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Davz at 08:40 AM on 30 October 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #43
According to the UN "the world is boiling ". Anyone like to tell me where? And shouldn't we all be dead?
Moderator Response:[BL] Past warnings to engage in full discussion are being ignored. As a result, this will be Davz last post.
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Eclectic at 07:42 AM on 29 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
Rob Honeycutt @58 [re your final sentence and "gish-gallopped"] ~
Indeed, poor Dr Clauser seemingly has left the building.
To confess, I did briefly ponder that TWFA's expansive postings were perhaps the product of one of the newer generations of Chat-GPT. However ~ the topics raised were too discursive, inapt, and self-oriented to be other than of human origin. The depth of knowledge was also not up to Chat-GPT's level.
And the picture formed, of a modern Laocoon (minus sons) struggling with the many large serpents of Global Warming.
TWFA , please struggle with only one serpent at a time (per one thread). Other serpents await you on other threads, in accordance with the house rules of SkepticalScience website. I admire your confidence in tackling your new career of amateur snake-catcher.
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Rob Honeycutt at 02:32 AM on 29 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA... re: Hurricanes
This is another example of the limits of your understanding and your proclivity for motivated reasoning. If you were to actually spend time reading the research on hurricanes you'd find a lot of interesting aspects to this issue.
1) Cyclonic activity has two effects that work somewhat in opposition to each other. Warming oceans provide more energy to spin up large cyclones, but upper winds tend to tamp them down. That physical element of the processes introduce a lot of uncertainty into the natural vs man-made issue.
2) Cyclone data is a real bear to wrestle. Older data is sparse due to the fact that the only information comes from early seafaring vessels and areas with low populations. Even 20th century data lacks a great deal of information about size and intensity of storms. Only in the past 10-15 years have scientists been able to track the total energy contained within individual storms.
The result:
Yes, cyclonic activity is increasing as human activities warm the planet.
Yes, storms are spinning up faster and covering larger expanses when they do.
No, a statistically significant increase in the number of landfall storms isn't yet being obsevered.
Once again, there are a number of well written articles on Skeptical Science on precisely this topic by people better informed on this subject than me. I would highly suggest you take the time to read a few of them before continuing on this topic.
Also, if you have questions or obsevations on that topic, please post in the thread for that article in order to keep your discussion on-topic.
Thusfar, we have gish-gallopped around quite a few topics here in this thread that is supposed to be relevant to Clauser.
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Rob Honeycutt at 02:09 AM on 29 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA... "The climate would and will continue warming at this phase even if man never existed..."
Here, yet again, you literally have no clue what you're talking about but present something as if it were fact.
If you look at the paleo record it is very clear that the Earth was entering a cooling phase due to slow changes in orbital forcings. It's only when humans started burning fossil fuels and substantially altering surface albedo (deforestation, farming, etc) that the planet abruptly changed and entered a steep warming trend.
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John Mason at 02:06 AM on 29 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
Re - TWFA #55: "The climate would and will continue warming at this phase even if man never existed"
For that to happen a cause is required. Care to set that out with references?
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TWFA at 01:16 AM on 29 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
Michael, the claim was that the hurricane was the most powerful ever in the East Pacific, not the most powerful recorded or obseved, and frankly I don't know who was recording hurricanes in that region 200 or 500 years ago that never made landfall or how they were measured.
The climate would and will continue warming at this phase even if man never existed, and with warming comes more weather and stronger weather. I assume all here consider NASA to be a creditable source, in this article last year, while making the usual predictions about what will happen when things get warmer, they cite a single study from 2019 that suggests that the current activity may be outside the natural variability:
Since the 1980s, the hurricane record has shown a more active period in the North Atlantic Ocean. On average, there have been more storms, stronger hurricanes, and an increase in hurricanes that rapidly intensify. Thus far, most of these increases are from natural climate variations. However, one recent study suggests that the latest increase in the proportion of North Atlantic hurricanes undergoing rapid intensification is a bit too large to be explained by natural variability alone. This could be the beginning of detecting the impact of climate change on hurricanes, the paper states. In contrast, the frequency of hurricanes making U.S. landfall (a subset of North Atlantic hurricanes) has not increased since 1900, despite significant global warming and the heating of the tropical Atlantic Ocean.
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michael sweet at 21:32 PM on 28 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA:
Do you realizr how rediculous your claim that if you wait long enough a bigger hurricane will strike the Pacific coast? We have 500 years of records for that part of the world. Those records clearly show that hurricanes have become stronger the past 20 years. If we look at the entire world the record is longer and there are a lot more hurricanes to compare. The worldwide record conclusively demonstrates to anyone who loois at it that hurricanes are increasing dramatically in strength, spin up much more rapidly than they used to and cause much more damage because they are more powerful. The fact that you have not learned about hurricanes does not mean that they have not become more powerful.
Your entire argument is based on the fact that you are completely uninformed about the dramatic changes that were predicted in advance by scientists and have now been measured worldwide.
It is impossible to counter an argument based on ignorance. You will neve rconvince anyone here about anything. We have followed the changes you deny.
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Eclectic at 12:12 PM on 28 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA , it is clear from your discursive writing style that you are an intelligent guy. At the same time it is transparent that you are engaging yourself in Motivated Reasoning ~ you have set your goal, your conclusion, and you have assiduously worked backwards to justify it to yourself.
I am sure that part of you is aware of that . . . while part of you rejects that insight. Part of you wishes to test yourself against those damn mainstreamers at SkepticalScience website ~ maybe "they" will give you added information to resolve your conflict, either by allowing you to be persuaded to the mainstream . . . or by allowing part of you to achieve a (self-assessed) performative triumph of intellectual conquest.
