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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 53551 to 53600:

  1. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    No worries Dana, Watts' tantrum is very revealing. More troubling is that his email yo you could be construed as a threat of violence against you. His emotional blog post also shows that instead of trying to rebut the substance of your excellent article he has elected to engage in vitriol, personal attacks, hyperbole and promulgating falsehoods (e.g., claiming that the forum is "secret"). But let us ignore Watts' empty rhetoric and address the one scientific issue that he tried to argue against. His failure to comprehend the >100% number is just yet another example of why Watts is not an expert in the discipline of climate science. On the one scientific issue that he did try and argue, he failed miserably and made a rookie mistake. As far as the >100% figure goes, a recent paper in Nature by Huber and Knutti (2011) determined that (my highlighting): "Greenhouse gases contributed 1.31°C (0.85-1.76°C) to the increase, that is 159% (106-212%) of the total warming. The cooling effect of the direct and indirect aerosol forcing is about -0.85°C (-1.48 to -0.30°C). The warming induced by tropospheric ozone and solar variability are of similar size (roughly 0.2°C). The contributions of stratospheric water vapour and ozone, volcanic eruptions, and organic and black carbon are small." Dr. Gavin Schmidt has also addressed this (my highlighting): "Over the last 40 or so years, natural drivers would have caused cooling, and so the warming there has been (and some) is caused by a combination of human drivers and some degree of internal variability. I would judge the maximum amplitude of the internal variability to be roughly 0.1 deg C over that time period, and so given the warming of ~0.5 deg C, I'd say somewhere between 80 to 120% of the warming. Slightly larger range if you want a large range for the internal stuff." So Dana is in very good company, because he actually follows, respects and understands the science. At this conjecture he has a choice 1) Either he is ignorant of the science, or 2) He knows better and is pandering to the emotions and gullibility/ignorance of his readership. Either option reflects very poorly on Watts and underscores the reason why the media should be ignoring him.
  2. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    CRV9, My main point is that same one exemplified by your statements that people can still buy cigarettes (i.e. the tobacco companies beat/rigged the system before) and the realities of a democratic society. It's exactly why what PBS did isn't "not that bad" but rather horrifically bad. Three Days of the Condor: the closing shock ending is that Robert Redford has given information on a secret government plan to take over the Middle East oilfields to all the major newspapers.
    Higgins: Hey Turner! How do you know they'll print it? You can take a walk… but how far if they don't print it? Turner: They'll print it. Higgins: How do you know?
    Back then, people believed that journalists were the sentinels of both government and society. They kept everyone shooting straight by letting people know, and letting democracy work. Of course that was always something of an idealistic fantasy, but even in an incomplete incarnation it's an important part of making democracy work. And that's exactly why PBS is so dramatically, epically wrong on this one. You can't say "oh, well." You can't let the Koch brothers buy our future by buying the media that's funded by our tax dollars and once existed as the unwritten check-and-balance to the other three branches of government (Legislative, Executive, Judicial, Journalistic). I don't think the point that you took from the interview, that AGW is important (please drop the small "c", it's unnecessary), was at all conveyed, and they clearly made no effort to do so. They didn't ask any hard questions. They didn't follow with a quick summary of how wrong he was on how many points. They just put it out there so that people could nod and doze and agree with whatever made them feel good about themselves. Epic fail.
  3. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    Aha....I found that the alleged (and untrue) quotes from Glenn Tamblyn, on WUWT, were in fact a commenter on Lewandosky's blog; seems Watts has once again misattributed a commeter's rant with a person that Watts just conveniently dislikes. Typical. I hope Glenn sets the record straight, although I know setting records straight with Watts is a fool's errand.
  4. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    dana@65: I wanna know *lots* more about the "secret web forum/off limits forum" Tony prattles on about: We *all* love a good conspiracy rant, especially if it's true! /sarc off Amazing how, when I plug the alleged "secret forum" comments into the Googlator (and let it be known that I have two left hands, wrt to really serious drilling down using the Interwebs) the only source of the alleged quotes from Tamblyn/Nuccitelli are....on WUWT. Hmmmmmm....you think Tony would ~leap~ at the chance to provide the actual *link* to your "secret web forum," no? If it existed....;)
  5. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    Yes, false balance, false equivalence and false controversy. Michaels, the segment producers, and News Hour obviously only wanted to put up a show that would keep the views in their seats and News Hour was not interested in factually accurate reporting that would correctly inform the public on climate change. Watts is of course completely transparent. He is only interested in sowing doubt in order to avoid any tax or carbon trading scheme or regulation that, in his opinion, would be "catastrophic to our economy." He is happy to use scare tactics to further his unsubstantiated opinions while ignoring the truly alarming effects of global climate disruption. This is situation we in the US find ourselves in. The only scientists the Republicans in Congress are willing to listen to are Christy and Lindzen so I would say the deniers have won for now. Watts should actually be very pleased. He needn’t worry about what the vast majority of climate researchers are saying because the vast majority of US media outlets are not paying attention. Watts should be basking in the glory of the national attention he has gotten from News Hour. The weak online responses from News Hour will not detract at all from that.
