heard the one about the priests who for over a millennium refused to let people know what the Bible actually said?

    And as for asparagus, the joke is on you. If you knew the first thing about climate, you would know that asparagus is in season in Europe at the moment.

  • Lost and Confused // May 12, 2008 at 8:58 pm

    Gavin’s Pussycat, dhogaza, or Hank Roberts, would you care to explain how my first example is a lie?

  • DocMartyn // May 12, 2008 at 9:03 pm

    “dhogaza // May 12, 2008 at 2:41 pm

    But any refutation of AGW theory will have to begin with a satisfactory explanation of how this extra heat being retained does not result in warming.”

    May be it changes air pressue, this affects the water vapor pressure, and we see a slight change in the water cycle. Moreover, there is an increase in convection and a widening thickening of troposphere.

  • dhogaza // May 12, 2008 at 9:06 pm

    But there is no ‘observed natural phenomena’ relating to anthropogenic CO2

    Of course there is … it’s called global warming.

    BTW, in relation to your earlier post (May 11 12.22am) I have no problem with people believing in religion as long as they don’t take it to extremes and thereby do harm. For myself religion is no big deal.

    The “big deal” is your insistence on equating science and religion.

  • Lazar // May 12, 2008 at 9:06 pm

    Steven,

    Access to the actual ensemble runs is what we have been asking for. Now, the link gavin gives is one I have visited in the past. I tried to register to get the data but was denied. So, I’ll keep trying.

    … I’ve been trying to register, the server has not been responding the past four days I’ve tried. Is this the problem you’re experiencing? Have you sent them an email?
    Thanks

  • David B. Benson // May 12, 2008 at 9:14 pm

    Dave Andrews // May 12, 2008 at 8:21 pm — I don’t know how much you need than
    Emissions:

    http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob.htm

    causing Mauna Loa:

    http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.html

    resulting in Temperatures since 1850:

    http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/10yave.jpg

  • S2 // May 12, 2008 at 10:01 pm

    Paul Middents, Joel Shore, luminous beauty and Hank Roberts:

    Thanks for your feedbacks re. Frank.

    I noticed that he derives his “errors” by comparing model hindcasts of cloud cover from 1979-1988 with observations from 1983-1990. Only five years are common to both, which doesn’t seem long enough (especially as this period included both an El Nino and a La Nina). I suspect he’s calculating natural variability rather than model errors, which would make the rest of his work pretty meaningless.

    I got lost trying to follow how he transforms latitudinal autocorrelation into temporal autocorrelation, but even if he is right I can’t see how he can justify accumulating the “errors” indefinitely. You can’t have more than 100% or less than 0% cloud cover, surely.

    At the end of his “supporting info” document he has an unnecessary diversion, where he suggests a correlation between increasing CO2 and the “greening of the Sahel”. Make of that what you will.

  • Hank Roberts // May 12, 2008 at 10:10 pm

    Dave, there is physical proof for the physics. You use semiconductors and lasers, so you’ve handled that proof. Have you read Weart’s AIP History? If not, you really should.

    If you don’t consider being able to build devices based on physical theory and have them work, and being able to observe in nature things predicted by theory, to be convincing, you’re not going to be convinced by typing on blogs.

  • Hank Roberts // May 12, 2008 at 10:12 pm

    Lost, explained before you asked (and many other places online where this bogus claim pops up, by many people).
    http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/05/10/open-thread-2-2/#comment-18408

  • steven mosher // May 12, 2008 at 10:49 pm

    Lazar,
    No that wasnt the problem I had. The problem I had was I didnt have a specific proposal. ” I want to look at the data” wasnt a good argument in their mind. Gavin, assured me that he will work to make access easier and I trust him since he has always been true to his word on these types of things. IN the mean time I’ve just focused on looking at modelE results. It’s funny to see people’s reactions when then look at it. Cup half full cup half empty reactions. In anycase, it’s a good good thing when the data gets set free.
    Truth will out.

  • steven mosher // May 12, 2008 at 11:23 pm

    Hank, do you really want to go down the grant guidelines path? and then the DQA guidelines,
    it just legalizes what should be open.

    Gisstemp code was freed up ( free the code !) and guess what? huh? when the code was freed nobody died. in fact, JohnV looked at it and did his own thing from scratch. There was no “grant” language there, preventing Hansen from releasing the code. Releasing the code took half of the gas out of the sceptical attack. DONT YOU GET IT.

    but if you want to pass the skeptics a bat to beat you with, go right ahead. I’ll gladly help them to free up information.

  • Hank Roberts // May 12, 2008 at 11:59 pm

    Lost claims there’s been a problem. I invited him to find a glaciologist who’s been turned down for access. It’s the concern troll posture that ticks me off.
    I read the grant years back and posted from it. So can you. The ice cores are in AZthe freezer, the researchers are busy.

    I urge those repeating the old bs to prove the claim they make or quit reposting the second hand complaints they heard from some guy in a bar or a blog.

    Cites. Please.

    > a bat to beat you with

    Do you beat reference librarians if you don’t like what’s found? Learn better.

  • Lost and Confused // May 13, 2008 at 12:03 am

    Hank Roberts, that post in no way shows my example was a lie.

  • dhogaza // May 13, 2008 at 12:15 am

    However, I’m not going to take your word for it. Ever heard the one about the priests who for over a millennium refused to let people know what the Bible actually said?

    Sigh … another “science is just religion” red herring.

    Science is cool, though, the relevant stuff’s all published in papers, and since you don’t trust the priests, you can print your own bible.

    No one is stopping you. Come back when you’re done.

    Gisstemp code was freed up ( free the code !) and guess what? huh? when the code was freed nobody died. in fact, JohnV looked at it and did his own thing from scratch. There was no “grant” language there, preventing Hansen from releasing the code. Releasing the code took half of the gas out of the sceptical attack. DONT YOU GET IT.

    Yes, we get it. If scientists don’t change their working methods in ways that denialists demand, you’ll accuse them of fraud equivalent to the Piltdown Man incident.

    I do hope you treat everything in life equivalently.

    I mean … you don’t fly on Boeing or Airbus airplanes, right? The software that drive’s them is closed-source, the data behind (say) the certification of the 787’s composite fuselage is not free (yes, the Feds get to look, but neither you nor the Airbus consortium get to look at it), etc.

    Denialists like yourself demand scientists change their working habits or risk personal attacks on their integrity and honesty.

    It’s total bullshit, and you’re one of the worst practitioners (though fortunately not a well-known one).

  • dhogaza // May 13, 2008 at 12:22 am

    The problem is you and SOME others see every question as a threat. every request for data as threat

    Well, Mosher, the threat’s real, because the obvious and well-practiced goal is to obsfucate, to undermine confidence in results, to sow FUD, to slow the pace of research by burdening researchers with new requirements.

    All the while lying about what’s going on.

    Your recent defense of Lucia’s misuse of IPCC scenarios, in that it’s OK for you and her to lie about their meaning because the IPCC didn’t write in a sufficiently defense manner, leaving their work open to quote-mining, is a perfect example.

    I frankly don’t believe a word you say about your motives, to be honest.

    Piltdown Mann.

    IPCC scenarios declare an end to weather variability and system noise and the onset of monotonically increasing temperatures.

    “if you want to pass the skeptics a bat to beat you with, go right ahead” - same thing. Science working as normal, denialists complain they don’t like how science works, and this somehow is twisted into justification for denialist lies. “It’s not their fault for lying, it’s the fault of the scientific community for not making it impossible for them to lie”.

    Feh. Enough. Scum is scum.

  • TCO // May 13, 2008 at 1:32 am

    Hank: poppycock to you! Data and methods must be shared to allow checking of results. Else, we will have a bunch of ego scientist publishing in Nature and Science and just driving their careers on “trust me”. This is basic shiznet from 50 years ago. Read Feynman or E Bright Wilson or Katzoff.

    Armagh: If someone wants to play in their bathtub and write blog posts about it that’s fine (like the Cold Fusionists). My purpose of making my comments is to slow down the idiots who think work is being done that the field should consider, when there ARE NO PUBLICATIONS.

    Paul: Pat Franks’s article reads like some old blog warhorse bloviating. It’s embarresing. And it’s not in a real journal. Happy?

  • dhogaza // May 13, 2008 at 1:32 am

    L&C lies about lying (which perhaps we can forgive, since he claims not to know what the word “lie” means):

    Refusal to archive data always seems dishonest to me, but when doing so violates the publisher’s (Science) requirements, there can be no doubt.

    The lie is in bold italics.

  • Hank Roberts // May 13, 2008 at 1:49 am

    Cite your sources when you make claims about what you don’t doubt — why not?

    Minimum decency rule for science.
    Else it’s just blog FUD.
    Tired of it.

  • Jim Arndt // May 13, 2008 at 2:07 am

    Mosher,

    I have a much respect for your opinion, but as for GHG causing the current warming I think the jury is still out. No one here can refute the Dalton and Maunder events, except to say it “might be” volcanic, but evidence? Sun worshipers, no I am not. I happen to think it revolves around magnetic and CME events. CME’s are known to have effects on the troposphere that can last up to 10 years, this is known. Large CME’s happen mostly during when the sun is most active. Reduction of cloud nuclei during this time what is considered the mostly likely cause. Less clouds more warming. During low sun activity less CME’s more CRF more clouds. There also may be a link between solar, planet and volcanic activity. Just a thought . But really know body has tracked down the root cause of climate change. Even Leif says it is still open but we all have our pet theories. ;-)
    We are cooler… soar minimum, PDO shift and a AMO sift in a few years? shurgs

  • Leif Svalgaard // May 13, 2008 at 4:15 am

    Jim A: you said: CME’s are known to have effects on the troposphere that can last up to 10 years, this is known. I will take issue with that. I do not know it “is known”. Rumsfeld once talked about the ‘known unknowns’ and the ‘unknown unknowns’, but in your case it looks like an ‘unknown known’.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 13, 2008 at 8:00 am

    Mosher:

    > But there is no ‘observed natural phenomena’ relating to anthropogenic CO2, there is a theory, based on
    > physics admittedly, but there is no physical proof.

    There is nothing in science that is based on raw observations. Even the reality of gravitation isn’t proven by watching things fall; that just proves that things fall (and not even always in the same direction, cf. helium balloons).

    Establishing the nature of and properties of gravitation requires careful measurements, like Galileo did (his inclined plane experiments) and theory. Establishing the inverse-square nature of gravitation requires more measurements, more theory and more calculations based on theory, to establish that the Moon is falling in the same way as an apple in Cambridge.

    There is no such thing as physical proof separate from theory building. Even measurement itself requires its own little theory (is this instrument trustworthy? Is it calibrated? What are its random and systematic errors? etc.) It’s observations within a theoretical framework, AKA modelling, that constitutes proof. AGW is an ‘observed phenomenon’ to the same standard that, e.g., biological speciation is.

  • Barton Paul Levenson // May 13, 2008 at 10:01 am

    Dave Andrews posts:

    But there is no ‘observed natural phenomena’ relating to anthropogenic CO2, there is a theory, based on physics admittedly, but there is no physical proof.

    Are you saying there is

    A) no proof that CO2 is a greenhouse gas,
    B) no proof that CO2 is increasing, or
    C) no proof that the new CO2 is anthropogenic in origin?

    All three are wrong, but it would help if you would clarify your error.

  • Barton Paul Levenson // May 13, 2008 at 10:29 am

    Paul Sh posts:

    Ever heard the one about the priests who for over a millennium refused to let people know what the Bible actually said?

    I’ve heard that cliche and more. That one’s not true, by the way. Anyone who could read Latin has always had access to the Bible, and at the time (c. 400 AD) that the Bible was translated into Latin, Latin was the lingua franca of Europe and the middle east.

  • Barton Paul Levenson // May 13, 2008 at 10:31 am

    Doc Martyn posts:

    But any refutation of AGW theory will have to begin with a satisfactory explanation of how this extra heat being retained does not result in warming.”

    May be it changes air pressue, this affects the water vapor pressure, and we see a slight change in the water cycle. Moreover, there is an increase in convection and a widening thickening of troposphere.

    How is it going to change air pressure? There’s no ceiling holding the atmosphere in; it’s volume is unconstrained.

  • Barton Paul Levenson // May 13, 2008 at 10:37 am

    Jim Arndt posts:

    CME’s are known to have effects on the troposphere that can last up to 10 years, this is known.

    Coronal Mass Ejections affect the troposphere for ten years??? Where did you hear that?

  • Barton Paul Levenson // May 13, 2008 at 10:39 am

    Apologies for putting the apostrophe in “its” above when the possessive was meant, a vile internet cliche about which I ought to know better.

  • steven mosher // May 13, 2008 at 12:49 pm

    Jim,

    Thanks, I haven’t seen anything credible that would undermine the physics of GHGs. is all the warming attributal to it? well no, it’s logically possible their are also other causes, but until those
    are looked at and ruled in or out, my pragmatism says, one acccepts the best explaination to date.
    i suppose if push came to shove one could argue for a large contribution due to natural internal variability and LTP.
    Are we certain enough to take drastic measures?
    not in my book. thats should get dghog going

  • steven mosher // May 13, 2008 at 1:03 pm

    dhog,

    The flight control software for boeing or any other aircraft manufacturer goes through IV&V. It’s a bitch. So while the source is not open, the testing validation and verification is done independently.
    It’s not just “peer reviewed” Moreoever, if there ever were an error in the code, my surving relatives would have a claim. Thats a good standard.
    it’s all about checks and balances. If you write software that is used to control the planet, thenput through iv&v, assume finacial liability, or open the source and data. nasa, to their credit, gavin in particular, has been stellar in getting data and methods out there. others are moving in that direction, some are dragging their feet.

  • dhogaza // May 13, 2008 at 2:02 pm

    The flight control software for boeing or any other aircraft manufacturer goes through IV&V. It’s a bitch. So while the source is not open, the testing validation and verification is done independently.

    Yes, twit, I know this.

    The point is, YOU don’t get to decide what standard practice is in the aerospace industry just because you like open source software (as do I, I manage an open source software project).

    Nor do YOU, or McIntyre, or other denialists get to decide what standard practice is in science.

    And even more to the point, it’s vile for folks on your side of the fence to say “look, they don’t meet the standards WE think they should meet, and since they don’t, they’re guilty of scientific misconduct, fraud on the scale of Piltdown Man” etc etc.

    You people don’t own the world and don’t get to set the rules.

    nasa, to their credit, gavin in particular, has been stellar in getting data and methods out there. others are moving in that direction, some are dragging their feet.

    Yes, NASA has made money available to do this. Not all researchers have that luxury, nor is it reasonable for you to DEMAND that researchers set aside bandwidth, server space, sysadmin time, etc to make stuff available JUST TO STOP YOU FROM SHOUTING “FRAUD, FRAUD, FRAUD!”.

    The vile accusations from your side have put pressure on researchers, no doubt. There’s been a combination of wagon-circling (with less return fire than is appropriate, IMO), and yielding to pressure (which, frankly, I’d prefer they not do because the form the pressure has taken - which has included attempts to destroy the professional reputation of some of the scientists involved - is close to blackmail).

    And would you quit with the posing “I’m just interested in the truth” crap? Your “mistatements” of fact are too frequent for that.

  • Hank Roberts // May 13, 2008 at 2:07 pm

    > dragging their feet

    In the field; the field is melting away and collecting and archiving actual ice cores can’t be delayed. Here’s Lonnie Thompson in the Byrd Polar Center archive:
    http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2008-04/37541488.jpg

    One example of why they’re in a hurry to collect the ice cores:
    http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://polarmet.mps.ohio-state.edu/jbox/research/GC-Net_AWS_labled.jpg&imgrefurl=http://polarmet.mps.ohio-state.edu/jbox/research/research.html&start=5&h=863&w=631&sz=129&tbnid=YjRACOtFan-iBM:&tbnh=145&tbnw=106&hl=en&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbyrd%2Bpolar%2Bcenter%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN&um=1

    Another:
    http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Tropical_Ice_Cores_Shows_Two_Abrupt_Global_Climate_Shifts_999.html

  • Rainman // May 13, 2008 at 3:41 pm

    Dhog: The intensity and vehemence behind your posts indicate an impending embolism. Take a step back and breath a bit. I think the ‘intarwebs’ are starting to get to you…

  • george // May 13, 2008 at 3:56 pm

    nasa, to their credit, gavin in particular, has been stellar in getting data and methods out there. others are moving in that direction, some are dragging their feet.

    Statements like the above are a subtle libel masquerading as a legitimate complaint.

    The point is not to further the science, of course. It is to plant doubt and insinuate dishonest motives — if at all possible, while staying just this side of the libel line (Sometimes the libel line is actually crossed — as with the “Piltdown Mann” comment — but few scientists have the time, money or even inclination to sue every idiot who makes a libelous comment about them on some blog)

    Of course, dragging “their feet” implies less than admirable motives without coming out and saying as much.

    Use of the word “some” (as in some are dragging their feet”, without saying precisely who and without providing any evidence whatsoever is also a typical propaganda technique.

    It’s an admission that “I can’t argue the science in a legitimate scientific forum, so i am going to short circuit the process and instead attack the scientists.”

    All this is really a waste of everyone’s time and more than a little pathetic.

  • Jim Arndt // May 13, 2008 at 4:11 pm

    Leif,

    Yes misstated. I meant to say the effect of CME on the troposphere is known. The ten year thing can be due to magnetic changes to the Earths magnetic field from the modulation. Sorry about the how it was stated. Just doing a drive by blogging. LOL But if you look at the warming of the 1990’s it started after the big CME in 1989 and last almost 10 years. Big CME’s = warming, maybe.

  • Dave Andrews // May 13, 2008 at 9:39 pm

    Dhogaza,

    Yes the temp is rising but you cannot assert that it is definitely due to AGW because there are so many other variables and just because GCMs (which have a myriad of shortcomings) can’t reproduce the warming without CO2 forcing doesnt mean that they are right.

    I didn’t equate science with religion, it was HB who said that there was a “truth”.

    [Response: Do you equate truth with religion?]

  • dhogaza // May 13, 2008 at 9:55 pm

    Yes the temp is rising but you cannot assert that it is definitely due to AGW because there are so many other variables and just because GCMs (which have a myriad of shortcomings) can’t reproduce the warming without CO2 forcing doesnt mean that they are right.

    Yawn. Sorry, my vote is with science on this one, not a random internet poster who conflates science and religion

    Some people find the “science is no different than religion” argument compelling, so compelling that they believe that science shouldn’t be taught in science class in public schools because doing so violates the Establishment Clause.

    I’m not one of them. Sorry to disappoint.

  • Armagh Geddon // May 13, 2008 at 11:20 pm

    Reviewing this thread is indeed an interesting exercise.

    To the extent that there are two sides, it is clear to me that one side is trying to uphold basic scientific principles and sound practice (replicatibility, archiving of data, proper V&V, compliance with grant terms, journal policies etc) while the other is engaging in what can only be described as emotional arguments purporting to defend sound scientific practice (and those scientists who, for whatever reason, have chosen not to comply), while all the while attacking those who are pointing out deficiencies in some of the work.

    I’ll leave you to sort out which side is which. “By their fruits ye shall know them”.

  • TCO // May 13, 2008 at 11:21 pm

    (Minor CA snipe) I just noticed that on his blogroll CA refers to Eli Rabett by chosen name. So…no plausible deniability here. No blaming it on the hoi polloi. Here is Steve, being a maggot.

  • TCO // May 14, 2008 at 12:35 am

    More CA snipe. Now, Steve is going on about the 1990 picture, which HE EMPHASIZED as needing to be dealt with is a cartoon as he’s been notified. Well I told him that ages ago when he was blathering on about it. He’s such a little turd snorkler of a sophist. Canadian socialist…what do you expect. Scum.

  • dhogaza // May 14, 2008 at 1:27 am

    To the extent that there are two sides, it is clear to me that one side is trying to uphold basic scientific principles and sound practice (replicatibility, archiving of data, proper V&V, compliance with grant terms, journal policies etc)

    Oh gosh, another denialist who’s convinced he/she knows that grant terms aren’t being complied with (even though the grantors believe they are), that journal policies aren’t being complied with (even though the journals are satisified), that results can’t be replicated (even though scientists routinely gather their own data to replicate the work of others), etc.

    And, oh gosh, he learned all this by READING THIS VERY THREAD!

    He can tell that journal standards are being violated by READING THIS THREAD! Doesn’t need to talk to the journals! No!

    In another words, just another dishonest denialist concern troll.

  • Hank Roberts // May 14, 2008 at 2:51 am

    > … by READING THIS VERY THREAD!

    Dz, no. Look him up. See his sources.
    DFTT.

  • dhogaza // May 14, 2008 at 3:03 am

    Oh, it’s obvious he’s drifted over from CA, I don’t think I need google for that. Have to be more explicit when I’m trying to be sarcastic, I guess.

  • dhogaza // May 14, 2008 at 3:08 am

    I just noticed that on his blogroll CA refers to Eli Rabett by chosen name. So…no plausible deniability here. No blaming it on the hoi polloi. Here is Steve, being a maggot.

    Well, I’d like to say it’s revealing of McIntyre’s character, but sadly it reveals nothing new …

  • Lost and Confused // May 14, 2008 at 4:14 am

    I just want to say, it is degrading to the quality of a post and a blog to make comments like, “He’s such a little turd snorkler of a sophist. Canadian socialist…what do you expect. Scum.” Posts that do nothing but demean and belittle only serve to hurt communication.

    Incidentally, the reason I did not post to defend my example was nothing I stated had to do with grant proposals, while each post I read calling it a lie was discussing them. If there was a different criticism posted, I apologize for missing it, but I did not feel like wading through irrelevant criticisms.

  • Robert S // May 14, 2008 at 9:03 am

    [Response: Do you equate truth with religion?]

    If the “truth” isn’t really the truth, but a theory (even if it is fairly well supported), then I would say that some faith is lurking in the shadows.

  • Armagh Geddon // May 14, 2008 at 10:01 am

    dhogaza: All I have to say to you is: “By their fruits ye shall know them”.

    Have a good day!

  • steven mosher // May 14, 2008 at 12:46 pm

    dhog, you’re wrong. I do get to demand the data and methods, especially if us tax dollars are involved. and, of course, if the data and methods are kept hidden, then I think i have an obligation to suspend judgement on the truth of the claims. that suspension of judgement shouldnt be read as an indictment of the researcher. it’s not. its an expression of doubt about the claims being made.

  • BBP // May 14, 2008 at 2:22 pm

    I have a question for steven mosher; how long should someone be allowed to hold on to data they gathered or a program they wrote before making it public? It can take years to gather a good data set or write a good program, and in the publish or perish world of (non-tenured) science if they don’t get several publications out of their efforts they won’t be able to stay in science. Once they make the information public, other researchers may be able to publish before they can. I think you have to give people a reaonable amount of time to retain exclusive control of their work.

  • Hank Roberts // May 14, 2008 at 2:23 pm

    The terms of the research grant specify the details of the requirement to share the data obtained and the terms on which other researchers can pay for part of the work done. You can look it up. Why do you go on proclaiming your belief that the researcher isn’t behaving properly without knowing the facts of the matter? Because it’s how they do things over there? This is such a common pattern that it’s easy to predict how people doing it behave. Sigh.

  • dhogaza // May 14, 2008 at 2:27 pm

    dhog, you’re wrong. I do get to demand the data and methods, especially if us tax dollars are involved.

    Nope. Depends on terms of the grant. I’ve done field work on a USFWS-supported project that’s only requirement was annual summaries and a ten-year statistical study of population trends.

    Oh, wait.

    You DO get to demand. And those doing the work DO get to tell you to go eff yourself, if the grant terms permit it.

    and, of course, if the data and methods are kept hidden, then I think i have an obligation to suspend judgement on the truth of the claims.

    The world of science doesn’t care, to be honest.

    that suspension of judgement shouldnt be read as an indictment of the researcher. it’s not.

    Piltdown Mann.

  • dhogaza // May 14, 2008 at 2:30 pm

    If there was a different criticism posted, I apologize for missing it, but I did not feel like wading through irrelevant criticisms.

    Uhh … my short and to-the-point post that quoted you directly didn’t mention grant proposals.

  • Dano // May 14, 2008 at 2:52 pm

    (replicatibility, archiving of data, proper V&V, compliance with grant terms, journal policies etc)

    zzzzzzzzz.

    Speaking of the recycle cycle. One would like to see something new sometime, not the same ol’ tired tripe.

    More creative denialists, please.

    Best,

    D

  • george // May 14, 2008 at 4:23 pm

    HB: I toned it down a wee bit. Perhaps this one will make it (though I do believe my last one hit the bullseye dead center :) )

    Steven Mosher says

    “if the data and methods are kept hidden, then I think i have an obligation to suspend judgement on the truth of the claims.’

    That one actually made me choke on my morning coffee, coming as it does from the guy who coined the phrase “Piltdown Mann” as a response to alleged “withholding” (hiding?) of such data and methods.

  • steven mosher // May 14, 2008 at 4:26 pm

    Dhog,

    You really dont get it. The piltdown mann meme was constructed for a very particular reason. Namely, one good meme deserves another. When people , like you, characterized the “coolists” as Creationists. I thought, Hmm. Lets extend that analogy. what is one of the powerful memes the creationists had. BINGO! piltdown man. You scream “creationist” they scream Piltdown. I gave them a weapon. I was an arms dealer. Literally. So this came naturally to me.

    Anyway, when I found the rendition of piltdown mann carving a stick it was way too funny to pass up.

    What I never imagined was this. I never Imagined that you and others would promote my meme the way you have. I joked about it once, you repeat it everywhere.

    TOOL.

  • TCO // May 14, 2008 at 4:39 pm

    BBP: Failure to show methods and data means that the work should be held more skeptically. I would also add that someone like Mann, his contribution was an algorithm for OTHER PEOPLE’s data. If he doesn’t share that, he’s not showing what he did. Also, the sort of quid pro quo going on with gray versions of data is not best practice. It smacks of favoritism and chummyness.

    Lost: I was wrong to make that turd snorkeling socialist remark.

  • steven mosher // May 14, 2008 at 4:40 pm

    BBP. It depends. If its work done by nasa or work funded by any agency of the Government they have 1 year under DQA to supply the information

    NSF grants as well have certain guidelines, so it depends.

    The point is this. If a sceptic made a claim without citation, and without disclosure you and others would rightly doubt the claim. RIGHLTY doubt it.

    So, when gavin shares his modelE results and I can go download them, did this recently, and look at them. I say, “hey, modelE does pretty good” and my doubt about that model is reduced. And I post that. ModelE does pretty good. See how information is a good thing?

    You want to fight global warmng? you see sceptics as a roadblock? Take away half their argument and free the data and methods. its cheaper than C02 sequestration.

    Or do the Nixonian thing.

    I’d feel slimy stonewalling like Richard Milhouse Dhog

  • TCO // May 14, 2008 at 4:41 pm

    Authors may well be allowed to keep stuff private in terms of grant obligations or legal requirements. Basically the granting agencies have fluffy language about transparency, etc. but no teeth and enforcement. However, the scientists who do so are wrong as SCIENTISTS. As Feynman physicists.

  • Hank Roberts // May 14, 2008 at 5:19 pm

    Find just one ice core researcher — not a wannabe — who has a problem. Please.

  • dhogaza // May 14, 2008 at 5:43 pm

    What I never imagined was this. I never Imagined that you and others would promote my meme the way you have. I joked about it once, you repeat it everywhere.

    It wasn’t originally presented as a joke. Your “it was just a joke!” characterization came afterwards, and you’ve said other things about Mann that are consistent with the “joke” about his work being fraudulent.

    However, the scientists who do so are wrong as SCIENTISTS. As Feynman physicists.

    Feynman did a lot of classified work in his career that has never seen the light of day.

    Every situation is different. Casting it as some sort of moral law equally appliable in all circumstances is wrong. Intentionally, dishonestly wrong in Mosher’s case.

    And he just can’t stop himself…

    You want to fight global warmng? you see sceptics as a roadblock? Take away half their argument and free the data and methods. its cheaper than C02 sequestration.

    Once again, the fault doesn’t lie with dishonest members of the denialsphere.

    It lies with those who make it easier for dishonest people to lie about science, even when those “who make it easier” are simply practicing science according to the rules they’ve been trained to follow.

    That’s an inherently sleazy position to take.

    Reminds me of the kid who entered my unlocked garage and stole a $15 paperback book from my unlocked car.

    Was it, in the eyes of the law, my fault for not having locked up and therefore making it easier for the kid to commit a crime?

    Nope. Burglary II, Theft III, a month in county and three years pro.

  • George // May 14, 2008 at 6:02 pm

    Regarding “Piltdown man”, people can read Steven Mosher’s words (preserved here on open mind becasue they have since been removed from CA) and decide for themselves.

    When I pointed that out to Steve McIntyre on a previous thread here during a discussion of claims of fraud, he thought it worthy of removal from CA.

    Some of us long ago tired of the lame excuses.

    Trying to blame others for somehow mis-characterizing what Mosher said is just pathetic.

    Don’t try to blame others for misusing what you said, OK?

  • dhogaza // May 14, 2008 at 6:02 pm

    Find just one ice core researcher — not a wannabe — who has a problem. Please.

    (pssst … they’re all in on the fix! didn’t you hear?)

  • BBP // May 14, 2008 at 6:05 pm

    I think (relevant) data should be disclosed, but so long as the basic methods are given, I don’t see a need to release computer code for scientific reasons. I would much rather have independent algorithms and codes used to replicate results - it is the ideas that are important, not the exact method used to implement the ideas. Releasing code does have the advantage that it lets lots of people run and investigate it, but in my opinion it is not really useful for replication (and may even be harmful)

  • dhogaza // May 14, 2008 at 6:40 pm

    And of course, what is the response when code’s released?

    They start attacking the quality of the code, just shifting gears in their never-ending quest to undermine science.

  • dhogaza // May 14, 2008 at 6:50 pm

    Good job, George.

    Hey, Mosher, can you point us to which of your many comments there said “hey, I was just joking, guys!”

    (hint for lurkers - he was not joking, and he posted numerous times on that thread without ever claiming he was joking about Piltdown Mann)

  • luminous beauty // May 14, 2008 at 7:15 pm

    TCO,

    I would also add that someone like Mann, his contribution was an algorithm for OTHER PEOPLE’s data. If he doesn’t share that, he’s not showing what he did.