And maybe part of it is to enjoy the hubris of "not running with the crowd". But whatever way, it comes back to the exercise of Motivated Reasoning.
Good luck in your journey to self-understanding.
(And yes, we all need improvement ! )
********
Rob Honeycutt : quite right, the biological sciences field is many orders of magnitude more complex than climate physics. No comparison !
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Rob Honeycutt at 11:20 AM on 28 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
Honestly, TWFA, I cannot decipher what any of this post @51 has to do with anything I just explained to you.
The broad consensus on anthropogenic climate change isn't like a medical study. Think of it this way, it's probably more like the connection between smoking and lung cancer. It's impossible to isolate the precise mechanism that links cigarette smoke to lung cancer, but study after study shows there is a very clear link. But, the tobacco industry wanted everyone to believe the connection was "too complex" or "too imprecise" or "the product of groupthink" or any of many similar arguments.
Ironically, it is literally the exact same people who devised the tobacco industry's response campaigns to the overwhelming science on smoking that created the fossil fuels industry's campaign of doubt about climate science.
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TWFA at 07:49 AM on 28 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
I get the variability, it's no different from clinical studies, the challenges of getting good data, running controls and placebos, they, too are all over the map and it takes time for a trend to be identified. At least in those we have millions of patients to experiment with, collect data from and alter course of treatment in a short time frame, but we only have one planetary patient, and the treatments proposed are extremely costly and disruptive, and also unfair to many different minorities, an extreme example being Inuits with ATVs and snow machines expected to either erect a solar farm and electrify them or go back to dog teams. Shouldn't they do their part too?
I was in the field of medical imaging and informatics, PACS and EHR systems and such, awarded eight patents and founded several startups. I hired brilliant ADHD software developers who were often wrong but never in doubt, when they would have a major system upgrade they wished to perform they would ask if they could do it during their work day. Why? Not because their favorite show was on that night, that show was in front of them 18 hours a day. No, it's because that's when our customers were also busiest, and that way if there was a problem they would discover it much more quickly as every button on my phone lit up with screaming radiologists.
I would explain to them that our clients are customers, not lab rats, you exist to serve them, they do not exist for you to write perfect code, you will do it at midnight and be prepared roll-back at 5. In the climate debate the client is the people, not the planet, as George Carlin put so well decades ago, the planet will be fine long after we are gone, so as in medicine the first rule is to do no harm.
What I see going on here is similar, folks who want to move ahead full blast, others like me who wish to see more data and test the models, others who could care less either way, either because they feel they have no say in it anyway or have the wealth to both buy a pair of Teslas AND a second home up north.
Taking the current models and applying them to some other data set than the one they were developed upon is the right way to test them. Perhaps it is classified, but thermocline levels and or temperatures obtained by submarine or sonobouy, some type of terrestrial sub-surface measurements, well water temperatures, whatever, anything that gets us as far away from the noise of weather and cloud reflectivity, there has to be something else out there we have been measuring for the past and will be for the next fifty years that can show the same trend, no matter how small, no matter the lag. There must be some other canary out there.
Temperatures above and below the weather would put to rest silly arguments about hurricanes in the East Pacific, which if never making landfall two centuries ago may never have been recorded, let alone measured, and other sensationalism thanks to mass media and competing information leading to mass hysteria.
Kind of reminds me of the windshield pit fiasco in the Pacific NW back in the fifties when some thought fallout from bomb tests in the Marshall Islands was doing something to their cars, the consensus among the social psychiatrists being that for the first time folks were looking AT their windshields instead of THROUGH them.
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Rob Honeycutt at 06:32 AM on 28 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA... "It's not that I don't care about surface temperature, I care about whether the models for surface temperature have been applied to predicting temperatures above and below, a perfectly logical query."
Yes, this is a perfectly reasonable and logical query. So, pause right there before you move forward with any assumptions.
The answer to the best of my understanding:
Yes, climate models are applied to the surface and up through the various layers of the atmosphere. Once you get above the surface you run into challenges with measuring those various layers. The surface has the advantage of extensive direct data, above that you have to rely on either balloon data (which is sparse) or satellite data (which is an indirect measure of temperature and actually poorly measures some layers, like the mid-troposphere).
For deep ocean models, I'm unsure. But I would imagine those would have little affect on shorter time scales and is more important measure as a longer term reservoir for accumulating heat energy.
For sea surface or near surface modeling, there is a lot of coupling between the ocean and atmosphere, thus those are going to be inherent to climate models.
The other important point to understand about climate modeling is that they are, as mentioned earlier, "boundary conditions" modeling.
You can think of "initial conditions" modeling like the hurricane storm tracks you see on the news. We know where the model is and the models project the likelihood of where it will track over the following days.
Climate models are different. What they're doing is running model ensembles. Essentially, they're doing longer term weather/climate runs, over and over, in order to see what the mean state is. As they say, "All models are wrong, but they are skillful." We're not asking models to tell us whether this year will be warmer or cooler than the last. We know that's inherently noisy. We're asking climate models to tell us, over time, how much warming we can expect to see.
Understand that? They're wrong because one model run will say next year is warmer and another will say it's cooler. But they are "skillful" because they can tell us, with a high degree of confidence, the longer term trend for the climate system.
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TWFA at 06:09 AM on 28 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
It's not that I don't care about surface temperature, I care about whether the models for surface temperature have been applied to predicting temperatures above and below, a perfectly logical query.
If we have a model that can replicate historical data there is a good chance it can predict as well, but if the models have only been devloped using surface data, adjusted to match history, then you should be able to take the exact same model and run it to replicate historical and predicted data for temperatures aloft or level of thermocline below.