  6. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    It might be worth comparing Muller @ PBS with Muller at CBC. Deep Climate discusses the latter, in Richard Muller Radio Rambles, part 1: Kochs “very deep”, “very thoughtful” and “properly skeptical”.
  7. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    Watts is a shill, and while it's important to examine him and why the Newshour brought him on, his credentials as a "climate scientist" are easily debunked. Few comments here are about Muller, who is also controversial, but much more interesting too. Through books and classes he has advanced scientific literacy among the public, including regarding warming. But he loves media attention too. I wrote about him here: http://renewabledoug.blogspot.com/2012/09/pbs-newshour-climate-and-professor.html
  8. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    Sphaerica@54, I don't dispute what you said. But you know we still can buy cigarettes, legally. I know a nuclear scientist who knows it causes cancers and still smokes. No, I'm not trying to be a smart ass. In this democratic society every dumb, ignorrant, gullible mind like mine has the same one vote as a brilliant mind like yours has. I'm trying to talk about reality in a democratic society. As much as cAGW is real and an inconvinient fact to some, the half of our representitives say it is a hoax is real and an inconvinient fact. And the PBC show clearly said so. I really thought that was its main point. The fact Bill Nye is speaking out publicly or the media is picking it up, the fact PBC is doing AGW with Mr. Watt are the fact we are talking about it in main public. Which is a good thing. And this is not about cAGW only. This is about science as a whole. I think we tend to look at the trees and not seeing the forest. Debate, controversy, pseudoscience shouldn't just hang around in blogsphere where the sun don't shine. It should be out there in main poblic for everybody to see. You are not afraid of your scientific stance, are you? Even the bad publisity is good sometimes.
  9. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    You know, when Watts says "the gloves are off," what does he mean? The only fists that matter are the fists of scientific research. What's Watts going to do? Ramp up the rhetoric? Rhetoric*0 = 0.
  10. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    Here is the link for the Huffington Post article PBS NewsHour's Climate Change Report Raises Eyebrows (VIDEO) referred to by John Hartz at 21 above.
  11. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    As expected, a spluttering emotional outburst from Watts, including rolling in the gutter. These folks have no compunction about traducing others, but if somebody points out their own failings? Watch out! Epic tantrum sure to follow. I wonder if Watts thinks he's scoring some kind of points with the general public by wallowing in database compost? Especially, I wonder how the producers of News Hour are going to feel about that? The same guy they featured just a few nights ago is now raving in public about years-old messages dug out of a stolen database? First and last time for Watts on -that- program. :-)
  12. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    "The rest of his post is just a bunch of personal attacks directed towards me. This morning Watts emailed me to warn me that "the gloves are now off." " Sad more than anything else. Its as if the poor fellow cannot understand sulphate cooling.
  13. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    To illustrate my "epic fail" point as simply as possible, take the formula x + y = z. Say x = 3, y = -1, and z = 2. In this case x is larger than z. Another way of saying that is that x accounts for more than 100% of the contribution to z. Like I said, it's not a difficult concept.
  14. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    cRR @64 - oh boy, I seem to have sent Watts into full meltdown mode. This comment of his is absolutely embarrassing:
    "Gosh. GHG’s are responsible for over 100% of the observed warming? That’s an epic fail if I’ve ever seen one."
    Apparently citing peer reviewed research is an epic fail now? I guess Watts can't comprehend how GHGs could be responsible for over 100% - apparently he needs to read SkS and educate himself. It's not a difficult concept to grasp. The rest of his post is just a bunch of personal attacks directed towards me. This morning Watts emailed me to warn me that "the gloves are now off." For his own benefit he should really put those gloves back on, because this is just embarrassing.
