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empirical_bayes at 10:21 AM on 7 September 2012Record Arctic Sea Ice Melt to Levels Unseen in Millennia
So, there's been a report, possibly on the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) site (although I can track it down with a link if needs be), that there's a massive phytoplankton bloom happening in Arctic because of less ice cover. I wondered if this might serve as a proxy experiment for those geoengineering proposals to increase CO2 sequestration in ocean by inducing phytoplankton with iron seeding. Specifically, I wondered if it might be possible to measure CO2 drawdown in Arctic because of increased bloom and see if it pays. Thanks. -
skywatcher at 10:21 AM on 7 September 2012Record Arctic Sea Ice Melt to Levels Unseen in Millennia
We also await, with not very bated breath, Astrofos' explanation for day and night, seeing as how the rising and setting of the big yellow thing in the sky appears to have so little to do with Earth's temperature /sarc. Reality must seem a very strange place to some. CBDunkerson #26, nice list of points, except I think for your #6, which might be amended to note that more snow overlying the sea ice can inhibit ice thickening. It's one explanation for why the Canadian Arctic had quite a cold winter yet the NWP opened quickly after the surface snow had melted. -
Doug Bostrom at 10:15 AM on 7 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
They're out there somewhere, Tom, like Moby Dick! Now, pass me my spyglass, and call me Ishmael. -
scaddenp at 10:11 AM on 7 September 2012Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
If I had to bet, then I would go with "recovery" in 2013 as well. However, I would also bet on a new record low within 5 years. -
Tom Curtis at 10:01 AM on 7 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
doug bostrom @111, while gladly acknowledging that some snark's are boojums, your boojum has just four acknowledged conspiracy theories attached. One of those was excluded for methodological reasons, while a second does not appear in the paper. Assuming that he would answer Strongly Agree (4) for the two relevant acknowledged conspiracy theories; and split between five agrees (3), and six strongly agrees on the other 11, this boojums mean score in the conspiracy response would have been 3.6, a massive 5.5 SDs above the mean. That would place them above the next highest (below the two suspect proxies), but still significantly below the two suspect proxies. Showing me boojums does not prove the existence of super-boojums. -
Tom Curtis at 09:50 AM on 7 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Michael Sweet @117, that's OK. I am a little prickly at the moment as I am under a lot of pressure, so it is quite possible I have over reacted. With regard to your experience in a public survey, just from Lewandowsky's paper we know that he omitted 71 responses because their IP was the same of some other response. That seems a reasonable precaution against the survey being gamed, but some of those responses may have been from other family members, or from work mates. The probability that they are gamed responses is sufficient to omit them, even though it is no guarantee. We also know that another 161 were omitted because either the participants age was considered implausible (95); the provided inconsistent responses to the consensus questions; or because the responses where incomplete. The first two are, again reasonable precautions against the survey being gamed although there is, again, a small probability of their excluding legitimate responses. At least one survey response had consensus responses of 100/100/0.9. It is entirely possible that the 0.9 was intended as a 90%. A similar slip up may account for some of the improbable ages and/or inconsistent consensus responses. The deletions due to incomplete answering are more complicated. Had I taken the survey (I did not), there was one conspiracy question that I would not have answered because I simply do not know, and do not know enough to even assess reasonable probabilities. Because of that, my response would have been excluded. However, I certainly fit the profile of people that the survey was intended to sample, ie, "... individuals who choose to get involved in the ongoing debate about one scienti c topic, climate change." If similarly principled people were deleted for not answering one or tow questions, the sample has been biased towards the more dogmatic or manipulable members of the target population. (Please note, that is a bias of the population, and does not in anyway warrant inferences about any individuals who completed the survey and answered every question.) However, despite that potential bias, the number omitted due to incompleteness may have been small; the unanswered questions may have been relating to age or satisfaction in life, in which case the omission would not bias the sample; or the omitted responses may have been massively incomplete, ie, all but a few questions not answered, in which case their inclusion would not have aided analysis in any way. So, there is a possibility of a problem here, but no certitude, in which case Lewndowsky should be given the benefit of the doubt. That is a side note to the main issue, however. Clearly Lewandowsky was prepared to omit responses given a reasonable suspicion that they were gamed. He was correct to do so. But it follows that he has no grounds in principle to not omit these two suspect responses, given equal reasonable suspicion. Indeed, it is certainly not an unusual practice in science to omit extreme outliers, which, given the sample size, samples more than 6 deviations from the mean in a unimodal distribution certainly are. Of course cutoffs in such pruning must be, to a certain extent arbitrary. That does not mean they are inappropriate. However, you are mistaken if you think I am calling for Lewandowsky to just exclude the data. I think at a minimum he should acknowledge the outliers and state his reason for including them, or excluding them. At a minimum, he should also explicitly acknowledge that the inclusion or exclusion of the outliers significantly affects the conclusions of the paper with regard to conspiracy theory ideation. It would be better if he also calculated the results of the paper both including, and excluding outliers. However, replication is not auditing, so that is not compulsory. Of course, it is disputed that those outliers do significantly affect the result. It should be noted, however, excluding the suspect outliers, that if just 4% of responses to individual questions by AGW rejectors had been one point lower, AGW rejectors would have had the same measured propensity to accept conspiracy theories as AGW acceptors. With a sample size of 96, that is a very weak result. I doubt it is statistically significant (although I cannot do the maths to work that out).Moderator Response: TC: minimally edited for accuracy 10:06am -
John Russell at 09:45 AM on 7 September 2012Realistically What Might the Future Climate Look Like?