Sure the values and rate of response will be different, but the trends should not, and that is what I am looking to see. As you know, any temperature observtions at flight levels would be at pressure altitude and need to be corrected to true altitude. There are decades of oceanic route position reports, I seem to recall it was typically four or five on the North Atlantic tracks, probably there are double that on the Pacific, don't know if that data is in a silo somewhere or integrated into other, but it is historical and of interest to me.
At one site on "the other side" they showed data that indicated temperatures aloft at 200 hPA have NOT been increasing above 1.7 per century but the models predicted 4-4.5, so of course ALL the models are crap.
When I explained to them I would not expect them to if the readings were at pressure altitudes because I know from experience that unless there is a significant diversion from the standard lapse rate, weather, they will not... even if all the forests on earth were afire, at a 200 hPA pressure altitude of about 40,000' I would expect virtually no variation, and at 5,000' without including the world inferno lots of noise in the signal and would want to look deeper at such a data set to make sure it was as closer to standard atmosphere conditions as possible and corrected to AGL.
As you can imagine, I got the same kind of crap there, what does it matter, I don't have a clue, all the studies studying all the models of the other studies show them all to be wrong, etc., etc. Nobody is right all the time, but nobody is wrong all the time either, even if they turn out to be right for the wrong reasons.
So, my search will go on, if there is anybody else here who understands what I am looking for and has something to offer other than, "Get a PhD in climate studies, otherwise believe what we say" I would love to hear from you.
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Rob Honeycutt at 04:14 AM on 28 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
On the PIREP's topic, the PIREP's themselves would be a terrible data source, just because they're sparse and inconsistent. But, I've always thought it would be a worthy research project to work with Garmin in order to pull ongoing data from airborne aircraft using their avionics. That might provide somewhat better coverage and consistency. Maybe.
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Rob Honeycutt at 03:57 AM on 28 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA... What I'm trying to convey to you is, climate science is a complex topic and you need to spend far more time than you currently have to get a good grasp of what is happening. Instead, you're starting from assumptions and are merely grasping for arguments to support that position, without endeavoring to skeptically research the topics.
"I am looking for information, not confirmation..."
This is clearly not the case, though, being that everything you've stated or "asked" has been fundamentally based in rejection of the established science.
Look, TWFA, there is a lot to understand about this topic. I am not an expert. But what I have done is taken the time to read a large body of the available research. There are many here on this site who are willing and capable of offering answers, but you're going to have to approach the subject with a little bit more humility and awareness of your current state of understanding.
If you have real questions, ask them. But don't be offended if people here give you answers you don't want to hear.
For instance, when you say, "I am just looking for a few that have run the models against some mid tropospheric level data set, or deep ocean temperatures, or anything other than surface temperatures." This is exactly what I'm talking about.
Why would you dismiss surface temperature? What about mid-troposphere temps do you think is more interesting? There are plenty of articles on this site discussing those topics already. All of those articles reference the available peer reviewed science.
Every time I hear someone call themselves an "independent thinker" it raises a huge red flag for me. Why would you believe every climate scientist out there is not an independent thinker? Why would you assume the broad consensus on climate change isn't a product of independent thinking across a broad spectrum of experts in their relative fields?
In order to truly be an independent thinker you first need to inform yourself about the subject you're thinking about. Without doing that, you're merely a rejectionist. If you're offended at being told this, perhaps you're just looking for an easy exit.
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TWFA at 01:28 AM on 28 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
Rob, with the PIREPs it was not bizarre at all, I was meaning for historical oceanic data that predates the modern technology, in my day position reports on HF always included wind and temperature. Attack, attack, attack... it's amazing.
Anyway, you keep repeating the same thing, "You obviously are a numb-nuts who hasn't read anything, there are tons of studies and everybody is in agreement, get lost".
I know how to read, have been reading clinical and technical papers all my life, I don't want to screen abstracts or read tons of studies, I am just looking for a few that have run the models against some mid tropospheric level data set, or deep ocean temperatures, or anything other than surface temperatures. You claim to be the expert, presumably you have read all the studies so you should be able to know right where to look, perhaps cite from memory. I am not the expert, but that does not make me a potted plant.
I am not here to argue, nor am I here to cheer or circle-jerk, I came here hoping to learn, there are plenty of advocacy sites on both sides, lots of noise, I was hoping this was not one of them.
There are two areas where I need more information, one is the whole cloud reflectivity and convective energy transfer process, and the other is whether the models we are relying upon work with data sets other than surface temperature, you can't have surface temperatures going up but everything else remaining the same and claim "the planet" is getting warmer.
I have children and grandchildren who look to me for advice because they know I am an independent thinker who has done pretty damn well so far thinking independently, I am looking for information, not confirmation, if this site is just another cheering section I will be happy to move on, nothing new to learn here.
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John Mason at 00:56 AM on 28 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA #41:
"Yes, Michael, and I can confidently predict that an even more powerful hurricane will someday top that one even if we are carbon neutral or dead, on the other hand I can state with equal confidence that at some time in the past a more powerful one hit Acapulco as well, there is no way one can prove that the one yesterday was "of greater force than any previously occuring in the East Pacific Ocean"."
One of the last dinosaurs standing: "I'm sure there have been worse asteroid strikes in the past". -
Rob Honeycutt at 00:26 AM on 28 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA: "... if the atmosphere and planet is heating up, so should the temperatures at 20,000' or 40,000', or even deep ocean temperatures, there should be plenty of data available at least for the former, weather balloons and PIREPs, it should track the models just as well and if not we would need to know why."
Each of these comments from you is a fascinating demonstration of how little you've actually looked at the science of climate change. There is published research on all these topics and there is a very broad, deep agreement across research fields that human emissions of CO2 are the primary cause of warming of the past 50 years.