    What algorithm was that?

    Please be specific.

  • Deech56 // May 14, 2008 at 7:49 pm

    Speaking of ice cores, Nature has a couple of papers in which the atmospheric CO2 and CH4 reconstructions have been extended back to 800K years ago: Nature 453, 379-382 (15 May 2008) , Nature 453, 383-386 (15 May 2008).

  • David B. Benson // May 14, 2008 at 8:45 pm

    Hank Roberts // May 14, 2008 at 2:51 am — DFTT?

  • dhogaza // May 14, 2008 at 9:03 pm

    DFTT?

    Don’t Feed The Trolls …

  • Dave Andrews // May 14, 2008 at 9:38 pm

    Dhogaza,

    You obviously didn’t listen to what i said. I don’t conflate science with religion that would be absurd, but it is possible that sometimes scientists believe in their ‘project’ with what could be termed a “religious fervour”

    Tamino (I don’t really like HB)

    No, I don’t equate truth with religion, but I hope your not just trying to trip me up with semantics here.

    [Response: I'm trying to find out what you really mean. It's not easy when you try to distance yourself from connecting science with religion, then in the same sentence say that sometimes scientists believe with a religious fervor. It sounds like you want to make inflamatory statements (like the al Qaeda analogy) but you don't want to be held responsible for them.]

  • Dave Andrews // May 14, 2008 at 9:59 pm

    BPL,

    In response to your questions I would answer

    1, no

    2, no

    3, well it all depends on what you mean by “new”. If you mean the supposed change since the pre industrialised level of c. 280ppm then there are problems with that, eg, earlier ice core studies showing much higher CO2 levels and chemical measurements, especially in Europe, also showing sometimes similar or higher levels in the 18th and 19th C as today.

    The more interesting question is whether there is any real proof that anthropogenic CO2 is the main driving force of temperature rises in the latter part of the 20th C. The answer is NO, as even the IPCC admits in a backhand sort of way with its “very likely”….”most” fudge.

  • David B. Benson // May 14, 2008 at 10:11 pm

    dhogaza // May 14, 2008 at 9:03 pm — Thank you.

  • David B. Benson // May 14, 2008 at 10:56 pm

    Dave Andrews // May 14, 2008 at 9:59 pm wrote “… earlier ice core studies showing much higher CO2 levels …” No. The ice core studies show that atmospheric CO2 is now higher than any time in the last 650,000 years (last time I looked into the matter). But that is simply that at that time the bottom 150,000 years worth of ice core from Dome C had yet to be analyzed.

    Now, rather than blunder around confused and disorganized (and also wasting people’s time trying to correct each and every one of your mistaken impressions), please to read “The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer Weart:

    http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html

  • steven mosher // May 14, 2008 at 11:25 pm

    Dhog. When the code was released I went ON CA And told people to Post to RC and thank them for releasing it. I posted to RC thanking them.

    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2031#comment-135395

    My post was a not allowed through.

    Make of that what you will. I suspend judgement.

  • Hank Roberts // May 14, 2008 at 11:26 pm

    Dave Andrews, care to cite your source?

    Okay, I’ll try. Ernest Beck, right?
    180 Years of atmospheric CO 2 Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods - ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT VOLUME 18 No. 2, 2007

    This stuff is what you’re reading, right?
    http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/CO2%20Measurements%201812-2004.jpg

    If that’s not where you’re getting your ideas, what sources _do_ you rely on?

    Somehow CO2 varied up and down like that until the very moment in time when accurate measurement became possible — and at that moment it dropped to a low point and began the slow increase measured thereafter?

    Think. Look at the locations where collection is done and the local sources and the methods used.

    Reason on this.

  • steven mosher // May 14, 2008 at 11:34 pm

    Dhog,

    You guys can go to the original thread and see me post that the hockey stick didnt rise to the level of fraud and that my Piltdown metaphor was too harsh ( I love the way you guys allow me to repeat this ) and then you can even find references here in tammy town where I explain how it started as a joke. and If you search you will find comments where I said it was a mistake and apologized profusely.

    The funny thing is, you guys promote the idea better than I ever could.

    TOOLS.!!!!

    hehe. and you cant stop EVEN WHEN I tell you How I am manipulating your behavior.

    TCO, please buy these clowns a vowel or loan them a clue by four.

  • george // May 15, 2008 at 12:25 am

    It sounds like you want to make inflammatory statements (like the {insert idiotic analogy here} ) but you don’t want to be held responsible for them.

    Is this some kind of virulent flu that is going around or something?

  • David B. Benson // May 15, 2008 at 12:33 am

    steven mosher // May 14, 2008 at 11:25 pm — Real Climate has a most funky spam filter. Perfectly innocenet, even technical, words are enough for the spambot to kill the post if the word has the name of any common drug embedded in it as a substring.

    I’ve been hit by this a couple of times…

  • Hank Roberts // May 15, 2008 at 12:46 am

    http://www.gingicat.org/jacob/troll.html

  • dhogaza // May 15, 2008 at 1:33 am

    you cant stop EVEN WHEN I tell you How I am manipulating your behavior.

    More evidence of your stellar character.

  • luminous beauty // May 15, 2008 at 1:38 am

    and you cant stop EVEN WHEN I tell you How I am manipulating your behavior.

    Nothing like a little megalomania.

  • TCO // May 15, 2008 at 2:03 am

    LB: Answer to your question is in the link that I had in a different post, which Tamino refused to accept.

  • nanny_govt_sucks // May 15, 2008 at 3:08 am

    Do you equate truth with religion?

    Do you equate truth with science?

  • Rattus Norvegicus // May 15, 2008 at 4:31 am

    I keep finding references to “Piltdown Man”. Do any of you know that the last artifact recovered from the Piltdown Man site was a cricket bat?

    Surely this meant that the perpretator was trying to say “this is all a joke”. Of course becaue of confirmation bias the people studying this site ignored the obvious joke…

  • Rattus Norvegicus // May 15, 2008 at 4:32 am

    ngs: science is a better cut at truth than religion.

  • Hank Roberts // May 15, 2008 at 4:42 am

    http://www.google.com/search?q=%22scientific+truth%22

    In particular,
    A Call for More Scientific Truth in Product Warning Labels
    http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/91q1/prodwarn.html

    “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
    “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
    “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

  • IANVS // May 15, 2008 at 8:52 am

    Tamino & co.,

    Don’t waste you time with Dave Andrews. He has no interest in learning about global warming. We just sweep him & his Fundamentalist Denial under the carpet over at at SciGuy. http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2008/04/new_paper_north.html#c930710

  • Barton Paul Levenson // May 15, 2008 at 1:02 pm

    Dave Andres inexplicably posts:

    The more interesting question is whether there is any real proof that anthropogenic CO2 is the main driving force of temperature rises in the latter part of the 20th C. The answer is NO

    If

    1 CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and if
    2 the new CO2 is anthropogenic, and if
    3 CO2 is driving the present warming,

    Then

    4 anthropogenic CO2 is driving the present warming.

    Since you disagree with 4, you must think one of 1-3 are untrue. Which is it?

  • Hank Roberts // May 15, 2008 at 2:29 pm

    Barton, recognize the bait - loaded language used.

    “interesting question … real proof … main driving force …”

    What could he want? Your attention! Repetition.
    What will you give him?

  • Hansen's Bulldog // May 15, 2008 at 4:01 pm

    Note to readers: I’m travelling this weekend, so moderation may be a little slow in coming for the next 4 days or so. Patience is appreciated.

    The next post will probably be Tuesday, and the most likely topic is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

  • dhogaza // May 15, 2008 at 4:04 pm

    A bit unexpected (as I thought the administration would try to continue to defy the court) …

    USF&W lists the polar bear as “threatened”.

    Of course, the administration has made it clear that it doesn’t think it has to actually DO anything to prevent the loss of sea ice, but the listing does tag warming and ice loss as being significant enough to threaten the species’ existence in the US in the century time frame.

    Expect more lawsuits attempting to lever the listing into action soon.

    Denialists, you have nowhere to hide. The Bush administration is now on record as having accepted climate science rather than to continue fighting in court.

  • dhogaza // May 15, 2008 at 4:07 pm

    Oh, and a preemptive strike against some whiner who might question why unreasonable conservationists sue the government so often.

    As I said numerous times while involved in the PNW old-growth wars during Bush Daddy’s reign, whenever some right-wing twit would whine about nasty conservationists who “misuse” the court system:

    We sue because we win. And we win because the law is clear. And those laws were passed during the Republican Nixon’s adminstration, so quit your whing now.

    [Response: For all his faults (and they are legion), Nixon not only created the EPA, he also appointed supreme court justices who actually defended the U.S. constitution.]

  • dhogaza // May 15, 2008 at 4:28 pm

    Watts’ response is about what one would expect from the clueless kneejerk denialsphere:

    The big green machine has finally successfully lobbied enough FUD to get the thriving polar bear listed as a threatened species.

    No, it was not lobbying. It was a FEDERAL LAWSUIT and the administration caved in because the required SCIENTIFIC OPINION generated by its own people stated that the polar bear merits listing.

    If the administration thought it had a prayer of winning this case on its merits, it would’ve never issued the listing.

    Presumbably, though, some lessons were learned after the northern spotted owl debacle of the late 1980s. For those who don’t remember, the Elderbush directed the USF&W to ignore the scientific finding and decline to list the bird. Not only did the lose in court (since the law says the USF&W MUST follow the scientific opinion generated during the evaluation process), but the judge was so pissed off that he slapped an injunction on all old-growth logging in the Pacific Northwest.

    The stakes in this case were similar. They could’ve risked a resounding loss in court, which might result in an injunction against further oil exploration in the Arctic (being sought by the plaintiffs) or worse. Or they could do what they did, which is cave in but write as many caveats into their decision as they dare to.

    Watts’ spin is about as inaccurate as one can imagine.

    He goes on:

    Never mind the fact that the arctic sea ice has melted before in the last 100 years…

    Astounding.

  • dhogaza // May 15, 2008 at 4:34 pm

    For all his faults (and they are legion), Nixon not only created the EPA, he also appointed supreme court justices who actually defended the U.S. constitution.

    I didn’t vote for the man because of his ummm “character issues”, and because I thought his “secret plan to end the war” was just smoke and baloney.

    But … he was elected back in the day when Republicans had an environmental and conservation track record similar to democrats (i.e. mixed, rather than entirely black).

    Oregon’s Tom McCall, for instance. Ruckelhaus (DDT, anyone?). “Tongue ‘em Packwood” was a strong proponent of conservation law until the party swung far right and he decided to accept timber industry support in one of the most surprising and vile sell-outs in Oregon political history.

    And labor unions and those democrats they supported were among the strongest opponents of CAFE legislation, of efforts to force the USFS to obey NEMA, the NFMA, ESA, etc.

    In retrospect, Nixon WAS a crook, but one of the more environmentally strong Presidents we’ve had.

    And he even toyed with the idea of a negative income tax to help the poor. Imagine …

  • nanny_govt_sucks // May 15, 2008 at 7:48 pm

    ngs: science is a better cut at truth than religion.

    It may depend on your religion/science.

  • L Miller // May 15, 2008 at 8:04 pm

    “For all his faults (and they are legion), Nixon not only created the EPA, he also appointed supreme court justices who actually defended the U.S. constitution”

    Nixon even made a pass at national health insurance. IMO all this really shows is just how far to the right the US has moved in the last 30 years.

  • Dave Andrews // May 15, 2008 at 8:27 pm

    IANVS,

    Nice to see you returning to the site that I told you about and which in your obviously extensive survey of the issue you had not managed to come across before!

  • Dave Andrews // May 15, 2008 at 8:38 pm

    Tamino,

    “sometimes scientists believe with a religious fervour”

    How about

    “We can avoid destroying creation” James Hansen, Illinois Weslyan University, 19th February 2008?

  • The Tuatara // May 15, 2008 at 8:59 pm

    Where does Watts get his “Arctic ice melted before” from? Some of our sceptics use the same trope, but I haven’t found a source for it.

  • Dave Andrews // May 15, 2008 at 9:07 pm

    BPL

    Are you saying IPCC are wrong when they use their fudge factor to definitively say that anthropogenic CO2 is not proven as the major driver of warming in the later 20thC?

  • Dave Andrews // May 15, 2008 at 9:29 pm

    Hank

    “What could he want?”

    Well perhaps some public acknowledgement that the science is not actually settled. Perhaps some public acknowledgement that there are all kinds of problems relating to the GCMs and their ability to reflect past climate and project into the future. Perhaps some public acknowledgement that there are lots of problems with the surface temperature measurements. Perhaps some acknowledgement in the IPCC public interface of all these things.

    That would be a start.

  • Hank Roberts // May 16, 2008 at 12:46 am

    http://bpr3.org/?p=91
    Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting

    A workaround for WordPress.com users
    May 12, 2008

    … WordPress.com …users …have had getting ResearchBlogging.org’s citation code to display properly….

  • Hank Roberts // May 16, 2008 at 2:46 am

    Dave, that’s all there in the published science.
    You miss it when you rely on the PR blogs that gloss over the detail. Yes, people on all spokes of the political wheel do oversimplify.

    You just can’t do better than the actual published research, and that changes all the time. Keep reading. Beware second hand opinions.

  • Lost and Confused // May 16, 2008 at 4:10 am

    The Tuatara, I am not sure exactly what he is using as his source. I do know I have heard people claim, “For the first time ever the Northwest Passage has so little ice ships can sail through it” or the like. In regards to this, the statement from Watts is true. The Arctic ice has melted enough in the past to allow Roald Amudson to navigate the Northwest passage in 1904, as well as the St. Roch (a Canadian ship) to navigate it in 1944.

    Without context, I am not sure if this helps or not, so take it for what it’s worth.

  • nanny_govt_sucks // May 16, 2008 at 5:15 am

    Where does Watts get his “Arctic ice melted before” from?

    See the Holocene Climatic Optimum.

  • Dave Andrews // May 16, 2008 at 10:20 am

    The Tuatara,

    Try this:

    ‘The Changing Arctic’, by George Nicolas Ifft, Monthly Weather Review, Nov 1922

    http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/050/mwr-050-11-0589a.pdf

    Some extracts -

    “The Arctic seems to be warming up. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers…. all point to a radical change in climatic conditions and hitherto unheard-of high temperatures”

    “The expedition all but established a record, sailing as far north as 81 degrees 29min in ice free waters”

    “He says that he first noted warmer conditions in 1918….and that today the Arctic of that region is not recognisable as the same region of 1868 t0 1917″

    Where formerly great masses of ice were found, there are now often moraines, accumulations of earth and stones. At many points where glaciers formerly extended far into the sea they have entirely disappeared.”

  • Dave Andrews // May 16, 2008 at 11:36 am

    Hank,

    Obviously much of the published research is hedged around with caveats but this is not how the IPCC is represented to the public and it is not expressed in the SPM, which is likely the only document that politicians, journalists and most members of the general public who are interested will read.

    And the doubts and uncertainties are never mentioned when senior IPCC people are interviewed etc.

    It certaintly should’nt have to be left to individuals to invest considerable time and effort digging out relevant literature in order to
    see the bigger picture, especially when the societal impacts of this issue are potentially so huge.

  • dhogaza // May 16, 2008 at 11:42 am

    Well perhaps some public acknowledgement that the science is not actually settled.

    We should be sure to acknowledge that the jury is out on the flatness of the earth, too, not to mention evolution and the cause of AIDS.

    Sounds silly, doesn’t it?

  • Barton Paul Levenson // May 16, 2008 at 11:49 am

    Dave Andrews posts:

    Are you saying IPCC are wrong when they use their fudge factor to definitively say that anthropogenic CO2 is not proven as the major driver of warming in the later 20thC?

    Do you still beat your wife?

  • dhogaza // May 16, 2008 at 12:02 pm

    Well, yes, Davey and L&C and Watts and all you tiresome denialist trolls, scientists are well aware that there was limited warming in the past.

    Amundsen’s trip …

    After a third winter trapped in the ice, Amundsen was able to navigate a passage into the Beaufort Sea after which he cleared into the Bering Strait, thus having successfully navigated the Northwest Passage.

    That bolded bit is important, people.

    We’ve lost about 50% of the volume of sea ice since the US navy started mapping it using nuke subs.

    But I love the ultra-foolish efforts to “prove” that nothing unusual is going on. Subtle misdirection might have a chance of convincing large numbers of people. Out-and-out flat-earthism such as Watts proclamation that it all melted a century ago, that observed warming is strictly an observational artifact, blah-blah-blah just makes the fact that denialists have nothing but FUD on their side clear to all but the most (politically) biased observer.

  • dhogaza // May 16, 2008 at 12:05 pm

    Oh, this is good, too…

    Due to water as shallow as 3 feet (0.91 m), a larger ship could never have used the [Amundsen's] route.

  • dhogaza // May 16, 2008 at 12:55 pm

    Where formerly great masses of ice were found, there are now often moraines, accumulations of earth and stones.

    When the polar ice cap melts, it does not leave moraines behind …

    Earth, sea, wind and fire - learn the difference before you post!

  • luminous beauty // May 16, 2008 at 1:24 pm

    Exactly where, when and how increasing greenhouse gas will effect the future climate is not settled science. The surface record isn’t perfect. No data are perfect. The scientific theory of perfect doesn’t exist. Hence caveats.

    Does that satisfy you, Dave?

    Now can you admit that AGW is affecting the climate? That CO2 absorbs IR from the earth’s surface and emits nearly half that IR back towards the earth’s surface? That CO2 is a product of combustion of fossil fuels? That we are producing enough CO2 to overwhelm natural CO2 sinks?

    Or is your head so firmly stuck where the sun never shines, a team of elephants couldn’t pull it out?

  • Hank Roberts // May 16, 2008 at 1:34 pm

    Yep. Dave, if you’ve spent all this typing time throwing stuff against the wall to see if anything would stick, you must have a lot of free time.

    You don’t understand probability and statistics, and you keep making that point over and over.

    You’re here a site where you’re offered the chance to learn a bit about advanced statistical analysis, if you had the basics — and instead you’re proclaiming over and over that you don’t understand and someone should do something about that.

    There’s a very high probability that you could learn. But we can’t say there’s proof of that.

    All I can say is, bless your heart, keep trying.

  • David B. Benson // May 16, 2008 at 9:16 pm

    Hank Roberts // May 16, 2008 at 1:34 pm wrote “But we can’t say there’s proof of that.” By using Bayesian reasoning from the evidence, my posteriors indicate that your hypothesis is rather strongly disconfirmed. :-)

  • Dave Andrews // May 16, 2008 at 9:34 pm

    Dhogaza,

    If you had looked at the article you would have seen that the reference to moraines and glaciers was made in relation to Arctic Norway.

    Obviously, as the North pole and most arctic ice floats on the sea it can’t leave such things behind.

    Oh, somehow I didn’t realise that - well silly me!

  • Dave Andrews // May 16, 2008 at 9:36 pm

    BPL,

    Do you still do the same to yours?

  • Dave Andrews // May 16, 2008 at 9:46 pm

    Hank,

    Thanks for your encouragement.

    I don’t recall I ever mentioned probability or statistics, I merely asked a few questions.

    Perhaps they were a bit too awkward for you to answer?

  • Dave Andrews // May 16, 2008 at 10:13 pm

    Luminous B,

    With 6 billion plus people on the Earth do I think they have an effect on the climate locally and perhaps even regionally, yes. Can they affect the global climate ? That’s more problematic as there is no way we can separate out any anthropogenic warming from natural variation, and as history has proved nature is quite capable of changing the climate as it likes.

    BTW, I’m sure those elephants would’nt like going to a place where the sun doesn’t shine.

    [Response: The climate is changing due to greenhouse gases, including CO2, and there's absolutely no doubt that the increase in greenhouse gases is due to human activity.]

  • Lost and Confused // May 17, 2008 at 3:55 am

    “Well, yes, Davey and L&C and Watts and all you tiresome denialist trolls…”

    I apologize if I misunderstood the wording, but did I just get called a denialist troll?

  • IANVS // May 17, 2008 at 3:58 am

    DaveA,

    You should thank all these patient guys & gals for trying to help you out of the climate science denial rut. http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2008/04/new_paper_north.html#c933537

    The religious rut, you’ll have to work on yourself.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 17, 2008 at 9:51 am

    As dhogaza said,

    And of course, what is the response when
    code’s released?
    They start attacking the quality of the
    code, just shifting gears in their
    never-ending quest to undermine science.

    Indeed. In another open tread right here not long ago Mosher volunteered a piece of the GIStemp source a proposthe UHI correction or whatever (don’t recall). The code was butt-ugly looking Fortran IV which I only found out later was something that had escaped before GISS rewrote and released the whole package in modern Fortran, undoubtedly at some cost.

    Of course the old code worked just fine as did the new code. Real scientists know how to write correct code with confidence even in a stone-age language, without looking over anybody’s shoulders. As they would know how to check for the latest release of a package :-)

    I wonder if mosh and comrades even themselves fully understand what drives them. For me, I would choose Alzheimer any day over the nameless disease of the mind afflicting these sorry creatures.

  • steven mosher // May 17, 2008 at 12:58 pm

    Luminous is a Luker.

    “Exactly where, when and how increasing greenhouse gas will effect the future climate is not settled science. ”

    Agreed. so lukers get to question the models without being lablelled as flat earthers, denialists etc etc. Yeehaa.

    “The surface record isn’t perfect. No data are perfect. The scientific theory of perfect doesn’t exist. Hence caveats.”

    Agreed! so lukers get to question the methods and data and push for improvements. again, without being labelled as creationists, denialists, oil company shills. good.

    “Now can you admit that AGW is affecting the climate? That CO2 absorbs IR from the earth’s surface and emits nearly half that IR back towards the earth’s surface? That CO2 is a product of combustion of fossil fuels? That we are producing enough CO2 to overwhelm natural CO2 sinks?”

    Bingo. another agreement between Lumious and the lukers.

    Here is the big luker question for luminous.

    Should data that has been collected over a decade ago, collected with the support of us tax payers, collected and used in scientific publications, collected and used in graduate thesis papers, should that data, should that data which represents a part of our collective knowlege of the history of the planet be put into an archive? should it put into an open archive so that others can benefit?

    Or can the single human who collected the data, who collected the data funded by all of us, be allowed to hold the data and not release it?

    Simple question.

    You’ll avoid it. or obsfucate. take your pick.

    but I guarentee that you will follow my instructions and do exactly as I say. you will avoid or you will obsfucate.

  • TCO // May 17, 2008 at 2:41 pm

    Tammy:

    My work is done. I’ve made my points and repeated them. I’ve had fun. I’ve interested a few, annoyed several. Convinced one or two on a point, mostly not changed any views. Said my peice.

    The science, math itself is fascinating on many levels…all the way from individual analyses to decisions of what should be worked on.

    To actually make quality insights tends more and more to require deep read and thinking about papers (such as the Peterson paper, I begged off of with Moshpit). It’s interesting. I’m capable of it. But I lack the will. Certainly have lacked the will to download R and learn linear algebra and such!

    I feel like I can suggest critical analyses and the like (honest), however not many seem inclined to jump to such bidding. (No complaint.)

    The outreach/argument/low-level hoi polloi wrangling is actually generally not fun. Though I know it fills the blog. Repetitive. Distracting (from insights, issue analysis, learning).

    Down periscope. Rig for patrol quiet…

  • Dave Andrews // May 17, 2008 at 3:06 pm

    Hank,

    My quip about probability and statistics was meant to be funny/ironic but does’nt look anything like that in the cold light of day (I’d had a few beers last night).

    Sorry.

  • dhogaza // May 18, 2008 at 4:18 am

    If you had looked at the article you would have seen that the reference to moraines and glaciers was made in relation to Arctic Norway.

    Obviously, as the North pole and most arctic ice floats on the sea it can’t leave such things behind.

    Oh, somehow I didn’t realise that - well silly me!

    Oh, I see, you REALIZED your post was stupid beyond belief when you made it.

    You REALIZED that touting warming in Norway which didn’t cause large-scale melting of the arctic ice cap as somehow proving that large-scale melting of the arctic ice cap is proven to be normal due to warming in Norway is fundamentally stupid.

    You were just having a good time, eh?

    If you think this raises my estimation of you, you are wrong.

    You’re not as bad as Mosher (who is smarter), so take that to heart.

    And, L&C, just for you…

    I apologize if I misunderstood the wording, but did I just get called a denialist troll?

    Yes. After all, you’re a dictionary denialist troll (”lie” doesn’t imply intent), why shouldn’t you be a science denialist troll, too?

    [Response: A bit less invective might be more persuasive.]

  • dhogaza // May 18, 2008 at 4:23 am

    Should data that has been collected over a decade ago, collected with the support of us tax payers, collected and used in scientific publications, collected and used in graduate thesis papers, should that data, should that data which represents a part of our collective knowlege of the history of the planet be put into an archive? should it put into an open archive so that others can benefit?

    Or can the single human who collected the data, who collected the data funded by all of us, be allowed to hold the data and not release it?

    I’ve taken many photos which sell in the international publication market (albeit on a small scale).

    Should I be forced to put my work into the public domain?

    “Hey, you’re a great photographer, you should give everyone in the world the right to use your stuff for free, and if you starve as a result, hey, you have a GIFT! Be happy with it! Artists don’t need to eat!”

    I assume you agree with that?

    Because in essence that’s what you demand of scientists. Like it or not, professional survival depends on gathering data and then WORKING with it, often for a long time.

    Darwin’s a good example, he sat on his shit for decades while he built a case that was unassailable for his theory.

    You could set a good example here by posting your bank account and routing numbers here, along with contact information and SS#.

    Since you seem to be arguing that personal possessions should be unilaterally given up for the public good or at least denialist gristmill.

    Don’t be inconsistent, dude.

  • steven mosher // May 18, 2008 at 1:03 pm

    Pussycat.

    Perhaps you missed my praise of the MITGCM.
    Perhaps you missed my praise of NCARs documentation. Perhaps you missed that. so I repeat it.

    ModelE is getting there. But who am I to judge?
    Oh? I am the taxpayer who paid for it. that is who I am.

    So I read the errata. I look at the documented errors. This is good. they are finding errors and fixing them. Good. When I point out to people that there are errors in the model they say things like.

    1. You are a denialist. basically accusing me of being some kind of nazi.

    2. You are a flat earther. basically accusing me of being an idiot.

    3. You are a creationist. basically accusing me of believing in some supernatural being.

    and now you seal the deal by throwing the alzheimers card. This is also a well worn tactic. oh he’s an emeritis professor. Ageist!

    Perhaps next you will suggest the science of eugenics. dont debate us. call us names and put us to sleep.

    Liberal fascists.

  • luminous beauty // May 18, 2008 at 2:38 pm

    Mosh,

    Playing the Doughy Pantload card? Doesn’t speak well for your appreciation of scholarship, does it?

    You can whine about models all you want. It’s a freeish country. Making sly insinuations questioning modelers’ motives won’t improve their methods or expand their observation horizons. That takes money, not nagging. But if you say models are useless because they are not perfect, you are treading in the waters of a certain river in Egypt.

    As a taxpayer, I’d like to see the National Security Archives freely opened to citizen scrutiny.

    Don’t you agree?

    Much more vital than Lonnie Thompson publishing the data from a set of ice cores for which no study has been published because they falsified the hypothesis being investigated. Null results are important, but not that important.

    Find some way to obviate the ‘publish or perish’ paradigm that dominates academia and initial open source archiving might be more amenable to researchers.

    Do you think that receiving government funding abnegates personal freedom?

    Sounds like some kind of commie.

  • Hank Roberts // May 18, 2008 at 4:05 pm

    > no study has been published because
    > they falsified the hypothesis

    A citation for that info would be helpful when this comes up, as it does repeatedly

  • Dave Andrews // May 18, 2008 at 8:00 pm

    Dhogaza

    The first part of the article was talking about an expedition into the “eastern arctic” (well inside the Arctic Circle) which “all but established a record ” for sailing so far North in “ice free waters” where-

    “Ice conditions were exceptional. In fact, so little ice has never been noted before.”

    The second part of the article then referred to Arctic Norway where-

    “At many points where glaciers formerly extended far into the sea they have entirely disappeared.”

  • Dave Andrews // May 18, 2008 at 8:04 pm

    IANVS,

    I don’t understand your “religious rut” comment but please don’t bore the people here with an explanation, tell me in that other place.

  • Dave Andrews // May 18, 2008 at 8:39 pm

    Tamino,

    “The climate is changing due to greenhouse gases, including CO2, and there’s absolutely no doubt that the increase in greenhouse gases is due to human activity”

    What then was the cause of the temperature rise between approx 1910 -1940 which was at a similar rate to that in the late 20thC? It can’t have been due to AGW since widespread CO2 emissions only come into play after then.

    So there must be other factors at work as well.

    [Response: Greenhouse gases are part of the answer, but only part. There was also a rather remarkable lull in volcanic activity, and in all likelihood an increase in solar output. Climate scientists have said all along that there are other factors at work as well.]

  • dhogaza // May 18, 2008 at 10:32 pm

    The first part of the article was talking about an expedition into the “eastern arctic” (well inside the Arctic Circle) which “all but established a record ” for sailing so far North in “ice free waters”

    Which is not the same as an ice-free traversal of the NW passage, so I’m not at all sure what you’re going on about.

    The recent decline in arctic sea ice is greater than at any other time in recorded history.

    That’s reality. Deal with it.

    Science denialism is tiresome enough. Reality denialism is just weird.

  • Lost and Confused // May 18, 2008 at 10:45 pm

    This is the last time I will respond to insults such as those dhogaza is levying. I cannot imagine anyone reading this without bias would agree to calling me a “denialist troll.”

    The justification for calling me this was my use of the word “lie.” I used the word in a legitimate way, using a definition which appears in the dictionary. It caused confusion as the definition is not the most commonly used definition. When I realized this, I explained the confusion, “corrected” my statements, and apologized.

    I have no idea how this behavior could be considered that of a “denialist troll.” I take offense to such insulting posts, and I question the purpose of them. They serve no useful function and are as, if not more, harmful than posts from “deinalist trolls.”

    I am not going to respond to trash-talk like this again.

    [Response: I allow considerably more liberty on open threads than topical ones, so they can get hostile. I'd say that not responding to hostility is a good strategy.]

