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vrooomie at 08:47 AM on 7 September 2012Record Arctic Sea Ice Melt to Levels Unseen in Millennia
DB, ModResp@38...first, thanks a heap for correcting my fat fingered, early-AM typos! Secondly, per your well-put codicil to my post..I was *tryin'* ter be polite...;) I'm *breathlessly* awaiting a response from Astrofos, though, I'm not holding my hand on my...well, never mind. >;-P -
michael sweet at 08:39 AM on 7 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Tom, I am sorry, I did not intend to come across so strongly. It is my understanding from working on a single public survey that no samples are deleted unless they self contradicted. The deviation from the mean was not considered. I respect that you put in a lot of time to research your posts and cite regularly from the literature. -
Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 08:24 AM on 7 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
@foxgoose - is it time to give this a rest? First off, as lots of people have pointed out to you it was one slide out of many in a presentation. It was preliminary indication, not a final paper. It was for fellow scientists, not the general public. Secondly, let's say McIntyre did finally decide to post the survey - a few days later (unlikely) and another dozen or two people responded. Say this included one full blown conspiracy theorist (probably not even that), half a dozen extreme right wingers, a dozen or so luke warmers of various political leanings and half a dozen who accept climate science, again with a spread of various political leanings. How much difference would it make to the survey results? Very little. At best, they might have grabbed a few more extreme right wingers to help the analysis - which is probably why they tried again to see if anyone from sites that are likely to attract a greater proportion of extreme right wingers would respond. Thirdly, on a blog if something isn't done quickly it probably won't get done at all. Fourthly, on most blogs, articles quickly drop down the list (okay, not on CA so much but I think it was a bit more active back then). If Steve or anyone else had decided to post the link then responses would probably come within a day or two and drop off rapidly. Fifth - McIntyre didn't post the link. Sixth - on the internet, downloads are almost instantaneous. The slide could have been prepared the morning of the presentation. Seventh - no, it was not the final results - and nor was it a car sale. Eighth - it was a single slide on the survey, not a whole presentation about the survey. And it was not the final result. 9 and 10 - it was not the final result. The paper is being published two years later. McIntyre didn't post the link. -
Gestur at 08:03 AM on 7 September 2012Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
Robert Murphy, I won’t subject myself to the nonsense at Watt’s webpage, life is too short for that sort of thing. But I note the following alarming statistics: according to my own simple calculations on the NSIDC’s MASIE data, the average loss of sea ice extent for the first 5 days of September 2012 is running at 87,188 square kilometers per day. According to NSIDC’s write up of Sept 5, the average loss of sea ice extent during August in the previous record overall low year of 2007 was 66,000 square kilometers per day. And in 2008, the year with the previous highest monthly August ice loss, the rate was 80,600 square kilometers per day. Finally, the 2012 August average ice loss rate per day was 91,700 square kilometers. So in the first 5 days of September of this year the loss per day is only marginally lower than it averaged for the entire drastic loss month of August, 2012. But it is substantially higher than the August 2007 average loss per day rate and non-trivially higher than the 2008 August average loss rate per day. To quote George W. Bush (late in 2008 and of course referring to the fate of the US economy at the time): “This sucker is going down.” -
Bostjan Kovacec at 08:01 AM on 7 September 2012Realistically What Might the Future Climate Look Like?