And the PIREP bit is espectially bizarre. Being a pilot myself I know what you're talking about, but you should also know that PIREP's tend to be few and far between. They're helpful but not reliable. In addition, those PROG charts you pull in to ForeFlight or download via ADS-B in, those are produced through the same models used for climate models. They're merely initial conditions modeling (weather) as opposed to boundary conditions modeling (climate).
All this and still you have yet to say one word about Clauser's claims.
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Rob Honeycutt at 00:14 AM on 28 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA: "...one of the problems I have with all the models I have seen is that they appear to have been adjusted or tweaked to global surface temperature observations..."
This is a nice demonstration showing that you haven't spent any time at all seriously looking at climate models. You've merely made an assumption and make statements that support what you prefer to believe without ever taking a serious look at the data or reading the underlying science.
Do you understand that Syukuro Manabe recently won a Nobel Prize precisely because his models from the late 1960's have been so accurate.
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MA Rodger at 18:47 PM on 27 October 2023CO2 effect is saturated
chuck22 @709,
I would suggest it is more that Venus shows what a thick atmosphere does to climate while Mars shows it for a thin atmosphere. Both have an atmosphere comprising about 95% CO2. Yet the surface of Mars has zero GH-warming while on Venus it is an impressive +407ºC.
Venus has about 80% of the solar warning relative to Earth, this due to its higher albedo (left hand graphic below) which more than compensates for being closer to the Sun. Thus the "naked planet" temperature for Venus (230K) is lower that Earth's (254K). Venus has a 92 bar atmosphere and the clouds in such a thick atmosphere are a major insulation mechanism preventing IR across the entire spectrum from escaping to space from anywhere near the surface.
Zhong & Haig (2013) show (their Fig6b) that the climate forcing on Earth from CO2 (which at 389ppm provides with feedbacks GH-warming of +34ºC) would be perhaps trebled by CO2 levels up near the 90% mark, (Fig6b shows the direct forcing up to ~30% CO2) an unrealistically high level, but it does show that additional CO2 does not "saturate".
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Eclectic at 18:00 PM on 27 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA @41 :
you are still skirting the issue (on-topic for this thread) of whether John Clauser's ideas fall into the common fruitcake category or into the solitary genius category.
Overall evidence strongly favors the former ~ but I am sure that your readers here would be interested to see if you have some actual support for the latter category.
Are you holding back, because you fear to expose the good Dr Clauser to ridicule? Or even worse - expose him to redicule [which I gather may be some form of red-shifted ridicule] ??
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TWFA at 15:37 PM on 27 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
Yes, Michael, and I can confidently predict that an even more powerful hurricane will someday top that one even if we are carbon neutral or dead, on the other hand I can state with equal confidence that at some time in the past a more powerful one hit Acapulco as well, there is no way one can prove that the one yesterday was "of greater force than any previously occuring in the East Pacific Ocean".
Do you even realize how rediculous such a claim appears to be? Chance and time alone disqualify such a statement just as vastness and time assure there is life elsewhere in the universe, but neither can be proved without evidence. A CQ or TV signal of Hitler opening the '36 Olympics coming from Vega would be evidence, but proving something never happened, or something that but for reality would have otherwise happened, is extremely difficult, sort of like proving Schrödinger's cat to be alive or dead without opening the box. Until such time as we can open that box a larger hurricane in Acapulco in either the past or future will both exist and not exist.
But moving on, one of the problems I have with all the models I have seen is that they appear to have been adjusted or tweaked to global surface temperature observations, which is not necessarily a flaw in their creation but possibly a failure in their useful application, and it seems to me that there must be some other data set those models could be run against, with and without the anthroprogenic forcing, basically turning it on and off and looking for the same results on a different sample set, which would clearly show the model works elsewhere, and possibly everywhere.
Is it the lamp or the light bulb? Screw in another bulb from another lamp and see what happens, if it comes on it was the bulb, if still off it might be the lamp or both bulbs... unless the one you screwed in was hot, in which case it is the lamp. Pretty simple truth table, if the atmosphere and planet is heating up, so should the temperatures at 20,000' or 40,000', or even deep ocean temperatures, there should be plenty of data available at least for the former, weather balloons and PIREPs, it should track the models just as well and if not we would need to know why.
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michael sweet at 12:47 PM on 27 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA:
There are mountains of evidence that climate science has predicted in the past that can be currently reviewed. For example, climate scientists predicted that hurricanes would increase in force in the future. Just yesterday the city of Acapulco was destroyed by a hurricane of greater force than any previously occuring in the East Pacific Ocean. That was predicted in advance. Hansen predicted the future increase in temperature in his testimony to congress in 1989. His predictions have proven to be accurate.
You are asserting that people who have correctly predicted climate change for the past 100 years cannot be believed in their predictions for the next 20 years. Why do you think that scientists who have correctly predicted changes in the past will suddenly become unable to make correct predictions now? For the most part the predictions of scientists have been correct. A few things, like the increasing force of hurricanes, and sea level rise, have been underestimated by scientsts.
The time when
"until such time as the real world data and not just the modeled projections show it is clearly being being affected by our behavior"
was reached decades ago. The predictions made during the 60's and 70's have been validated by data. You are claiming that we can never predict anything because we do not remember what was predicted correctly in the past. The people at SkS remember the past projections and know that they validate the current projections.
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Rob Honeycutt at 12:24 PM on 27 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA... "...because the effects of cloud cover and weather is my primary area of interest I would appreciate links to that data."
Aside from your childish passage prior to this ask, there is a full body of research on cloud effects on climate. Perhaps you should endeavor to read the research instead of just assuming a preferred position.
One key clue that cloud effects aren't going to save us is merely the fact that, over the past million years we can see (through all kinds of paleo records) that the earth has gone through numerous glacial-interglacial cycles. We know the pacing and forcings that drive those cycles.