  • Hank Roberts // May 18, 2008 at 11:25 pm

    Dave, look at the identified factors; look at what’s shown for the date ranges you’re talking about:

    http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/pics/1107_FigureB.jpg

    All you need to do is
    1) draw in another downtrending line that subtracts the same as the uptrending CO2 line adds, to zero out the CO2 effect (and of course label it with whatever would be causing that, that we don’t know about); and then
    2) draw in another uptrending line that puts back in the forcing to get the temperature to come out the way it actually did (and of course label that with whatever would be causing that, that we don’t know about); and then
    3) explain why the physics that explains the CO2 forcing (and lasers, and much else in current electronics hardware) is wrong, and how it can be wrong about the CO2 forcing in the atmosphere while still explaining how a CO2 laser operates.

    Seriously, look. Do you understand why the wishful thinking that there has to be some unknown, undiscovered thing happening is so wishful? You need to explain all the above, to get your unexplained undiscovered cause to fit what we know happened the past century.

    Maybe you can do it. But if you’re reading Spencer Weart’s book, you know by now that there is a heck of a lot of research that has to have been wrong (not just “wrong” but very precisely wrong in a very specific way) to leave room for the hidden force you think must be there.

    Who shaves with Occam’s razor when Occam is out of town?

  • dhogaza // May 19, 2008 at 1:52 am

    Sorry, L&C, but unsupported accusations of scientific misconduct are going to bring harsh responses.

    Refusal to archive data always seems dishonest to me, but when doing so violates the publisher’s (Science) requirements, there can be no doubt.

    On the issue of IPCC editing. A number of responses from chapter authors (who are responsible for editing in response to reviewer comments) are dishonest.

    Why do you expect people to be polite to you when you’re flinging unsupported accusations like those (and others) around?

    There’s nothing polite about your accusations, after all.

  • Lost and Confused // May 19, 2008 at 4:23 am

    The former accusation is evidently true, as Science agreed. There is no room to disagree here. If it would help, I could post the sequence of events, but there is no question about them.

    The latter accusation is evident at the simplest of checks. The response to comment 6-1122 is dishonest. Contrary data was deleted, with no justification. In the response to comment 3-33, it is said a disagreeing method “is likely wrong,” with no justification offered.

    The accusations I have made are only “unsupported” insofar as nobody had questioned them. Had anyone requested or demanded support for them, I would have provided it immediately. I offered specific examples which were easy to verify. When nobody questioned them, I assumed they either checked for themselves and agreed, or simply accepted me at my word.

    I would note, this is the first time anyone stated my examples were “unsupported.” A week and a hundred posts after I gave examples is the first time I am questioned on them.

  • Lost and Confused // May 19, 2008 at 4:33 am

    I would also like to reiterate a point, as people reading my last post may not have read it before. My criticisms are of specific individuals, groups or practices. I have not and am not saying the climate science community is dishonest, is evil, or even that it is wrong.

    I am saying there are problems with it. I am saying the action of certain individuals at times has been dishonest. I am saying the IPCC report has problems, and is not a completely accurate summary. I am even saying certain papers published are faulty and do not do what they claim to do.

    I would gladly discuss the specific problems, as well as the reasons I believe them to be problems. I personally support open and honest communication without insults or attitudes, and I make accusations with extreme hesitance.

  • Hank Roberts // May 19, 2008 at 9:53 am

    Just cite your sources. Is this so hard? I’ve asked you repeatedly and you always ignore the request.
    It’s basic courtesy, at least, in science discussions to say where you get what you claim to be fact.

    And you never seem to be able to do it, though you always have more paragraphs of typing available.

    I’m done asking. You can, you should … who cares. Maybe you will. It’d do you good to try.

  • dhogaza // May 19, 2008 at 12:34 pm

    My criticisms are of specific individuals, groups or practices. I have not and am not saying the climate science community is dishonest, is evil, or even that it is wrong.

    My criticisms are of specific individuals, groups, and practicies and include you, CA, and the casting of unwarranted accusations of scientific misconduct with the intent of undermining the practice of science.

    I have not and am not saying that everyone one who disagrees with the climate science community is dishonest or evil, many have just been misled by the dishonest or evil.

    However, when it comes to the basic facts, the denialist community is wrong.

    But thanks for playing and for reasserting your credentials as a dishonest denialist. I’ll withdraw the accusation of being a troll.

    Feel better, now?

    As Hank says, provide cites. Science agrees that Thompson did wrong? Please provide a WRITTEN STATEMENT BY SCIENCE to the effect that Thompson is GUILTY OF THE STANDARDS IN PLACE AT THE TIME OF SUBMISSION.

    You’ve stated that science agrees. Surely you can produce the evidence.

  • dhogaza // May 19, 2008 at 12:37 pm

    guilty of not following, I should say.

    And that Science claims that this was a dishonest act by Thompson, which in my view would include Thompson stating that he archived data but didn’t and knowingly lied, a lie (in the commonly understood sense) which was then later uncovered by the journal, which then made a written statement verifying dishonest behavior on Thompson’s part.

    Prove your assertion.

  • luminous beauty // May 19, 2008 at 3:23 pm

    L&C prevaricates on his equivocation, and thinks he is due some respect.

    L&C lies like a pig in his own ordure.

    [Response: Maybe a little less hostility would be worthwhile.]

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 19, 2008 at 5:58 pm

    L&C:

    I would note, this is the first time anyone stated my examples were
    “unsupported.” A week and a hundred posts after I gave examples is the
    first time I am questioned on them.

    I for one only committed to questioning your first lie^Wintentional misrepresentation. There’s only so many hours in a day. But yes, I did check your comment 3-33 claim (know thy enemies :-) ) and yes, that was a lie too.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 19, 2008 at 6:37 pm

    Mosher’s plaintiff…

    Perhaps you missed my praise of the MITGCM.
    Perhaps you missed my praise of NCARs documentation. Perhaps you missed
    that. so I repeat it.

    …brings to mind the one about the guy getting stopped by the cops for running a red light. Doesn’t deny, argues “but I stopped for several green lights. Don’t that count for something?”

    ;-)

  • Old Dad // May 19, 2008 at 7:03 pm

    Here’s an amateur’s take on the AGW debate. As will become obvious, I don’t have the scientific or statistical chops to add anything to the technical discussion, but I do count myself as a fair minded, rational human being who can read.

    First, the utter complexity of climate is both striking and fascinating. Hats off to the many scientists laboring in this most challenging field. While there may be bad eggs on both sides of the debate—there always are—my impression is that most come to the table with good intentions.

    That said, the debate has been shamefully politicized, exposing many scientists to abuse that they don’t deserve. It’s OK to be wrong or very nearly right. That doesn’t make us criminals. On the other hand, there may be bad actors who need to be exposed. Regardless, it’s a shame that the many scientists struggling to understand this puzzle aren’t left in peace to do good work.

    Common sense and a rudimentary understanding of the science suggests to me that man is contributing to climate change. How could we not? That said, determining our relative contribution seems as yet out of reach. To my amateur eyes, the science appears not settled, certainly not to the extent that would merit drastic action. On the other hand, there are other compelling practical arguments for reducing emissions of GHG. Certainly C02 is a contributor. It’s possible, I suppose, though, that there are as yet undiscovered mitigating factors.

    I don’t pretend to understand the climate models. I will say that I admire the attempt to capture such a complex phenomena, and don’t find fault with flawed results so long as we use these interim failures to get smarter and better.

    My hope is that we can give the climate scientists the time, space and money to get better answers without dragging them into Congressional hearings, or allowing them to be used

    [Response: The need for action to limit greenhouse gases, and the urgency to do so, have thrust the issue into the realm of public policy. This exposes climate scientists to the slings and arrows of outrageous politics, so I think there's little chance they'll be left alone to work in peace.

    In my opinion, there are still a lot of unanswered questions but the principal impact of dramatic increase in greenhouse gases isn't one of them. The real danger is that greenhouse gas levels will continue to rise rapidly, and they're already at much higher levels than we've seen in many millions of years. For me, the risk from unabated emissions is too great, and since the burden will fall on the next generation we have a moral obligation not to gamble with their future.]

  • Dave Andrews // May 19, 2008 at 8:38 pm

    dhogaza,

    No it wasn’t about the NW passage but an expedition into the eastern arctic and it recorded the fact that the ice extent and other factors had changed dramatically there and in arctic Norway, and how that was unprecedented in the experience of the people involved at the time.

    Perhaps a bit like arctic ice extents recently as far as we are concerned?

  • dhogaza // May 19, 2008 at 9:45 pm

    No, Dave, regional melting is not equivalent to the arctic-wide phenomena we’ve been seeing the last 50 years.

    Nothing at all like losing something like 50% of the ice volume of the arctic ice cap in that time frame.

  • dhogaza // May 19, 2008 at 9:52 pm

    Maybe a little less hostility would be worthwhile.

    If I thought that was true - that L&C might learn rather than continue to unintentionally misrepresent a variety of facts (cough, cough) - I wouldn’t be hostile.

    There’s been ample opportunity for a change in behavior. How long does one wait?

  • Old Dad // May 19, 2008 at 10:10 pm

    Tamino:

    Thanks for the blog, and your generous response.

    You wrote (in part):

    “For me, the risk from unabated emissions is too great, and since the burden will fall on the next generation we have a moral obligation not to gamble with their future.”

    This seems to me to be the crux of the matter as relates to immediate and, perhaps, precipitous action. We’re gambling with our children’s futures no matter what. And we’re gambling based on tenuous assumptions, regardless of our positions on AGW.

    My concern is that draconian action will invite unintended consequences at least as bad as the forecasted disaster from AGW. Moreover, since the science seems to be steadily improving, wouldn’t it be prudent to let it mature?

    That doesn’t mean no immediate action, but action based on best available understanding of the problem and proposed solution.

    That’s the discussion that the current political climate stifles.

    [Response: Generally I stay away from policy discussion, but I'll indulge a bit. I have two chief thoughts. First, the important part of the science really is settled, and plenty mature: warming will result from greenhouse gas emissions, and it'll be very unpleasant for earth's inhabitants. Second, I think that those who have a vested interest in obstructing action have drastically exaggerated the risks of taking action.

    First and foremost on the list of actions should be conservation measures, but for some reason people resist even though it saves them money! I had the hardest time persuading my relatives simply to turn off their computers and lights at night -- in spite of the fact that it would noticeably cut their electric bill. Second should be government stimulus of the renewable-energy industry. Global warming or no, energy is going to get a lot more expensive, and whichever nation is at the cutting edge of renewable-energy technology is going to cash in big time. If I were a greedy capitalist money-worshipper, that's what I'd be investing in.]

  • dhogaza // May 20, 2008 at 12:28 am

    My concern is that draconian action will invite unintended consequences at least as bad as the forecasted disaster from AGW

    Well, then, it’s very fortunate that climate scientists continue to tell us that we don’t need to take draconian action if we act soon, right?

    If you want to avoid draconian action in the near future, your job is easy. Sit on your rear. Watch a little football. Put up your feet. Crack a cold one (don’t worry, the CO2 came recently from the atmosphere).

    If you want to avoid draconian in, say, your childrens lifetime, say in the next half century, well, we’ll have to work a bit harder.

    Tamino outlines reasonable steps. He mentions “greedy capitalist money-worshippers” … there are quite a few of those in silicon valley, posing as “venture capitalists”. They’re investing in the future. Heavily. The state government’s helping by providing a market for PVs, but a lot of it’s being driven by simple faith in the Valley’s ability to make a little tech magic happen in this segment of technology.

    Some of the changes happening in society for other reasons can help. Let’s promote them! Telecommuting, for instance. I’ve worked remotely for a couple of decades, now, and I’m no longer the only person I know who does it. The last full-time contract job I had required me to drive to the office once a week. Horrors! But still much better than five days a week.

    There’s a long list of NON-DRACONIAN actions than can be taken. The federal government should take the lead. Unfortunately, it hasn’t, and the states and local governments are taking up the slack. So is industry, to an ever-increasing extent. Even within the fossil fuel industry in a few cases (BP - not Exxon).

    At this point, with all the state and local government activity, business leaders wising up, consumers wising up … a little federal leadership (rather than obstruction, for instance the current federal effort to block CO2 reduction efforts by state governments) would go a long, long ways.

    Bottom line - if fear of draconian action makes you feel cautious, pay attention to what proponents of change are saying.

    Because they’re saying exactly the same thing - we’re frightened by the spectre of draconian action, so we need to work hard to avoid the need.

    By acting now, not later.

  • Raven // May 20, 2008 at 12:45 am

    Tamino says:
    “warming will result from greenhouse gas emissions, and it’ll be very unpleasant for earth’s inhabitant”

    The first part of your claim is supported by science. The second part is not. Just this week another contradictory study about hurricaines came out suggesting that GW will reduce their frequency. The same kinds of debates exist in virtually every other alledged negative consequences of GW.

    “Second, I think that those who have a vested interest in obstructing action have drastically exaggerated the risks of taking action.”

    You also need to remember that A LOT of people have a vested interest in exaggerating the risks. Al Gore is looking to make billions for his investors in ‘green technology’. Various 3rd world countries see this as an opportunity to make billions from carbon credit projects. The list of people seeking to profit from the GW hysteria is quite long.

  • Jim Arndt // May 20, 2008 at 12:54 am

    Well I agree with Mosh that many lurkers here do hit and runs. Call you everything in the book. Sight no evidence and disappear. I like to let it all hang out. I could be wrong, and I say so when I am wrong. I have found that solar is more closely link to rain fall which then shows up in river flow. Very nice correlation and causation. More precipitation more ice sheets no sea level rise. But then I still could be wrong, who knows. I think that CO2 has run its course and can’t cause anymore warming, no water vapor feedback. I think CME’s and high speed wind streams (solar that is) cause the warming by preventing cloud forming nuclei. Less cloud more warming. I know Leif will say huh, but just a pet theory I guess. I would post the link but I think Tammy frowns on that so hope this makes it. As for the Pres candidates I don’t like any of them. I will vote for who does the least harm.

  • Dano // May 20, 2008 at 1:05 am

    Hank Roberts laments:

    And you never seem to be able to [cite your sources], though you always have more paragraphs of typing available.

    I’m done asking. You can, you should … who cares. Maybe you will. It’d do you good to try.

    This citation point is a good indicator. Viz.:

    o Folks who can’t cite likely never had a natural science course. This makes their authoritative assertions in comments suspect at best. IOW: they can’t speak to the issue.

    o Folks who won’t cite are hiding something. IME it is some sort of FUD purveyance, mendacicization, or ideological relevance threat. IOW: they want to distract from the issue.

    o Folks whose cites are mirror images of see-oh-too’s unique format are hiding something, likely the fact in bullet 1, but possibly the fact in bullet 2. You don’t see much of this anymore, but was useful at the time it was popular. IOW: they can’t be trusted to speak to the issue.

    —–

    Bottom line: “debating” in comments with someone who can’t/won’t cite properly is a waste of time.

    Best,

    D

  • Dano // May 20, 2008 at 1:07 am

    Oops. ‘Submit’ is not ‘preview’.

    —–

    Bottom line: “debating” in comments with someone who can’t/won’t cite properly is a waste of time. Point out their unequipedness or mendacity, save the point for reference, ignore and move on.

    Best,

    D

  • Old Dad // May 20, 2008 at 2:01 am

    Tamino,

    Thanks again for a generous response. I’m not at all convinced that the most important parts of the science really are settled, or that the consequences of AGW are dire–because I don’t have the tools to do the heavy lifting. I’m like many/ most Americans in that regard. Whle I value your judgment on these matters, much more, than say, Al Gore’s, he’s (I guess), leading the charge

    As you know, a large majority of Americans are not concerned about climate change. That’s not surprising given the political climate.

    I couldn’t agree more with your call for conservation and alternative energy sources. I’d support a moon shot for energy independence in a heart beat.

  • Old Dad // May 20, 2008 at 2:18 am

    dhogaza,

    Do you have to be such an [edit]? We probably agree on more than we disagree, vis a vis, climate change. But I find you a shtty ambassador.

  • Hank Roberts // May 20, 2008 at 2:42 am

    Global warming is not the worst problem, and is not the fastest problem, and is not the first really bad event predictable. Global warming physics requires understanding radiation math.

    Simple physical chemistry, high school level science, is much easier to understand. We’ve been warned for at least thirty years.

    Warming won’t matter a couple of centuries from how if — this century–we lose the use of the oceans and the bottom of the food chain, the primary productivity that turns sunlight and sea water into life and oxygen.

    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v262/n5570/abs/262653a0.html
    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v437/n7059/abs/nature04095.html
    http://www.nature.com/cited/cited.html?doi=10.1038/nature04095

  • Alan Woods // May 20, 2008 at 3:45 am

    Old Dad, you’ll find that dhogaza the terrier plays a specific role here for Hansen’s Bulldog.

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/54/Spikechester1.jpg

  • dhogaza // May 20, 2008 at 4:27 am

    Well I agree with Mosh that many lurkers here do hit and runs. Call you everything in the book. Sight no evidence and disappear.

    Ahh, so you’re talking about Mosh saying that Mann’s work is equivalent to the Piltdown Mann fruad? That’s what you mean by hit and run?

    Or are you describing L&C’s unsupportable claim that internationally reknowned scientists like Lonnie Thompson is an dishonest liar guilty of scientific misconduct.

    These are the kind of people you have a problem with, right?

    I’m not at all convinced that the most important parts of the science really are settled

    It’s been settled in the lab, and in theory, showing that CO2 *does* absorb IR radiation and therefore *does* add more energy (heat) to the climate system.

    That’s the “most important part of the science” by oh, an order of magnitude at least, or more.

    Because everything follows from that basic truth.

    or that the consequences of AGW are dire–because I don’t have the tools to do the heavy lifting.

    Yet I bet you fly on airplanes, right? Even though you don’t personally have the tools to do the heavy lifting to prove that the airliner is safe?

    Do you have to be such an [edit]? We probably agree on more than we disagree, vis a vis, climate change. But I find you a shtty ambassador.

    The truth doesn’t need an ambassador.

    Nor do people at CA need to compare Michael Mann to the perp who put on the Piltdown Man hoax. Nor do people like L&C have to go out of their way to accuse leading climate scientists of being dishonest and guilty of scientific misconduct.

    Why pick on *me* for being rude? They are being far more than *rude*, when the anti-truth science-denialist side has tried to get leading scientists fired, discredited, humiliated in front of congress, etc.

    You’re like the detective asking me … “why were you RUDE to that man you stopped for murder? You need to be polite to murderers! If you’re not polite to them, why, we’ll have to let them go!”

  • Barton Paul Levenson // May 20, 2008 at 12:32 pm

    Raven writes:

    Tamino says:
    “warming will result from greenhouse gas emissions, and it’ll be very unpleasant for earth’s inhabitant”

    The first part of your claim is supported by science. The second part is not. Just this week another contradictory study about hurricaines came out suggesting that GW will reduce their frequency.

    But not their intensity, which will increase. It helps if you actually read the article.

    The same kinds of debates exist in virtually every other alledged negative consequences of GW.

    Not among those who know what they’re talking about, they don’t.

  • Barton Paul Levenson // May 20, 2008 at 12:34 pm

    Jim Arndt writes:

    I think that CO2 has run its course and can’t cause anymore warming,

    Then Venus should be pleasantly temperate.

    no water vapor feedback.

    Google “Clausius-Clapeyron relation”

  • Dano // May 20, 2008 at 12:55 pm

    Old Dad (@ May 20, 2008 at 2:01 am)

    Said some good stuff there.

    An awful lot of people resist any sort of solution that alters their lifestyle. There are numerous books out there - my favorite recent one is Deep Economy - that explain why many of the people implicit in Old Dad’s statement reject lifestyle-altering solutions.

    So what does this mean? Tobis has it at the top of his blog page: change both the lightbulbs (for the willing to change) and the laws (for the unwilling to change).

    Numerous studies show that in matters of conservation, when both top-down and bottom-up solutions are enacted, the greatest conservation occurs. It’s the way people respond. They don’t all respond the same. In our household, we all recycle everything because it is habit. But mom can’t quote the savings and won’t seek out anything to get the numbers. The GF is sick of hearing the reason why we have to recycle even more, and doesn’t want to hear ‘green’ anything ever again. The kid dutifully recycles because we taught her to. Yours truly will tell you which surrounding cities have what recycling program and the net savings.

    We all respond differently to the “threats’ to “natural” environment, within a few groups. There is not one solution, not one method, not one way.

    We must be flexible.

    Best,

    D

  • Hansen's Bulldog // May 20, 2008 at 1:32 pm

    I think “Old Dad” has expressed skepticism, but not in a denialist way. He openly admits he’s no expert on the science, but he’s cautious about accepting the scientific concensus. This doesn’t seem to be because of any conspiracy-theoretic attitude, it’s because of the enormous complexity of the climate system.

    Nor does he state an opposition to taking action, merely a reluctance to support drastic action, and a desire to be aware of possible negative consequences of our actions (as well as of inaction).

    The whole thing strikes me as a measured approach. Clearly I don’t agree with some of his beliefs, but I don’t see any hint of the denialist bury-your-head-in-the-sand folly, or of the protect-Exxon-at-all-costs attitude of the Heartland Institute.

    So come on, folks! This is a citizen trying to understand, applying measured skepticism, yet aware of our obligation to the next generation. Show some respect.

  • Rainman // May 20, 2008 at 2:05 pm

    Tamino: Well said. I’d meant to come in as Old Dad did, but failed miserably. My apologies.

  • Jim Arndt // May 20, 2008 at 2:15 pm

    Barton “Then Venus should be pleasantly temperate.”
    Well its not even apples and oranges its apples and broccoli. Can’t even compare the two the only thing that is similar is the size. I’m if earth had 10000 times more CO2 it would warm up and we would be dead.

  • Hank Roberts // May 20, 2008 at 2:18 pm

    Thanks HB.

  • Hank Roberts // May 20, 2008 at 2:58 pm

    Dhog — a caution, and I say this with love:

    You’re using a tactic proven to be counterproductive by repeating the full text of the claims you want to criticize.

    This is true also when you say something you know is false trying for irony or sarcasm.

    If what you want is to change what people think is true, don’t do those things.

    Here’s why:

    ——–excerpt——-
    … for correcting these myths …., rather than repeat them …, one should just rephrase the statement, eliminating the false portion altogether so as to not reinforce it further (since repetition, even to debunk it, reaffirms the false statement)…..
    …. politicians and others interested in getting their (maybe not wholly correct) message out there can take (and have taken) advantage of this phenomenon–get their mantra out there first, and it’s reinforced even when an opponent tries to correct it….”

    ——end excerpt——

    Yes, we do have to respond to false claims:

    —-excerpt—-

    “…. Ignoring it also makes things worse, as the story noted that other research ‘… found that when accusations or assertions are met with silence, they are more likely to feel true.’….”

    —-end excerpt—–

    Please read at least the blog article about the research. It explains why trolling works so well, especially the team-trolling where one person posts something then another, pretending to oppose the idea, repeats it and flames it. That’s a common method. It works really well to reinforce the ideas in the readers following later.

    http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2007/09/deck_is_stacked_against_mythbu.php

  • Raven // May 20, 2008 at 3:03 pm

    Barton Paul Levenson says:
    “Not among those who know what they’re talking about, they don’t.”

    Really? Show me the results of reproducable controlled experiments that demonstrate conclusively that more warming in the real earth’s climate is bad - especially compared to the alternative of the little ice age. (hint: models are NOT scientific experiements - they are nothing more than fancy calculators that are only as good as the assumptions built into them).

    Science without reproducable controlled experiments is nothing but guess work. That does not mean the science is useless but it does mean that no one can claim that ‘we know that the consequences will be bad’. We don’t know - we can only speculate and no amount of histrionics will change that.

    Lastly, Tamino likes to beat up on straw men. Most skeptics would like to see a measured approach that focuses on things that would be useful even if CO2 turns out to be a non-issue. For example, promoting energy efficiency and alternate energy sources is good. Carbon trading is useless and a recipe for fraud that will enrich the market manipulators.

  • luminous beauty // May 20, 2008 at 3:22 pm

    Less cloud more warming.

    Only if one thinks that albedo is the only effect that clouds have on the radiation budget. H2O has a greenhouse contribution as well.

  • Hank Roberts // May 20, 2008 at 3:45 pm

    PS: here’s the article the blog post points to:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/03/AR2007090300933_pf.html

    It is a review piece. While the author doesn’t cite studies, he does for each study discussed name the researcher, journal, and year in which the studies discussed were published. Most of the meat of the article is near the end.

    “Research on the difficulty of debunking myths …. does not absolve those who are responsible for promoting myths in the first place. What the psychological studies highlight, however, is the potential paradox in trying to fight bad information with good information.”

    “… Schwarz’s study was published this year
    [2007] in the journal Advances in Experimental Social Psychology …. the brain uses subconscious “rules of thumb” that can bias it into thinking that false information is true. Clever manipulators can take advantage of this tendency….”

    “… Denials inherently require repeating the bad information, which may be one reason they can paradoxically reinforce it.

    “… once an idea has been implanted in people’s minds, it can be difficult to dislodge. Denials inherently require repeating the bad information, which may be one reason they can paradoxically reinforce it…. repetition seems to be a key culprit. Things that are repeated often become more accessible in memory, and one of the brain’s subconscious rules of thumb is that easily recalled things are true….
    …. whoever makes the first assertion about something has a large advantage over everyone who denies it later.”

    “… rather than deny a false claim, it is better to make a completely new assertion that makes no reference to the original myth.”

  • Dano // May 20, 2008 at 4:08 pm

    This is a citizen trying to understand, applying measured skepticism, yet aware of our obligation to the next generation. Show some respect.

    Yes - there is a difference between a skeptic such as Old Dad and a blatant dnihilist such as those asserting that the fat hypocrite wrong totemic Al Gore is looking to make billions for his investors in ‘green technology’ and that the list of people seeking to profit from the GW hysteria is quite long.

    One asks honest questions and the other blatantly purveys FUD (wittingly or unwittingly).

    They should not be treated the same.

    Best,

    D

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 20, 2008 at 5:56 pm

    He openly admits he’s no expert on the science, but he’s cautious about
    accepting the scientific concensus. This doesn’t seem to be because of
    any conspiracy-theoretic attitude, it’s because of the enormous
    complexity of the climate system.

    Not really… it’s because some people out there very badly wanted him to believe that “the science is not settled.” You know and I know that all the science that matters is. Heck, lots of things in life are complex. We drive buggies on planetary surfaces dozens of light-minutes away. We model neutron star binaries in other galaxies collapsing on each other, getting out verifyable predictions. Welcome to life in the big city.

    Nor does he state an opposition to taking action, merely a reluctance to
    support drastic action, and a desire to be aware of possible negative
    consequences of our actions (as well as of inaction).

    Again, some folks wanted him very badly to believe that drastic (lifestyle undermining) action now is necessary. It isn’t. Action now is necessary, and how drastic eventually will become clearer as time progresses. Signs are: not very (comparable to the sacrifices we bring routinely for military security, often at least as speculatively motivated).

    There is nothing wrong with his attitudes, but quite a bit of work left to do on his facts…

    And if you think dhogaza is bad, try getting a paper rejected in peer review :-)

  • Jim Arndt // May 20, 2008 at 8:18 pm

    “Less cloud more warming.

    Only if one thinks that albedo is the only effect that clouds have on the radiation budget. H2O has a greenhouse contribution as well.”
    Clouds do it both ways. They reflect incoming and they reflect out going IR, this is known not rocket science. H2O as water vapor is the primary greenhouse gas and depending on altitude (I’m not saying strat just tropo) and longitude it can vary from 70% to 95% of the GHG effect. CO2 is not very good without the water vapor feedback, the focus of the AGW models. No water vapor feedback makes CO2 just another trace gas.

  • Dano // May 20, 2008 at 8:34 pm

    There is nothing wrong with his attitudes, but quite a bit of work left to do on his facts…

    Utterly just like human nature.

    Best,

    D

  • Dave Andrews // May 20, 2008 at 8:40 pm

    Dhogaza,

    “No, Dave, regional melting is not equivalent to the arctic-wide phenomena we’ve been seeing the last 50 years.

    Nothing at all like losing something like 50% of the ice volume of the arctic ice cap in that time frame.”

    Remember that during the 18th and 19th centuries many expeditions tried to navjgate the NW Passage. They all failed often with considerable loss of life. Then in 1903 -6 Amundsen got through. Since then there have been a few passages more recently needing ice breakers.

    Last year ( August 2007) it was reported that the NW Passage was almost completely clear and the region was more open than ever since the advent of routine monitoring in 1972.

    Will it be the same this year? We shall have to wait and see, but it was passable in the early 20thC and as far as I know no attempts were made to find out between Amundsen’s voyage and 1940.

    So who can say what the situation was then?

  • dhogaza // May 20, 2008 at 9:34 pm

    Show me the results of reproducable controlled experiments that demonstrate conclusively that more warming in the real earth’s climate is bad - especially compared to the alternative of the little ice age.

    An ice age, little or large, is not a possibility in the next millenium. Why should we make the comparison? Might as well compare with “the alternative of runaway greenhouse warming ala Venus” or “the alternative of near-vacuum like the Moon”.

  • Lost and Confused // May 20, 2008 at 9:46 pm

    Hank Roberts, the only times I know of where I did not provide citation when you requested is when you made faulty requests. For example, in this thread you told me to cite a “source at the grant agency.” I ignored this call for a citation, as nothing I said dealt with grant agencies. Indeed, your remarks were completely irrelevant to my point, and were misleading. In another topic, I effectively stated, “I can find no problem with the material on this subject.” You made critical remarks about my lack of citations. I responded, offering to provide whatever you wanted. You ignored this. I am not going to attribute any motives to this, especially given the topic was an older one. I point this out only as an example of my willingness to provide sources, contrary to your remarks. You are making an untrue statement when you say I have always ignored your requests for citations.

    The criticisms in regards to the IPCC editing have citations, yet nobody has discussed them. To clarify, are you satisfied with the sourcing on this topic?

    The information in regard to Science originally stemmed from a number of independent conversations. To better understand the issue, I reviewed Steve McIntyre’s discussions on the issue, and use his remarks to understand the facts. I hold his statements of factual information in this as reliable, as I have no reason to believe otherwise. I assume he has in fact had the communications with Science he has posted, that he is not flat-out lying.