@Lanfear67 Can you be more specific why you think it'd be impossible to feed 7+ population with working animals? I was quite skeptical about it, needed almost a year to get used to it, but now it looks ok. It's not really my idea - my professor asked me during an exam what I thouhgt about it. Regarding how many oxen you need to do the work of a tractor: I'm not sure if this is the right question to ask. I'd start with the area of land available and then ask what the production capacity of it is. How much primary photosynthetic production will go to feed the animals on the farm, how much will be taken as produce and how much will be fed back to soil directly, and if this division is sustainable? Does anyone have any idea how the emissions from animals compared with diesel? -
Foxgoose at 07:59 AM on 7 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Repy to #114 Bob Loblaw at 07:02 AM on 7 September, 2012 No - the key date was the final request. (-Snip-)Moderator Response: [DB] Inflammatory snipped. -
Robert Murphy at 07:54 AM on 7 September 2012Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
Funny thing is, Bastardi links to a map that is labelled "Sea Surface Temperature". On the same website there is an actual map showing extent, and it shows what everybody else is showing. What Bastardi thinks is sea ice extent "rapidly growing back" What the website actually shows for sea ice extent: -
dana1981 at 07:08 AM on 7 September 2012Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
It's really astonishing that anyone still takes Bastardi seriously isn't it? -
Bob Loblaw at 07:02 AM on 7 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Foxgoose: Yes, but focusing on the date of the reminder, instead of the date of the earlier original invitation, means you weren't telling "the whole truth". After you get that figured out, perhaps we'll move on to "nothing but the truth". -
Robert Murphy at 06:48 AM on 7 September 2012Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
Unpossible! Anthony Watts says that the ice has started to turn a corner this week, and he's always right, isn't he? Sea Ice News Volume 3 number 12 – has Arctic sea ice started to turn the corner? And Joe Bastardi says the ice is "rapidly growing back". When was the last time he was wrong about something? :) -
Foxgoose at 06:13 AM on 7 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Reply to #91 Bob Loblaw at 12:00 PM on 6 September, 2012 To put your mind at rest, I did "know exactly what I was doing" when I said Steve McIntyre received the reminder email on the 23rd. I was stating the truth. You may, of course, draw whatever conclusions you like from that Be careful though - maybe telling the truth is part of a cunning conspiracy ;-) -
Alpinist at 05:56 AM on 7 September 2012Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
The next question seems to be the developing hypothesis that the dramatic changes in the northernmost latitudes are having a significant influence in the jet stream leading to increasing “blocking” events. These blocking events might be responsible for the extremely persistent patterns in the North America this year that have resulted in the damaging drought and fire events in the US and a wetter than normal summer in the Rockies of BC and Alberta. After three weeks of smoke in Western Montana, I’m certainly ready for it to end! -
Foxgoose at 05:50 AM on 7 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Reply to Tom Curtis at 07:34 AM on 6 September, 2012 Tom You're mistaken I'm afraid. I think you missed the point that Geoff Chambers and I made in our earlier posts. We pointed out that Steve McIntyre has now specifically confirmed that he received the "reminder" email on September 23rd. Which rather invalidates the rest of your post. -
Tom Dayton at 05:13 AM on 7 September 2012CRU tampered with temperature data
karl, regarding the effects of adjustments, see the Skeptical Science post Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique. -
Doug Bostrom at 03:52 AM on 7 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Leaving aside for a second the probability of one swimming into Lewandowsky's net, chimeras apparently do exist, presuming various anecdotes such as that related in the link are not all lies. To me the most interesting part of Tom's analysis lies in the case he constructs for the improbability of catching a sample of the relatively few very most strange fish swimming in the ocean. On the one hand, Tom shows mathematically how bizarre these creatures are, yet it seems it's not impossible to find examples without an absurd amount of effort. It's nonetheless a leap to say that a properly constructed survey instrument will bump into them as easily as a person steering a browser into particular places. Many confounding factors. -
Mark-US at 02:37 AM on 7 September 2012Realistically What Might the Future Climate Look Like?
