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Comments 56601 to 56650:

56601. Peter Lang at 16:40 PM on 17 July 2012
       Nordhaus Sets the Record Straight - Climate Mitigation Saves Money
       In the lead article for this blog thread, the author, Dana1981, states that “skeptics” “misrepresented Nordhaus's research”. I cannot speak for others but I don’t believe I have misrepresented his research. However, I do not accept some of the conclusions he draws. On the other hand, Dana1981’s article appears to have misrepresented Nordhaus’s work. Dana’s article does not mention the assumptions which underpin Nordhaus’s research. The assumptions are academic but they are totally impracticable to achieve in the real world. Here are some of the assumptions (in my words): • Negligible leakage (of emissions between countries) • All emission sources are included (all countries and all emissions in each country) • Negligible compliance cost • Negligible fraud • An optimal carbon price • The whole world implements the optimal carbon price in unison • The whole world acts in unison to increase the optimal carbon price periodically • The whole world continues to maintain the carbon price at the optimal level for all of this century (and thereafter). If these assumptions are not met, the net benefits estimated by Nordhaus cannot be achieved. As Nordhaus says, p198 :

       Moreover, the results here incorporate an estimate of the importance of participation for economic efficiency. Complete participation is important because the cost function for abatement appears to be highly convex. We preliminarily estimate that a participation rate of 50 percent instead of 100 percent will impose a cost penalty on abatement of 250 percent.

       In other words, if only 50% of emissions are captured in the carbon pricing scheme, the cost penalty for the participants would be 250%. The 50% participation could be achieved by, for example, 100% of countries participating in the scheme but only 50% of the emissions in total from within the countries are caught, or 50% of countries participate and 100% of the emissions within those countries are caught in the scheme (i.e. taxed or traded). Given the above, we can see that the assumptions are theoretical and impracticable in the real world. To recognize this point, try to envisage how we could capture 100% of emissions from 100% of emitters in Australia (every cow, sheep, goat) in the CO2 pricing scheme, let alone expecting the same to be done across the whole world; e.g. China, India, Eretria, Ethiopia, Mogadishu and Somalia. Therefore, we should be asking: what will be the cost of complying with the requirements when they are fully implemented to the standard that will eventually be required? By my estimates, the Australian carbon tax and ETS will cost $10 for every $1 of projected savings. But the savings will not be achieved, because they depend on all the assumptions being achieved, and clearly they will not be. Furthermore, the costs can be expected to be much higher than is being admitted so far.
56602. maximo at 16:28 PM on 17 July 2012
       It's the sun
       A simple equation would be 8,244,910 million New York residents x 1000 days = 8 billion persons power usage. Although not everyone on the globe has electricity or uses electrical heating.
56603. Doug Bostrom at 14:52 PM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       vroomie: If ya need help with that clapped-out Jaguar XJ, cawl me. Er, I'm sorry, that was a silly narrative artifice. I'm a red block Volvo guy myself; why didn't I pick a P1800? Tip w/paleo-Jag: find everything marked "Lucas" and replace it. You'll have no more troubles. :-)
56604. scaddenp at 14:50 PM on 17 July 2012
       It's the sun
       Okay. Big difference. That means one of those storms every hour, on the hour would add 0.0005 W/m^2 to the 240W/m^2 of incoming solar radiation. I think that is considerably less than the error in the observing system.
56605. Bernard J. at 14:23 PM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       Eli astutely observes:

       Popper has done a lot of damage, or more precisely Popper as interpreted by your average junior high school teacher and the squads of Galileo's roaming the INTERNET.

       I've been engaging in exactly this discussion with a Galileo over at Judith Curry's. I note that in Skeptical Science's 'Most Used Climate Myths' there is a post (#66) rebutting the claim that AGW has been falsified, but there appears to be nothing adressing the converse claim that AGW isn't science because "it can't be falsified". Perhaps it is time that this particular canard was dismantled by SkS for the nonsense that it is.
56606. Bernard J. at 14:06 PM on 17 July 2012
       Does breathing contribute to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere?
       

       I don't know the answers and I am looking for some educated guesses.

       Seek, and ye shall find.
56607. vrooomie at 14:05 PM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       doug_bostrom@99: if ya need help with that clapped-out Jaguar XJ, cawl me. I recently finished my E-type and need direction....;)
56608. Bob Loblaw at 14:00 PM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       JohnB @102:

       @97 Bob. I don't know where you are but with a population of 35 million it isn't Oz. Australia is a Democracy and we have a Parliament that sets the rules. After the next election, how about we change the rules so that anybody who won't go the "Archive your data" road gets no further funding? Since Parliament represents ALL of the people, that saves trying to divide the work into tiny packets.