So, think about it. If cloud/weather effects were capable of offsetting changes in modern climate forcings, why would it not have done so over the past million years?
If what you're assuming were true, then we'd see no climate cycles because clouds/weather would always keep global temperature in equilibrium.
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Rob Honeycutt at 12:10 PM on 27 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA... May I ask, do you even know what Clauser's claims are?
I ask merely because you seem to be studiously avoiding addressing the merits any of them.
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TWFA at 11:44 AM on 27 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
Without a time machine the answer as to whether Clauser or "everybody else" is right or wrong is not and cannot as yet be known, theory is not an outcome, consensus is not data, only measurement is, as Spock would say, "Insufficient data, captain".
No, I am not claiming to be as intelligent or logical as Spock and you are not going to be able to insult or castigate me into agreement or silence. I and doubtless others do not find such an approach the least bit persuasive, and the biggest problem the experts have is being persuasive instead of dismissive.
Whether you like it or not there will be other old geezers like me and Clauser who have only earned their advanced degress in ignorance through a lifetime of experience and observations of nature, people, their predictions and outcomes, most recently all the peer reviewed scientists and experts claiming that a vaccine, a mask and two weeks to flatten the curve was all that was necessary to bring things to a halt, but in my case a serial entrepreneur and inventor investing in my own ideas and predictions as well as those of others.
We have learned that it is not the answers that make the case, it is the questions that precede them, and we know how to ask them. Do not dismiss the value of lay participation in an esoteric field, especially when it affects them directly, you never know where wisdom and breakthrough may come from.
I mean, who would ever expect that a dumb playwright without an advanced degree in probability theory like Bernard Shaw could ever be able to explain it to the masses in a public debate of his day not unlike the one we are engaged in right here.
However I am pleased to learn from you that we have some kind of recorded data of planetary cloud cover history, presumably from cave drawings forward, or perhaps Martian observations contained in journals carelessly left behind after landing and departing Nazca International Spaceport, instead of inferred or imputed data through a chain of supporting inferred or imputed data, and because the effects of cloud cover and weather is my primary area of interest I would appreciate links to that data.
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Rob Honeycutt at 11:41 AM on 27 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA... "they certainly formed conclusions and they applied them."
Not to belabor an irrelevant point, but both took concepts and work from others (both paid for the rights) and leveraged them for their respective companies. I believe that would be business management, not applied science. The engineers they hired to further develop the software were doing a form of applied science.
Oh, and it was Xerox Parc who developed the first GUI, not 3M (Minnesota, Mining and Manufacturing).
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Rob Honeycutt at 11:27 AM on 27 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA... When you say, "But there is no profit motive in mine, only preservation of my standard of living..." you're clearly not understanding that is inherently an economic motivation. Preservation of "your" way of life is a financial motive.
Al Gore, on the other hand, has primarily made his money being a long serving boardmember for Apple, being a major partner in a large VC firm, and through the sale of a major media company he started. As far as I'm aware, Gore's motivations on climate change are merely to prevent extensive damage to the global environmental systems that support life on this planet.
But, any discussion of motivations and/or Al Gore have absolutely nothing to do with the veracity of any of Clauser's statements on climate science.
Please, let us know when you would like to actually discuss Clauser's statements.
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One Planet Only Forever at 10:01 AM on 27 October 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #42
wilddouglascounty,
There is an additional item of improved understanding regarding leadership to be looked into.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #43 2023 highlights the following new item:
"Misinformation and the epistemic integrity of democracy"
This new item improves understanding of the dangers of, what can go wrong with, 'popularity and profitability based competition for leadership'.
Freedom for everyone to believe and do as they please does not develop sustainable improvements.
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Eclectic at 09:19 AM on 27 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA, you are skirting around the issue ~ of whether John Clauser is "yer average emeritus fruitcake" or whether he has achieved a brilliant Galileo-like stroke of genius . . . showing that all the prior scientific experts have been grossly wrong. While I do enjoy reading your discursive philosophical/lawyerly rhetoric, nevertheless you are failing to discuss the matter logically.
Please concentrate on whether Clauser is right or wrong about climate matters. (And note that the planetary history indicates that he is essentially wrong in his suppositions about clouds.) Do not dwell on whether Gore and/or Gates and/or China are offending your political identity issues or your personal economic-theory sensibiities.
Waffling discursions are quite easy ~ for instance , you will be aware of Kuebler-Ross's famous Five Stages of Grief. TWFA, you seem, climatically, to be showing the first two grief stages : Denial and Anger.
Have you reached the Bargaining stage (in hoping that that Clauser is right, despite a mountain of evidence that he is wrong) . . . or even the Depression stage? (Depression can indeed co-exist with the other stages of Anger etcetera.)
Are you fearful that the Acceptance stage threatens to change your inner character of personal identity? Personal change can be difficult for the ego to face up to ~ in the shorter run it's easier to keep in Denial.
See ~ rhetorical waffle is easy-peasy. And entertaining when it has an admixture of truth !
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TWFA at 07:45 AM on 27 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
How is it not?
Applied science is the use of the scientific method and knowledge obtained via conclusions from the method to attain practical goals.
Let's not get into the weeds over definitions, let's try to convey meaning, and to head off the next point of argument, they didn't invent them, Gates had a contract with IBM for the PC, Jobs saw a GUI at 3M, but they certainly formed conclusions and they applied them.
Now we have Al Gore and others who want to apply your conclusions upon the rest of us, like Gates and Jobs he has and others have profited immensly and have a vested interest in their experiment in climate control, but unlike Gates and Jobs if these folks have their way I will have no choice but participation in their experiment, just as if I had my way, wait for more data, they would be participating in mine.