Does the unexpectedly fast loss of cryosphere albedo mean IPCC AR4's temperature projections are too low? -
Doug Bostrom at 02:25 AM on 7 September 2012Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
Your graph shows that we can certainly expect recovery to be just around the corner, Dana. It seems we can always count on a corner, though we'll probably soon have to begin restricting the seasonal coverage of the graph in order to find one. What's interesting about the ABSIA graphs and all the others recently behaving in similar hysterical fashion is indeed the superficial appearance of "recovery" from year to year. I suppose that's pretty much perfectly in keeping with what we've learned of diminishing volume. We can see the same behavior in mud puddles-- thick ice takes longer to vanish. Folks new to the topic and who are intrigued should be sure to pay a visit to Neven's Arctic Sea Ice Blog -
Kevin C at 01:59 AM on 7 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Did you actually read Tom's response @108? May I suggest you do so again? -
michael sweet at 01:28 AM on 7 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Tom, I see someone who is not an expert in a subject claiming a peer reviewed paper is wrong based on their back of the envelope calculation. We see this all the time at SkS. We normally rely on peer reviewed data to support arguments. You normally cite peer reviewed data to support your analysis. Here you cited your wife as agreeing with you. In this case you have cited no papers. You have provided no data to support your claim that the distribution should be a normal distribution. The sample size is small so it is difficult to calculate the normal curve, let alone count extremes. There are abundant papers counting conspiracy beliefs, why don't you cite one of them to support your claim that these outliers should be excluded? You have not drawn a line where you would include a response and when you would exclude a response. In my experience a line like that is impossible to agree on. In the end all the responses are counted. If you think the responses are gamed you discount the conclusions. Lewandowsky discusses this in the paper. If you can cite a paper that says results that appear gamed to the researcher should be excluded from the analysis I will consider your data. My understanding is that all responses are normally included. AIUI Lewandowsky's conclusion is that deniers often believe in conspiracy theories. What is so contraversial about that? You don't like his title.Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] The first paragraph of this comment is verging on ad-hominem territory. The correctness of an argument does not depend the expertise of its source. The absence of a suitable reference does not mean that the argument is incorrect, just that you have to judge it on its intrinsic strength and Tom has been completely candid about that. Please keep the discussion more tightly focussed on the argument and not the individual making it. -
vrooomie at 01:19 AM on 7 September 2012Record Arctic Sea Ice Melt to Levels Unseen in Millennia
Astrofos@37....um, *intriguing* analysis. Have you had this published in a refereed journal? As a geologist, I find your conclusions--well, let's say--*fascinating.* I await to hear other learned voices, here, comment upon them, also: Assuming I read it correctly, you assert the melting of the Arctic to be more a function of the heat from the "Thermosphere," rather than heat absorbed by the oceans? As for the Mars reference...you do know Mars has no magnetic field, certainly nothing even remotely close to Earth's, right? Some peer-reviewed references to back up your conclusions would be appreciated.Moderator Response:[DB] Fixed typos per request.
Fascinating? No. Merely interesting.
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dana1981 at 01:12 AM on 7 September 2012Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
Thanks doug. I'm no Arctic expert, but given the huge amount by which 2012 will shatter the previous record, and be well below the exponential trend line, I have to think there were some natural factors at play in this minimum that will likely lead to one of those 'recoveries' over the next year or two. I could certainly be wrong, but that would be my guess. -
Dikran Marsupial at 01:09 AM on 7 September 2012CRU tampered with temperature data
karl there are many sources of known bias in the raw data, of which UHI is only one. The process of dealing with this is known as "homogenisation"; google scholar should provide references to papers discussing the issues involved. There is a particularly good review by Blair Trewin that you can find here, which would be an excellent place to start. n.b. I actually work at UEA so I am not going to comment on this one other than to give a pointer to the literature. -
Doug Bostrom at 00:52 AM on 7 September 2012Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
And speaking of dynamic things, that's a very thought-provoking visualization you've created, Dana. -
Doug Bostrom at 00:51 AM on 7 September 2012Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
Further to Chris and CB's remarks about what we might expect going forward, there's another startling graph at Neven's blog here, detailing the annual behavior of Arctic Basin sea ice area. Area is of course one of the less favored metrics of sea ice, but it's not the absolute numbers shown in that graph that are interesting but rather the dynamics year-on-year. When I look at ABSIA graph, I don't see an obvious reason why it would revert back to the previous mode of behavior. After 7 years of being "stuck" in an apparently new mode, what's going to change it back to the previous mode? -
karl at 00:41 AM on 7 September 2012CRU tampered with temperature data