  15. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    The hilarious epic fail of Dana Nuccitelli . He forgot about the decrease of solar insolation they always harp on when they announce the Ice Age beginning tomorrow or something like that. 'Forgot' deliberately - never underestimate climate revisionism. Posted a reminder at WUWT but it will be disappeared (as they say in the Middle America's).
  16. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    "You're late to the party." Sph@61, somehow, I was afraid, though not surprised, that I was...;(
  17. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    I tend to find Mr Watts methods similar to those of other 'citizen scientists' of the past such as Eric von Danikien who also had his own theories that the mainstream was wrong and produced voluminous and detailed work analysing and explaining why his ideas were more likely to be correct. It has always been easy to produce ideas that are superficially revolutionary and appeal to a wide audience. It creates a frission in the followers who feel they are on the inside track of a revolution in understanding. However this is why we have science. Not a body of knowledge, but a way of approaching problems. Its not easy, it long, boring and arduous. You need to build a large body of proof for your ideas that offers a better description of what is happening than the idea you are challenging. Mr Watts fails woefully by not explaining things like the much faster rate of warming in the high latitudes, the retreat of sea ice, the drop in NH summer snow cover, the receding glaciers and so on. Anyone can speculate and come up with plausible sounding ideas. And in this case PBS have broadcast little more than plausible sounding speculation.
  18. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    vrooomie, You're late to the party. Go to WUWT to see: Bill Nye is the anti-science guy when it comes to global warming and hurricanes August, 2011 and Is Bill Nye Smarter than a 5th Grader? May, 2011
  19. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    dana@58: I hope you will make that same point in the comment stream at PBS. A few weeks back, there was a discussion of how best to 'battle' the landslide of fake skeptics' comments, and I arrived at the conclusion that, to the best of our abilities, where it rares its head, folks like you, Kevin C, Doug_Bostrom, and even me need to inveigle against it/them.
  20. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    This is worth the reposting...by Bill Nye. “I appreciate that we want to show two sides of the stories — there’s a tradition in journalism that goes back quite a ways, I guess — but the two sides aren’t equal here. You have tens of thousands of scientists who are very concerned and you have a few people who are in business of equating or drawing attention to the idea that uncertainty is the same as doubt. When you have a plus or minus percentage, that’s not the same thing as not believing the whole thing at all… We in the science education community chip away at this problem all the time. We have an enormous population of people in the United States that don’t believe in evolution, the fundamental idea in all of life science. It would be like saying, I don’t believe in earthquakes or something. The analogies are disturbing.” I wonder how long it will take (if not done already) for the denialati to shrilly proclaim that Nye is now "one of the warmists." Oy vey gevalt.... Desmogblog (http://s.tt/1nCOE)
  21. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    DSL @55 - if Watts and Jones ever get their paper published, then they can make that argument. Right now all the evidence contradicts their UHI argument. After they bungled their first preliminary draft so horrendously, there's simply no way we can take their word for it that they've now done the analysis correctly and they're still right and every other group is still wrong. Rob @56 - indeed some Republican politicians have started to at least consider carbon taxes as a way to bring in some revenue and help reduce local deficits. Carbon pricing would also create higher demand for low carbon products, which would spur innovation and thus potentially create jobs.
  22. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    Einstein had a degree in physics (Watts is a college dropout) and was pursuing an advanced degree while working at the patent office. He received his Ph.D. in 1905 and continued to work at the patent office for a number of years because the only teaching position available was as a lecturer (then as now not a full-time position) at the University of Bern. The myths about him being a poor student or that he was not formally trained in the sciences are entirely wrong.
  23. Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
    I keep reading about the comfortable 2m upper boundary of SLR this century, but can't shake the images from Greenland of roaring rivers discharging meltwater this past summer. With the fantastic shrinkage in arctic sea ice volume, and this past year loss of area, I'd be interested in seeing a followup post on the prospects for nonlinear SLR. I got interested in this when searching for comments on Pfeffer's kinematic constraints paper from 2008, and stumbled onto this excellent blog post: http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2012/01/hansen-still-argues-5m-21st-c-sea-level.html Would be interested in the SkepSci crew's take on those questions.
  24. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    Just catching up here... @4 Dale makes the comment, "Well, not without taxing your own population into poverty..." This is a huge misconception about taxes. People seem to have this notion that taxes suck money out of the economy and nothing could be further from the truth. Tax revenues do not disappear from the economy. In fact, a carbon tax will more likely turn out to be have net positive benefits for most people. The challenge is that there are clear losers too. The losers are going to be the fossil fuel industry.