    In regards to Science’s agreement. A simple fact, which to my knowledge is not disputed, is Science required Lonnie Thompson to archive data due to the efforts of Steve McIntyre. This shows Thompson had not met Science’s requirements. This shows Science agreed with the disputed factual information, called unsupported here. Is this disputed at all? If so, on what basis? If not, why is there a demand for citations?

    Now then, I remember there was a fiasco over me using the word “lie.” Whatever I post is accurate, to the extent of my knowledge at the time of posting. I would ask those who accused me of lying to retract this accusation as it is untrue.

    Hank Roberts, I ask you to retract your false and denigrating claim regarding my supposed refusal to provide citations.

  • Dave Andrews // May 20, 2008 at 9:47 pm

    Hank,

    Well to my, perhaps untutored eye, that Yale graph backs up what I was saying.

    The temps rose from roughly 1919 - 1940 at a similar rate to roughly 1980- 1995. But the “greenhouse gases” only took off in the late 1950’s

  • Dave Andrews // May 20, 2008 at 9:48 pm

    OOPs, typo

    should be 1910-1940

  • Hank Roberts // May 20, 2008 at 10:19 pm

    Please point to your source for your beliefs. You keep telling us what you believe to be true. Point to a citation.

    You do know what a citation is.
    Please.

  • Hank Roberts // May 20, 2008 at 10:20 pm

    Perhaps I’m wrong. This may help:

    http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Acitation

  • Hank Roberts // May 20, 2008 at 10:50 pm

    Lost, I apologize. Looking at what you’ve been writing, I realize you honestly do not have any idea what I’ve been asking for when I asked you to cite your sources. Each time you’ve repeated what you believe, or what you believe you read that someone else somewhere said he believed to be true, about something, sometimes naming a magazine.

    This really will help:

    “A ‘citation’ is the way you tell your readers that certain material in in your work came from another source. It also gives your readers the information necessary to find that source again, including:
    information about the author
    the title of the work
    the name and location of the company that published your copy of the source
    the date your copy was published
    the page numbers of the material you are borrowing

    Proper citation will keep you from taking the rap for someone else’s bad ideas. …”

    http://turnitin.com/research_site/e_citation.html

    For sources on the web, a working link often will suffice — provided you link to the actual response in a specific thread. It always helps to quote enough of what you’re relying on that there’s no doubt you’ve actually cited the place you found it, not simply gone looking after the fact for some support. The latter is frowned on for obvious, I hope, reasons.

    Gotta go. Good luck with it.

  • dhogaza // May 20, 2008 at 10:52 pm

    A simple fact, which to my knowledge is not disputed, is Science required Lonnie Thompson to archive data due to the efforts of Steve McIntyre.

    I’ve googled without success, though I did uncover a whining blog entry by Roger Pielke, Sr from last November that would indicate, at least as late as that date, that Thompson, NAS, and Science magazine had all ignored pleas for the raw data.

    So, once again, cite please.

  • Raven // May 20, 2008 at 11:04 pm

    dhogaza says:
    “An ice age, little or large, is not a possibility in the next millenium. Why should we make the comparison? Might as well compare with “the alternative of runaway greenhouse warming ala Venus” or “the alternative of near-vacuum like the Moon”.”

    You evaded the real question. If the alarmists are right then we would be still stuck in the little ice age if we had not started emitting massive amounts of GHGs. For that reason, alarmists must not only demonstrate that a warmer planet is worse than today they also must explain why there is little of no evidence that the warming over the last 100 years or so has been bad.

  • Raven // May 20, 2008 at 11:06 pm

    Hank Roberts says:
    “A ‘citation’ is the way you tell your readers that certain material in in your work came from another source”

    This blog does not offer a level playing field since the owner will refuse to post links to sources that he does not approve of.

  • Hank Roberts // May 20, 2008 at 11:32 pm

    Dave,
    > Yale chart

    What else varies? The black line (left scale) is the sum of the amount the colored lines (right scale) show above and below zero, year after year. Use a ruler to check:
    http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/pics/1107_FigureB.jpg

    Read what I wrote. The black line stays, it’s what was observed. The colored lines are known observed forcings. Whatever you think is missing, if you add it in, the black line doesn’t change, so you need what I said — your mysterious additional force, and another one to remove the effect of CO2.

    Occam left his razor on the shelf when he went on vacation, borrow it …

    >untutored

    If you’re feeling untutored, you came to the right weblog — ask our host for pointers to the tutorials here.

    I’m gone for a week or two, mostly. Good luck with it. You can get tutored.

  • dhogaza // May 20, 2008 at 11:43 pm

    I’ve gone to Climate Audit (holds nose) and clicked on the “Thompson” category. The latest information I have found reads as follows:

    The complaint was to PNAS not the editorial assistant. I’ve already tried : Science, NSF and the President of NAS, all of whom refused to intervene.

    Which directly contradicts L&C’s claim:

    Science required Lonnie Thompson to archive data due to the efforts of Steve McIntyre.

    Please point me to the post by McIntyre that supports your claim, L&C.

  • Old Dad // May 21, 2008 at 12:11 am

    All,

    Thanks for listening. I’ll keep reading. I appreciate our host’s kind words. I’m no denialist, but I am skeptical by temperament and training. I support completely all those who are dilligently trying to figure this problem out. Now back to lurking.

  • Lost and Confused // May 21, 2008 at 12:28 am

    Hank Roberts, you avoided several key parts, which I would ask you to address before I track down the links involved. The first, is for what do you want me to provide a citation? You failed to answer my specific questions designed to find where the disagreement lied, so I am uncertain as to what citation to provide. For example, you did not answer my question regarding IPCC editing. I cannot tell whether or not you are expecting some citation here. On the issue of Science, where is the disagreement/confusion? Are you expecting a citation showing Thompson did not originally archive data, or just that Science forced him to do so?

    The original lack of archiving by Thompson was a fairly widely discussed topic, and was never disputed, so I would not expect a citation to be needed for that. Would it be sufficient then to provide a citation showing Science had to force Thompson to meet its policies? I am willing to provide citations as needed, but I do need to know what is in doubt.

    Finally, you did not retract the untrue statement you made about me. You have further compounded this insult by claiming I do not know what a citation is, which is also untrue. I repeat my request for you to retract your untrue statements about me.

  • dhogaza // May 21, 2008 at 12:50 am

    Would it be sufficient then to provide a citation showing Science had to force Thompson to meet its policies? I am willing to provide citations as needed, but I do need to know what is in doubt.

    I’ve already asked you. Do it.

  • Lost and Confused // May 21, 2008 at 1:33 am

    I had not realized anyone needed a citation for the lack of archiving by Lonnie Thompson. It might be helpful to discuss the current status first. Over 20 years ago Thompson drilled ice cores at Dunde. Thousands of samples were taken. The results from this drilling have been used in a multitude of papers. However, the papers did not always use the same data. Different versions of the Dunde information have been used in different papers. There are at least six different versions. Different versions have appeared in MBH98, Thompson’s PNAS 2006 article, Thompson’s Climate Change 2003 article, Yang et al 2002, Crowley and Lawery 2000, and Yao et all 2006 (on which Thompson was a coauthor). The only archived data on the Dunde samples is:

    ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/trop/dunde/dunde-d18o.txt

    This file has ten year averages from 1,000 AD on of dO18 samples. Ice core data usually includes a dozen different measurement types, and the Dunde samples extend beyond 1000AD. Of the thousands of samples taken, Thompson has archived approximately 100 (note, even this was not originally available). There is no way to reconcile the different Dunde versions with the data that is currently available, nor is the Dunde series is the only series to have issues.

    Now then, as to the actual archiving. Steve McIntyre has been a large supporter of good archiving practices, and it has been a constant theme on his blog. Thompson’s lack of archiving is a topic McIntyre has been bothered by, and he has attempted to get copies of the data. He has largely been rebuffed in this, with Thompson refusing to provide information. In response to this (and other similar cases), McIntyre has contacted a number of people. The Science journal, in response to McIntyre’s requests, provided McIntyre with data from a Kilimanjaro drilling (as well as other unavailable data, including data from Briffa). This data is not used often, unlike the Dunde data. On another occasion, McIntyre contacted Climate Change. Due to this communication, Thompson archived some data, including that in the link previously provided.

    Due to the length this post has already reached, I will stop for now. Please tell me what portions of this post you dispute or doubt, as well as which portions for which you would want citations.

  • David B. Benson // May 21, 2008 at 1:36 am

    Raven // May 20, 2008 at 11:04 pm — By about 1885 CE the Swiss glaciers had all stopped growing. From 1955 CE until a980 CE those glaciers were in retreat at 4 m/y. From 1980 CE to present, the retreat has been about 12 m/y.

    Already peasants in Bolivia who depnd upon glacier meltwater to grow their potatoes are in deep trouble. An so it goes. There are plenty of signs. You have to be deaf and blind not to notice these.

  • Lost and Confused // May 21, 2008 at 1:44 am

    There is a good point mentioned in dhogaza’s post before mine. Steve McIntyre feels journals are behaving inappropriately on the topic of archiving (by not requiring or not enforcing). I was mistaken to say Science forced Thompson to archive data. Science only required the data to be provided, not archived. I had mistakenly confused the events with Climate Change and Science here. Climate Change forced Thompson to archive data, not Science. Science was responsible for the archiving of some Briffa and Osborn data instead.

    As it happens, McIntyre’s quoted remark is directed in a general sense, as he feels those journals have failed to make meaningful requirements of the authors.

    In any event, I apologize for my careless mistake.

  • Lost and Confused // May 21, 2008 at 2:41 am

    I interpret dhogaza’s remark, “I’ve already asked you. Do it,” to be an affirmative answer to the question he quoted.

    The first link is to a post made by McIntyre. It should be noted, as with my above correction, Climate Change was the journal in question. The link in this post is broken, but the point is still clear. The second link is to a copy of McIntyre’s letter to Science. The third link discusses Science’s response.

    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=15#comments
    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=537#more-537
    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=539#more-539

    Other posts are relevant, but these should a basis for my comments.

    Tamino I submitted this once, but it seems to have disappeared immediately. It was probably some problem on my side, but feel free to delete this if the other copy went through.

    [Response: It was caught by the spam filter, so it only "appeared to disappear."

    Some may consider links to Steve McIntyre's blog as less than completely reliable documentation.]

  • Raven // May 21, 2008 at 3:29 am

    David B. Benson says:
    “Already peasants in Bolivia who depend upon glacier meltwater to grow their potatoes are in deep trouble.”

    If the peasants in Bolivia really depended on glacier meltwater for irrigation then they would need the glaciers to recede - advancing glaciers would create even bigger problems because they would lock the water they need in ice!

    The water that these people come from depend on probably comes from the annual snowfall/melt and does not depend on the existence of the glacier.
    Unfortunately, local rainfall pattern changes can have many causes ranging from ENSO to deforestation and cannot be conclusively attributed to warming.

    Similar issues exist with virtually every other alleged harm caused by warming.
    Furthermore, these ‘harms’ but be weighed against the positive effects of warming which range from higher agricultural productivity to fewer cold related deaths.

  • dhogaza // May 21, 2008 at 4:11 am

    Thank you, L&C, for doing a good job of presenting, in essentially cut-and-paste style, the McIntyre case. And for admitting that you had misstated it previously.

    Steve McIntyre feels journals are behaving inappropriately on the topic of archiving (by not requiring or not enforcing)

    Yes, he does, and they obviously disagree with him in some cases, and he’s in no position to enforce his point of view on the science establishment.

    In the case of Thompson the journals, granting agencies, etc, disagree with McIntyre. There is a difference of opinion as to what must actually be archived, and the scientific establishment appears to strongly believe that Thompson has met the requirements.

    The right thing for you to do at this point is to admit that an honest disagreement about requirements, regarding data that in some cases is 20 years old (no requirements regarding availability on the web would apply to such old, pre-web work), etc in no way supports your repeated claim that Thompson has acted DISHONESTLY, in other words is guilty of scientific misconduct.

    Withdraw your slander.

    I know that McIntyre makes this claim repeatedly, though implicitly, and therefore claims that Thompson is guilty of scientific misconduct, but I’m giving you the chance here to be more honest than McIntyre.

    We’ll see if you grab the opportunity I’ve placed in front of you.

  • JCH // May 21, 2008 at 4:27 am

    Hey, science blog of the year (or some such nonsense) versus :

    http://www.nsf.gov/news/mmg/media/images/mos_f.jpg

  • dhogaza // May 21, 2008 at 5:21 am

    So let’s see, denialists like Raven insist that a large body of science is wrong, can’t be substantiated.

    And his proof is … a handwave. “It will be OK, I say so” is the essential bottom line of his argument.

    And we’re supposed to treat this as being as credible as the rigorous work of thousands of scientists?

    Your latest post is nothing to crow about, raven.

  • Lost and Confused // May 21, 2008 at 5:53 am

    Somehow the idea of you reaching out to me is difficult to believe dhogaza. Given your repeated insults and accusations, I find your tone here distasteful. I suppose that is because even now you misrepresent me. You say I accused Thompson of scientific misconduct. I have done no such thing. I have intentionally refrained from even using the phrase, as it is a far stronger accusation, which I am not prepared to make.

    I called certain archiving practices dishonest. To demonstrate, I pointed to examples of data not being archived, which to me is a dishonest practice. I pointed to examples of this lack of archiving violating publisher requirements. To me, this is dishonest. As discussed before, Al Gore has not fixed several untrue statements in his documentary. To me, this is dishonest.

    Dishonesty is defined as the lack of honesty. Honesty is defined as “fairness and straightforwardness of conduct.” To me, Thompson’s actions in regards to archiving are dishonest. This is a moral judgment, based upon personal beliefs, as much as any other judgment of dishonesty.

    An IPCC reviewer stated certain data should not be deleted from a graph, that it should instead be included. This deleted data did not agree with the “consensus.” The chapter author’s response was, “Showing that data would be inappropriate.” He offered no justification. To me, this is dishonest. You can disagree if you want. That is the nature of moral judgments.

    And Tamino, I felt it was safe to offer those links, as to my knowledge nobody has accused Steve McIntyre of fabricating conversations.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 21, 2008 at 11:03 am

    L&C,

    As dhogaza said. We’re making progress. (Thanks dhogaza — especially for holding your nose ;-) )

    What he neglected to point out is, that not only have the times changed web-wise; the times they have a-changed. In olden days, ships were of wood and men of iron, and a scientist as good as his word. People like you have terminated that era in climatology. I honestly do not think that was a good thing.

    It is in any case not right to make scientists go back and retroactively decypher their notebooks from twenty, or even ten, years ago.

  • Barton Paul Levenson // May 21, 2008 at 11:33 am

    Jim Arndt posts:

    I’m if earth had 10000 times more CO2 it would warm up and we would be dead.

    Then it wasn’t correct to say that CO2 has “run its course” and can’t cause any further warming, was it?

  • Barton Paul Levenson // May 21, 2008 at 11:36 am

    Raven posts:

    Science without reproducable controlled experiments is nothing but guess work.

    Then I take it you don’t believe that Earth has an iron-nickle core, possibly with admixtures of sulfur and oxygen. Or that stars work by fusion. Or that some families of animals evolved from others. After all, none of those can be duplicated in “reproducable [sic] controlled experiments.”

  • Barton Paul Levenson // May 21, 2008 at 11:39 am

    Jim Arndt writes:

    Clouds do it both ways. They reflect incoming and they reflect out going IR, this is known not rocket science.

    Clouds of the sort present on Earth and Mars do not reflect IR; they are nearly perfect absorbers of IR, and clouds are, in effect, a greenhouse agent responsible for 5-15% of Earth’s greenhouse effect. For low- and medium-height clouds, this is offset by their high visual reflectance. The net effect of low and medium clouds is cooling; the net effect of high clouds is warming. For what it’s worth, the sulfuric acid cloud layers of Venus do reflect IR, which makes the greenhouse effect on Venus hotter than it would otherwise be.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 21, 2008 at 12:13 pm

    L&C, sigh.

    What about sticking to the OALDCE? It’s more accessible to the rest of us than your private word list.

    “dis·hon·est /…/ adj 1 (of a person) … 2 [attrib] (a) intended to deceive or cheat: dishonest behaviour, goings-on, competition. (b) (of money) …”

    “dishonest archiving practices” seems to fall under 2(a). Don’t you agree that intent qualifies it as scientific misconduct?

  • dhogaza // May 21, 2008 at 1:37 pm

    Direct quote:

    Refusal to archive data always seems dishonest to me, but when doing so violates the publisher’s (Science) requirements, there can be no doubt.

  • george // May 21, 2008 at 3:17 pm

    Steve McIntyre feels journals are behaving inappropriately on the topic of archiving (by not requiring or not enforcing)

    I feel a song welling up:

    “Feelings, nothing more than feelings…”

    That from the guy who has applied the “Poof! They’re gone” (errors removed without a trace) policy to his own posts on his website.

    Wouldn’t want to archive misinformation, now would we?

  • Dano // May 21, 2008 at 3:18 pm

    Raven, in his continuing bid to be always wrong, states:

    The water that these people come from depend on probably comes from the annual snowfall/melt and does not depend on the existence of the glacier.
    Unfortunately, local rainfall pattern changes can have many causes ranging from ENSO to deforestation and cannot be conclusively attributed to warming.

    o Glaciers in the Andes are also melting rapidly, a potential catastrophe for countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru that depend heavily on meltwater for water supplies. Glaciers in Bolivia and Peru lost a third of their surface area between the 1970s and 2006, and continued loss could decrease river flows as early as 2030. In Peru’s coastal region, where 70 percent of the population resides, 80 percent of water resources come from snow and ice melt, which often constitutes the only source of water during the dry season. [emphasis added]

    o Glaciers provide water for drinking and irrigating crops

    People living in Peru and Bolivia rely on water from melting glaciers and ice caps to provide water during the dry spells of the year. Increased warming is causing the ice to melt for a longer period each year. Whilst this means more plentiful water at the moment, if the melting continues the glaciers will retreat. This may lead to the loss of the water altogether.

    India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan rely on glacial meltwater for both drinking and irrigation during the dry season. Although they experience very heavy rainfall during the monsoon season, it is not a reliable source for year round supplies.

    In Switzerland’s Rhone Valley, farmers have irrigated their crops for hundreds of years, by channeling meltwater from glaciers to their fields. The Rhine and Rhone rivers in Europe start as glacial meltwater. If global warming continues and the Alpine glaciers melt, these rivers will possibly dry up, leaving parts of Europe lacking sufficient water supplies.

    o In the city of La Paz (Bolivia) and its suburb El Alto, more than 2 million people get about a third of their drinking water from glaciers—and those glaciers have shrunk by more than half since the 1960s, according to Walter Vergara, a World Bank expert on climate change in Latin America. The situation in less monitored areas is more of a mystery. Satellite images show that glaciers are shrinking, but they don’t provide a reliable estimate of how much water is released or where it goes, and climbing glaciers to get better measurements is risky and expensive.

    Too bad The Google doesn’t have a wisdom button, eh lad? You sure could use one. Or is it that you are just purveying FUD and being correct doesn’t matter?

    Best,

    D

  • Raven // May 21, 2008 at 4:34 pm

    Dano says:
    “In Peru’s coastal region, where 70 percent of the population resides, 80 percent of water resources come from snow and ice melt, which often constitutes the only source of water during the dry season.”

    Nothing in your links contradicts what I said. These people cannot possibily be depending on the melting of old glacier ice for water because that would mean they *require* the glaciers to recede year after year. What is likely happening snow falls during the rainy season and then melts gradually during the dry season. This is an annual cycle that has *nothing* to do with with the glaciers and there is no reason to believe that it would not continue even if the glaciers did not exist.

    It is likely that some locations are currently receiving more glacial meltwater than they would receive if the glaciers were advancing. This simply means that these locations were already living an unsustainable existance that depends on the receding glaciers (i.e if the glaciers weren’t receded they would have already encountered a water supply problem). These locations are no different from places like the mid west where a dependence on fossilized water from aquifers will lead to a crisis when these aquifers run out. In both cases, the problem is one of over exploitation of water resources rather than global warming.

    This is a perfect example of tunnel vision on the part of alarmists. They really want to believe that the world is trouble so they automatically presume that any change related to warming much be bad.

  • kfr // May 21, 2008 at 4:49 pm

    sorry raven do you honestly believe this or are you being deliberately obtuse?

    Meltwater will still come from a glacier even when it’s growing. As far as i’m aware the common term for this is ’seasons’. In summer some will melt, run off, and provide a water supply as described. Over the whole year (and colder ’seasons) it will gain more mass than it loses as meltwater.

    Your ignorance would be funny were it not for the fact you have the audacity to question scientists of significantly greater knowledge and condemn them as being wrong. Do you feel any sense of shame?

  • Raven // May 21, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    kfr says:
    “Meltwater will still come from a glacier even when it’s growing. As far as i’m aware the common term for this is ’seasons’. In summer some will melt, run off, and provide a water supply as described. Over the whole year (and colder ’seasons) it will gain more mass than it loses as meltwater. ”

    Why don’t you try using some basic math:

    The amount of water coming out of the mountains is the sum of the annual snowfall and the glacier melt minus the amount of snowfall that gets added to the glacier each year.

    If the glaciers are receding then the annual outflow will exceed the amount of annual snowfall. If the glaciers are expanding then the annual outflow must be less than that the annual snowfall.

    IOW - less water would flow out of the mountains if the glaciers were expanding. This is basic logic and should not be difficult to understand.

    If you take away the glaciers you would still have snowfall accumilating on the mountains and this would store the water during the rainy season and release it during the dry season (this is the cycle that operates in most mountainous places which lost their glaciers long ago).

    Now you might have point if you could demonstrate that warming not only causes the glaciers to melt but prevents snow from forming on the mountain tops. But I have not seen anyone claim that - I have only seen the claim that water supplies will dissappear if the glaciers disappear.

    Of course, even if you can show that the warming stops snow accumulation you also need to remember that humans can build these wonderful things called dams which can store the rain water in the mountains until it is needed.

  • dhogaza // May 21, 2008 at 6:34 pm

    I’m glad Raven’s set us straight, I just hope those water planners who are needlessly worrying about the future listen to him …

  • Raven // May 21, 2008 at 6:51 pm

    dhogaza says:
    “I’m glad Raven’s set us straight, I just hope those water planners who are needlessly worrying about the future listen to him …”

    I live in an region surrounded by mountains without glaciers. We depend on the winter snowfall for the summer water supplies. In some cases this water is trapped in natural reservoirs. In others it is trapped behind dams.

    Water planners in areas that currently have the luxury of extra water provided glacier runoff only have to look to regions like this which have have been managing the annual water cycle for decades. It is not hard nor is it that expensive compared to the cost of a futile attempt to stop the climate from warming in the first place.

    The bottom line is the loss of water from melting glaciers is not an example of a ‘harm’ caused by warming because annual snowfall can provide the same storage effect even without glaciers and when it does not we have tried and true technology that does the same thing.

  • dhogaza // May 21, 2008 at 8:16 pm

    The bottom line is the loss of water from melting glaciers is not an example of a ‘harm’ caused by warming because annual snowfall can provide the same storage effect even without glaciers and when it does not we have tried and true technology that does the same thing.

    So mitigation costs due to warming is not a “harm”. Got it …

  • Dano // May 21, 2008 at 8:21 pm

    The bottom line is the loss of water from melting glaciers is not an example of a ‘harm’ caused by warming because annual snowfall can provide the same storage effect even without glaciers and when it does not we have tried and true technology that does the same thing.

    Yaaaaaaay!

    Raven has solved the receding glacier problem in the Himalaya, Andes and Alps! Right here on a comment thread! Yaaaaaay!

    Someone call the AP, Reuters, BBC quick! Our problems are over!

    Thank you Raven! You’re a real Hero!

    Best,

    D

  • L Miller // May 21, 2008 at 8:37 pm

    Raven, to have ice melt last through the summer you need a source of ice that persists through the summer. Snow melt in the spring is all well and good, but it won’t replace the year round melt water from a glacier.

    You are correct in thinking total precipitation won’t change, but instead of being released at a constant predictable rate through the summer it will cause massive flooding in spring followed by no flow at all in summer. It’s two disasters for the price of one.

  • Dave Andrews // May 21, 2008 at 8:49 pm

    Hank,

    Have a good time wherever it is you are off to.

    Re the “unknown force”, er, could it be the Sun?

  • dhogaza // May 21, 2008 at 9:20 pm

    Re the “unknown force”, er, could it be the Sun?

    Given our efforts to measure everything we know how to measure that comes from the Sun, if so, then it’s going to be something quite new to physics.

    On the other hand, CO2 forcing is well-known physics.

    So let’s see, if forced to choose between something well-known to science vs. something totally unknown to science which should I choose?

  • Lost and Confused // May 21, 2008 at 9:26 pm

    I have no idea why you repeated that quote dhogaza. Without some explanation, it is hard to tell what your point is. Given your track record, I will take it as an implied disagreement.

    The post has two parts. First, refusal to archive data seems dishonest to me. This means my impression is the activity is dishonest, but I am not sure, so I will refrain from passing judgment. The second part says I am no longer unsure when the refusal violates publisher requirements. I am not sure where the confusion or disagreement is.

    Gavin’s Pussycat, the definition I offered was the definition I got is the definition I would get from the combination of the prefix “dis” with “honesty.” The prefix “dis” means “not, opposite of,” which when paired with honesty gives the definition I used.

    I see the same definition offered upon performing an internet search for “definition dishonesty.” The online OALD (which I assume will be acceptable as reference compared to the OALDCE. to which I have no access) provides as its first definition, “not honest.” Wikipedia states both definitions are commonly used, with which I would certainly agree. I see nothing to indicate the definition garnered by combining the meanings of the prefix and root of dishonesty is not a good definition.

    I have used this same definition of dishonesty the entire time I have posted here. I do not know why there is confusion now.

  • Lost and Confused // May 21, 2008 at 9:36 pm

    I apologize for the nonsense paragraph in the previous post. To correct the third paragraph, it should read:

    Gavin’s Pussycat, the definition I offered was a definition I got from the combination of the prefix “dis” with “honesty.” The prefix “dis” means “not, opposite of,” which when paired with honesty gives the definition I used.

  • Raven // May 21, 2008 at 9:48 pm

    dhogaza says:
    “So mitigation costs due to warming is not a “harm”. Got it …”

    Not when the migation costs are much lower than the cost of “stopping” the climate from warming in the first place.

    The climate changes. Humans need to adapt. That’s life. Get over it. There are a lot of higher priority problems that we need to deal with and the CO2 hysteria is an unnecessary distraction.

  • dhogaza // May 21, 2008 at 9:48 pm

    Maybe some thesaurus entries will help you understand common English:

    Noun 1. dishonesty - the quality of being dishonest
    unrighteousness - failure to adhere to moral principles; “forgave us our sins and cleansed us of all unrighteousness”
    corruption, corruptness - lack of integrity or honesty (especially susceptibility to bribery); use of a position of trust for dishonest gain
    unscrupulousness - the quality of unscrupulous dishonesty
    deceptiveness, obliquity - the quality of being deceptive
    deceit, fraudulence - the quality of being fraudulent
    deviousness, crookedness - the quality of being deceitful and underhanded
    shiftiness, trickiness, rascality, slipperiness - the quality of being a slippery rascal
    larcenous, thievishness - having a disposition to steal
    untruthfulness - the quality of being untruthful
    disingenuousness - the quality of being disingenuous and lacking candor
    honestness, honesty - the quality of being honest
    2. dishonesty - lack of honesty; acts of lying or cheating or stealing
    knavery
    actus reus, wrongful conduct, misconduct, wrongdoing - activity that transgresses moral or civil law; “he denied any wrongdoing”
    betrayal, perfidy, treachery, treason - an act of deliberate betrayal
    charlatanism, quackery - the dishonesty of a charlatan
    trick - an attempt to get you to do something foolish or imprudent; “that offer was a dirty trick”
    falsehood, falsification - the act of rendering something false as by fraudulent changes (of documents or measures etc.) or counterfeiting

    This is exactly the same discussion we had about “lie”, in which you tried to withdraw your statements by claiming to use the word in ways that no one else would.

  • Dave Andrews // May 21, 2008 at 9:49 pm

    Dhogaza,

    If CO2 forcing is as you say, why when CO2 levels were so much higher in the past ( Millions of years ago) did we not get into a runaway situation ?

  • dhogaza // May 21, 2008 at 9:55 pm

    L&C claims that McIntyre caused Science to “force” Osborn and Briffa to archive data after they originally failed to do so.

    From L&C’s CA link:

    Science stated that Osborn and Briffa had complied with their policy by depositing their data at WDCP ( here by the date of publication) and that they (SCIENCE) had omitted this reference “by mistake”, which they were now correcting. I confirmed with WDCP that some data had been deposited with them prior to publication and that this data had been placed online prior to Feb 10, 2005. Science also sent me digital chronologies for 13 of 14 sites used in Esper et al 2002 which are now archived at climateaudit here - I don’t know why they wouldn’t archive this at their website).

    So much for L&C’s claim.

    Now, of course, McIntyre bitches that the archived data is munged data, but apparently Science accepts this as meeting their archival needs.

    Regarding Thompson’s “dishonesty”:


    the [Thompson's] publications were prior to the establishment of a policy.

    McIntyre then goes on to imply that Science is lying about this, but I have no reason to believe that his implied accusation is true.

    Of course, it’s possible that L&C is using a definition of the word “before” in ways I’m not familiar with and therefore interpreting the statement somewhat differently than I do …

  • dhogaza // May 21, 2008 at 10:32 pm

    If CO2 forcing is as you say, why when CO2 levels were so much higher in the past ( Millions of years ago) did we not get into a runaway situation ?

    Climate science tells us, and has been telling us for quite a long time, that it is unlikely that runaway warming is a possibility on earth. One reason has to do with the Earth’s distance from the sun compared to Venus:

    Is there a risk that anthropogenic global warming could kick the Earth into a runaway greenhouse state? Almost certainly not. For an atmosphere saturated with water vapor, but with no CO2 in it, the threshold absorbed solar radiation for triggering a runaway greenhouse is about 350 Watts/m2 (see Kasting Icarus 74 (1988)). The addition of up to 8 times present CO2 might bring this threshold down to around 325 Watts/m2 , but the fact that the Earth’s atmosphere is substantially undersaturated with respect to water vapor probably brings the threshold back up to the neighborhood of 375 Watts/m2. Allowing for a 20% albedo (considerably less than the actual albedo of Earth), our present absorbed solar radiation is only about 275 Watts/m2, comfortably below the threshold.