@Bostjan #70 Having discussed with colleagues for many years the question of substituting draught animals for fossil-fuelled machinery, it would appear that if we went back to say, oxen (which are generally thought to be more efficient than horses), around 25% of available land would be taken up in growing the necessary fodder to enable production of arable crops for human consumption on the remaining land. This ratio is based on historical records confirmed by calculations. As things stand, replacing fossil fuels in agriculture doesn't seem so viable in the short term while ever world population continues to grow. As I've said before, any way you look at it, we can expect some significant rises in food prices in the near future. -
Bert from Eltham at 09:34 AM on 7 September 2012Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
Dana I wonder if your very nice animation was a sceptics bank balance or share portfolio would they be as optimistic for total recovery of their money? Bert -
Doug Bostrom at 09:24 AM on 7 September 2012Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
Jeff Masters does his usual good job of explanation at his Wunderground blog. Masters features Jim Pettit's interesting plots of Arctic sea ice, using Pettit's depiction of ice extent. The increasingly obvious cardioid shape is a useful cue to changes in annual behavior, plus of course the graphs have a built-in pun. -
John Russell at 09:23 AM on 7 September 2012Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
There was a tweet from Ed Hawkins, climate scientist at the University of Reading, UK, this morning to say, "About 80% of scientists at #Bjerknes conf on high latitude climate think there will be more Arctic sea ice in Sept 2013 than 2012". I guess the thinking is that if the last record melt was in 2007 (5 years ago) then the odds on next year being a greater extent than 2012 are around 4 out of 5 (~80%). If that's how the scientists represent the probability then this could very easily become a denial meme that "scientists predict there's an 80% chance ice will recover." Whereas in fact all they're saying is that there's a significant degree of variability overlying the long term trend. -
Philippe Chantreau at 09:21 AM on 7 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
This is turning into the kind of buffoonery that is normally the exclusive territory of Monckton. Let's see: all the temperature records show consistent increases, surface and satellite, the radiative properties of CO2 have been known for fr#%^ing ever, the Arctic sea ice is on a death spiral, extreme weather events are showing up exactly like you'd expect and Foxgoose is arguing about dates. Not even about the meager substance of that marginally interesting Lewandosky item, just some dates. Really Foxgoose, that's all you've got? Seriously? That's where you're taking the argument? And you don't see anything wrong with that? The only thing I take from it all is that there is absolutely nothing of interest on McIntyre's blog; even when something almost interesting comes his way, he doesn't post the link. What was he afraid of, I wonder. And I don't buy that he missed it. It's not like he's busy doing real science, teaching etc. This, among other kinds of nonsense, is why I knew early on what kind of "debate" we're looking at here. Complete intellectual bankruptcy against reality. Who wins? -
Bostjan Kovacec at 09:16 AM on 7 September 2012Realistically What Might the Future Climate Look Like?
@Philippe Thanks for that, but I was thinking about warming effect of methane that's much higher compared to CO2. So even though it's not of fossil origin it may have even stronger warming effect on a short term scale than using diesel tractors. -
Daniel Bailey at 09:11 AM on 7 September 2012Record Arctic Sea Ice Melt to Levels Unseen in Millennia
Perhaps Astrofos is now exercising discretion... -
Bostjan Kovacec at 09:07 AM on 7 September 2012Realistically What Might the Future Climate Look Like?
Mark-US@69 AR4 predictions for temperature changes are outdated. Now even skeptics are using it to prove that nothing is going on and that if it happens it'll only be in 2100. -
Bob Loblaw at 09:05 AM on 7 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Foxgoose@115 If you've offered a car for sale, and posted a reminder, and I have never responded at all to your offer or indicated a desire to buy, then you are under no obligation to me whatsoever. You are free to do whatever you want with the car. Do you really think that you'd feel you should have sold me the car when I turn up months later with the reminder, saying that I was cheated? McIntyre was in his rights to ignore the invitation to participate. He has no right to complain (nor do you) that Lewandowsky proceeded with his analysis using the responses he did get without waiting for a reply from McIntyre that was unlikely to ever arrive. -
Tom Curtis at 09:00 AM on 7 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Foxgoose @113, I was incorrect in assuming you were talking about the relevant first invitation rather than the irrelevant reminder. Beyond that it still remains the case that McIntyre had plenty of time to put up the survey before the 23rd of Sept; and that you have no evidence that the survey was actually terminated on or before the 23rd of Sept. Indeed, the sending of a reminder notice strongly suggests that it was not terminated at that point. I wish to confine myself to rational criticisms of Lewnandowky, in press. Not wild goose chases. -
Philippe Chantreau at 08:56 AM on 7 September 2012Realistically What Might the Future Climate Look Like?
Bostjan, the carbon comong from livestock is primarily derived from plants and is all part of the normal carbon cycle. Diesel fuel contains carbon that was locked away for millions of years and is then rapidly and massively reinjected in the atmopshere, so the 2 do not compare. -
Doug Bostrom at 08:51 AM on 7 September 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Just in case we forget from one minute to the next: Fifth - McIntyre didn't post the link. And again, lest we forget and as the wag elsewhere suggested, too busy with the "other matter" of rummaging in other people's email to read his own email. Obviously it's Lewandowsky's fault. Some features of this affair are not worth exploring, for anybody. -
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.
-
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.
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