  25. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    The other half of the equation, Evan Jones, hath spoken in comment at PBS:
    Sorry, but Watts is dead-on correct. If anything, he understated the issue in your program. Menne (2010), which used the data I -- personally -- compiled used the obsolete and fatally flawed Menne (1999) methodology for rating stations. But when applying the new (WMO-approved) Leroy (2010) methodology, the trend differences between well and poorly sited station are stark. Well microsited rural stations without airports show barely half the NOAA-adjusted "official" record. This is true even after accountig for TOBS bias and MMTS conversion. NOAA is going to have to readdress its entire USHCN dataset.
    Hrmmm . . . even after accounting for those factors.
  26. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    CRV9, And why do you think it is that half of USA lawmakers think AGW is a hoax? Imagine yourself in the 1970s. A PBS show presents a number of scientists demonstrating how they have discovered that tobacco is linked to lung cancer. At the end, they add an interview with an acupuncturist who tells the viewer that he's done studies to prove that the air in the scientist's work is tainted by pollution and so not a reliable test of tobacco smoke, and anyway the scientists are in it because they've created this entire cottage industry on doing cancer research. In fact, universities have created entire departments around cancer research. Anthony Watts:
    Well global warming had become essentially a business in its own right. There are NGOs, there are organizations, there are whole divisions of universities that have set up to study this, this factor, and so there's lots of money involved and then so I think that there's a tendency to want to keep that going and not really look at what might be different.
    1970s version:
    Well cancer research had become essentially a business in its own right. There are NGOs, there are organizations, there are whole divisions of universities that have set up to study this, this factor, and so there's lots of money involved and then so I think that there's a tendency to want to keep that going and not really look at what might be different.
    Really? You don't think it was not "that bad?"
  27. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    CRV9 makes some good points about acknowledging "wrong" and letting the public see what it looks like. The trouble is, many viewers are not obsessively fascinated with this topic and (our cognition being what it is) will in the absence of any other story adopt Watts' story as their operative picture of what's going on with climate science and climate change. Leaving aside that the segment was remarkably uninformative on its notional topic, one should set some sort of lower threshold to the "quality of wrong" chosen for illustration. A presentation including somebody such as Richard Lindzen would actually have been better. Lindzen shares many of the ideological fixations as does Watts but is fully able to describe climate science accurately if he so chooses. Based on his track record we'd have been presented with a similarly slanted perspective but one more comprehensive than Watts was able to accomplish, given his limitations. Lindzen is state-of-the-art "wrong" so if the producer's objective was to present the best "wrong" available Lindzen would have been a much better choice, with a cluster of other better alternatives to Watts also in the realm of best fit for purpose. A presentation with Lindzen would still leave open the question of what is the point of parading "wrong" in front of viewers. Obviously the intention is not to present a freak show but rather is a communications effort of some kind. News Hour failed to "speak in its own voice" to properly explain their objective with the segment, leaving us guessing the reason for why a person who is essentially unqualified to solidly improve public understanding of the topic of climate change was chosen to occupy ten minutes' airtime. Other choices would leave open the same question.
  28. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    CRV9, no one here seeks to "suppress every skeptic voice," nor does anyone here advocate allowing no other opinion other than our (scientist's) opinions. However, as evidenced by thousands of posts here, *if* a Watts, a Lindzen, a Christy make outlandish/obfuscaory/flat-out wrong assertions, it is to be expected that those who *do* do this professionally will, in a scientific way, take out their incorrect/badly- or not-supported opinions *vigorously*. On another early thread, I pointed out that science is a blood sport: the main difference is we attack ~ideas~, not the originators' of those ideas. Watt's is the *first* to whine about having his opinions challenged, byt, never, as far as I can see, offers up much beyond his usual snarky comments, then just repeats the lie he got shown ~was~ a lie. PBS' dog-and-pony show, in some feeble effort to show they're "fair and balanced," was, in what it didn't say, bad.