    However, things might change in the future …

    The Earth may well succumb to a runaway greenhouse as the Sun continues to brighten over the next billion years or so

    But I don’t think we should worry about it until we figure out what to do about AGW this century.

  • dhogaza // May 21, 2008 at 10:37 pm

    The key is thought to be that Venus lost its water early on …

    Once water is lost, the reaction that turns carbon dioxide into limestone can no longer take place, so CO2 outgassing from volcanoes accumulates in the atmosphere instead of staying bound up in the rocks. The end state of this process is the current atmosphere of Venus, with essentially no water in the atmosphere and essentially the planet’s whole inventory of carbon in the form of atmospheric CO2.

    As you can imagine, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere of Venus is many orders of magnitude greater than the amount of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere.

    Of course the “lost its water” hypothesis depends on water having been there in the first place, but presumably if there hadn’t been, the process that led to most of the planet’s carbon being in the atmosphere in the form of CO2 is even simpler to explain.

  • David B. Benson // May 21, 2008 at 11:54 pm

    Raven // May 21, 2008 at 3:29 am — Instead of just MSU (Making Stuff Up), you could have first gone to the web to learn just why and how the Bolivian peasants are dependent upon glacier meltwater and non-receeding glaciers.

    And no, they obviously cannot afford to build dams. (Their problems would be alleviated by pipelines, but even that is too expensive.)

    You asked for an example of current harm done by AGW. This was an example. Now actually go do some research to discover why AGW is implicated in the problems the people dependent upon the great lakes of central Africa are having.

  • Dano // May 22, 2008 at 1:35 am

    Raven handwaves:

    The climate changes. Humans need to adapt. That’s life. Get over it. There are a lot of higher priority problems that we need to deal with and the CO2 hysteria is an unnecessary distraction.

    Yes.

    You knew nothing about meltwater from glaciers, yet tried to make some statement and sound confident about it.

    The Google doesn’t have a wisdom button.

    Raven needs a wisdom button, desperately.

    Best,

    D

  • Lost and Confused // May 22, 2008 at 3:12 am

    First, there is no source for those definitions dhogaza. Second, they do not disagree with the one I used. The first obviously does not disagree, and the second agrees in the first portion. The word “dishonesty” is commonly used in multiple ways. One way is the way in which I used it. I provided a couple sources agreeing which are easily verifiable. If you want to disagree with my usage, you be obligated to show some flaw in them. You have made no attempt to do so.

    On the issue of data archiving. In regards to the second remark by dhogaza, that was Science’s response. As I previously stated, I had mistakenly used Science in posts rather than Climate Change. On Osborn and Briffa, I never stated Science forced Osborn and Briffa to archive their data. In this regard, dhogaza’s post misrepresents my comments. I freely admit to having made a mistake by thinking the Osborn and Briffa issue was an example of dishonesty. I thank dhogaza for showing me this. I had never discussed that topic, and had only briefly looked at it, so I am grateful to have this mistake pointed out to me.

    I would ask dhogaza to correct his misrepresentation discussed here, as well as the incorrect representation of the disagreement on “dishonesty.”

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 22, 2008 at 4:46 am

    L&C, but that begs the question what you have for “honesty” in your personal word list ;-)

    I find it more useful to define dishonesty, because it requires an active effort, than honesty, which does not. Dishonesty to oneself requires a continuous maintenance effort and wears you down. Give it up already, L&C. Feel better.

  • Barton Paul Levenson // May 22, 2008 at 8:44 am

    Raven writes:

    The amount of water coming out of the mountains is the sum of the annual snowfall and the glacier melt minus the amount of snowfall that gets added to the glacier each year.

    If the glaciers are receding then the annual outflow will exceed the amount of annual snowfall. If the glaciers are expanding then the annual outflow must be less than that the annual snowfall.

    You seem to be assuming that the atmosphere over Bolivian glaciers is a closed system. Not so. If depleted of moisture, moisture will come in from elsewhere. It’s drawing on the world’s oceans and transpiration on land.

  • Barton Paul Levenson // May 22, 2008 at 8:48 am

    Raven writes:

    The climate changes. Humans need to adapt. That’s life. Get over it. There are a lot of higher priority problems that we need to deal with and the CO2 hysteria is an unnecessary distraction.

    And while we’re at it, that AIDS thing? Treatable with AZT. Get over it. And drug-resistant TB now infecting a third of humanity? Hey, sanitaria worked in the 19th century. That’s life, pal. And the genocide thing? Hey, sh*t happens. You don’t need to prevent genocide, you need to adapt to it. That’s life. Get over it.

  • Barton Paul Levenson // May 22, 2008 at 8:49 am

    Dave Andrews posts:

    If CO2 forcing is as you say, why when CO2 levels were so much higher in the past ( Millions of years ago) did we not get into a runaway situation ?

    Because the levels of CO2 weren’t high enough for that? Try googling “runaway glaciation” + Venus + Earth + Mars + “saturation.”

  • dhogaza // May 22, 2008 at 2:19 pm

    On Osborn and Briffa, I never stated Science forced Osborn and Briffa to archive their data. In this regard, dhogaza’s post misrepresents my comments.

    So let’s see … first you say Thompson is dishonest, and Science forced him to archive his data. Then you say, oh, wait, it was Osborn and Briffa, not Thompson. Now you’re saying that when you said so, you didn’t mean Science forced Osborn and Briffa to archive their data, even though it was them, not Thompson, you were talking about when you mentioned Science forcing someone to archive your data. Now you’re saying it was Climate Change, not Science.

    And after all this confusing story-changing, you have the balls to complain that I misrepresent your comments?

    First, there is no source for those definitions dhogaza

    They’re not definitions, they’re from a thesaurus , thus are synonyms.

    I am grateful to have this mistake pointed out to me.

    You mean your dishonest lie, right, using those two words in the way you’re accustomed to?

    How about in the future, you get your facts straight before accusing scientists of nefarious deeds so the rest of us don’t have to waste our time proving that you’ve got your facts wrong?

    And I can’t imagine you’ll be surprised to learn that you’ve totally blown your credibility here.

    Credibility is a bit like virginity, you can only lose it once.

  • Dave Andrews // May 22, 2008 at 8:33 pm

    BPL,

    OK, so how come in the Late Ordovician Period an ice age occurred when CO2 was over 4000 ppm?

    Surely, if the AGW theory is correct, and according to Hansen if we double CO2 to 560 ppm temps will rise 6 degrees , which will spell disaster (paraphrase of his words not mine), then when CO2 was at over 4000 ppm the Earth must have been in SERIOUS TROUBLE.

    But here we are amicably discussing things on a blog.

  • dhogaza // May 23, 2008 at 2:35 am

    Try this

    Continents drift, remember?

  • David B. Benson // May 23, 2008 at 2:47 am

    Dave Andrews // May 22, 2008 at 8:33 pm — Learn about the dim Sun hypothesis and also about the different location of the continents.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 23, 2008 at 11:03 am

    Dave A., in his usual ignorance, points out

    OK, so how come in the Late Ordovician Period an ice age occurred when CO2 was over 4000 ppm?

    The word “when”. There’s a universe of meaning behind that little word, Dave, when talking about things that happened 600-plus million years ago. The dating problem. Summary: those two events happened successively, not simultaneously; but that wasn’t initially obvious. Your info is old.

    The ice age occurred first, shrouding the whole planet in white and shutting down the weathering processes that take CO2 out of the atmosphere. Volcanism just kept slowly adding the stuff, but the albedo kept the planet on ice until CO2 concentrations became really huge, like the 4000 ppm you quote.

    Only then did the ice start melting, runaway fashion, turning the planet into a pole-to-pole hothouse. The geological evidence is spectacular.

    …then when CO2 was at over 4000 ppm the Earth must have been in SERIOUS TROUBLE.

    She was, though no blogs remain. Google for “Snowball Earth” and “Cap Carbonates”.

  • Dano // May 23, 2008 at 1:54 pm

    OK, so how come in the Late Ordovician Period an ice age occurred when CO2 was over 4000 ppm?

    First, I’m sure decision-makers across the planet find that basing their decision-making from a time when the earth had most of its land mass locked up in one continent (and at the time of the ice age it passed thru the south pole) might have a problem or two.

    But here we are amiably discussing decision-making on a blog. Let me go ask one of my decision-makers what they know about the middle Ordovician, and how humans mediated conflict back then.

    Best,

    D

  • Barton Paul Levenson // May 23, 2008 at 2:11 pm

    Dave Andrews posts:

    OK, so how come in the Late Ordovician Period an ice age occurred when CO2 was over 4000 ppm?

    Because CO2 isn’t the only thing that determines climate.

    Other people have answered this above; Gavin’s Pussycat has a particularly good explanation. I’ll add what I can.

    In the very long run, the “carbonate-silicate feedback” (Walker et al. 1981) stabilizes the planet’s temperature.

    When temperature goes up, there is more weathering (CO2 + H2O => HCO3), and carbon dioxide comes out of the atmosphere and goes into the oceans, which acts to reduce temperatures.

    When temperatures go down, there is less weathering, and carbon dioxide from volcanoes and metamorphism gradually builds up in the atmosphere, which acts to increase temperatures.

    The stabilization mechanism isn’t perfect. We have had several worldwide glaciations, including the “Huronian” glaciation 2.3 billion years ago, and the “Sturtian” and “Varanger” glaciations 800 million and 600 million years ago, respectively. When that happens, the “snowball Earth” is gradually replaced by a “hothouse Earth” until things settle down again.

    From crude energy-balance climate models written in 1969 (Budyko, Sellers), it appeared that just a few percent reduction in sunlight could glaciate the Earth permanently. Coupled with the knowledge that a runaway greenhouse effect would take place if Earth were a few percent closer to the sun (Ingersoll 1969, Rasool and de Bergh 1970), it indicated that the “ecosphere” or “continuously habitable zone” of a sunlike star might be very narrow, and Earthlike planets consequently rare. Michael Hart at NASA published a computer model in 1978 that showed such effects, noting specifically that when the Earth in his simulation glaciated, it never recovered.

    All this had to be thrown out when Walker et al. published a paper in 1981 noting the silicate-carbonate feedback. Since then, astronomers have believed in wide ecospheres/CHZs, and it’s likely that there are many “Earths” out there.

    But in general, if everything else is kept the same, more CO2 in the atmosphere mean a warmer global climate.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 23, 2008 at 6:31 pm

    BPL, I wasn’t aware of this historical background, although I was actively reading science already then.. Thanks!

    It is BTW not true that the transition from snowball to hothouse was gradual. On the contrary, it was a catastrophic run-away deglaciation like the preceding glaciation. When the edge of the ice sheet reaches 45 degrees latitude, the albedo feedback exceeds 100% — in both directions. We have a hysteresis phenomenon here, where the same CO2 concentration is on two branches, a warm and a cold one.

    There are unlikely to be quite similar situations in the present climate system; the sea floor clathrates and tundra methane come to mind, that might suddenly and lethally wipe all sensitivity calculations off the table.

    There has also been much speculation about how life could survive the snowball, even with severely reduced species diversity. There may have been marine “refugia” close to the equator and to volcanic vents. Or even under the sea ice, polished to glass-plate translucence by a cork-dry cloudless blizzard at -20C.

    Life itself may have played a role in starting one of the later glaciations, by the roots of the new land plants breaking open the rock, facilitating the weathering by CO2.

  • Dave Andrews // May 23, 2008 at 9:15 pm

    Hi guys,

    Seems there are about three people, Hoffman etc, who believe in snowball earth and many geologists who do not. (Maybe you’ve just doubled their fellowship!)

    What about this from Crowley & Baum 1995?”

    Geochemical data and models suggest a positive correlation between carbon dioxide changes and climate during the last 540m.y. The most dramatic exception to this correlation involves the Late Ordovician (440Ma) glaciation, which occurred at a time when CO2 levels may have been much greater than present ( 14-16X)?”

    Meanwhile the carbonate- silicate feedback “is not well known” (Velbel, Geology Dec 1993)

    And GP, don’t tell anyone but an ancient mystic has given me records of the blogs at that time and they would certainly help Dano with his/her decision makers LOL

  • David B. Benson // May 23, 2008 at 9:21 pm

    There is now some evidence to indicate that Snowball Earth was not 100% ice/snow covered.

  • dhogaza // May 23, 2008 at 10:24 pm

    Can’t access the Velbel paper but something about Dave Andrews makes me think “quote mine”, and something about 1993 makes me think “what was true or not 15 years ago tells us little about what’s true today”.

  • dhogaza // May 23, 2008 at 10:25 pm

    Here’s the full abstract for Crowley and Baum (1995). The portion quoted by Dave Andrews in bold …

    Geochemical data and models suggest a positive correlation between carbon dioxide changes and climate during the last 540 m.y. The most dramatic exception to this correlation involves the Late Ordovician (440 Ma) glaciation, which occurred at a time when CO2 levels may have been much greater than present (14-16X?). Since decreased solar luminosity at that time only partially offset increased radiative forcing from CO2, some other factor needs to be considered to explain the glaciation. Prior work with energy balance models (EBMs) suggested that the unique geographic configuration of Gondwanaland at that time may have resulted in a small area of parameter space permittng permanent snow cover and higher CO2 levels. However, the crude snow and sea ice parameterizations in the EBM left these conclusiosn open to further scrutiny. Herein we present results from four experiments with the GENESIS general circulation model with CO2 levels 14X greater than present, solar luminosity reduced 4.5%, and an orbital configuration set for minimum summer insolation receipt. We examined the effects of different combinations of ocean heat transport and topography on high-latitude snow cover on Gondwanaland. For the no-elevation simulations we failed to simulate permanent summer snow cover. However, for the slightly elevated topography cases (300-500 m), permanent summer snow cover occurs where geological data indicate the Ordovician ice sheet was present. These results support the hypothesis based on EBM studies. Further results indicate that although average runoff per grid point increases substantially for the Ordovician runs, the decreased land area results in global runoff 10-30% less than present, with largest runoff reduction for flat topography. This response has implications for CO2-runoff/weathering parameterizations in geochemical models. Finally, simulated tropical sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are the same or only marginally warmer than present. This result is consistent with evidence from other warm time intervals indicating small changes in tropical SSTs during times of high CO2.

    Nothing there to indicate the authors believe there’s anything wrong with our understanding of CO2 forcing, Dave.

    Why didn’t you provide the entire abstract in the first place?

  • Hansen's Bulldog // May 24, 2008 at 3:06 am

    I’m taking the wife on a getaway weekend trip, so moderation will be delayed for a day or two. As usual, patience is greatly appreciated.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 24, 2008 at 6:46 am

    David, dhogaza: that abstract looks like a “partial snowball”, facilitated by a special continental geometry.

    Have to read up :-)

    BTW didn’t anyone notice my error “600-plus million years”? Tsk tsk.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 24, 2008 at 8:33 am

    dhogaza, you were not far off on Velbel 93… the quote was mined from the introduction (not quoted here).

    ABSTRACT
    Estimation of the temperature dependence of natural
    feldspar weathering in two catchments
    at different elevations yields an apparent
    Arrhenius activation energy of 18.4 kcal/mol
    (77.0 kj/mol), much higher than most laboratory
    values.This finding supports recent sugges-
    tions that hydrolytic weathering of silicate
    minerals may consume carbonic acid and thereby
    remove atmospheric carbon dioxide more rapidly
    with increasing temperaturethan previously
    thought. This result provides a stronger negative
    feedback on long-term greenhouse warming
    than has been assumed in most models of global
    carbon cycling. The present estimate was
    determined from the ratio of feldspar weathering
    rates (determined by geochemical mass
    balance) in the southern Blue Ridge Mountains of
    North Carolina, United States.Temperature
    (a function of elevation) is the only factor that
    differs between the two catchments; parent
    rock type, aspect, hillslope hydrology, and
    vegetation type and successional stage are
    the same in both.

  • Dave Andrews // May 24, 2008 at 7:42 pm

    Dhogaza,

    My quote from Crowley and Baum (1995) was specifically made in relation to GP’s assertion that the ice age came first and the CO2 increase from volcanic activity later and other comments about ’snowball earth’.

    Ok, so for the sake of argument lets assume the ’snowball earth’ theory is correct. But that would have related to the early Cambrian period c 600mya, as would GP’s comment.

    My original post and the quote from Crowley and Baum relate to the late Ordovician approx 44omya, 160m years later and at a time, as Crowley and Baum say, a glaciation occurred when CO2 levels were 14-16 times greater than present.

    How does that squre with your understanding of CO2 forcing?

  • dhogaza // May 24, 2008 at 9:23 pm

    Crowley and Baum say, a glaciation occurred when CO2 levels were 14-16 times greater than present.

    How does that squre with your understanding of CO2 forcing?

    Given that they reproduced the glaciation in appropriate locations that match the geological record using a global circulation model which implements our understanding of CO2 forcing, I’d say it squares very, very well.

  • L Miller // May 25, 2008 at 2:01 am

    My original post and the quote from Crowley and Baum relate to the late Ordovician approx 44omya, 160m years later and at a time, as Crowley and Baum say, a glaciation occurred when CO2 levels were 14-16 times greater than present.

    CO2 *dropped* from 7000 ppm to 4000 ppm just as the ice age that ended the Ordovician began. Keep in mind almost all the earths landmass was near the poles and the suns output was ~5% weaker then today. For comparison, the swing from solar maximum to solar minimum is only ~0.1%

  • Lost and Confused // May 25, 2008 at 3:40 am

    Gavin’s Pussycat, I already offered a definition of honesty. I have furthered shown my usage of “dishonesty” is common usage. If you still disagree with my usage, would you mind showing how my explanation is wrong?

    I am not sure how to understand one of your comments dhogaza. I pointed out you offered no source for your definitions, to which your responded, “They’re not definitions, they’re from a thesaurus , thus are synonyms.” This completely misses the main point, being the lack of source. It is also wrong, as each word listed, including dishonesty, has a definition listed. Clearly there are definitions, and there is no source for them. I am going to assume this was just an oversight, but would you correct this? Would you also provide the source for those definitions?

    Anyways, I skipped over your summary of events, as the first line, “So let’s see … first you say Thompson is dishonest,” is untrue. I never made such an accusation, so it seems pointless to bother reading the rest. If you correct this misrepresentation, I will read the rest.

    Also, I only changed my “story” twice. The first time was to correct the mistake where I used Science in place of Climate Change when discussing Thompson. The second was to retract my claims regarding Osborn and Briffa, which I learned were incorrect. My mistakes may make me a buffoon, but I admit and correct them. That is the nature of open and honest discussion. I ask dhogaza and Hank Roberts to correct their misrepresentations.

    I think it would be pointless to have a discussion if both sides will not admit their mistakes.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 25, 2008 at 9:04 am

    Dave, yes, I mixed up the older Snowball Earth episode with the late Ordovician glaciation, which was only partial. Sorry for the confusion.

    What remains valid is the remark on timing. Over most of the Ordovician CO2 was high as you wrote, and the climate warmer than today in spite of a 4% weaker Sun; it is only toward the end that there was a drop in CO2 leading to a short succession of ice ages. It is all well explained on Wikipedia. The science has advanced since 1995.

  • Barton Paul Levenson // May 25, 2008 at 11:22 am

    Jesus, Dave, how many ways do you want us to answer the same damn question? You’ve had it explained to you repeatedly. Go back and read the responses again, until they sink in.

  • dhogaza // May 25, 2008 at 1:34 pm

    I am not sure how to understand one of your comments dhogaza. I pointed out you offered no source for your definitions, to which your responded, “They’re not definitions, they’re from a thesaurus , thus are synonyms.” This completely misses the main point, being the lack of source. It is also wrong, as each word listed, including dishonesty, has a definition listed. Clearly there are definitions, and there is no source for them. I am going to assume this was just an oversight, but would you correct this? Would you also provide the source for those definitions?

    What a whiner you are. They’re from an online thesaurus, just as I said the first time (though I left out the word “online”, it should be clear I cut-and-pasted from an online source rather that laboriously type the synonyms in by hand).

    You can find it using Google.

    As for having a discussion, there’s not much point. You’re too lazy to make sure you’re right before you start flinging crap around, and after being laboriously corrected post stuff like this:

    I skipped over your summary of events, as the first line, “So let’s see … first you say Thompson is dishonest,” is untrue. I never made such an accusation

    Whiney, and untrue, because earlier you said this about Thompson.

    Refusal to archive data always seems dishonest to me, but when doing so violates the publisher’s (Science) requirements, there can be no doubt.

    Accusing someone of making a dishonest act is to accuse them of being dishonest, so your claim to have never so accused Thompson is another lie on your part.

    Why don’t you just go back over to CA and muck about with your buddies over there who share your sense of right and wrong and leave us honest (used in the everyday dictionary sense) people alone?

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 25, 2008 at 6:09 pm

    L&C, just phone my lawyer ;-)

  • David B. Benson // May 25, 2008 at 10:08 pm

    Ordovician glaciation with 16 times the CO2 concentration:

    Current average temperature in Antarctica: (273-50) K
    Current climate sensitivity to doubled CO2: 3 K
    To 16 times: 4×3 = 12 K
    Resulting average temperature in Antarctica: (273-38) K

    Cold enough for you?

  • Dave Andrews // May 26, 2008 at 7:31 pm

    DB

    So are you saying doubled CO2 does’nt make a difference globally or only in Antarctica?

  • drawp // May 26, 2008 at 7:47 pm

    Speaking of heeding the warnings of scientists about lead poisoning, global warming etc.; it was not too long ago that we were all advised to quit saturated fats like butter and eat only hydrogenated fats like margarine. Only one government scientist - a few years ago- had the honesty to publicaly apologize for killing thousands of people!!
    When it comes to predicting the behavior of complex systems like climate and humans, scientists should shed their mantle of infallibility.

  • Dave Andrews // May 26, 2008 at 7:54 pm

    GP,

    Thanks for the clarification. Accept landmass configuration and Sun strength play a part but still have questions which I will have to look into further.

    I am reluctant to rely on Wikipedia since it can be manipulated so easily. Why are so many scientific papers behind ‘paywalls’, even relatively older ones?

  • dhogaza // May 26, 2008 at 7:55 pm

    So are you saying doubled CO2 does’nt make a difference globally or only in Antarctica?

    He said no such thing. Read.

  • dhogaza // May 26, 2008 at 7:58 pm

    When it comes to predicting the behavior of complex systems like climate and humans, scientists should shed their mantle of infallibility.

    When it comes to science denialism, denialists should shed the strawman argument that scientists claim to be infallible.

    They should also shed the argument that the fact that science is sometimes wrong means that science is always wrong.

  • Hank Roberts // May 26, 2008 at 9:36 pm

    Cite please? I hear this claim but have never been able to get anyone to tell me where they get the story from. Can you?

    This fits my recollection, from living through it: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TDC-47T2PW7-F&_user=5199400&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000066519&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=5199400&md5=e698e1b5c1dee7dd78ec3ed47de93326

    I recall advice to avoid “saturated fats” — and industry responding by inventing trans fats, which weren’t warned against until enough people had consumed them to accumulate an epidemiological record.

    Why trans fats? Nothing like them in nature.
    Much industry involvement in how the warning to consume moderate amounts and mostly plant source fats got misinterpreted into advice to use lots of hydrogenated corn oil. Wonder why?

  • David B. Benson // May 26, 2008 at 11:12 pm

    Dave Andrews // May 26, 2008 at 7:31 pm — The point is that Antarctica is so cold (on average) that even lots of warming still leaves it freezingly cold, year round.

  • JCH // May 27, 2008 at 12:41 am

    “Why are so many scientific papers behind ‘paywalls’, even relatively older ones? …”

    So they can raise money to catch up on archiving?

  • Lost and Confused // May 27, 2008 at 3:52 am

    It seems the latest “discussion” I was having is over, but I want to point out two last things, because they strike me as extremely odd. One, the notion that accusing someone of a dishonest act is the same as accusing that person of being dishonest is absurd. If I see someone take something from a store without paying, I would say I saw them take something without paying, which is stealing. I would not accuse the person of being a thief, because I would not know why the person did it. For all I could tell, it could be a mistake, where the person did not mean to steal. Accusing a person of a type of activity is far different than accusing a person of a type of character.

    The second is even more outlandish. From a person who demanded I provide sources/citations, the response given to the a request for a source is, “You can find it using Google.” So dhogaza refuses to provide his source yet demands others provide theirs, he also refuses to admit his own false statements but demands others retract theirs, and he does this while insisting the other people are trolls.

    To be blunt, this is ludicrous. I have no idea how anyone can continue to take dhogaza seriously. I will gladly participate in a discussion on this blog, but I refuse to respond to dhogaza any more. If anyone has questions or problems with my statements, feel free to tell me. Otherwise I am taking a break from Open Threads.

  • dhogaza // May 27, 2008 at 3:57 am

    “Why are so many scientific papers behind ‘paywalls’, even relatively older ones? …”

    So they can raise money to catch up on archiving?

    So certain people can then complain about archiving not being done the way they want archiving to be done (free, and with handholding!)?

  • Barton Paul Levenson // May 27, 2008 at 12:02 pm

    L&C posts:

    One, the notion that accusing someone of a dishonest act is the same as accusing that person of being dishonest is absurd.

    Is that an example of reasoning as practiced on your planet?

    “Accusing someone of murdering a person is not the same as calling that person a murderer.”

    “Accusing someone of deliberately starting forest fires is not the same as calling that person an arsonist.”

  • dhogaza // May 27, 2008 at 12:17 pm

    People who steal aren’t thieves.

    I think L&C is a far more clever troll than most, but surely he’s trolling. His black-is-white use of the English language just has to be clever bait.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // May 27, 2008 at 3:06 pm

    Dave, yes, finding good accessible articles is a bit of a problem. I find it irritating too. Wikipedia can usually be trusted to give a decent overview of these more technical subjects, often written by people in the field.

    Google Scholar gives lots of references for “late ordovician glaciation”. Some look useful.

  • Heretic // May 27, 2008 at 6:05 pm

    L&C, “sources” apply to information, and in the context of this blog, more specifically scientific information. For the definition of words, well, dictionaries and thesauruses don’t show that much variability.

    The way you’re heading right now, seems we’re in for a discussion on the meaning of “is.”

  • Dave Andrews // May 27, 2008 at 7:43 pm

    Dhogaza

    “So certain people can then complain about archiving not being done the way they want archiving to be done (free, and with handholding!)?”

    I think you totally miss the point here. Climate science is not the same as, say two archaeologists arguing over the relevance of certain artifacts to an ancient civilisation.

    The IPCC process will impact upon everyone on Earth, it has tremendous policy implications. It is natural therefore that people will want to study and question the science. The possible ramifications of this science are so great that it cannot just be dealt with in the “business as usual way”.

    It really behoves climate scientists to insist that their work is readily and freely available to ordinary people.

  • Hank Roberts // May 27, 2008 at 9:48 pm

    Dave, tell this to your employer about your work. Let us know how far you get.

    While there’s a great effort being made to open science up, much is under contract terms held by the people who published it. That’s not the authors, it’s not theirs to release.

    You risk sounding like a ‘concern troll’ if you keep insisting people who can’t do something must do it, without working yourself to contact those who can do it and get it done.

    Tell them your goal is to nationalize the science done by climate scientists for the good of the people.

    Most of the paleo climate work is in the hands of the petroleum companies, by far. Ask your oil company to open their archives.

    Better yet, talk to your government.

  • kim // May 28, 2008 at 1:01 pm

    By the way, the answer to Steve’s important question as to why the models’ confidence intervals haven’t narrowed over time is the great uncertainty in optical path length T.

    H/t Miscolzi
    ==========

  • kim // May 28, 2008 at 1:10 pm

    By the way, Dano, thanks for the link to Climate Progress. Joe Romm is a smart guy but it isn’t hard to find his ideological pressure points. He banned me after only two days of enjoyable conversation. I’m not familiar enough over there to know if his frenzy of deleting was something special, or standard operating procedure, but it seemed obvious he’s spun just the sort of cocoon where creatures like you can develop to their full potential.
    =============================

  • Dano // May 28, 2008 at 2:05 pm

    He banned me after only two days of enjoyable conversation.

    He banned the kim bot for spreading FUD, lies, comment spam, and disinformation.

    The bot continued to spread FUD even after receiving input that the bot output was suboptimal wrt facts.

    Smarter bot programmers, please.

    Best,

    D

  • Hank Roberts // May 28, 2008 at 8:39 pm

    Odd they haven’t tried adding a module to do retroactive citation.* Not that it would be useful, but it would add a frisson of superficial credibility to the output, for naive readers who are the targets.

    ———–
    *Retroactive citation: going back through the paper/chapter/thesis you just wrote and adding in the citations now that you know what it was they needed to support.
    http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~chikken/legacy/thinking-september.html

  • David B. Benson // May 28, 2008 at 9:04 pm

    kim // May 28, 2008 at 1:10 pm — I, too, became very tired of your “even I don’t know when the global cooling will stop”.

    What hubris…

  • Dave Andrews // May 28, 2008 at 9:13 pm

    Hank,

    Trust you had a good respite.

    Are you saying that all those academics working in climate science who are public employees cannot assert themselves. From whom does the approx $4-5 billion pa US govt climate research funding come?

    Oh, hang on a minute, that’s an awful lot of money the flow of which we don’t want to jeopardize. So lets divert attention by mentioning oil companies.

    Ok, so I’ll go after the oil paleos, you pursue the climate academics. Perhaps together we can democratise the issue.

  • kim // May 29, 2008 at 2:15 am

    David, you have it wrong. The cloying phrase is:

    We are cooling, folks. For how long even I don’t know.

    Hubris might be in thinking it is not cooling, or perhaps in claiming to know for how long we are cooling. My position looks at the thermometer now compared to the recent past, and declares humility about the future readings of same thermometer. Hubris, that ain’t; you are responding to a little joke, the clever phrase ‘even I’. Nice, huh?
    ==========================

  • Hank Roberts // May 29, 2008 at 3:02 am

    http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2288632
    is a good summary of the progress made — and of how long this issue has been important — with academic publishing.