But there is no profit motive in mine, only preservation of my standard of living and those of my descedents until such time as the real world data and not just the modeled projections show it is clearly being being affected by our behavior and beyond the control of nature or chance... at which point you would need to do something about China, currently participating in both experiments at once via dirty manufacturing of green products at a profit.
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Rob Honeycutt at 07:40 AM on 27 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA... Your previous post have been long and winding passages, so I'm trying to focus on your first claims. I would suggest here that your examples are both wrong and not applicable to the discussion of Clauser's claims.
Neither Gates nor Jobs invented what you're attributing to them. Neither of these advancements in computer applications were counter to any previous foundational sciences from which they were assembled.
This is wholly different from Clauser, who is essentially dismissing well established science without the benefit of having done any research in the field.
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Rob Honeycutt at 06:55 AM on 27 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA... Just so you know, those do not fit the definition of "applied sciences." As well, neither of the advances in computer applications are attributable to Gates or Jobs.
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One Planet Only Forever at 06:54 AM on 27 October 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #42
wilddouglascounty @4,
Reflecting on my response @4, I have some suggestions along the line of your request for "...a list of educational resources, incentives, and campaigns that put these recommendations front and center."
The first recommendation relates to your questions about 'leadership' (including public school board leadership). Learn about the candidates for leadership you can vote for and:
- do whatever you are able to do to support the candidates that most diligently promote and pursue learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others (they will likely be well aligned with the pursuit of the 80 recommendations).
- do whatever you are able to do to oppose the Other candidates. This would include being part of counter-protests when the type of harmful self-interested people the Other type of candidate try to get votes of support from publicly display their damaging (to Others) and unsustainable misunderstandings.
Some other things you could look into:
- "The Story of Stuff". This organization is focused on reducing consumption and reducing the harm done by the remaining consumption.
- "Project Drawdown" . This group is related to 360.org which is another group to look into.
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TWFA at 06:43 AM on 27 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
In the case of Gates, perceiving that a standard operating system as a hardware interface platform for multiple applications was one of the two keys to widespread adoption and utility of the technology, and with Jobs the GUI interface being the other, and he was just beginning. Prior to those two it was just "Big IT" with a monopoly market in main frame computers and application development, industrial process control and arcade games.
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Rob Honeycutt at 05:42 AM on 27 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA... Okay, so... What were the advancements in "applied sciences" made by Jobs and Gates?
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TWFA at 04:34 AM on 27 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
I suppose you are referring to advancements in "pure" science as opposed to "applied" science, or perhaps even need to explain to me just what your concept of "science" is. Gates and Jobs made advances in applied science, their accomplishments and the consequences obvious and without which all the prior advances in computer science would have remained in the lab the same way communications advances were locked up in Bell Laboratories until TPC (The Phone Company in "The President's Analyst) was broken up.
Inconveniently for the masterminds, people actually have to live in a world with a combination of nature and applied science, unlike lab rats they have the ability to resist those who wish to experiment with their lives and livelihoods.
So when you take theories in pure climate science and then try to apply it to, or at great expense or sacrifice impose it upon folks accustomed to individual liberty there are consequences, one of them being that, like a good doctor, you need to do a better job of explaining your diagnosis, prognosis and recommended treatment to your patients than simply proclaiming that all of you doctors know more about this than anybody else and you are all in agreement that the rest of us need psychotherapy or brain surgery.
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Rob Honeycutt at 04:02 AM on 27 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
TWFA... Can you explain the scientific advancements made by Jobs and Gates that went contrary to the previous century of scientific research?
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TWFA at 02:47 AM on 27 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
I seem to recall that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs did not have any peer reviewed papers on computer science when as teenagers they charted the future of computing and communications and folks invested millions into their unproved, non peer reviewed theories.
I think it is healthy to get outside observation and critique from folks with good minds that may not be "set". One does not have to be a specialist or have studied the field all his life to ask why if none of the current models can accurately reproduce what has happened over the last century why should we have faith in their predictions for the next?
And "faith" is what it is all about, because nobody can "prove" the future while in the present, but we can hopefully understand the present with results from the past... if we choose to pay attention to them, and that applies to far more than climate science.
When folks accuse others of being "deniers" it means they themselves must be "believers", neither can prove their case with facts, neither can prove something will or will not happen in the future until the future arrives, meaning until then we are talking about religion and not science. "Show me a video of God and I will believe" vs "How could all of this come to be without Him?" If 99% of alleged scientists agree on something either it is no longer science or they are not scientists, it is either religion or they are evangelists.
As a non-peer reviewed entrepreneur, renaissance man and pilot flying ABOVE clouds I have always marveled at the weather, the incredible energy conversion and transmission capacity of phase change and latent heat, for decades before Clauser came along I have been screaming about cloud reflectivity because I have seen it first hand... all that light beneath me is going back to space. 70% of the Earth's surface is water, from which clouds will form, temperature goes up, more clouds form, more reflection, less insolation.
It's not rocket science, or even computer science, put a pot of water on the stove, no matter how high the heat the water temperature never gets above boiling. If what Al Gore said at Davos this year were true, that the oceans are boiling, presumably not just where magma is erupting, it would have defied the laws of physics and thermodynamics, it would be impossible to capture and retain such heat with the 100% cloud cover we certainly would have.
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pattimer at 19:42 PM on 26 October 2023What’s the deal with carbon capture and storage?
I think an important point to make about CCS is that if in the future we successfully make use of CCS there will be benefits but it will not reverse the effects of past and present CO2 emissions. It will not replace lost glaciers, bring sea levels back down, etc. This is for the simple reason that when tipping points are crossed we creat a new Earth that will be around for millennia.