  29. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    (I hope that Kevin C doesn't object to my tooting his horn for him here) Dale, A few weeks ago, Kevin C, one of the regulars here, posted a *one page* python script that computes global-average temperatures from GHCN v3 data. With that script, you can easily test Watts' favorite claims about the global temperature record. The script will allow you to process rural and urban stations separately, so that you can see the effects of UHI for yourself. You can also generate global-average temperature estimates from raw vs. adjusted data, so that you can see for yourself how much (or little) the "data adjustments" matter on a global scale. You can find Kevin C's original python script here. (After you go to that link, simply do a ctrl-f text search for the string "show code" to find the actual script.) I modified the script ever so slightly to make it easier to perform direct "apples vs. apples" comparisons of the script output with the official NASA/GISS "meteorological stations index" (available at the NASA/GISS web-site). The modified script writes the results out in a format that can easily be imported into Excel or OpenOffice and plotted. I also added a bunch of "newbie-friendly" comments to the script that explain in detail how to get all the temperature data and crunch the data with the script. You can get the modified version here. If you download the script and follow the instructions provided in the comments, you will be able to perform direct "apples vs. apples" comparisons of your own results with the official NASA results -- i.e. you can easily plot up your own rural, urban, raw, and adjusted results and compare those results with the official NASA version. So check it out and see how it goes -- and don't be shy about sharing your findings with us right here. Let us know how your own results square with the claims that Watts has been making. You will probably need to install some additional software on your PC/laptop (i.e. python and OpenOffice), but that additional software is completely free and very easy to install. And a final note -- just want to make it clear that Kevin C did all the real work writing that script -- I just "polished the cannonballs" a bit. ;)
  30. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    Kevin C@46, this is all Feyerabend's fault: seems as if the denialosphere has adopted epistemological anarchism as its Holy Screed! The 'mass' of opinion, to which the lesser educated public seems to put a large amount of stock into, is indeed the result of that, and I would posit as support of your statement: "Of course raising problems with existing theories is a valuable activity if done within a knowledge-seeking framework. I guess one source of confusion to the public is in the distinction between a paper which critiques a theory in order to increase knowledge and one which critiques a theory in order to avoid knowledge. " It all depends on *where* laypersons look for the "knowledge-seeking framework." In many cases, what the "masses" want is confirmation bias, of an already formed, usually negative, opinion of science. they find that framework in the well-funded, highly visible likes of Watts, Lindzen, Christy et al, and that is the main disservice PBS has done, in their interview with Watts.
  31. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    Dana: Any truth to the rumor that Watts is about to receive nother big shipment of smoke bombs and mirriors from Koch Industries? He did, after all, use up some of his inventory in the PBS interview.
  32. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    Mole @32 - This isn't the place to talk about carbon pricing, but the European Union and its (27, I think) member states have had a carbon emissions trading system in place since 2005. Australia is about to join it. It's not yet global, but there are major international economies participating. The rebuttal also isn't just an appeal to authority/expertise - it goes into a lot of detail about how we know carbon pricing will have minimal economic impact, and will be a net benefit to the economy when compared to business as usual/adapting to climate change. But if you want to continue this discussion, it should go in another post, for example the 'CO2 limits will harm the economy' rebuttal comments.
  33. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    As I said before I didn't think it was necessary that bad. Of course, it's one simple mind of the general public. But I did feel that they did spend too much time for Mr. Watt and they should have had someone from NASA or NOAA for a counter view. However, you can't suppress every skeptic voice no matter how absurd they sound scientifically to you. Over reacting of suppression or dismissal sounds suspicious rather. People will hear their voices no matter how much you wish it is not fair. You have to be confident that you can let them state their points and you state your points, and you can confidently let people decide. You'd have to have that poise. You can't have every TV show, news article or whatever in media to not to show skeptics today. It becomes it doesn't matter how much they scream when they'd sound absurd to the public. I don't think getting too emotional and blaming the messanger is a good idea. I don't have any objection that you complain to PBC though. you need more allies not more of dissents. Main point was that half of our lawmakers still believe AGW is a hoax despite the 97% of climate scientists, so the show stated and that's because of people like Mr. Watt. And I don't think they said he was a climate scientist. I didn't think it was bad, to be honest. I wished they showed a climate scientist from NASA or NOAA as I said before but I thibk they sort of assumed more of the public already know. i guess you may hate me now.