what bothers me is this: the raw temperature data from USHCN do not show a warming trend and only after adjustments, the trend appears. Is there a sensible explanation for that? I know of urban heat index, but that would adjust data in the other direction. -
Tom Curtis at 23:19 PM on 6 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
michael sweet @104, the evidence that the two responses with the strongest support of conspiracy theories are outliers cannot be found in any academic book or paper, but only in Lewandowsky's data. Analysing that data shows them to be 6.49 and 6.28 standard deviations greater than the mean value for responses to the conspiracy theory questions (excluding that regarding climate change). If this were a normal distribution, that would mean they have probabilities of occurring in a single trial of 1 in a billion, and 1 in ten billion respectively. This is not a normal distribution, and there were significantly more than 1 trial, so the probability of their occurring is significantly greater than that. Never-the-less, the occurrence of two such extreme results is improbable - hence the assumption that they are just a statistical aberration has little force. This is particularly the case given that both of these statistical aberrations are also aberrations (in this survey) in having very strong disagreement with climate science; and given that they come from the smallest bin and a bin with a narrow distribution. (See my post at 105). If they had been statistical aberration is it approximately 8 times more likely that they would have occurred in the acceptor bin, and more than 2.5 times more likely that they would have occured in the undecided bin. That means that even if two such improbably events should be expected, the probability that both would be in the rejectors bin is less than 0.76% (It is, of course, far less probable than that they should actually occur, although I am unable to determine a reasonable estimate of that probability.) I do not need a reference to know that it is far more likely that the survey has been gamed than that so improbable an event has occurred. This is especially the case in that anonymous internet surveys are known to be plagued with attempts to game them, even when they deal with uncontroversial topics. On Lewandowsky's own data, he has excluded 16.8% of responses as having been probably gamed. If this percentage was carried through the rest of the results, then any two results taken at random have a 2.8% chance of being gamed. It should not be supposed that the responses that survived screening are as likely to have been gamed as those that did not - but nor can it be assumed that none of those responses that did survive screening where not gamed. Obviously the more unusual the data in a response, the more likely it is to have come from gaming the survey. Therefore, on statistical information alone it is highly probably that these two responses are scammed. It has been suggested that people adhereing to nearly all conspiracy theories are not uncommon. The two academic papers I have read on the subject, however, never report more than three conspiracy theories held by one person (including Goertzel 94, cited by Lewandowsky). I am aware of just one person who accepts near universal conspiracy theories (cited by Goertzel on a web site), but he did not accept all theories, and would only avow that there was "a kernel of truth" in most conspiracy theories. On that basis, for most conspiracy theories he would answer 3 (agree) rather than 4 (strongly agree). In that way he is like the two other outliers in the survey, of whom I am not suggesting that they are scammed. Here are the two suspect responses along with the next two most extreme responses so you can compare them, and note just how extreme the suspect responses are:
Very little of this information is new information; and I have argued these points before on this thread in detail. Paraphrasing such detailed analysis as merely saying "I doubt it" is gross misrepresentation. If you have a serious rebutal to make, make it. I would like little better than to be shown that I am wrong. Simply suggesting that I am wrong because you are unwilling to actually analyse the data, however, is hardly convincing.
Finally, you say that I am damaging my reputation. My reputation at SkS has been built on reasoning in exactly this style, but with "skeptical" arguments and comments as the target. The only difference now is that my target is somebody closely associated with the defense of climate science. It appears, then, that my reputation with you has been built not on my analysis, but on my agreement with your opinion. [inflamatory snipped]
Perhaps you would like to reconsider that comment; [inflamatory snipped]
Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] [Mildly] Inflamatory snipped. Discussion of this topic is becoming a little too heated. Please can we all keep the discussion as impersonal as possible, and based purely on reason [for which Tom rightly has an excellent reputation IMHO]. -
TNiazi at 23:01 PM on 6 September 2012Record Arctic Sea Ice Melt to Levels Unseen in Millennia
Thanks Dana.. In a parallel research that I summarized and published on http://planet-earth-2017.com/heat-not-from-the-sun/ I link the change in temperature belts as well as the increase in global temperature to the tilting and weakening of the magnetic field which started some 150 years ago and has greatly declined in the last couple of years. If my analysis is correct through proposing a different model of the geophyisics that govern the planet and through histroy records, then the situation will get worse before it gets better! You can only design and deploy the right strategies in Agriculture, Energy, Infrastructure, ..etc once the root cause of Earth changes is confirmed. -
Bernard J. at 22:10 PM on 6 September 2012Realistically What Might the Future Climate Look Like?