    I’m not aware of any similar information about opening up corporate records. Let’s hope.

    Meanwhile do remember that authors will often make their own work available either on web sites, or in response to courteous email requests, or by the old method, mailing a paper offprint for the courtesy of a self-addressed stamped envelope enclosed in a letter asking for a copy.

    Ask for help finding anything you know is paywalled — say what you’ve already tried, to save others duplicating your effort — and someone may suggest another alternative.

  • Rattus Norvegicus // May 29, 2008 at 3:29 am

    But remember to correspond with the corresponding author.

  • Dano // May 29, 2008 at 2:52 pm

    We are cooling, folks. For how long even I don’t know.

    For zero years.

    We know the kim is a spam bot, because a person is able to learn.

    Too bad the kim bot reply routine is a recursive repetition output.

    —–

    wrt corresponding author: rarely has a request for a paper been turned down.

    Real scientists share their knowledge - that’s why they do it.

    Best,

    D

  • Hank Roberts // May 29, 2008 at 6:52 pm

    http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080528/full/453569a.html

    [Response: Indeed this is a very interesting paper, and it's making the rounds of the blogosphere right now. Maybe I'll post about it.]

  • dhogaza // May 29, 2008 at 7:24 pm

    That link doesn’t appear to work (um, hell, it *doesn’t* work :)

    I’ve only read the summary in the press. It’s very interesting.

    I see that McIntyre is being his usual graceful, humble self.

    [Response: The link works fine for me.

    And you're quite right, it's not exactly endearing for McIntyre to try to take credit for this.]

  • Hank Roberts // May 29, 2008 at 8:05 pm

    Chuckle. I wonder if he cites prior sources; a few minutes’ searching finds them aplenty. Our “naval war changes climage” friend talked about it long ago; so did John Daly, the Larouchies, and many scientists. As an example, only one example:

    Second JCOMM Workshop on Advances in Marine Climatology (CLIMAR-II), Brussels
    F. Fetterer’s informal unedited notes.
    Wednesday 19 November 2003
    ——-excerpt follows———-
    SST
    Looking at temperature records from bucket and intake, intake has more variability. Difficult problem to get errors out to the point where useful for climatology, because lots of errors, most are correlated, and most not well-known.
    Significant and time-varying differences between bucket and intake temps
    Need to understand before can use for climatology
    ——–end excerpt——–

    As with any science, what matters is who follows through to study a question once raised.

  • Hank Roberts // May 29, 2008 at 8:10 pm

    Oh, that’s from a simple Google search for bucket water temperature intake that popped up the example I gave and others I mentioned.
    http://nsidc.org/noaa/search/CLIMAR_II_notes.doc

  • dhogaza // May 29, 2008 at 8:50 pm

    Huh, link works now, server problem before I guess. Even I know how to click a link.

    McIntyre’s commented directly on the nature news site. Apparently he thinks his previous posting of speculative scenarios are equivalent to the hard work of actually tracking down sources in order to pin things down accurately.

    And apparently he’s miffed because Thompson and his co-researchers don’t read his blog.

  • Hank Roberts // May 29, 2008 at 9:05 pm

    That’s the “someone else should do the work of verifying my ideas” method of doing science.

  • Dave Andrews // May 29, 2008 at 9:38 pm

    Hank,

    “Ask for help finding anything you know is paywalled — say what you’ve already tried, to save others duplicating your effort — and someone may suggest another alternative.”

    Well, where to begin since everything from AGU, Science, IJC and Nature is behind a paywall?

    Whilst this may not matter to those in Academia as their institutions cover the costs, at a stroke it disenfranchises the majority of the population who are the ones who will be affected by and have to pay for the policy measures based on the science.

    That certainly

  • Dave Andrews // May 29, 2008 at 9:40 pm

    Hank,

    Not sure where the “That certainly” camee from at the end - ignore.

  • David B. Benson // May 29, 2008 at 10:51 pm

    For paywalled papers, first see if you can find the ‘preprint’ copy on one of the authors’s web sites. If not, see if you can find the e-mail address of the corresponding author. Write a polite, short e-mail asking for an electronic copy.

    For books, try your local lending library. If not, pay, read and give to your local lending library when you are done with it.

  • Hank Roberts // May 29, 2008 at 11:11 pm

    > where to begin
    Snailmail a SASE or email the author and request a copy; if several, look for one listed as the “corresponding author” on the abstract.

  • Hank Roberts // May 29, 2008 at 11:46 pm

    Oh, and do state that the $9 for AGU copies or similar fee for other publications is unaffordable and that you aren’t within convenient reach of a public library; most of us recall having to get out of our chairs to do research, and you do need to make a case that you’re deprived not lazy when asking scientists to take personal time to get you material. This is not meant to be abusive, it’s serious. Life is short, time is fleeting, the craft is long to learn, and that’s why we pay taxes for public libraries.

    Yes, this will change. No, not before breakfast.

  • dhogaza // May 30, 2008 at 4:01 am

    And if the journal’s a bit too specialist for your metropolitan public library, go to a local university. In my experience, at least, they’re concerned with people sneaking in to steal books (or students not sneaking in to steal books) so the security is all about keeping you from stealing material, and you can just walk in and read to your heart’s content.

    But, as Hank says, you need to get off your ass, which in your case may make you feel “unfranchised”.

    But hell, real live scientists do the same thing when they’re looking for something their department or they themselves aren’t subscribed to.

  • Deech56 // May 30, 2008 at 12:53 pm

    Hank Roberts, thanks for the heads-up on the book “Under a Green Sky.” Just finished it and it is a fascinating read. Of course, fossils were a particular interest of mine way back when before medical research beckoned.

    And authors are generally very happy to provide reprints, especially to those who have no other easy means of obtaining a manuscript. I would have to say that I’ve never actually gotten a SASE as part of a reprint request - figuring out the postage would be tricky and most investigators have means for sending reprints out. A PDF by e-mail is easiest, but for snail mail an address block that can be snipped and taped to an envelope works well, too.

  • Hank Roberts // May 30, 2008 at 2:39 pm

    Well, one thing important to remember — the journals aren’t US Government products; many of the researchers are overseas. Any grant has its terms for how information is made available.

    There’s a peculiar sense of entitlement from the grandchildren of the US citizens who fought in World War II that their ancestors saved the world so the current generation of childre have the right to take anything in the world that they fancy. This is stupid.

  • Dano // May 30, 2008 at 2:44 pm

    Whilst this may not matter to those in Academia as their institutions cover the costs, at a stroke it disenfranchises the majority of the population who are the ones who will be affected by and have to pay for the policy measures based on the science.

    Yeah, sure.

    I learned everything I needed to know about solder and turbulent flow in pipes, so I’m not disenfranchised when they come out to fix my toilet.

    Similarly, I took EE classes so the electrician doesn’t disenfranchise me on the service call.

    I learned everything there is to know about Alexander Graham Bell so that second line I had put in for The Google didn’t disenfranchise me.

    Structural stress and specific gravity? So I wasn’t disenfranchised by the carpenter…

    IOW: pfffffft.

    If you can’t figure out how to get a paper, you aren’t going to understand what’s written in it, let alone be able to speak to it for policy implications.

    Please.

    Best,

    D

  • Dave Andrews // May 30, 2008 at 7:34 pm

    Well, thank you all for your helpful advice, such basic things that can be done. I wonder why I had never figured any of them out for myself?

    And such assumptions. I’m aUK citizen - no way for you to know that , of course, but don’t assume things are how you imagine them to be.

    And it’s not just about getting hold of “a paper”, Dhogaza, there are myriads of relevant papers. As you seem to be so well acquainted with them perhaps you could give me a list of your top 100 to check against my list.

    The wider point that you all ignore is that that I stated in a previous post. The ramifications of climate change could be so huge that it is not sufficient for scientists to say the science will continue in a ‘business as usual’ way.

  • Dano // May 30, 2008 at 8:39 pm

    The ramifications of climate change could be so huge that it is not sufficient for scientists to say the science will continue in a ‘business as usual’ way.

    Lordy, let’s hope science doesn’t continue in a business-as-usual way.

    The reductionist, Cartesian-Platonic model isn’t sufficient for the job, IMHO. We need a more humane/moral system of scientific inquiry.

    Trouble is, tho, the status quo is doing its d*mnedest to marginalize the few scientists sounding humane/moral alarms when they step out of their little Cartesian boxes.

    Best,

    D

  • dhogaza // May 30, 2008 at 10:10 pm

    And such assumptions. I’m aUK citizen - no way for you to know that , of course, but don’t assume things are how you imagine them to be.

    They don’t have libraries in the UK? Nor a postal service?

    My, things have really gotten primitive there since my last visit.

    And earlier you whined:

    re you saying that all those academics working in climate science who are public employees cannot assert themselves. From whom does the approx $4-5 billion pa US govt climate research funding come?

    As a US citizen and taxpayer, why should I care about some brit whining that he’s not got free access to something I helped pay for?

  • Hank Roberts // May 30, 2008 at 10:16 pm

    The top 100 will depend on your exact area of expertise. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is a monolithic area, it’s a synthesis of a lot of work in a great many different areas of investigation, often being pursued for their own intrinsic interest and then found useful later by other researchers.

    What’s your particular area of expertise?

  • Hank Roberts // May 30, 2008 at 10:22 pm

    PS, Dave, if you’re really just doing the “I’m so concerned for other people” thing, let me know and I’ll quit replying. If you have particular real needs and can’t figure out how to solve them, say so.

  • Deech56 // May 31, 2008 at 1:58 am

    Dave Andrews, you’re complaining that a ton of papers that the public should audit are behind paywalls? You have gotten all kinds of suggestions on how to get manuscripts. Science and/or Nature can be found in public libraries and you should be able to find those papers, but the others are published in journals that vary in terms of free access. Even paper research has a cost, and for scientists these costs are borne by their institutions. you cannot expect to get something for free that others have to pay for. TANSTAAFL.

  • Dave Andrews // May 31, 2008 at 9:19 pm

    Dhogaza,

    “as a US citizen and taxpayer, why should I care about some brit whining that he’s not got free access to something I helped pay for?”

    Oh dear Dhogaza! Are’nt we all in the same boat with respect to climate change ?

    It therefore doesn’t matter where the funding for the science comes from- after all the IPCC process is “telling” politicians in the UK and around the world how they should react to climate change based, in considerable part, on research undertaken in the US.

    So lets share things equitably- why not?

  • Gavin's Pussycat // June 1, 2008 at 12:20 pm

    Deech56, there is such a thing as the
    International Reply Coupon. From 1906 and
    still going strong…

    BTW Dave, fine concern trolling demo!

  • Lazar // June 1, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    Dano;

    Trouble is, tho, the status quo is doing its d*mnedest to marginalize the few scientists sounding humane/moral alarms when they step out of their little Cartesian boxes.

    Aye. Hansen identified a problem, stepped beyond his container, and told his bosses to get stuffed. Very nice. Very Nietzschien. And he was rewarded for it. That really drives the moonbats nuts.

  • Hank Roberts // June 1, 2008 at 4:38 pm

    > lets share things equitably- why not?
    What are you offering? Or are you only asking to share what others are doing? Seriously, I gave you pointers to the long and growing effort among university scientists to make their work more easily available — which means they’re paying more of the cost themselves to publish rather than letting publishers pay the cost and profit from it.

    What are you putting into the share pile?

  • Lost and Confused // June 2, 2008 at 3:45 pm

    I had not been planning on continuing this discussion after taking a break from the thread, but this comment made by Barton Paul Levenson struck me as somewhat humorous, “Accusing someone of deliberately starting forest fires is not the same as calling that person an arsonist.”

    A few years back I had the privilege to assist in managing a “prescribed fire.” A prescribed fire is a fire intentionally set in a forest, with the aim of garnering some benefit. They are used for a variety of reasons, ranging from forest management to agricultural purposes. Millions of acres each year are set ablaze through these intentional fires.

    I was just a grunt worker for this project, but fires I deliberately created ravaged hundreds of acres. Nobody called me an arsonist.

  • dhogaza // June 2, 2008 at 8:10 pm

    A wildfire, also known as a wildland fire, forest fire, brush fire, vegetation fire, grass fire, peat fire, bushfire (in Australasia), or hill fire, is an uncontrolled fire…

    Thank you for playing once again.

  • David B. Benson // June 2, 2008 at 8:48 pm

    Lost and Confused // June 2, 2008 at 3:45 pm — I remedy that.

    Arsonist.

    :-)

  • Lost and Confused // June 3, 2008 at 12:15 am

    You are a bit late with that one David B. Benson, but they say it is better late than never.

    And dhogaza, when offering a definition for a word, it helps to define that word, rather than a synonym. It would help if you would bother to cite your source (Wikipedia’s article on wildfires), but even from just what you stated it is clear that definition is meaningless here. A wildfire is also known as a forest fire because a wildfire is a subset of forest fires. Forest fires contain two categories, wildfires and prescribed fires. Providing the definition of wildfire does not equate to providing a definition of forest fire. A definition of forest fire, from the Colorado State Forest Service, “Forest Fire: Any wildfire or prescribed burn that is burning in forest, grass, alpine, or tundra vegetation types.” I believe the definition of forest fire used by a government agency is a bit more meaningful than the definition of wildfire offered by Wikipedia. Here is a link to the definition.

    http://csfs.colostate.edu/glossary.htm

  • Lost and Confused // June 3, 2008 at 12:20 am

    You are a bit late with that one David B. Benson, but they say it is better late than never.

    And dhogaza, when offering a definition for a word, it helps to define that word, rather than a synonym. It would help if you would bother to cite your source (Wikipedia’s article on wildfires), but even from just what you stated it is clear that definition is meaningless here. A wildfire is also known as a forest fire because a wildfire is a subset of forest fires. Forest fires contain two categories, wildfires and prescribed fires. Providing the definition of wildfire does not equate to providing a definition of forest fire. A definition of forest fire, from the Colorado State Forest Service, “Forest Fire: Any wildfire or prescribed burn that is burning in forest, grass, alpine, or tundra vegetation types.” I believe the definition of forest fire used by a government agency is a bit more meaningful than the definition of wildfire offered by Wikipedia.

    I made a post with the link to that definition, but it seems to have been eaten by the spam filter. I found the link to that definition as the first search result returned by Google upon searching for, “definition forest fire” without quotation marks. It should be easy enough to verify.

  • Hank Roberts // June 3, 2008 at 12:33 am

    http://barb.velvet.com/humor/flaming.html

  • dhogaza // June 3, 2008 at 4:07 am

    A wildfire is also known as a forest fire because a wildfire is a subset of forest fires. Forest fires contain two categories, wildfires and prescribed fires.

    I’ve been involved in forest conservation issues since 1972 (36 years ago). You are totally full of shit.

    I did the google search you recommend, and the first return is:

    An uncontrolled fire in a wooded area

    The second return is:

    Sci-Tech Dictionary: forest fire
    (′fär·əst ′fīr)
    (forestry) Uncontrolled combustion of forest fuels.

    The third result deals with fire ecology, not word definitions.

    I’m not going further.

    As far as the Colorado State Forest Service goes, they’re as free to misuse words as you are.

    But it was clear in BPL’s post that he was talking about wildfire, not prescribed burns. I’m sure, if he is paying attention, that he’ll be willing to testify, in court, under oath, under penalty of the death, that this is what he meant and he did not understand he had to protect against your constant war against the english language, in which you insist “lie” means “truth” blah blah blah.

    HB, I rarely think that banning’s worthwhile, but when someone uses intentionally perverse unconventional use of English as their world-view for the undermining of all of modern science … doesn’t it make one stop and take pause?

    L&C - if your only beef against science is that you are an English language illiterate, you don’t have as much as a soft pile of blue whale shit to stand on.

    [Response: I know you're passionate, and it's a quality I admire, but I'd appreciate less use of unsavory vocabulary.]

  • Dano // June 3, 2008 at 1:22 pm

    L&C finds a crumb and declares it a picnic. IME, I find having a decent argument carries more weight than quibbling over minor details. I guess you’re finding out purveying FUD is hard.

    But I guess that’s why others here are referring to flames and arson and such.

    Best,

    D

  • dhogaza // June 3, 2008 at 2:27 pm

    I know you’re passionate, and it’s a quality I admire, but I’d appreciate less use of unsavory vocabulary.

    Sorry about that. But … I’m sure L&C can find us a reference on the internet that proves that none of those words mean what you think they mean!

  • Hank Roberts // June 3, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    Attention ….

  • Lee // June 3, 2008 at 3:06 pm

    Notice how L&C is managing to make the argument about ANYTHING BUT the science?

    Don’t play his sad little game.

  • Rainman // June 3, 2008 at 3:51 pm

    The more I read, the more concerned I get.

    My concern is the degree of polarization that is occurring. People are not giving themselves and others room for error.

    Dhog, you are quite passionate as Tamino stated. I do keep reading your posts hoping for some bit of info or insight I hadn’t seen before, but mostly you just rant.

    L&C, you seem to be trying to save face after using questionable verbiage. You are just feeding others rant material, and it is taking away from the real issue… the climate. I believe you can represent the opposing point of view here, if you can not get caught up with semantics.

    Tamino, thanks for the blog. I’m still learning, and still stick by the label ‘lukewarmer’. Excess CO2 bad? Yeah. Need to fix some things? Yeah. Need to flail about with kneejerk programs, etc? Definitely not.

  • Lost and Confused // June 3, 2008 at 6:42 pm

    I had only posted on that because it seemed somewhat humorous. It had never occurred to me this would get into yet another “debate” over definitions. It certainly never occurred to me the definition used by government agencies, would be a source of ridicule.

    Rainman, the only “questionable verbiage” I have used was quite a while back, with my poor usage of the word “lie.” I admitted it was a mistake and apologized for it. As for the rest, my usage of “forest fire” is the same as government agencies. I do not see how using it is questionable. My usage of “dishonesty” was completely correct, as I demonstrated. I am only “caught up with semantics” because trolls decided to pick that as a yelling point.

    Given your remark, it would seem the trolls have been successful.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // June 3, 2008 at 7:34 pm

    I find ’soft pile of blue whale shit’ colourful, not unsavoury. Haven’t any personal experience with the substance though, and will defer to those that have (is the whale blue, or the … ? Enquiring minds, and all that).

    I suppose a measure of intimacy with Nature tends to lower one’s treshold for bull; pardon my French. That’s a feature, not a bug.

  • dhogaza // June 3, 2008 at 9:20 pm

    I find ’soft pile of blue whale shit’ colourful, not unsavoury. Haven’t any personal experience with the substance though, and will defer to those that have (is the whale blue, or the … ? Enquiring minds, and all that).

    A few days ago MSNBC had one of those annual lists of the “ten worst jobs” that float around, in this case “in science”.

    And on the list was “whale feces collector”, complete with some fairly graphic discussion by a whale researcher of what the job entails.

    Images stuck in my mind :)

  • Dave Andrews // June 3, 2008 at 9:35 pm

    Hank,

    I appreciate your posts and the help they give, even though I might not concur with your conclusions.

    Many thanks

  • Gavin's Pussycat // June 4, 2008 at 3:58 am

    > My usage of “dishonesty” was completely correct, as I demonstrated

    No it wasn’t. No you didn’t. (Why do you make me waste blog space like this?)

  • Barton Paul Levenson // June 4, 2008 at 12:18 pm

    The global warming eco-Nazis have lied for too long about how collecting whale feces is unpleasant. The fact is, increased excretion by whales greatly benefits the collector, and will cause increased crop yield. And it smells like roses!!!

  • steven mosher // June 4, 2008 at 1:11 pm

    Rainman, welcome to ranks of lukers.

  • Lost and Confused // June 4, 2008 at 2:55 pm

    Gavin’s Pussycat, after your last post criticizing my usage of “dishonesty” I made a response. You never responded to it. The relevant section is:

    “Gavin’s Pussycat, I already offered a definition of honesty. I have furthered shown my usage of ‘dishonesty’ is common usage. If you still disagree with my usage, would you mind showing how my explanation is wrong?”

    You failed to provide any demonstration of fault on my part in response to this. Indeed, you did not even respond. In light of this, your recent denial of it with no explanation is illogical.

    I get the feeling I am just being baited here. Is this incorrect?

  • Hank Roberts // June 4, 2008 at 3:51 pm

    How can we tell the troller from the trolled?

  • Gavin's Pussycat // June 4, 2008 at 6:36 pm

    L&C, you still haven’t called my lawyer…. he loves clintonian linguistics. Before you answer to me, first answer to yourself the simple question: can ‘unintentional dishonesty’ even exist?

    I am not interested in having this discussion or in proving you wrong. I will just not be misrepresented. If you were halfway ‘intentionally honest’, you would have proven yourself wrong to your own satisfaction long ago.

  • Lost and Confused // June 4, 2008 at 9:15 pm

    Gavin’s Pussycat, that completely fails to address the point. You say I failed to prove my usage justified, yet you refuse to address the proof I offered. You are doing nothing more than saying I am wrong, while ignoring anything I say to support my position. As it happens, I have never misrepresented you, but you have misrepresented me.

    As for your question Hank Roberts, I am not sure how one can be certain, but one trait seemingly lacking in trolls is humility, as well as the willingness to openly admit mistakes. This may not be accurate for all trolls, but it is for the ones I know.

    Incidentally, would you mind retracting your false claim you made about me? The comment you made which I find false and denigrating was, “Just cite your sources. Is this so hard? I’ve asked you repeatedly and you always ignore the request.” I explained how this was wrong before, at the same point where I originally requested you retract the claim. Perhaps you missed it then, but it would be basic courtesy to not let stand a false accusation.

  • David B. Benson // June 4, 2008 at 11:31 pm

    Trollers have bait and sinker. Trollees swallow bait and sometimes the sinker as well.

    :-)

  • Hank Roberts // June 5, 2008 at 2:42 am

    > at the same point where
    Inadequate cite. Please try harder.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // June 5, 2008 at 7:55 am

    L&C, your misrepresentation is your claim that my, and many others’, unwillingness to engage in tiresome clintonesque duelling with you consists acceptance of your ridiculous claims.

    On the contrary, it does not and will not. So yes, you are wrong, and no, I’m not gonna prove it. Over and out.

  • steven mosher // June 5, 2008 at 1:18 pm

    consider the following terms.

    Spin.
    stretching the truth.
    white lies.
    shading the truth.
    hyperbole.
    understatement.

    I would say our language and sense of things recognizes various shades of honesty and dishonesty.

    calling someone dishonest is not synomous with calling them a liar, a nuance recorded in our language.

  • Lost and Confused // June 5, 2008 at 4:56 pm

    Hank Roberts, it is scarcely an “inadequate cite.” It is not a citation at all. I assumed you could easily find the post in question, as it is my first post made after you made the false claim. To make finding it easier, the time stamp on the post is May 20, 2008 at 9:46 pm. Naturally, it is in this thread.

    Gavin’s Pussycat, I never claimed that. I do not claim to be correct because you do not respond, nor do I claim you accept my claims. I claim to be correct because I provide valid points which are not refuted. I agree you do not accept the points; I think you are wrong for it. Since you brought up the issue of misrepresentation, would you correct yours?

    Also I would go beyond that steven mosher. While I agree “calling someone dishonest is not synomous with calling them a liar,” I would further state saying someone committed a dishonest act (as in the examples you listed) is not synonymous with calling them dishonest. I believe to claim otherwise is completely baseless.

  • Hank Roberts // June 5, 2008 at 7:10 pm

    L&C, I gave up on you earlier.

    You’re asking for more attention and whining that you really really do know how to cite sources and accurately quote what you’ve read elsewhere.

    You’ve provided yet another illustration of the problem I’ve been asking you to fix.

    Do you understand the difference between a paraphrase and a direct quote? Nobody can search for the source of something if you paraphrase and claim you’re quoting.

    Take the first four words you put in quotation marks. Search for them:

    http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Just+cite+your+sources.%22

    You posted a paraphrase, or a faulty recollection, of what I wrote, and complained it was unfair.

    You then found the timestamp yet you _still_ didn’t check your ‘quote’ or, if you did, you failed to notice you got it wrong.

    Denial illlustrating what you denied.
    Bad bug. Please fix.

    I’m _done_ with you.

  • Lost and Confused // June 5, 2008 at 10:13 pm

    Hank Roberts I never posted a paraphrase without making its nature clear. You tell me I got a quote wrong, yet if you do a search of this thread you will find the exact words I quoted (which is expected, given I copied and pasted them). I gave the time stamp of the post where I discussed your false claims, but I can also give the time stamp of the post where you made them. It would be the post you made on May 19, 2008 at 9:53 am. It is the first thing you say in that post. I would provide a link directly to it if I knew how.

    The quote is completely accurate. Verifying this is easy with most internet browsers, as most allow you to search a page for text. Even without such functionality, it should be a simple matter. I have no idea how you could claim it is inaccurate when it is so easy to see such a claim is untrue.

    You can say you “gave up on” me all you want. It does not matter. You are wrong, you made false claims, and you were condescending and obnoxious while doing so. A retraction is necessary for you to have any credibility now, and an apology might help.

    I am completely dumbfounded by all of this.

  • Hank Roberts // June 6, 2008 at 1:05 am

    Hey, get a cite. I’ve used a variety of phrasings trying to convince you to cite sources. Maybe you’re quoting one from somewhere. But you haven’t given a pointer to it yet. Exercise, try doing it.

    You claim you’re quoting me from

    >May 20, 2008 at 9:46 pm

    Nope. That’s one you wrote, this one:

    http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/05/10/open-thread-2-2/#comment-18659

    That’s the one where you wrote, memorably:

    “A simple fact, which to my knowledge is not disputed, is Science required Lonnie Thompson to archive data due to the efforts of Steve McIntyre. … Is this disputed at all? If so, on what basis? If not, why is there a demand for citations?”

    Same problem there — denial, followed by yet another example of the problem you’re denying, failure to give sources.

    I asked you again after that:

    http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/05/10/open-thread-2-2/#comment-18662

    You can keep going on and on about this, or you can end the subject by giving useful sources. You choose.

  • Hank Roberts // June 6, 2008 at 1:43 am

    Here’s how to copy a link:

    For a web page: select the lfull ink in the browser navigation window, copy that.

    For a blog like this one, to link to an individual posting: put your cursor on the time stamp (note the pointer change). Right click, choose “Copy Link Location” or similar. Copy that.

    For Science Magazine or any other magazine with a website: go to the actual article, look for the info on how to cite it, copy that. One way is usually a “DOI” reference.

    Example:
    Science Magazine article
    Science 18 October 2002:
    Vol. 298. no. 5593, pp. 518 - 522
    DOI: 10.1126/science.298.5593.518

    The DOI line can be pasted right into a Google Scholar search, and will find the original and other articles as well.

    At left side of the Science Mag. page is a link called “Download Citation” — put pointer on that, right click, and Copy Link Location. Paste it, thus:

    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/citmgr?gca=sci;298/5593/518

    ANY of these methods lets the reader go to the actual document you refer to and check for themselves.

    Other citation forms are available, for all media and references. Google.

  • Hank Roberts // June 6, 2008 at 3:33 am

    Ok, point to L’n'C, the post giving a correct pointer was in the queue when I wrote mine asking for it.
    Very good. There’s hope.
    This is why. Because no matter what mistakes any of us make, so long as people can see the original sources they can read for themselves.

    Always important we give a checkable, clear link — not rely on people to go googling for support for our beliefs, but citing sources so they can read them and know for sure what we’re talking about.

    Way too much of “this is true, go find out for yourself” — have to remember that Google’s results change per user and all the time, no one steps in the same Goo twice.

  • Hank Roberts // June 6, 2008 at 9:11 am

    The once inimitable*Benny Peiser has a new statistical advisor.

    ——Excerpt follows——-

    (1) GLOBAL COOLING: TEMPERATURES CONTINUE TO FALL

    Anthony Watts, 3 June 2008
    http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/uah-global-temperature-dives-in-may/

    Confirming what many of us have already noted from the anecdotal evidence … the University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) published their satellite derived Advanced Microwave Sounder Unit data set of the Lower Troposphere for May 2008.

    It is significantly colder globally, colder even than the significant drop to -0.046°C ….

    ——-end excerpt——-

    From: CCNet 94/2008 - 4 June 2008, edited by Benny Peiser. To subscribe, send an e-mail to listserver@livjm.ac.uk (”subscribe cambridge-conference”). Standard mailing list commands get info on the archive, etc.
    __________
    1/ Eptly imitated last year: “Peiser[2], failed and was essentially disavowed in 2006, but much of its flawed material was re-used in the 2007 attempt first by Monckton and then by Schulte….” (internal citations omitted)
    http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/environmental_law/climate_change/index.html

  • steven mosher // June 6, 2008 at 12:46 pm

    I find this odd, just odd.

    Hank is giving it pretty hard to L&C for a failure to cite. In other words, he demands a citation to back up a claim. no cite, then doubt the claim. I can respect that logic. It is a logic that has a analog of sorts. No public data, Dr Jones? No public data Dr.Thompsen? Then what follows? doubt the claim.

  • guthrie // June 6, 2008 at 3:07 pm

    Without following every last twist and turn, I’ve seen Hank around long enough that if he’s giving someone trouble for not citing things, then he has a reason for it.

  • Hank Roberts // June 6, 2008 at 5:43 pm

    Mosher, you conflate data archiving with citation.
    And you repost a regular septic PR claim.

    If you had a cite, others could look at it and decide for themselves whether your belief has support.

  • Hank Roberts // June 6, 2008 at 6:26 pm

    Wattsup is getting headline treatment at the main http://www.wordpress.com page as well, though it changes often.
    —–excerpt——-

    WordPress.com News
    In Science:
    UAH: Global Temperature Dives in May

    Confirming what many of us have already noted from the anecdotal evidence coming in of a much cooler than normal May, such as late spring snows as far south as Arizona, extended skiing in Colorado, [...] ….Watts Up With That?
    In Science
    UAH: Global Temperature Dives in May ….
    ——-end——-

    Sigh. Too bad they don’t have a Statistics tag.

  • Dave Andrews // June 6, 2008 at 10:06 pm

    Hank,

    Poor old BP, what did he ever do to you except write a critique of former AGW poster girl Oreskes?