  34. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    DSL: I think you've made a critical point here. To underline it, I think any analysis would conclude that climate science is knowledge-seeking - it is developing a single unified understanding of climate, consistent with observations and with the laws of physics. Details change in the light of new evidence, but the size of the changes is declining, i.e. the process is gradually converging. By contrast, most climate skepticism is knowledge-avoiding, and thus is correctly classified as a form of denial. Climate skeptics are almost without exception not building a comprehensive and consistent understanding of reality - often they raise problems with existing theories without any interest in providing an alternative understanding, or they advance explanations which address microcosms of the data without attempting to fit them into a broader understanding (e.g. the Humlum paper), or they simply look for evidence that the science is unknowable. The distinction is somewhat congruent to Lakatos' distinction between progressive and degenerate research programs, Of course raising problems with existing theories is a valuable activity if done within a knowledge-seeking framework. I guess one source of confusion to the public is in the distinction between a paper which critiques a theory in order to increase knowledge and one which critiques a theory in order to avoid knowledge.
  35. 2012 SkS Weekly News Round-Up #1
    Perhaps...
    America is [the] only nation where climate scientists face organized harassment by Katherine Bagley...
    ;-)
    Moderator Response: [JH] ROFL!
  36. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    SW: "He completed his PhD thesis in April of 1905 and submitted his paper on what was to become known as the theory of relativity in June of that year and it was published in September." Dale, of all the myriad differences between Watts and Einstein, there's the most important for this situation: Einstein was developing a theory. Watts is developing doubt. Watts has no interest in scientific progress. Indeed, the evidence strongly suggests that he is actively attacking the scientific project through the decisions he makes about blog content and comment streams. The surface stations project is/was not an attempt to add to science. Watts fought revision the whole way, and he's fought criticism the whole way after publication. Since the results of the first project didn't fit the required message, he tried to do it again in a slightly different way. Fail. I know that he triggers the underdog response in many people, but what do we gain by giving Watts wide play? Baseless confusion and doubt. If Watts says there is doubt and shakes a graph at non-experts, then there is doubt. There's already a mechanism for skepticism built in to science. It's worked quite well for a few centuries. It's very hard to work around, especially in a dynamic, hyperintegrated, and large field. Watts' doubt is not being cast toward the science; it's being cast toward the public. That alone should trigger warning bells.
  37. Sceptical Wombat at 23:59 PM on 19 September 2012
    PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    Dale @ 7 Einstein didn't even have a degree (let alone a PhD) when he published his theory of relativity in his 20's. He was a patent office clerk. His PhD was given to him well later. I don't know where you get your information from but according to Wikipedia Einstein had completed a 4 year mathematics and physics teaching diploma at Zurich Polytechnic which I would guess was probably at least as formidable a qualification as a modern BSc. Describing him as a clerk at the patent office is a bit condescending - he was in fact an assistant examiner. He completed his PhD thesis in April of 1905 and submitted his paper on what was to become known as the theory of relativity in June of that year and it was published in September.
  38. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    When Richard Muller appeared in March 2011 before the House Committee on Science (his full statement is here) he had one recommendation for what the Committee could do in the way of legislation to "advance our knowledge of climate change". He called for the creation of a Climate Advanced Research Project Agency, or Climate-ARPA, saying it "could help". He went on: "Without the efforts of Anthony Watts and his team, we would have only a series of anecdotal images of poor temperature stations, and we would not be able to evaluate the integrity of the data. This is a case in which scientists receiving no government funding did work crucial to our understanding climate change. Similarly for the work done by Steve McIntyre. Their "amateur" science is not amateur in quality; it is true science, conducted with integrity and high standards. Government policy needs to encourage such work. Climate-ARPA could be an organization that provides quick funding to worthwhile projects whether they support or challenge current understanding" PBS could have asked Muller what he thinks of "true" scientists of "integrity" who have such "high standards", eg Watts, now.
  39. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    Yet another critical review of the PBS interview of Watts: PBS NewsHour Falls Into “Balance” Trap, Provides Megaphone For Anthony Watts , Farron Cousins, DeSmog Blog, Sep 17, 2012 Dana’s review is still the best of the bunch because he strips away the bombastic rhetoric of Watts to show that Watts's understanding of climate science is a millimeter deep and a kilometer wide.
  40. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    Another good discussion of the Watts' PBS piece. Media Matter's discussion of Watt's obfuscation
  41. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    gws: I think that's a very useful terminological distinction!
  42. 2012 SkS Weekly News Round-Up #1
    #8, John I second your suspicion. I for one would be very interested in a chinese perspective on changing climate patterns in a fast changing environment.