Lanfear. Speaking of animal-based technologies, it would be a travesty if we didn't tip our hats to a true artist with a poignant message. -
Kevin C at 22:09 PM on 6 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Micheal Sweet @104: May I tentatively suggest that you appear to me to be trying to create excuses to avoid engaging with the evidence? Tom is not writing a peer-reviewed paper, he is analysing the data and presenting his results on the fly. I've done the same on SkS comment threads, and so have many others. Furthermore he seems to be the only one on this thread who is analysing the data. May I further, and again tentatively, suggest that the sociology of what is occurring on this thread is very interesting in ways which go beyond what has been noted up till now. Yes, skeptics have been throwing up conspiracy theories as if in a bizarre attempt to confirm Lewandowsky's research. But AGW proponents have been responding in a similarly bizarre and self-discrediting manner. If I may use the tribal metaphor (hopefully this will be permitted since I am applying it to my own tribe), when one of us applies our skepticism in a way which undermines rather than reinforces tribal values, the reaction of the tribe is to scapegoat that person. That undermines our supposed credentials for supporting an evidence-based approach. I'm only a dabbler in social anthropology, but if you want a reference I believe this book by Rene Girard (510 citations) is a seminal work in the field. -
CBDunkerson at 21:49 PM on 6 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Foxgoose wrote: "A great many people are sceptical, however, of the politically led and inspired "science" which grew out of the UN inspired IPCC." Mmmmm... I might be skeptical of that too. If it actually existed. Let's imagine for a moment that the IPCC (heck, the UN) never existed. How would this change the scientific research on global warming? The answer is, of course, that it would have no impact whatsoever... because the IPCC does not conduct research. Rather, it collects existing research into a report for policy makers around the world. In short, it is an effort to transmit the scientific consensus to the political establishment. We could debate the merits of that, but the fact is that it has absolutely no impact on the science itself... and the belief to the contrary amongst 'skeptics' is just another demonstrably false conspiracy theory. The idea that the IPCC is conducting biased research fails utterly in the face of the fact that they are not conducting any research... yet it is a cornerstone of 'skeptic' beliefs. Again, Lewandowsky's study is redundant. The sky is blue. Earth revolves around the Sun. Many online GW 'skeptics' are conspiracy theorists. Nothing new here. -
Tom Curtis at 21:21 PM on 6 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Further to my 90 and 100, here are the updated data for the distributions; the first being in absolute numbers, the second in percentages. In my opinion, the change in data requires no revision to my commentary @90:
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CBDunkerson at 21:19 PM on 6 September 2012Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
Good article, but one point of 'dissent'. I'm not sure it is very likely that we will see a 'regression towards the mean' next year. As stated in the article, this is usually the result after a number of factors have aligned to produce an exceptional anomaly. However, I've read several analyses which say that conditions for melt in the Arctic this year weren't particularly unusual. The 2007 record low ice extent and 1998 record high temperature anomaly were both driven by several major factors all happening to line up in the same direction... but the 2012 record low ice extent was just a 'normal' year so far as melt conditions were concerned. There was one significant storm in early August, but given that extent is still dropping a month later any ice impacted by the storm likely would have melted anyway. The only other 'exceptional' factor I've read about impacting this year's melt was how thin the remaining sea ice has become... but that will be even more true next year. Of course, weather factors could align to produce an anomalously low melt next year... but we could also get weather factors like 2007 and see another profound drop. Thus, the only real point I'm making is that by all accounts I've read this year wasn't an outlier in terms of melt conditions... it was 'business as usual' and the resulting extreme melt thus may be a 'new normal' rather than an anomaly unlikely to be repeated soon. -
chriskoz at 20:46 PM on 6 September 2012Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
If you look at this graph described in neven's blog you understand very well why Arctic Ice is misbehaving starting from middle 2010. You don't need to play silly "WUWT predictive games". Basic data that ridicules those games is available for 2 years already. Wieslaw Maslowski was spot on when he anounced in 2006 that the then trend was leading to ice free sumer 2016. About "recovery". Classic denialists, in my experience, will never stop trumpeting it. It's not only about ice: after 120F summer in USA, there will be "recovery" in winter. Then, there will be "recovery" of oil/gas in Alaska/NWT/Greenland. Sad but very true. If those people are not forcibly shut up, there is no upper ceiling to AGW. -