    Interestingly her “essay” in Science (note, not a scientific paper) has never been followed up despite its popularity amongst the pros and now being almost four years old.

    Wonder why that is?

  • inputted // June 6, 2008 at 10:14 pm

    http://www.thedailygreen.com/cm/thedailygreen/images/nR/tornado-chart-0531-lg.jpg

    Note the difference between corrected (up through Feb. 2008) and the 2008 raw report numbers.

  • steven mosher // June 7, 2008 at 12:59 am

    Yank.

    If I did an analysis and refused to give you the data.
    what you you think.

    be honest

  • Hank Roberts // June 7, 2008 at 2:09 am

    Dave, you’re either making up misinformation or passing it on without attribution. Which?

    You’re not making the least effort to check what you believe. Peiser admitted his error. Monckton and wossname plagiarized it. Nitwittery.

    The real scientists did follow up the work with real work, and you can easily find that.

    It’s easy to find the work following up published science — because this is how science works. Try it, you’ll learn much:

    Go to the original, here:
    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

    Left side of that page, click on the links. What you call “followed up” is what journals mean by articles citing a work — following it up. Several different services track followup citing articles:

    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/external_ref?access_num=http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686&link_type=GOOGLESCHOLAR
    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/external_ref?access_num=sci%3B306%2F5702%2F1686&link_type=ISI_Citing
    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686#otherarticles
    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/crossref-forward-links/306/5702/1686
    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/scopus/306/5702/1686

    See? If you’d wanted to show any support for your belief, you could have checked it.

    Where _did_ you get your mistaken idea? Who are you relying on for what you believe? And why do you trust sources that give you misinformation that is so easy to check and find out is wrong?

    Just repeating the mistake without saying where you get it puts you at risk for appearing to be making up the misinformation.

    Skeptics cite. Trolls can’t. You can, if you look.

  • dhogaza // June 7, 2008 at 4:46 am

    If I did an analysis and refused to give you the data.
    what you you think.

    be honest

    it would depend on the situation, and on who you are, obviously.

    You’re struggling for a point here.

    BTW, please provide us with the data you analyzed, and the algorithms used to analyze it, that supports your earlier claim that Mann’s Hockey Stick paper is the equivalent of Piltdown Man.

    You have all that at your fingertips, right?

  • Gavin's Pussycat // June 7, 2008 at 2:17 pm

    Steven Mosher: sure there are many shades of honesty and especially of dishonesty — nice list. Would you agree though that those are all examples of intentional dishonesty? (Or do you have experience with unintentional dishonesty you care to share with us :-) ?

    L&C it is good to see your clarification, thanks. If I misrepresented you — which may have happened due to properly representing you being a bit of a moving target, and scrolling hundreds of posts back cumbersome on the device I am using — I sincerely apologize. Be assured that it was always unintentional.

  • Dave Andrews // June 7, 2008 at 7:31 pm

    Hank,

    By followed up I didn’t mean how many times it had been cited. I said she had been a popular poster girl for AGW.

    I meant, how come when her work was so often cited etc she hadn’t followed it up with more studies along the same lines?

    After all, such recognition doesn’t come along easily so why hasn’t she tried to replicate it?

  • dhogaza // June 7, 2008 at 9:24 pm

    I meant, how come when her work was so often cited etc she hadn’t followed it up with more studies along the same lines?

    Why repeat the same study over and over again? The question’s been answered, presumably she’s moved on to other research.

  • Pat Cassen // June 7, 2008 at 9:24 pm

    Dave,

    Rather than speculate on how Oreskes wishes to spend her time, you could easily do your own informal study. Just go to the Science, AMS and AGU journal websites and start reading abstracts, which are mostly free. You might even follow up on WorldClimate Report papers and find out what they _really_ say.

    But somehow, I don’t think you’re really interested.

  • Hank Roberts // June 7, 2008 at 9:43 pm

    http://www.birdhouse.org/blog/images/waffle_assn.jpg

  • Hank Roberts // June 7, 2008 at 11:35 pm

    To be more specific, waffling won’t help you here because, if you’d bothered to read the citing articles you’d know the author’s subsequent work.

    And look up what replication means in science.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // June 8, 2008 at 10:05 am

    Actually Dave, she has been publishng along the same lines, in the peer reviewed literature. Like Elsevier’s Environmental Science and Policy:

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VP6-4D1DMSM-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=c03730d63991634d620626a379d97853

    Fortunately for you it’s paywalled so you have something to bitch about, but already the abstract should make you feel bad :-)

  • steven mosher // June 8, 2008 at 2:48 pm

    Hank.

    I don’t Conflate the two. read what I wrote.
    ANALOGY. analogy does not conflate; analogy
    compares.

    very simply, you demand others to provide a source, typically a source that you trust, like peer reviewed literature. I see no problem in you demanding that others provide sources for their claims. It’s your test of truth. Did somebody write the words in a peer reviewed article. That is your measure of truth.

    In a LIKE manner I demand the fundamental source, the fundamental authority: the data,
    the facts.

    You want papers ; I want data and facts.

    You demand citations to words on pages, otherwise you wont take the argument seriously.
    LIKEWISE, I demand access to data.otherwise I will not take the argument seriously.

    Why is this so hard for you to get?

    You like links to words. I prefer data.

  • Dave Andrews // June 8, 2008 at 8:45 pm

    Hank,

    Again you didn’t pay attention to my words - the replication referred to the word “recognition”. I know what replication in science means, but perhaps you don’t know how normal people actually use words.

  • Dave Andrews // June 8, 2008 at 8:51 pm

    GP,

    Nice try, but that link leads to a paper published on 5th August 2004, FOUR MONTHS BEFORE Oreskes Science essay published 3rd December 2004.

    So the abstract doesn’t make me feel bad, but it should make you do so.

  • Dave Andrews // June 8, 2008 at 9:56 pm

    Pat Cassen,

    Of course I could do my own informal study but that wouldn’t count for much, especially when Hank’s links show Oreskes is still being widely cited.

    Yet, surely, the literature has grown significantly since Dec. 2004 (perhaps even exponentially) so why wouldn’t she want to update her ‘ essay’ if it is as important as people say?

  • dhogaza // June 8, 2008 at 10:47 pm

    Yet, surely, the literature has grown significantly since Dec. 2004 (perhaps even exponentially) so why wouldn’t she want to update her ‘ essay’ if it is as important as people say?

    Because there’s zero evidence that the result would be any different.

  • Hank Roberts // June 9, 2008 at 4:53 am

    Attention.

  • luminous beauty // June 9, 2008 at 3:05 pm

    Oreskes’ 2007 update

  • Hank Roberts // June 9, 2008 at 6:04 pm

    http://alterslash.org/#Scientists_Surprised_to_Find_Earth_s_Biosphere_Booming

    Nice to see Slashdotters here checking sources and recognizing — and debunking — spin from people oversimplifying news to spin their PR talking points. Those who recognize the studies will understand what’s going on. Watch for this PR from credulous witnessers though.

  • Gavin's Pussycat // June 9, 2008 at 6:40 pm

    luminous beauty,

    you could have added that this is a chapter in an upcoming book: Climate Change: What It Means for Us, Our Children, and Our Grandchildren, edited by Joseph F. C. DiMento and Pamela M. Doughman, MIT Press, 2007.

    She’s not sitting still.

    Dave: I know. First she publishes in the peer reviewed literature, then she bases an essay on (or around) it in a high profile journal. In my book that is the correct order.

  • Lost and Confused // June 9, 2008 at 8:32 pm

    There is almost a shade of agreement now Hank Roberts. You say, “Because no matter what mistakes any of us make, so long as people can see the original sources they can read for themselves.” All that you need to do now is admit you did make a “mistake,” retract it and possibly apologize.

    Incidentally, in discussing my citations you made yet another mistake. You make this mistake when you say, “You claim you’re quoting me from.” The time stamp I had provided originally was not the time stamp of the post I was quoting, but rather my post discussing the quoted material, which was what you called for. You then mistook what the citation was for and criticized me for it.

    You have made a lot of false remarks about me, in this topic, but I would rather not dwell on it. Instead, I ask you to retract two comments. The original one which started this, “Just cite your sources. Is this so hard? I’ve asked you repeatedly and you always ignore the request.” Also, this later remark which I requested you retract (a request you ignored), “You posted a paraphrase, or a faulty recollection, of what I wrote, and complained it was unfair. ”

    As for your tutorials, I am well aware of how to copy links. I am simply not familliar with blogs, so I do not know the formatting tags or small features (I had no idea how you could link to a comment). Thank you for the help on that. In return, here is a tip for you. If you are looking for a particular word or string on a page, hold Ctrl and press F. Type what you are looking for in that box.

    Doing that would have kept you from making at least one of those false remarks about me.

  • Hank Roberts // June 9, 2008 at 9:33 pm

    Noted.

  • Hank Roberts // June 10, 2008 at 6:48 pm

    The link posted June 9, 2008 at 6:04 pm to the “biosphere blooming” story at alterslash has expired.

    This link works:
    http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/06/09/050251.shtml

  • Dave Andrews // June 10, 2008 at 9:16 pm

    Dhogaza

    “Because there’s zero evidence that the result would be any different.”

    How do you know if the study hasn’t been done?

  • Pat Cassen // June 10, 2008 at 9:35 pm

    Dave -

    We know because we read the journals.

    You say:
    “Of course I could do my own informal study but that wouldn’t count for much…”

    Come now. You’re too modest. You can do it. Oreskes showed you how; Peiser showed you how not. You can be a poster boy yourself.

  • Dano // June 10, 2008 at 10:44 pm

    so why wouldn’t she want to update her ‘ essay’ if it is as important as people say?

    Look at Heritage, CEI, AEI: if there were blockbuster stories, they’d be trumpeted all over the right-wing noise machine network (RWNMN).

    The number of papers? Zeeeee-roooooo.

    Shouldn’t take long to count. Go to a Uni library, Dave. Log on to ISI. Count. Report back to us. Hint: if you find something different than Oreskes, contact Heritage. They’ll publish your blockbuster & give you PR.

    HTH.

    Best,

    D

  • Hank Roberts // June 10, 2008 at 11:25 pm

    Heck, if you go look at the citing articles in ISI (via the handy link on the page, you don’t even have to stir from your web browser chair) you can find amazing stuff.

    This paper cited Oreskes, for example. Now here’s an idea that should interest a lot of people:

    Title: Recycling greenhouse gas fossil fuel emissions into low radiocarbon food products to reduce human genetic damage
    Author: (Williams, Christopher P.)
    Source: ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMISTRY LETTERS 5 (4): 197-202 NOV 2007

    Cited References: 13
    Times Cited: 0
    hmmm, nobody’s followed up yet?

    Abstract: Radiocarbon from nuclear fallout is a known health risk. However, corresponding risks from natural background radiocarbon incorporated directly into human genetic material have not been fully appreciated. Here we show that the average person will experience between 3.4 x 10(10) and 3.4 x 10(11) lifetime chromosomal damage events from natural background radiocarbon incorporated into DNA and histones, potentially leading to cancer, birth defects, or accelerated aging. This human genetic damage can be significantly reduced using low radiocarbon foods produced by growing plants in CO2 recycled from ordinary industrial greenhouse gas fossil fuel emissions, providing additional incentive for the carbon sequestration. …

  • Dave Andrews // June 11, 2008 at 10:21 pm

    Hi guys,

    I don’t know why you seem to assume I’m rightwing, simply because I have a different point of view to you. Indeed as a UK citizen I have probably been well to the left of you, if you are Democrats, all my adult life.

    However, you are all ignoring the elephants -

    “A world without
    elephants would be an impoverished place, and increases in total forest
    cover do not necessarily increase the number of places where elephants
    can live.”

    Naomi Oreskes, in a personal note to a paper in Environmental Science and Policy 7 (2004) pp 369-383. Now she was critiquing Lomborg in this paper, and I have nothing against elephants, but it does seem a strange thing to say, practically out of the blue.

  • Hank Roberts // June 12, 2008 at 12:03 am

    > out of the blue
    Not at all. Google remains your friend:
    http://scholar.google.com/scholar?sourceid=Mozilla-search&q=Lomborg+elephants

  • Dave Andrews // June 12, 2008 at 10:10 pm

    Hank,

    Oreskes introduction of the elephants was out of the blue in the context of the personal statement she made on the paper.

    It is also indicative of the fact that she has a particular agenda while at the same time she is critiquing Lomborg for his ‘particular agenda.’ Thus it is not an unbiased scientific approach but a political one. And that seems to be her modus operandi.

  • dhogaza // June 12, 2008 at 10:54 pm

    It is also indicative of the fact that she has a particular agenda while at the same time she is critiquing Lomborg for his ‘particular agenda.’

    You mean like … the truth?

  • Hank Roberts // June 12, 2008 at 11:19 pm

    Dave, Oreskes alluded to one of Lomborg’s classic, much discussed statements. You missed the allusion.

    Google Scholar. Really.

  • Hank Roberts // June 13, 2008 at 7:08 pm

    http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/schneider08/schneider08_index.html

    MODELING THE FUTURE
    A Talk with Stephen Schneider [4.1.07]

    Brief excerpt below. Click the link for the video and the full text.

    “… there is a very uncomfortable 10% or so chance doubling CO2 would warm us up more than four and a half degrees C—which would, of course, be a catastrophic outcome as that is the magnitude of an ice age to interglacial transition occurring in a century rather than 50 centuries as in geological history.

    There are still imaginable positive (amplifying) feedback processes that wouldn’t be triggered until you get warm enough to set them off. Some examples: melting permafrost dumps methane and gives you a big amplifier; the current tropical forests, so long as you’re not cutting them down, soak up more CO2 than they give off—but some recent literature suggests as you warm up more than a few degrees, tropical forests switch from being a sink of greenhouse gases to being a source; and oceans absorb less CO2 as they warm. You can’t even identify and evaluate or validate these feedback processes at this point in the climate-change process since they won’t get significantly triggered until we’re a couple of degrees warmer.

    Even though a lot of this is theory, it’s easy to see that the climate sensitivity on the top end is not very bounded. While we say it’s likely (there’s at least a 2 in 3 chance) that it won’t go up above four and a half degrees, there’s a 10-20 percent chance that we could have blown it already and we’ll end up at the catastrophic end of the bell curve of uncertainty.

    This is where planetary risk management comes along. …
    …
    … Every single thing we do that slows warming down is better than doing nothing. But even if you fail to get adequate measures implemented soon, you don’t give up, you keep trying to prevent it from getting higher and worse. That’s my style, and not easy to sell in a sound bite, but I think you have to tell the truth. To me we don’t really know what the absolute thresholds are, so let’s not gamble that we might get the most dangerous ones, not because we’re sure, but because we’re prudent.

    As for the climate denialists, we’ve seen their kind before—and gladly they are a vanishing breed in both smoking and global warming, though a few prominent ones are still out there spouting. Just remember, watch out for the myth-busters and the truth tellers and listen to the careful ones talking in ranges and bell curves.”

    Click the link for the full text

  • Dave Andrews // June 13, 2008 at 10:36 pm

    Dhogaza,

    She admits that from his standpoint Lomborg is “surely right” so why is her point of view more the “truth” than his?

    It boils down to the fact that she “feels” environmental considerations and the effects they might have are more important than the economic and human oriented facts that Lomborg thinks are more important.

    Her approach is therefore essentially political and not really concerned about any scientific aspect.

  • Dave Andrews // June 13, 2008 at 11:01 pm

    Hank,

    Well I googled Lomborg and elephants and did likewise on Google Scholar and whilst both came up with numerous sites using both words none came up with a quote from Lomborg specifically realating to elephants.

    So if you have a direct reference to this “classic Lomborg” that Oreskes supposedly used please let me know where it is.

  • luminous beauty // June 14, 2008 at 1:18 pm

    Dave,

    You are arriving at some bizarre conclusions. Lomborg isn’t just wrong, he’s dishonest.

    http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/

  • Hank Roberts // June 14, 2008 at 9:47 pm

    Dave, horse, water, think.
    http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2001/12/12/point/

  • Dave Andrews // June 14, 2008 at 9:58 pm

    Luminous,

    Kare Fog has conducted a personal and vicious campaign against Lomborg for a number of years. Interestingly, Lomborg is still far more internationaslly recognised then Fog, who seems to be aiming for ‘fame by association’

  • Tom // June 15, 2008 at 2:35 am

    Dave,

    Do you also think E.O. Wilson is aiming for fame by association with Lomborg? (See the last link provided by Hank.)

  • Arch Stanton // June 15, 2008 at 2:44 pm

    Tom, LOL, now that’s funny.

  • Hank Roberts // June 15, 2008 at 5:01 pm

    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v415/n6871/full/415514a.html

  • David B. Benson // June 15, 2008 at 7:11 pm

    Happy Father’s Day to fathers!

  • Tom // June 16, 2008 at 12:24 am

    Jared wrote “CO2 cannot be proven as the dominant climate forcing until it produces warming when natural variables do not favor it.”

    Jared, that statement is incorrect, though it is intuitively correct to most people, and is compatible with the way that science usually is taught in high schools and even in some introductory college classes–as if science always must be done by pure experiments that allow only a single independent variable of interest to vary.

    In fact, there is a range of situations from which completely legitimate scientific conclusions may be drawn. That range is used by all disciplines of science as a matter of course. Among the tools for dealing with non-ideal data-gathering situations is principal components analysis (PCA), which is used to tease apart the independent variables that simultaneously are affecting an observed situation. That has been done for CO2’s influence on global warming.

    A less esoteric approach is simply looking at the graphs of the observations against the predictions of theoretical models with and without the variable of interest.
    That has been done for CO2 and global warming. The fit of observed to predicted by far and obviously is best when CO2 is included in the predicting, versus when CO2 is not. A handy place to find three graphs from the 2001 IPCC report illustrating that is here: http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/example6.htm. You can find similar but more recent graphs in the 2007 IPCC 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, on page 40 and elsewhere: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-syr.htm.

  • Tom // June 16, 2008 at 12:58 am

    Sorry, I accidentally posted my comment on the wrong thread. It should have been in “PDO:….” (My browser hung twice while I was typing.)

  • Achulleus // June 16, 2008 at 6:53 pm

    What is this steven mosher and Piltdown man thing? Can someone explain or post a link to an explanation?

  • dhogaza // June 16, 2008 at 9:27 pm

    Ahh … archulleus …

    Mosher is famous for declaring that Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” paper is a fraud equivalent to Piltdown Man.

  • Hank Roberts // June 16, 2008 at 9:48 pm

    Ach — Google.

  • Dave Andrews // June 16, 2008 at 10:37 pm

    Tom,

    I wasn’t saying that people couldn’t find errors in some of Lomborg’s arguments, but that KF seems to have some kind of “axe to grind”

    That said Lomborg’s overall arguments stand up pretty well, and that is why it has upset so many people, environmentalists and scientists alike.

  • Dave Andrews // June 16, 2008 at 10:41 pm

    Dhogaza,

    If you take exception to the “Piltdown Man” analogy just where would you place Mann’s hockey stick contrivance?

  • David B. Benson // June 16, 2008 at 11:24 pm

    Human Development Index seems to belong on this Open Thread. Going to

    http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_hum_dev_ind-economy-human-development-index

    I found

    #31 Czech Republic: 0.874
    #42 Slovakia: 0.849

    and from my experiences in both countries towards the end of the previous century, I’ll say that, for an academic, life is just fine at 0.874 and a small bit not quite so fine at 0.849.

    Don’t know about the energy per capita of either country, tho’.

  • David B. Benson // June 16, 2008 at 11:26 pm

    Dave Andrews // June 16, 2008 at 10:41 pm — Instead consider the following interesting use of an unusual statistic.

    Temperatures for the past 1200 years:

    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/311/5762/841
    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/02/a-new-take-on-an-old-millennium/langswitch_lang/po

  • Hank Roberts // June 16, 2008 at 11:35 pm

    I know it’s an open thread, but this is getting sad.

  • Tom // June 17, 2008 at 12:39 am

    Dave Andrews wrote “I wasn’t saying that people could find errors in some of Lomborg’s arguments.”

    But Dave, here is just the first bit from the E.O. Wilson review:
    “My greatest regret about the Lomborg scam is the extraordinary amount of scientific talent that has to be expended to combat it in the media. We will always have contrarians like Lomborg whose sallies are characterized by willful ignorance, selective quotations, disregard for communication with genuine experts, and destructive campaigning to attract the attention of the media rather than scientists. They are the parasite load on scholars who earn success through the slow process of peer review and approval. The question is: How much load should be tolerated before a response is necessary? Lomborg is evidently over the threshold.”

    “Lomborg’s estimate of extinction rates is at odds with the vast majority of respected scholarship on extinction.”

  • Dano // June 17, 2008 at 2:27 am

    just where would you place Mann’s hockey stick contrivance?

    In the denialist/delusionist fringe totem column. Of course all the evidence points to modern warming. Why just focus on a totem?

    Unless you have nothing else, of course. Oh, you have something, you say? Trot out those studies, that collected data, that evidence. Let’s see it.

    Waiting…waiting…waiting…

    Best,

    D

  • L Miller // June 17, 2008 at 3:45 am

    From the big thaw thread…

    Think of merchandise. Distributing merchandise across a small country is fairly easy, requiring little energy. Distributing the same merchandise across a larger country (United States) is more difficult, consuming far more energy.

    European countries do a lot more trade between themselves so the good they buy and sell end up being transported just as far. Where local goods are used, there is no particular reason you couldn’t produce them locally in the US, the population is more then large enough to support such local economies.

    The difference in energy consumption has much more to due with modes of transportation, style of housing and city design.

    Something struck me as I briefly looked at the numbers. Finland’s population density is one of the three lowest in Europe. It has an energy per capita consumption equal to 74% the United States level. Norway, another of the three least densely populated European countries has an energy per capita consumption equal to 68% the United States level. It is interesting to see Norway and Finland are both extremely high in energy per capita for European countries. Both have low population density, as does the United States. It seems quite plausible there would be some connection.

    US population density is 2X that of Finland and 2.5X that of Norway. If you hypothesis were correct they should be using more energy then the US, but they use much less. The reason they use more energy then other European countries is almost certainly their colder climate.

  • dhogaza // June 17, 2008 at 4:16 am

    If you take exception to the “Piltdown Man” analogy just where would you place Mann’s hockey stick contrivance?

    In the realm of sound science, as has been demonstrated over and over again.

    While Piltdown Man was a fraud, a doctoring of bones, buried, uncovered, claimed as a true fossil despite this.

    If you think there’s any similarity at all, well, oh, hmmm

    Please state it for the record.

    So we can make sure you never forget it.

  • Lost and Confused // June 17, 2008 at 6:02 am

    From L Miller, “US population density is 2X that of Finland and 2.5X that of Norway. If you hypothesis were correct they should be using more energy then the US, but they use much less. The reason they use more energy then other European countries is almost certainly their colder climate.”

    I never advanced this “hypothesis” you are discussing. I never claimed population density was the only determining factor for energy consumption. I merely suggested population density could plausibly have a significant impact. If so, determining how “wasteful” a country is would require more information than a simple energy per capita measurement.

    The idea of simply writing off the entire discrepancy as a matter of temperature difference without any analysis is absurd.

  • steven mosher // June 17, 2008 at 2:01 pm

    Achulleus,

    You can find it somewhere on CA, but I will recount it for your enjoyment. While reading around the “warmist” sites I noticed a certain theme or meme. That meme was that “denialists” were just like creationists. Now, I thought that one good meme deserves another. In short, one good analogy, deserves another. If people want to fight with metaphors, then they should expect metaphors in return. So, thinking about the creationist fights with evolutionists, the example of the Piltdown man occurred to me. Now, as someone who believes in evolution, I recognize this incident as a low point in the advance of science. But the lengths people went to defend it were great. Why? Anyways, I went
    and found a “picture” of the Piltdown man, and the artists rendition had him carving a stick
    that looked like the blade of a hockey stick.

    So, I made a post. The post said, “when you see the hockey stick, think Piltdown Mann”
    and I linked the photo.

    That’s it. bad joke. I know.

    and the rest is blog history. actually, there are many similiarities between the two stories, even the publications used. the MAIN difference between the two, a difference which I have always
    acknowledged, is that one was a fraud. plain and simple. the other is more like wishful thinking.
    So, you can go find the thread and see me discuss the similiarites and the differences between the two cases. but, I will have to agree with dhog,
    he has made me famous for saying it, and continues to do so.

  • Hank Roberts // June 17, 2008 at 5:35 pm

    > he has made me famous

    http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2007/09/deck_is_stacked_against_mythbu.php

    “… repetition, even to debunk it, reaffirms the false statement …”

    That’s research on how people remember. Worth understanding.

  • luminous beauty // June 17, 2008 at 6:53 pm

    mosh,

    If the goal is to manipulate the soft-minded with skewed analogies based on lies and misrepresentation, then you win.

  • David B. Benson // June 17, 2008 at 7:19 pm

    Infamous, methinks.

  • Dave Andrews // June 17, 2008 at 10:19 pm

    Dano & Dhogaza,

    It took approx 45 years for Piltdown Man to be confirmed as a hoax and during this time it had considerable support from parts of the scientific establishment.

    Will the Hockey Stick contrivance last that long?

  • dhogaza // June 18, 2008 at 4:50 am

    It took approx 45 years for Piltdown Man to be confirmed as a hoax and during this time it had considerable support from parts of the scientific establishment.

    Will the Hockey Stick contrivance last that long?

    Thank you for going on the record, stating your belief that Mann’s reconstructions (confirmed by a lot of subsequent science), is an intentional hoax intended to make science look stupid as was the case in Piltdown Man.

    Sorry, though, the actual effect is to make YOU look a bit … slow.

    No problem, you’re building a lifetime body of work here, and elsewhere, a virtual monument to dumb.

  • Hank Roberts // June 18, 2008 at 5:06 am

    “… repetition, even to debunk it, reaffirms the false statement …”

  • Barton Paul Levenson // June 18, 2008 at 12:28 pm

    Dave Andrews writes:

    It took approx 45 years for Piltdown Man to be confirmed as a hoax and during this time it had considerable support from parts of the scientific establishment.

    Will the Hockey Stick contrivance last that long?

    There’s no comparison. Piltdown was a hoax. Mann’s paper was sound science. Fourteen similar papers since have also come up with “hockey stick” reconstructions of temperature time series. This has been extensively dealt with in this very blog. Have you not read any of the previous threads?

  • steven mosher // June 18, 2008 at 1:59 pm

    Hank gets it.

  • steven mosher // June 18, 2008 at 2:14 pm

    dave andrews,

    good one.

    One of the points I tried to make was that good science ( i believe in agw) can often get caught up in defending questionable things. So, with the evolution debate and Piltdown you had something that early on was questioned but it took decades to get rid of. And it wasnt even important. So, the attackers latched onto it, the defenders defended it, beyond all good reason, harming their credibility.

    On an utterly unrelated note to this topic.

    the cover up is usually worse than the crime.

  • steven mosher // June 18, 2008 at 2:35 pm

    luminous.

    I accept your surrender.

  • Dano // June 18, 2008 at 4:29 pm

    Is this the best the denialists can do - make knowingly false analogies?

    They gots nothin’.

    BTW, Anna Haynes on DotEarth made a wonderful Greasemonkey script for that site. Fabulosity defined & works on FF 3.0.

    Best,

    D

  • Hank Roberts // June 18, 2008 at 4:37 pm

    … repetition …

  • dhogaza // June 18, 2008 at 6:58 pm

    So luminous got it right then:

    If the goal is to manipulate the soft-minded with skewed analogies based on lies and misrepresentation, then you win.

    Well, I guess you score a few points for being honest about your goal.

  • Lost and Confused // June 18, 2008 at 8:37 pm

    Continuing the discussion in The Big Thaw topic.

    It seems we can agree then for the most part george. Energy per capita alone cannot determine how “wasteful” a country is. Finland is a great example of conservation efforts, yet its energy per capita consumption would imply it is extremely wasteful if taken on its own. I would imagine the difference in wastefulness between Canada and the United States is significantly greater than the energy per capita measurements show. Energy per capita alone is simply insufficient for this purpose.

    The only point of disagreement I have is with, “US per capita consumption was fairly flat from about 1980 to 2000. (It has gone up by almost 50% since(!), but the comparison stats i gave above were for 2000).” There is no indication energy per capita consumption has increased in the United States since about 1980. You provided a link showing energy consumption rates in the United States, which shows this lack of increase. I suspect you just misread the graph.

  • Dave Andrews // June 18, 2008 at 10:33 pm

    BPL,

    First, I have read untold number of threads here and elsewhere.

    Second, Piltdown Mann was a deliberate hoax, but that wasn’t known in the period 1908 -1912 when the major’ finds’ were made. There were sceptics( as there are today), but it was only in 1953 that it was definitively proved to be a hoax.

    Third, Mann’s “sound science” has been validly and comprehensively questioned and it remains to be seen if it will withstand the test of time. Although, I note Dano has already concluded that the hockey stick is just a “totem”

  • dhogaza // June 19, 2008 at 4:13 am

    Although, I note Dano has already concluded that the hockey stick is just a “totem”

    He’s talking about your denialist fantasy side.

    Science has moved on. Science doesn’t really care about Mann’s original work, except for the fact that denialists keep trotting it out as a totem of their belief that climatology is a fraud.

    In other words, science only cares to the extent that it’s forced to point out that people like Mosher, and apparently you, are liars.

  • Rattus Norvegicus // June 19, 2008 at 5:26 am

    I would note that one of the last artifacts recovered from the Piltdown site was a cricket bat. Whatever else the hoaxer was, he did have a sense of humor…

  • Barton Paul Levenson // June 19, 2008 at 1:53 pm

    Dave Andrews posts:

    Third, Mann’s “sound science” has been validly and comprehensively questioned and it remains to be seen if it will withstand the test of time.

    What part of “fourteen other studies have gotten essentially the same results” did you not understand?

  • steven mosher // June 19, 2008 at 2:21 pm

    yes, dhog.

    When people try to manipulate the soft minded by using the “creationist” attack, I have no problem whatsoever responding in kind. one good metaphor deserves another.

    So basically as long as people stick to the numbers, I stick to the numbers. When they get off track and start using terms like “flat earthers, creationist, denialist” then the gloves come off.

    Now, let me explain to you that I do not believe
    that climate science is fraud. I am a Lukewarmer.