  43. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    re #37 I have noticed for several years now that in the US (and maybe elsewhere? Australia?) the "appeal to authority"-fallacy argument is often made (more often by "skeptics") to discredit authoritative voices when it should actually be called "appeal to expertise", which IMHO is not the same. In Europe, especially Germany, where I am from, expertise is usually at least somewhat critically evaluated by journalists. Especially in public television and newspapers. You can trust hearing the facts, and having debunkings presented when expertise is questionable. Non-experts (like Watts) are simply absent (with very few "outliers") from non-internet media, and can only express their doubt-mongering online, where they do not reach the masses. This is a major difference between NA and EU media landscapes.
  44. 2012 SkS Weekly News Round-Up #1
    @ajki #8: I tend to agree with you -- Katherine Bagley and the headline writer should not have used the adverb "only". In addtion, what's going on in three other continents (Africa, Asia, and South America) was not addressed. Generally speaking, we in the Western World need to broaden our concept of what "world-wide" means. On that score, I suspect that the number of regular SkS readers from, Asian, African, and South American countries is a relatively small fraction of our readership base. How SkS should go about marketing itself to pople in Asia, Africa, and South America merits further discussion.
  45. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    About the only Watts statement in the PBS transcript that isn't simply conservative politics is "Yes, we have some global warming. It’s clear the temperature has gone up in the last 100 years, but what percentage of that is from carbon dioxide and what percentage of that is from the changes in the local and measurement environment?" Does Watts agree with 97.5% of climate scientists who say yes to the question: "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?" He may in general, but the snippet above implies no. The rest of his responses are political except the swipe at Muller. What Watts (along with editing by PBS) did is establish his political view, cast doubt upon the amount of warming caused by CO2, and swipe at Muller. I very much doubt he changed the views of any of the PBS viewers.
  46. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    Let me buck the trend here and argue that we shouldn't necessarily dismiss someone's claim on the basis of their expertise. It's more complicated than that. I think that it depends on both the forum and the nature of the claim. If someone is presenting their opinion, then we should certainly weigh that opinion against their expertise. Faced with multiple contradictorary opinions, we have to look for external metrics to select from among them. Expertise, prior record, vested interested, honesty and other metrics are all relevant in this case. If someone is presenting a scientific argument, by which I mean an argument which is structured as evidence based-reasoning as would be published in a peer-reviewed journal, or indeed a summary of such an argument where the full argument is also available, then we no longer need to fall back on expertise and so on. In this case we can evaluate the argument on its merits without reference to the source, and indeed we should do so because otherwise we preclude the possibility of scientists ever making contributions outside their original disciplines. I suggest that this gives us an appropriate methodology for evaluating different kinds of arguments. Watts of course fails on both counts - his recent attempt at a scientific contribution falls short on evidence-based evaluation, and his opinions fail on the basis of expertise and a track record of promoting wrong and contradictory material.
  47. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    Mole, tell me how a pigovian carbon tax would harm an economy? However, whether carbon tax or any other measure is harmful, the one thing that is harmful is rapid carbon change. The whole basis of any policy is studies that conclude reducing emissions is a better long term option than doing nothing. By all means feel free to suggest other ways to reduce emission besides pricing carbon. Myself, I am just happy with banning construction of new power plant that emit. Let the market figure out the best alternative.
  48. 2012 SkS Weekly News Round-Up #1
    When I read "America Is only Nation..." about european climate scientists being less of a target for insults and harassment and find Dr. S. Rahmstorf supporting this claim (to a degree), I must really wonder what I'm forced to find on websites like EIKE and the like. There may be less insults by quantity, but not by quality.
  49. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    Dale, When you go to your dentist you no doubt are reassured by his certificate of competance proudly displayed on the wall, showing that he has passed the relevant exams and courses of study. Or perhaps, with your disdain for professional qualifications you would rather go to this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_oQRFaNzwY If you follow the above link, you will find it goes to an Indian street dentist, who's only qualifications are that he has worked in other highly technical professions, such as fixing bicycles. Alternatively, lets try this exercise. You go flying in a jumbo jet who's pilot's only qualifications are that he has passed his private pilot's license, whilst I go flying with a captain with full ATPL and 20,000 hours. I will look forward to having drinks in the bar whilst you are dragging yourself out of a smouldering wreck at the end of the runway, (if you are lucky).
  50. PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?
    Yeah, Mole, "ooops." I'm sure that after laboriously parsing your last paragraph the moderators will work extra hard to repair your error for you. :-)

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