TheTracker at 20:18 PM on 6 September 2012Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
Very nicely done. I would love to be facile with animation like that. It really makes the point beautifully. -
vrooomie at 20:09 PM on 6 September 2012Potential methane reservoirs beneath Antarctica
John Hartz@7: If you'll permit me, I'd like to finish your sentence: "because if we do, we're dead." -
michael sweet at 18:14 PM on 6 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Tom, I have not seen any references in your posts to justify your analysis. The Lewandowsky paper provides copius references to support their analysis. Please provide a reason I should listen to an amateur analysis without any peer reviewed input? I am dissapointed in your posts here and I think it affects your reputation. For example, you are completely wrong about the two "outliers". You have provided no justification for deleting these responses further than "I doubt anyone would answer this". You must provide an objective reason to discard any results. Where will the line be drawn between acceptable and "gamed"? "I doubt it" is completely unacceptable. You have suggested nothing so I cannot even criticize your proposal. I have participated in scientific surveys and you need a reason to delete samples. I regularly talk to conspiracy theorists at my job teaching High School in the USA and I am not surprised by those two results. There is a lot of literature on this subject, you have provided no links to support your claim that these points are outliers. Perhaps you could start with Landowsky's references. Your other claims are similarly unsupported. -
bratisla at 18:13 PM on 6 September 2012Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
It is likely the neverending story will repeat itself in 2013, as there is a sizeable chance 2013 levels will be (a bit) higher than 2012. And, when everything will go horribly wrong, they still will be able to shout "recovery !" when some ice will reappear after the first ice-free Arctic summer. The most important question is : will they still have the mainstream media audience they get nowadays, allowing policymakers to sit on their thumbs ? -
Lanfear at 17:37 PM on 6 September 2012Realistically What Might the Future Climate Look Like?
Bostjan@61 You are in principle correct about the animal-based farming. However please take into consideration the population size that this animal-based technology did, and still does support in some parts of the world today. You will notice that it could not, and will not support the current population of 7+ Gperson primarily due to the ratio of animals needed to replace a single farm engine such as a plowing tractor. On a tangent, there is/was an interesting opening sequel in James Burke's Connections-series called 'The Trigger Effect'. -
Doug Bostrom at 16:54 PM on 6 September 2012Realistically What Might the Future Climate Look Like?
Lanfear, right, which is why I mentioned the Carnot cycle, which is what brings batteries of any kind within the sphere of useful in comparison to caveman-style combustion and wretched castings full of thrashing parts. Getting to an apples-apples comparison is not easy but some choices are easy thanks to context. For my driving habit and addiction level an electric car is now easily feasible; I was about to plunk for a Leaf but now am dithering between that and a Focus. I'm one of a vast number of people who can now ponder over this choice and what a terrific thing that is. Tractors, not so easy. -
geoffchambers at 16:52 PM on 6 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Tom Curtis #95 Of course there's a good reason for randomizing the order of questions. No doubt Kwiksurveys offers that feature. That's not what happened. Climate Audit was offered a different survey with different questions and a different ID. So Lewandowsky can claim he was fully justified in announcing the results of his n=1100 survey at Monash, because the survey Climate Audit was invited to participate in was a different one. Or he can continue to claim that 5 sceptic blogs were invited to participate in this survey, (-Snip-), since his n=1100 survey was likely to be swamped by a totally different type of respondent at any moment. He can't logically do both. #96 You say "the reason for using bins is that no single question clearly demarks those who accept AGW from those who reject it". True enough,and it's a serious criticism of the survey that they couldn't even devise a question to do that. The four questions are logically linked, so someone who strongly agrees with one and strongly disagrees with another is not undecided, but more likely seriously confused. No wonder they believe in conspiracies. I can see the use of a battery of questions with the general public, because a single question which adequately distinguishes the warmist from the denier is likely to be too complicated for the average punter to understand. ( -Snip-). But this question is aimed at climate obsessives who weigh the meaning of every word (well, I know I do). A perfect opportunity to devise THE climate question wasted.Moderator Response: [DB] Accusations of dishonesty and sloganeering snipped. -
Tristan at 16:26 PM on 6 September 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #35
A comedic excerpt about climate change from a physics lecture at UQ. -
Lanfear at 16:23 PM on 6 September 2012Realistically What Might the Future Climate Look Like?