    1. The world is getting warmer. We have many lines of evidence. However, the observation record, needs to be tidied up. There is nothing dishonest about questioning the observation record with the hopes of improving it. Witness the latest issue about SST observations. So, better record, better data, more transparency.
    good for science.

    2. The best explanation of the warming is the increase in GHGs, specifially human produced GHGs. So, no wacky sun theories from me. It’s getting warmer, Humans are the likely cause.

    3. Hockey Stick. The existence of a global MWP is uncertain. It’s absence is Uncertain.

    4. GCMs. They need to go through IV&V.
    But from what I’ve seen of ModelE, for example, it does a fair job of hindcasting.
    Model skill needs to be addressed in a more
    forthright manner.

    5. Policy. when need to move away from spewing carbon.

  • steven mosher // June 19, 2008 at 2:35 pm

    Dano,

    There is no such thing as a false analogy.

    Analogies, like GCM, are either useful or not.

    An analogy is model. it will fit in some places
    but not fit in others. this, in fact, is the very structure of analogy. It is the very structure of frame. Go read ” Metaphors we live by.”

  • dhogaza // June 19, 2008 at 3:11 pm

    Logicians disagree with the claim that there’s no such thing as a false analogy.

  • Dano // June 19, 2008 at 3:19 pm

    Mosher:

    I have a buddy who got his undergrad in Rhetoric (no, really). He thanks you for his morning chuckle.

    You’re trying too hard. But the rest of us appreciate the efforts, because the effort occurs in repeatable patterns that we use as indicators. I see a half-dozen of the expected and recognizable pattern in the June 19, 2008 at 2:21 pm. And the rest of the planet is glad that these patterns are so common and recognizable.

    Best,

    D

  • David B. Benson // June 19, 2008 at 6:21 pm

    steven mosher // June 19, 2008 at 2:21 pm — There is now a whole book about the MWP, planet wide treatment.

    But just for you, I’ll report some links. Actually read the paper this time, hmmm?

    Temperatures for the past 1200 years:

    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/311/5762/841
    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/02/a-new-take-on-an-old-millennium/langswitch_lang/po

  • Philippe Chantreau // June 19, 2008 at 7:27 pm

    Metaphors be with you.

  • t_p_hamilton // June 19, 2008 at 7:44 pm

    Analogies are NOT models. They are meant as an aid to understand a difficult concept that IS in a model.

    For example, a chemical equation A + B -> 2C is meant to model what really happens. Mass is conserved, as is the number of each atoms of each type, and how they are connected before and after.

    An analogy would be two people getting married, because people react on a number basis, not a weight basis. This may help the student to understand WHY they need to convert g -> mol before relating the amount of A to the amount of C.

  • Dave Andrews // June 19, 2008 at 9:19 pm

    Dhogaza & BPL,

    I need some help here. Dhogaza is telling me science has moved on and” it doesn’t really care about Mann’s original work” while BPL is saying “what part of fourteen other studies” etc didn’t I understand.

    So just what is the status of the hockey stick these days? You tell me guys.

  • Dave Andrews // June 19, 2008 at 9:36 pm

    Talking of Piltdown man etc its interesting that Nature has a Commentary today,

    htttp://tinyurl.com/3keo6h

    about research misconduct where a survey of 2212 reseaechers foud approx 9% observed incidents of misconduct over a period of three years.

    Approx 25% of those incidents concerned post docs ( perhaps unsurprisingly since they .
    are trying to make their way up the greasy pole and thus may occasionally forget where they archived their data) but more worryingly fully 53% concerned Assistant professors and up.

    Is this a healthy state of affairs?

  • luminous beauty // June 19, 2008 at 9:46 pm

    It can be shown, however, that all analogies are, at least, partially false.

  • Dave Andrews // June 19, 2008 at 9:47 pm

    And 37% of the misconduct was not even reported to the institution.

    Even more unhealthy?

  • dhogaza // June 19, 2008 at 9:57 pm

    Dhogaza is telling me science has moved on and” it doesn’t really care about Mann’s original work” while BPL is saying “what part of fourteen other studies” etc didn’t I understand.

    Exactly. Toss Mann’s work into the trash and you’ve got 14 other studies which tell you the same thing. Science has moved on. Science doesn’t care about Mann’s original work.

    Other than to protect the reputation of science against attackers who claim the whole field of climatology is a fraud, and to try to combat the outright lies made by those who try to discredit climate science in order to maintain the status quo.

    That’s not so hard to understand. After all, you’ve been told it before.

    So just what is the status of the hockey stick these days? You tell me guys.

    Sound science.

    We’ve already told you.

  • Dave Andrews // June 19, 2008 at 10:30 pm

    Dhogaza,

    Ok, lets accept your arguments.

    When then is science going to stand up and say we have moved on from the hockey stick, we don’t care about it or the fact that it was iconic in the TAR , was widely used to influence politicians about climate change, made the focal point of inumerable books about AGW, featured heavily, although misattributed, in an ‘Inconvenient Truth’ and shown to be seriously deficient by other research.

    “It was sooo late 1990’s”

  • nanny_govt_sucks // June 19, 2008 at 11:00 pm

    Toss Mann’s work into the trash and you’ve got 14 other studies which tell you the same thing. Science has moved on. Science doesn’t care about Mann’s original work.

    Just repeating this over and over again doesn’t make it so. Mann’s work is cited again and again in today’s literature still. The “other studies telling the same thing” that you refer to are not independent of Mann’s work by any stretch. Only with blinders on can you say that science has moved on from Mann’s work.

  • steven mosher // June 20, 2008 at 12:10 am

    David Benson. I will read your papers when Phil Jones releases his data. It seems to me that when we have actual data from actual thermomemeters that we should Start by looking at that data. Start with data from the past 100 years. Only, we can’t. Why?
    because hadcru will not release the data or the methods. So, why I should I click on a link to WORDS when the source data, the data that determines the temps of the past 150 years is not open to me. Unless the link is to the source data, then I am not the least bit interested. words. good enough for you. I like data. source data. source code. If people dont supply it, then I withhold my consent

  • David B. Benson // June 20, 2008 at 1:23 am

    nanny_govt_sucks // June 19, 2008 at 11:00 pm — Just how is

    Temperatures for the past 1200 years:

    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/311/5762/841
    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/02/a-new-take-on-an-old-millennium/langswitch_lang/po

    ‘not independent’ of Mann’s work?

  • dhogaza // June 20, 2008 at 3:00 am

    Just how is
    Temperatures for the past 1200 years…

    Oh, they just like to make shit up.

  • dhogaza // June 20, 2008 at 3:02 am

    I like data. source data. source code. If people dont supply it, then I withhold my consent

    So, have you released your source code and the details on the analysis that led you to proclaim that Mann’s work is equivalent to the Piltdown Man fraud?

  • nanny_govt_sucks // June 20, 2008 at 5:05 am

    David, dhogaza, please see http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=967

  • Petro // June 20, 2008 at 6:07 am

    I have now followed somewhat intensively climate change studies for two years. During that time, science has explained several discrepancies in climate data and developed the models further. Especially the faith of the Arctic has been raised to the subject of more studies.

    On the other hand, the arguments of denialists have not changed a bit. Can anyone of you deniers tell where are the scientific publications you base your belief? Have I missed something essential?

  • Barton Paul Levenson // June 20, 2008 at 12:06 pm

    Dave Andrews writes:

    So just what is the status of the hockey stick these days? You tell me guys.

    It was the first paper of its type, using a large ensemble of proxy measurements to estimate historical temperatures.

  • Barton Paul Levenson // June 20, 2008 at 12:25 pm

    nanny writes:

    ***Science doesn’t care about Mann’s original work.***

    Just repeating this over and over again doesn’t make it so. Mann’s work is cited again and again in today’s literature still.

    And Manabe and Strickler’s 1964 paper introducing radiative-convective models continues to be cited in the literature, too. Do you think atmosphere science and planetary atmosphere studies haven’t moved on from radiative-convective models? Hell, Svante Arrhenius’s 1896 paper continues to be cited.

  • t_p_hamilton // June 20, 2008 at 3:46 pm

    ”

    Talking of Piltdown man etc its interesting that Nature has a Commentary today,

    htttp://tinyurl.com/3keo6h

    about research misconduct where a survey of 2212 reseaechers foud approx 9% observed incidents of misconduct over a period of three years.

    Approx 25% of those incidents concerned post docs ( perhaps unsurprisingly since they .
    are trying to make their way up the greasy pole and thus may occasionally forget where they archived their data) but more worryingly fully 53% concerned Assistant professors and up.

    Is this a healthy state of affairs?”

    10% of the respondents reported seeing misconduct in their department, a typical department would have 100 individuals, so that would be 1/1000.

    Misconduct is rampant! Of course, it is more prevalent than 1/1000, but the system in place is probably better than any alternative.

    Can you name any other profession with a better ethical record? Lawyer, minister, politician, used car dealer, blogger? LOL.

  • dhogaza // June 20, 2008 at 5:40 pm

    Can you name any other profession with a better ethical record? Lawyer, minister, politician, used car dealer, blogger? LOL.

    You forgot one: Industry-supported denialist shill?

  • nanny_govt_sucks // June 20, 2008 at 5:57 pm

    Barton, MBH98-99 are more than cited in the literature, the MBH PC1 (the controversial Bristlecone Pines) is used in supposedly “independent” reconstructions even recently. See Osborn and Briffa 2006. Have climate scientists “moved on” since 2006? I don’t know. But it appears the hockey stick, like a zombie, still wanders the halls of paleoclimatology.

  • Philippe Chantreau // June 21, 2008 at 12:23 am

    You haven’t Petro: NGS is still whining about MBH98.
    Don’t you wish you could request Cheney’s office to be as forthcoming with methods and data of its energy policy doings as deniers do with the science papers they don’t like (they don’t scrutinize much of what’s in E&E).
    It’s not like there aren’t billions involved and direct impact on your life there too (and some would say zombies wandering the halls as well)…

  • Dave Andrews // June 23, 2008 at 9:51 pm

    Hi Guys,

    Seen Hansen’s latest about arraigning heads of energy, particularly coal companies?

    Doesn’t it make you squirm, whatever your point of view?

    Why not trip over to CA (you know how to find it) and check out how SM and JG are sytematically taking GISSTemp apart.

    How long before Hansen joins hockey stick in the arena that “science doesn’t care about”?

  • Hank Roberts // June 24, 2008 at 3:30 am

    http://www.springerlink.com/content/b526175r62177n20/

    Rate of change continues to matter, but only within a narrow range:

    “… We also systemically examine how the rate of forcing, for a given CO2 stabilization, affects the ocean response. In contrast with previous studies based on results using simpler ocean models, we find that except for a narrow range of marginally stable to marginally unstable scenarios, the forcing rate has little impact on whether the run collapses or recovers. In this narrow range, however, forcing increases on a time scale of slow ocean advective processes results in weaker declines in overturning strength and can permit a run to recover that would otherwise collapse.”

  • Hank Roberts // June 24, 2008 at 3:35 am

    http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/65/3/414

    The most rapid change is life in the ocean:

    “… Here we present new observations, review available data, and identify priorities for future research, based on regions, ecosystems, taxa, and physiological processes believed to be most vulnerable to ocean acidification. We conclude that ocean acidification and the synergistic impacts of other anthropogenic stressors provide great potential for widespread changes to marine ecosystems.”

  • Hank Roberts // June 24, 2008 at 3:39 am

    Paleo, excellent article well illustrated:

    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7176/full/nature06588.html

    “… Already, recent studies of the PETM seem to validate some forecasts about future first-order changes in climate: extreme ocean warming of more than 5 °C extended to the North Pole; shifts in regional precipitation occurred, resulting in greater discharge from rivers at high latitudes and freshening of surface waters in the Arctic Ocean; and global ecosystems changed markedly, with major latitudinal and intercontinental migrations in terrestrial plants and mammals and with the sudden appearance of ‘exotic’ phytoplankton and zooplankton in open and coastal ocean environments (see refs 14 and 15 for reviews).

    More importantly, the transient warming events show characteristics that are indicative of short-term positive feedbacks, which accelerated and magnified the effects of initial carbon injection before weathering and other negative feedbacks restored the global carbon cycle to a steady state. The most obvious characteristics are the timing and magnitude of various environmental signals. Stable-isotope and other records suggest that the abrupt and massive carbon input followed an interval of gradual warming and preceded an interval of decreased carbon uptake. Moreover, for the PETM, even the most conservative estimates of the mass of carbon released might require contributions from multiple sources.
    Opportunities and challenges

    The overall conditions and transient hyperthermals of the early Cenozoic represent an assortment of natural experiments that can help researchers to investigate the coupling of carbon cycling and climate over a range of timescales, and thus provide a means of testing theory….”

    Relatively slow compared to current rates but astonishingly fast in paleo terms:
    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7176/fig_tab/nature06588_F3.html

  • dhogaza // June 24, 2008 at 3:58 am

    Seen Hansen’s latest about arraigning heads of energy, particularly coal companies?

    Doesn’t it make you squirm, whatever your point of view?

    It’s extreme. What do you suggest? 10 years in the cooler?

    It’s an interesting question. Does fraud regarding the future of humanity rise to the level of criminal accountablity?

    On Hansen’s side is the record of Nuremberg, were the victorious allies established a relatively low bar for conviction of crimes against humanity.

    Are you suggesting the standards be lowered? If so, should many of those Germans executed have been allowed to walk?

    Against Hansen is, of course, the fact that the US has been blind to the standards set by Nuremberg when they’re applied to anyone on “our side”.

    Which, in this case, means oil and coal interests.

    Do you care to defend double-standards set by the US?

  • nanny_govt_sucks // June 24, 2008 at 4:43 am

    Hi Hank,

    Are any actual observations considered in that study or is it just a couple of guys fiddling with their computer?

  • Barton Paul Levenson // June 24, 2008 at 11:52 am

    Dave Andrews posts:

    Seen Hansen’s latest about arraigning heads of energy, particularly coal companies?

    Doesn’t it make you squirm, whatever your point of view?

    YES. Hansen is an excellent, perhaps even a great, climatologist. But as an expert on politics or law, his opinion is no better than anyone else’s. And I think this proposal of his is stupid and counterproductive. All we need is for oil company execs to legitimately be able to present themselves as persecuted. This kind of witch hunt is stupid and wrong and will make things worse, not better.

  • John Cross // June 24, 2008 at 2:58 pm

    Nanny: Good call, how dare they not build a time machine so they can get actual observations from 65,000,000 years ago.

    Of course they do have the CaCO3 records from the drill holes, but I am sure they were simulated drill holes.

    Regards,
    John

  • Thomas Huxley // June 24, 2008 at 4:12 pm

    Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated,
    including funding to help shape school textbook discussions of global warming.
    CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term
    consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these
    CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.

    Global Warming Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near—James Hansen

    Discuss!

  • nanny_govt_sucks // June 24, 2008 at 4:37 pm

    John,

    I was referring to the study linked here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/b526175r62177n20/

    There was a delay from the time I posted, so some more of Hank’s posts intervened.

    I don’t see anything in the abstract about observations of any kind. Maybe there are some observations described in the study which I don’t have access to. It looks to me like a couple of guys fiddling with their computer. If so, then seriously, is this science?

  • Hank Roberts // June 24, 2008 at 7:50 pm

    http://web.mit.edu/globalchange/www/if.html

  • David B. Benson // June 24, 2008 at 8:39 pm

    nanny_govt_sucks // June 24, 2008 at 4:37 pm — Yes, it is called computational experimentation. Used more and more, in many areas, in conjunction with theory and physical experimentation (or observation).

  • guthrie // June 24, 2008 at 9:19 pm

    Dave Andrews will presumably be able to produce the references showing that it had considerable support from parts of the scientific establishment.

  • Dave Andrews // June 24, 2008 at 10:20 pm

    TH,

    Well, what a diatribe by Hansen. Apart from his messianic pronouncements about the survival of ‘creation’ he is totally out of line with the IPCC ‘consensus’ on sea level rises, for example.

    But the give away, and note I am not a US citizen, is right at the end - “The 2008 election is critical for the planet”.

    This is playing politics and nothing to do with climate science. If Hansen was a private individual there would be nothing wrong with him stating his point of view like the rest of us. But he isnt just a private individual, he is a US public employee and head of GISS. Possibly he is angling for a position in a new Democrat administration but he isn’t talking science.

  • nanny_govt_sucks // June 25, 2008 at 12:55 am

    Yes, it is called computational experimentation.

    Well fine, then call it that. But don’t call it science.

  • Hank Roberts // June 25, 2008 at 2:36 am

    Dave, think of it as evolution in action.

  • Timothy Chase // June 25, 2008 at 5:14 am

    Dave Andrews (June 24, 2008 at 10:20 pm) wrote:

    But the give away, and note I am not a US citizen, is right at the end - “The 2008 election is critical for the planet”.

    The United States is critical and time is short. We are going to be shifting away from traditional oil to other energy sources. We should be shifting to solar, wind and perhaps nuclear. However, if I were to lay down money, I expect the developed world to shift largely to other fossil fuels. Oil sands, shale oil, coal — you do know that the NAZIs drove their war machine on synthetic oil made from coal I presume?

    Both Obama and McCain are presumably against global warming. However, McCain has a consistent record of voting against solar and wind, but he in favor of “clean coal” and nuclear, and now supports offshore drilling. I don’t really see McCain making a break with fossil fuel or opposing the profit-margins of entrenched industry.

    Given what I see, this election is critical for the planet. And I am glad that someone with a somewhat higher profile than myself is of the same opinion and has chosen to express it — but of course I may be biased by my concern for human civilization.

  • Timothy Chase // June 25, 2008 at 5:33 am

    Offshore drilling and McCain…

    “Tomorrow I’ll call for lifting the federal moratorium for states that choose to permit exploration,” McCain said. “I think that this and perhaps providing additional incentives for states to permit exploration off their coasts would be very helpful in the short term in resolving our energy crisis.”

    EIA to McCain: Drop offshore (drilling)
    Offshore drilling will have no impact on oil prices through 2030
    Posted by Joseph Romm (Guest Contributor) at 1:38 AM on 19 Jun 2008
    http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/6/18/132416/923

    According to the Energy Information Administration, US offshore drilling would have no effect in the short-term, and even in the long-term would have a quite negligible effect — given that the price for oil is determined in a global market.

    Please see:

    Energy Information Administration
    Impacts of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48 Federal Outer Continental Shelf
    http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/otheranalysis/ongr.html

    Offshore drilling is estimated to be of roughly the same magnitude (only more than a decade distant) as the little favor the Saudis just performed for us this month.

    Please see:

    Great minds: Saudis prove EIA’s point
    Offshore drilling has an ‘insignificant’ effect on oil prices
    Posted by Joseph Romm (Guest Contributor) at 9:56 PM on 24 Jun 2008
    http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/6/24/151852/447

  • BBP // June 25, 2008 at 1:20 pm

    Nanny,
    Is it the use of a computer you object to, or modelling what can’t be (currently) experimentally tested. If it’s the later, would you say that Newton’s first law isn’t science? It can’t be experimentally verfied

  • dhogaza // June 25, 2008 at 2:11 pm

    Well fine, then call it that. But don’t call it science.

    Good luck trying to take this tool away from scientists. And don’t be too offended at the chuckling noises you hear when you tell scientists that “this isn’t science”.

  • luminous beauty // June 25, 2008 at 3:01 pm

    Nanny,

    Without numerical modeling (computational experimentation) science would be little more than “Oooh, look at the pretty rocks!”

    What is modeled is a priori based on observation and a posteriori compared to observation.

  • Duane Johnson // June 25, 2008 at 4:44 pm

    Hansen ia acting improperly and should suffer the consequences as would any other government employee. However, it would only enhance his pursuit of martyrdom.

  • nanny_govt_sucks // June 25, 2008 at 8:16 pm

    What is modeled is a priori based on observation and a posteriori compared to observation.

    Well, with computer models, what is modeled is a priori based on observations but implemented using many assumptions, estimations, adjustments, and even some possibly flawed code because of course it was written by humans.

    a posteriori, were there any comparisons to observations? I don’t know. It doesn’t look like it. That’s what I’m asking about in reference to the study Hank linked.

    With the flaws inherent in computer modeling, and lack of comparisons to observations afterward, seriously - are we talking about science here?

  • Dave Andrews // June 25, 2008 at 9:47 pm

    TC,

    WHAT ON EARTH is your reference to the Nazis about?

  • null{} // June 25, 2008 at 11:04 pm

    Stop using the products of Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Fission, Big Gas, Big Hydro, Big Agri, Big Pharma, Big Retail, Big Auto and they will all dry up.

    We are the consumers that produce CO2.

    Accept responsibility for your actions. Don’t fly to Europa, for example.

  • dhogaza // June 26, 2008 at 12:19 am

    Hansen ia acting improperly and should suffer the consequences as would any other government employee.

    Government employees are entitled to speak freely on their own time as long as they don’t claim to be speaking in an official capacity.

    Welcome to America. Love it, or leave it.

  • Timothy Chase // June 26, 2008 at 1:49 am

    Dave Andrews (June 25, 2008 at 9:47 pm) wrote:

    TC,

    WHAT ON EARTH is your reference to the Nazis about?

    Just using them as an example of an economy where people had switched from oil to synthetic oil made from coal. It can be done. And I suspect it would be considerably easier that switching to an alternate energy not based on fossil fuels — at least in the short-run. That is, as the price for traditional oil climbs.

    Production has been more or less flat for the major regions for the past several years. There is still a great deal of oil out there, of course, but the stuff we could easily get at is gone, and what is left requires increasingly costly methods. Additionally, the faster you pull oil from a well the less the amount of oil you will be able to get from it over the lifetime of the well.

    Demand continues to grow, particularly with the growth of China’s economy. And demand is highly inelastic (at least over the short-run), with a twenty percent rise in the price of oil roughly translating into a one percent decrease in demand.

    I suspect its mostly up from here. Prices, not supplies.

    PS Sorry I capitalized the whole thing — habit with acronyms — due to my current assignment. It seems the more heavily regulated the history of an industry, the more acronyms.

  • Hank Roberts // June 26, 2008 at 5:05 am

    http://www.criticalpowergroup.com/Replacing-Distribution-Transformers.pdf

    Replacing Distribution Transformers
    A Hidden Opportunity for Energy Savings

    Alison Thomas, Department of Energy, Federal Energy Management Program
    Michael Shincovich, Department of Energy
    Steve Ryan, Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Star Program
    Dave Korn, Cadmus Group, Inc.
    John Shugars, Consultant, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    ABSTRACT
    Electrical power distribution transformers are behind-the-scenes equipment in virtually every government and commercial building. They are energized around the clock, providing power to the building’s electrical equipment and consuming energy whether or not this equipment is operating. The Department of Energy (DOE) has replaced the aging
    transformers in its Germantown, Maryland, facility with high-efficiency transformers which
    minimize these operational losses. This paper discusses why DOE chose energy-efficient
    replacement transformers and also provided incremental funding for them – even though it is a tenant in this GSA-owned building. We also estimate dollar and energy savings and
    atmospheric carbon emissions reductions that should be realized, compared with standard
    efficiency transformers. To estimate these savings we evaluated transformer loading in the
    building.
    The paper describes the load measurements and compares our results with those of
    other measurements in commercial and governmental buildings. These measurements reveal that distribution transformers are often much more lightly loaded than expected, creating energy savings opportunities for units with low “no-load” losses. The Germantown
    measurements are extrapolated to estimate savings which could be realized throughout the
    federal government, other levels of government, and commercial buildings nationwide through
    replacement with energy-efficient distribution transformers. The paper also provides a
    perspective on the DOE Federal Energy Management Program initiative to promote
    purchases of energy-efficient products throughout the federal government and the
    complementary Energy Star program to promote their use throughout the private sector, as well.

    Background

    The Department of Energy (DOE) promotes the purchase of energy-efficient equipment in federal facilities as a primary energy management policy….
    …
    Energy and Cost Savings at Germantown
    The facility will save more than 160,000 kWh per year by replacing its old transformers with energy-efficient transformers rather than baseline efficiency units. At the current Germantown electricity cost of $0.063 per kWh, the facility will save more than $10,000 per year. The upgrade to TP 1 units over conventional transformers in this contract
    will pay for itself in just 5.7 years. Even better, using current GSA pricing for Cutler Hammer
    TP-1 models, the differential in transformer cost versus standard models could pay for itself
    in roughly 2.5 years. GSA prices are those published and offered to qualified purchasers for
    the federal government. They are also probably representative of what prices a large purchaser could obtain. This is compelling when one considers that the transformers can last
    30 years or more. Over the nominal life of the transformers savings will total $300,000 in
    today’s dollars. …

  • henry // June 26, 2008 at 6:17 am

    dhogaza said:

    “Government employees are entitled to speak freely on their own time as long as they don’t claim to be speaking in an official capacity.

    Welcome to America. Love it, or leave it.”

    About Hansen, though: “He is also considering personally targeting members of Congress who have a poor track record on climate change in the coming November elections. He will campaign to have several of them unseated.”

    Coming dangerously close to violating the Hatch Act.

    Welcome to the American Government. Follow its laws, or leave it.

  • Thomas Huxley // June 26, 2008 at 8:27 am

    More on Hansen. Anthony Watts is conducting a Reader Poll: James Hansen calls for trials of energy executives, what next?
    I voted for: “Energy companies should be investigated to see if Hansen’s claims are true” , which seems reasonable to me, but only 1% of voters agree so far….

  • Barton Paul Levenson // June 26, 2008 at 12:02 pm

    nanny writes:

    “Yes, it is called computational experimentation.”

    Well fine, then call it that. But don’t call it science.

    Take that, astronomers! Those stellar evolution codes aren’t science! And the ones modeling nuclear explosions, those aren’t science either! And simulations of airliners in crashes — not science!

  • dhogaza // June 26, 2008 at 5:26 pm

    Coming dangerously close to violating the Hatch Act.

    Welcome to the American Government. Follow its laws, or leave it.

    “In 1993, Congress passed legislation that significantly amended the Hatch Act as it applies to federal and D.C. employees (5 U.S.C. §§ 7321-7326). (These amendments did not change the provisions that apply to state and local employees. 5 U.S.C. §§ 1501- 1508.) Under the amendments most federal and D.C. employees are now permitted to take an active part in political management and political campaigns.”

    You were saying???

  • Thomas Huxley // June 26, 2008 at 6:08 pm

    Back to Watts on Hansen

    Congress should put energy execs on trial as Hansen suggests 31% (1678 votes)
    Hansen should step down, because scientists should not suggest law or policy 4% (194 votes)
    Hansen should be fired by NASA for overstepping his bounds 22% (1163 votes)
    Hansen should apologize for his remarks, but keep his job 1% (77 votes)
    Energy companies should be investigated to see if Hansen’s claims are true 24% (1290 votes)
    Congress should ignore this opinion, and form policy based on data, not opinions 18% (989 votes)

    Vote stats at 11.06 Pacific Daylight time 26 June

  • Hank Roberts // June 26, 2008 at 6:46 pm

    Nan, it’s a new age, man, look into it. Otherwise you’re just throwing chaff.

    http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MCSE.2005.91
    “Data-driven computational science …. computational experimentation. …”

    http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA466047
    “… Computational experimentation mitigates the weakness of both laboratory and field research, yet it has its own limitations and appears suited best as a complement and not a replacement. To illustrate the power and potential of computational experimentation, we describe an implemented agent-based modeling environment….”

  • Thomas Huxley // June 26, 2008 at 7:16 pm

    Back to the Chase

    …you do know that the NAZIs drove their war machine on synthetic oil made from coal I presume

    Is this not the Reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy?

    but then again see this re SASOL:
    “Thanks for the Cheap Gas, Mr. Hitler!
    How Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa perfected one of the world’s most exciting new fuel sources.    :

    Nazism, apartheid, and international sanctions created a fuel source that might never have existed in a better world.

    Maybe it is time for Open Thread #3.

  • dhogaza // June 26, 2008 at 8:51 pm

    I think the point about Germany’s use of synthetic oil from coal in WWII is a good one. It shows what can be done when not enough crude is available to meet demand.

    I think it’s an all too possible outcome of oil becoming more and more expensive, given the world’s coal reserves. It’s not a Reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy - the argument is that it’s a bad idea because of its affect on the environment, not because the Germans did it during the war.

    Hansen should be fired by NASA for overstepping his bounds 22% (1163 votes)

    So 22% of the respondents there are unaware that Hansen’s entitled to state his opinion, and to be politically active, and that NASA couldn’t fire him over this even if the Bush administration tried to force them to.

    Pathetic.

  • David B. Benson // June 26, 2008 at 11:24 pm

    Yes.

    Tamino, aka “Hansen’s Bulldog”, could you now start Open Thread (#3)? This one takes a looong time to download…

  • Hank Roberts // June 27, 2008 at 12:57 am

    http://www.npr.org/news/specials/climate/video/

    videos from Robert Krulwich’s five-part cartoon series, Global Warming: It’s All About Carbon.

  • Timothy Chase // June 27, 2008 at 2:11 am

    Thomas Huxley () wrote:

    Is this not the Reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy?

    Whatever, Duude!

    No — I was using them to illustrate that producing synthetic oil from coal works and that it has been around for a while. I didn’t know that South Africa made use of it, though.

    However, what gets me most “excited” is the use of oil sands — which I understand may prove to be the dirtiest of the non-traditional fossil fuels. Synthetic oil from coal nearly doubles the emissions per unit of energy:

    Search for New Oil Sources Leads to Processed Coal
    By MATTHEW L. WALD, July 5, 2006
    http://zfacts.com/p/420.html

    … but oil sands are more like a factor of three:

    U.S. mayors pass resolution urging cities not use oilsands derived fuel (US-Mayors-Oilsands)
    Jun 23, 2008 5:00:00 PM MST
    The Canadian Press
    http://www.oilsandsreview.com/news.asp?ID=16986

    Meanwhile the six major rivers of Asia are projected to dry up this century under business as usual, drought is projected to affect 50% of the globe at any given time (currently it is 30%, but was 20% back in the 1950s), and we are already experiencing increased food shortages due to increased flooding and droughts — both of which are the product of a stronger hydrological cycle.

    I expect starvation on a scale the likes of which has never been seen before in human history.

  • tamino // June 27, 2008 at 2:23 am

    A new open thread is now open.