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chuck22 at 13:24 PM on 26 October 2023CO2 effect is saturated
Thanks, doesnt venus provide some evidence of what levels of CO2 would be needed to saturate?
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One Planet Only Forever at 08:57 AM on 26 October 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #42
Wilddouglascounty @4,
Someone may be able to "... highlight a list of educational resources, incentives, and campaigns that put these recommendations front and center ..."
But, I will start my response with a minor, but important, clarification of your opening comment (edits in bold) “... and then some news media is beginning to focus on how devious the fossil fuel investors are in using misinformation, disinformation, and obfuscation along the lines of the tobacco mercenaries while some media players, especially the ‘social type’, continue to be part of the misinformation and disinformation efforts.”
As for the questions asked ... the answers involve the need for increased critical thinking in pursuit of increased awareness and improved understanding of how to be less harmful and more helpful to others and seeking understanding of the bias of any information source (note that SkS is an excellent resource for that).
Having a bias towards helpful well-reasoned understanding of ‘all of the relevant evidence’ will produce results that differ from other sources. Such presentations can still be ‘claimed to be biased’. But ‘evidence of bias’ does not make a source ‘unreliable and unhelpful’. It is undeniably more damaging to be biased against more fully informing how to be less harmful and more helpful to others. Examples of that are the ways that Fox News and WUWT have a history of being ‘more biased to be misleading’ than the diversity of sources pointed to by SkS (which also all have a bias).
The efforts you are asking for already exist. And they have existed for decades. Note that the report and its 80 recommendations are substantially based on the following sources of improved awareness and understanding: The UN Development Programme, the Sustainable Development Goals, and the IPCC Reports. Many political groups, other leadership contenders (business and political), and advocacy groups are aligned with the pursuit of that type of learning and participated in developing the improved understanding.
The problem is not a lack of effort to increase awareness and improve understanding of how to be less harmful and more helpful. The problem is the success of efforts by people who have interests that are contrary to that type of learning.
In addition to the many helpful actions of the SkS team, a broad spectrum of books help understand why learning to be less harmful and more helpful is not more popular. I am especially biased towards (fond of - like) “The 9.9 Percent” by Matthew Stewart. "The 9.9 Percent" is an evidence-based book (loads of references) that does of good job of explaining how the most powerful 0.1% win by getting unjustified support from the rest of the top 10% (the 9.9% who also want to maintain unjustified perceptions of status relative to Others). It includes understanding that the actions of the undeserving top 10% are excused by a portion of the remaining 90% because of divisive misunderstanding appealing to ‘personal biases’ that motivates them to try to be 'perceived to be higher-status' like the unjustified top 10%.
In a nut-shell the required solution involves compromising the ability of the undeserving among the top 0.1 Percent (in wealth and power) to get support from, or be excused by, the top 10% or any of the 90%. Note: 0.1% of the current global population is 8 million. And 10% is 800 million. So over-coming the power of the most unjustified 10 Percent is a massive challenge.
Things are improving in a sputtering way like: two steps up, three steps back, two more steps up, then another step up, then a step back. Undeniably faster improvement would be better (lots of damage to Others caused by delayed reduction of harm done by the Few). However, the tragically slow improvement, and resulting larger amount of damage done, is not the fault of, or due to, a lack of effort by the people pursuing being less harmful and more helpful to others.
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Eclectic at 08:24 AM on 26 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
Speaking of delusions ~ about 17-ish years ago, there was video interview with Prof. Lindzen (Emeritus) , where Lindzen asserted that the world could not / would not get warmer, because Divine action protects this planet from such an excursion.
Has Lindzen changed views since then? Or his "reasoning" ?
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John Mason at 00:13 AM on 26 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
groovimus - Mass-delusion, you say? You need to get out more - and with your eyes open.
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walschuler at 03:35 AM on 25 October 2023Climate Adam: Escaping the Elements - The truth behind Climate Migration
I think the presentation is quite clear and useful, but near the end becomes overly positive about potential benefits of migration due to climate change. In most cases, even if other factors contribute to the decision to move, the climate factor is likely to involve a traumatic event of some sort, such as fire, flood or loss of arable land.
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wilddouglascounty at 21:54 PM on 24 October 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #42
So what I'm hearing about this report is that the investors in fossil fuels are effectively circling around the 80 recommendations to develop game plans AGAINST making those recommendations come to fruition, and then the media is beginning to focus on how devious the fossil fuel investors are in using misinformation and obfuscation along the lines of the tobacco mercenaries.
But where is the political will emerging that will take these recommendations seriously and move them into accomplishments? Why are we not seeing a groundswell of conversations, commitments and policies being passed that embrace these recommendations? Shouldn't we be asking advocacy, corporate and governmental leadership to be providing, well, leadership?
Please highlight a list of educational resources, incentives, and campaigns that put these recommendations front and center and help our communities disseminate quality information up front instead of just reacting to well funded disinformation programs designed to delay, dilute and deceive!
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Rob Honeycutt at 11:06 AM on 24 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
groovimus... Did you have some reason why we should entertain Clauser's position on climate change in spite of the fact he's never in his career done research in the field?
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groovimus at 08:11 AM on 24 October 2023John F. Clauser: the latest climate science-denying physicist
Speaking of talking points: that's quite a rehash of the ole "let's insult these guys and their cognitive functioning, cuz they're only old guys now and we can rub it in". I've seen it happen in all kinds of fields. Thomas Nagle with a lifetime of philosophical materialist belief, writes a book a couple of years before retiring from NYU, the book indicating second thoughts on that ironclad materialistic hegemony in academia. He got roasted over the coals for that and of course the standard "he's an old guy in decline" BS. the exact thing happened to Anthony Flew, retired Brit philosopher with a lifetime of comitted atheism, changed his mind late in life in favor of deism. Same exact tactic, "his mind has declined, and he got someone to ghost write his book." they said.