       I, too, live in a parliamentary democracy, but not Oz. Yes, our parliament sets the rules. And yes, archiving data is a standard procedure - legislation sets down what types of records must be kept, for how long, etc. And I have worked on programs that actively submitted data to international, publicly-available archives. ...but the laws also set down rules on who has the authority to enter into agreements to share data. It is rarely the scientist - (s)he can propose, but people further up the food chain make the decisions. And parliament has also set the rules on how others can obtain information (e.g. FOI). As for current decisions: the duly-elected parliament has decided to cut funding in many science areas, including getting rid of staff that know what much of the data means and what to do with it. Programs are being shut down, and the staff that ran them are being dispersed to the winds. I still get requests for assistance regarding publicly-available data, but it is no longer my job to work with that data, and it's nobody else's job, either. This is what the attacks on science are accomplishing. If the individuals that are suing climate scientists, or attempting to prosecute them, or are inundating them with FOI requests spent their efforts lobbying politicians to improve resources for these time-consuming archiving processes, then I'd accept their motives a little easier. Until then, it just looks like a witch hunt and intimidation. For an illuminating view of what politicians often really do, take John Mashey's advice in #154, and get a copy of "The Republican War on Science" and read up on the Data Quality Act. If you really want good science, then stop the politicians from destroying it.
56609. Oneismany at 13:48 PM on 17 July 2012
       Does breathing contribute to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere?
       @#46-47 - even so, despite the fact that humans have been unloading ten times the CO2 that they breathe into the atmosphere from the lithosphere via fossil fuel burning, the overall atmosphere has increased in CO2 during the industrial era from about .03% in 1750 to about .04% today. But humans and other animals breathe in air that is about 21% oxygen and breathe out air that is about 16% oxygen and the difference is an increase of about 5% in CO2 (of the air exhaled). Maybe there are some differences between species in the amount of exhaled air that is converted from O2 to CO2, but let's assume the whole animal biomass is exhaling ~5% more CO2 and ~5% less O2 than they inhale (and that hasn't radically changed during the industrial revolution). Evidently, the increase in atmospheric CO2 today versus pre-industrial atmosphere is .01% of the total air, but that increase represents only a .2% decrease in CO2 uptake from plants during 250 years. Where does all the new C added from fossil fuel burning (that isn't retained in the air) end up, if not in the biomass itself? Or, are humans responsible for diminishing the whole ecosystem (plants and animals), in which case, how much of the CO2 increase can be attributed to the decimation of plant life or other sources, versus how much directly to burning fossil fuels? Are people really the biggest factor in the whole carbon cycle? Or, does the animal life on Earth (human and otherwise) contribute more CO2 to the carbon flux than fossil fuels? No doubt the measured increase in atmospheric CO2 is significant, but what is the margin for error in those measurements? I don't know the answers and I am looking for some educated guesses.
56610. maximo at 12:41 PM on 17 July 2012
       It's the sun
       Correction it was actually 26 billion kilowatt hours of thermal energy dumped on the earth during the March 8-10 Solar storm, enough to power New York for 2 years. It's from the NASA video on the link I posted, which Tom is nothing to do with what I think. (-Snip-)
       Moderator Response:

       [DB] Please refer more closely to the comments policy (linky adjacent to the comments input box) when constructing comments. All-caps contravenes said policy and subjects comments to moderation.

       Converted all-caps to bold.

       Furthermore, please note that repetitive posting constitutes sloganeering, also a CP violation. FYI.

       Snipped repetitive link.