Doug Bostrom@64 Just to be clear, 45MJ/kg is energy contained in the diesel fuel, but the diesel engine has a practical thermal efficiency of less than 50% (just a quick Wiki-loookup), so one should really compare the drive shaft-output in both cases. Nonetheless diesel still is more 'efficient', but not with that huge a difference. -
Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 15:17 PM on 6 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
John Cook has written a good article relevant to posts in this thread. It's just been published today on The Conversation (click here). Maybe he'll post it on SkepticalScience as well. -
dana1981 at 15:01 PM on 6 September 2012Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
Planning on it, skywatcher! Look for an update in October. -
John Hartz at 14:43 PM on 6 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Re the Lewandowsky research and paper and all the discussion and analyses of it on this thread and elsewhere in the blogosphere. "Much ado about nothing!" Let's get back to discussing and analyzing stuff that really matters. -
skywatcher at 14:37 PM on 6 September 2012Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
Dana, make sure you update it with 2012's figure once the melt season ends! If we're lucky, it will fit on the bottom of the chart... -
Tom Curtis at 13:58 PM on 6 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Further to my comment @90 and @96, here is are the tables for my second point @90 after correcting for the error. The error I made was that, contrary to my intention, the bins where not symmetrical in terms of the number of possible responses that could fit in a bin. That biases the result. Once corrected so that the three main bins are of equal size in terms of possible responses, the results differ from what I first thought them to be. Specifically, as can be clearly seen below, acceptors of AGW are less prone to accept conspiracy theories than either rejectors or undecided. This is so whether or not the two outliers are included. However, the undecided are still more accepting of conspiracy theories than are either acceptors or rejectors. Further, with the two outliers included, rejectors are very similar to the undecided, but without those outliers, they are far closer to the acceptors.
Given these more accurate results, it is seen that a key point of my analysis @90 was incorrect. Never-the-less,the conclusion that Lewandowsky's paper misses important detail, and overstates the relationship between rejecting climate change and acceptance of conspiracy theories are still substantiated.
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Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 13:40 PM on 6 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Incidentally, the discussion board I referred to is not a conspiracy theory site - it presents itself as a 'normal' discussion board. For some reason it attracts a lot of extreme right-wingers, many of whom are able to hold regular jobs (even quite senior jobs) but are also wacko conspiracy theorists. (At least one of the moderators is a conspiracy theorist along the lines of Jo Nova - gold bug, one world government etc, which may explain its tolerance of wacky and sometimes downright ugly posts and threads.) The main topic of the board also attracts rational people. -
Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 13:16 PM on 6 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
People can and do believe in a whole range of conspiracy theories at the same time. One discussion board I visit demonstrates that fact. Thing is, how many of those people visit mainstream climate science blogs? (Not many, going by this survey.) See here, for some examples of the mental contortions of some people (as if this thread weren't enough): http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120126152134.htm -
Doug Bostrom at 13:12 PM on 6 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Your remarks about the excluded middle and the improbability of one person believing in the whole range of conspiracy theories need to be repeated again and again. I'm sure we can all count on it; it'll be thrown right in the same "stone soup" as Geoff's chronological numerology, stirred relentlessly, consumed with gusto regardless of whether anybody understands what Tom's talking about or the relative merits of survey methods versus blog science astrology.
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