You guys should be ashamed for hiding behind this argument. You know that working academics are in jeopardy like never before in the West from being cancelled for wrongthink, and you are part of that problem. You can even watch Lintzen's videos and see for yourself his use of precise vernacular and reasoning to explain exactly where he is coming from on this mass delusion gripping the world's intelligentsia.
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John Hartz at 09:43 AM on 23 October 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #42
Just Dean: Thank you for the positive feedback. Posting links to the above articles on the SkS Facebook page and listing the posts in the Weekly Digest series has been a labor of love for me.
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One Planet Only Forever at 09:31 AM on 23 October 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #42
I agree with Just Dean's compliment to the SkS team for highlighting important action that can lead to limiting the damage done by people who want to delay ending of climate change impacts they benefit from.
I would add that the following NPR news item relates to Just Dean's mention of the selective reporting by the Washington Post. It also relates to the challenge of achieving popular support for the required changes of developed ways of enjoying life and profiting from economic activity:
How gas utilities used tobacco tactics to avoid gas stove regulations, by Jeff Brady, Climate, NPR, October 17, 2023.
The NPR includes the following 'rejection of what is required' by the collective of profiteers from natural gas consumption:
"The gas utility industry is ramping up rhetoric and openly talks about fighting to save its business. In 2021, Harbert told NPR that her industry wants to be part of solving the climate problem and has developed a position statement on the issue. "If the goal is to reduce emissions, we're all in," she told NPR. "If the goal is to put us out of business, not so much.""
The profit pursuers are willing to participate in profitably reducing the impacts they profit from. But the required rapid ending of the accumulation of global warming impacts is 'contrary to their profit interests'. The undeniable need to end the natural gas utility operations is anathema to them. And, as the NPR reporting clearly indicates, they have spent many decades developing their ability to scientifically fight against limits on their ability to benefit from being more harmful.
Developed popularity and profitability and the power of misleading marketing to delay corrections of damaging popular and profitable activity is a significant impediment to achieving the required limiting of damage done to the future of humanity.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:58 AM on 23 October 2023New report has terrific news for the climate
I have an important concern about the examples presented in the NPR article “How gas utilities used tobacco tactics to avoid gas stove regulations” I refer to in my comment @9 regarding the way that ‘conservative’ has been used by some scientists regarding evaluations of risk of harm.
As an engineer my learned conservative concern is to severely limit the potential for harmful results. An opposite use of ‘conservative’ appears to be abused as justification for higher risk of harmful outcomes. Tragically, trending to be more harmful, fighting against developing evidence of harm or potential harm, seems to align with what some ‘political interests’ want to claim is conservative – maintaining, excusing and defending the status quo - avoid harming/restricting developed popular or profitable activities that are potentially, or actually, harmful.
Many portions of the NPR article present versions of this twist of political influence on science.
A specific (lengthy) quote is the entire section headed Identifying uncertainty and highlighting it: (I bolded the secific words in the quote, but the rest of the quote contains presentations of thinking that are also contrary to 'conservative meaning limiting harm', especially contrary when limiting harm requires 'change')
Another strategy deployed by the gas industry focused on uncertainties in the emerging body of indoor air research and amplified them. Uncertainty and questions are part of research, but giving them disproportionate emphasis makes the science seem shakier than it is.
The Gas Research Institute, which funded research for the gas industry, hired the firm Arthur D. Little to produce this kind of material. Arthur D. Little had a history of conducting similar work for the tobacco industry. A 1981 paper completed by Arthur D. Little surveyed available research on the health effects of gas stoves but focused on questions the research did not answer and found the epidemiological data was "incomplete and conflicting."
The company says it doesn't have access to records for this project, conducted more than 40 years ago. "We have no reason to believe that the GRI report wasn't conducted with the same high standards of rigor and objectivity with which Arthur D. Little approaches all client engagements," Etienne Brumauld des Houlières, global marketing and communications director, wrote in an email.
The industry also favored reputable scientists who were considered scientifically conservative, for generally wanting to see a larger body of evidence than their peers before reaching conclusions.
Among them is Dr. Jonathan Samet, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health, who has a long history as an epidemiologist and researcher. A 1995 review produced by tobacco company Philip Morris concluded that his reputation "as an authority in pulmonary medicine and epidemiology" was "probably due at least in part to his scientific conservatism."
Samet's 1993 study of infants living in Albuquerque, N.M., homes found no connection between respiratory illness and the presence of a gas stove. It was funded by the Health Effects Institute, which received funding from a wide variety of sources, including the gas industry.
Samet says he never did research for the tobacco industry and that it set "a high water mark for egregious behavior and discrediting science." He does not see that same behavior when it comes to the gas industry and health effects of cooking with gas.
"Over my career, there are people who felt that I waited too long before perhaps saying that X causes Y. But that's because I don't think we want to have false positive determinations," Samet told NPR. Scientists say accomplishing that in epidemiology can be tricky because often there are multiple factors present that could be causing a health problem.
When it comes to assessing science that will inform new policies, Samet says it's rare that one study is enough to reach a conclusion. "I've been involved in enough of the development of authoritative reports in different contexts to take the view that the right way to understand what the science shows is to put it all together," Samet says. "And sometimes, unfortunately, the answer is that we don't have enough. So if that's conservative, that's fine."
As evidence around the health effects of gas stove use has accumulated, Samet's views are changing. "If I had a child who might be particularly susceptible because of asthma, for example, then I would probably think carefully about what I could do to make my home safer and a gas stove would be on that checklist," Samet says.