56611. Tom Curtis at 12:09 PM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       doug_bostrom @158, most of the data withheld by national weather services was withheld because it was commercial information, normally sold at a profit to fund the operations of the weather services. It was only supplied to the CRU free on condition that it not be distributed thereby undercutting their market. This illustrates the hypocrisy of those calling for free access to scientific data. Almost without exception such people make exceptions for commercial and military data. But if free access to the data is a requirement for good science, it follows that when a exception is made for commercial and military applications, what they do should not be considered science, and should not be permitted to be published in scientific journals. What is more, what is considered commercial is fairly arbitrary. As the examples of those national weather services shows, there is a commercial demand for climatological data. Indeed, the fact that Steve McIntyre want the data so much shows the existence of demand for that data, and there would be nothing wrong in principle with UEA "monetizing" that demand by charging McIntyre for the data he wished to access; thereby decreasing the cost of the research to UK tax payers. If Phil Jones first response to McIntyre had been, we would be delighted to provide you with the data over which we have intellectual property rights, and the price will be 10,000 pounds, McIntyre would in theory have no come back. By his own standards it is appropriate to withhold scientific data when commercial interests are in play. This is why the purported standard of free access to data is a con. The sin qua non of science is replicability, not auditability; and as Caerbannog notes, replication is not McIntyre's stock in trade. I personally like it when scientists freely share data. Science is enriched by the practice. But I always recognize it for what it is - a courtesy, not a right. Once you begin filing FOI requests you are abusing courtesy, and being rational, other scientists should simply freeze you out as a person not fit to be associated with.
56612. Doug Bostrom at 11:46 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       Tom: The data-set in question was released to the public by the CRU *nearly a year ago*. Yeah, and I'm wondering if the blauditors helped with the hold-outs? Also, will they help sweep up the mess created by unilateral publication of the raw data by the UK? The end result is that all the records are there, except for Poland's. Davies's only worry is that the decision to release the Trinidad and Tobago data against its wishes may discourage the open sharing of data in the future. Other research organisations may from now on be reluctant to pool data they wish to be kept private. Thomas Peterson, chief scientist at the National Climatic Data Center of the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and president of the Commission for Climatology at the World Meteorological Organization, agrees there might be a cost to releasing the data. "I have historic temperature data from automatic weather stations on the Greenland ice sheet that I was able to obtain from Denmark only because I agreed not to release them," he says. "If countries come to expect that sharing of any data with anyone will eventually lead to strong pressure for them to fully release those data, will they be less willing to collaborate in the future?" OK, climate sceptics: here's the raw data you wanted (New Scientist) Who cares? The intended effect was accomplished-- a ruckus was raised. Don't hold your breath waiting for any useful outcome.
56613. caerbannog at 11:19 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       dubious at 23:08 PM on 16 July, 2012 Phil Jones's 2005 email (not to McIntyre) is notorious on this topic: "I should warn you that some data we have we are not supposed to pass on to others. We can pass on the gridded data – which we do. Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it. There is IPR to consider." Alternatively, google McIntyre Crowley and take the first result. You'll see McIntyre spending about a year and a half of his time trying to get data, starting with very polite emails which were generally ignored and maintaining a much greater level of civility throughout - and persistence - than many people would have managed. Crowley then (2005) wrote an article making a number of allegations about McIntyre, which McIntyre said were untrue. dubious, The data-set in question was released to the public by the CRU *nearly a year ago*. You can get it all here. Now, the big question is, what have McIntyre and Co. done with it in the 11+ months since it was released? Can you point me to any results they've published on-line? Can you tell me whether their results contradict or confirm the CRU's published results? If not, why not? You guys seem to be *very concerned* about Phil Jones and others not releasing their data quickly enough, but you don't seem to be very interested in doing anything with it once you've gotten it in your hot little hands. If McIntyre was so interested in getting that data that he invested a year and a half of effort to get it, then why hasn't he (or any of the rest of you skeptics) done anything with it in the 11+ months since it was all released?
56614. Tom Curtis at 10:43 AM on 17 July 2012
       It's the sun
       maximo @986, do you mean to say that the Earth has been hit with solar storms having an power equivalent of 1.2*10^-8 W/m^2 over the year, and you think that that will massively distort the energy balance equations. Even if we where hit by one of those storms every hour, on the hour, it would only add 0.000005 W/m^2 to the average (after albedo) 240 W/m^2 incoming solar radiation. I am really struggling to see your point here.
56615. maximo at 10:10 AM on 17 July 2012
       It's the sun
       Admitting Ultraviolet and Infrared as being just outside the visible range isn't an incorrect statement. To recognise that as inclusive of the limited range of measurement of the 'visible spectrum' that 95% of coverage is still not measuring the larger proportaion of the non visible Solar emissions. There have been 2 solar storms this year, one just yesterday July 16. The other March 8-10, which hit the earth with 26 million kilowatt hours of thermal energy, enough to power New York for 2 years. NASA have a specially designed satelite to measure those activities, but it is only very recently. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEFQHDSYP1I
56616. Tom Curtis at 10:07 AM on 17 July 2012
       It's the sun
       maximo @983, radiation from the Sun follows a black body curve. As such, observations of emissions within a fairly small range of frequencies are enough to quantify its total radiation with a high degree of accuracy. Sufficiently high so that correlating emissions between different instruments is a much larger source of error.
56617. Riccardo at 09:17 AM on 17 July 2012
       It's the sun
       maximo I'm glad you admitted you were wrong claiming that TSI only include visible light but still you're missing something. The ERBE mission started somewhere in the late '70s, I'm sure you can easily find the exact date. Apparently you missed that the range 1-2000 nm of the SORCE instruments covers 95% of the total irradiance. I can't quantify how much energy is emitted in the 1-200 nm range and I'm to lazy to check, but I'd expect it's going to be a small part. The same applies to the far infrared and microwave range. There's really no issue with TSI apart from tiny discrepancies between different instruments.
56618. Tom Curtis at 09:05 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       JohnMashey @154, my understanding is that under Australian law, to establish a case of defamation you must establish either that you have suffered material damages, or that your reputation has been damaged. The Communications Law Center, says of Australia's uniform defamation laws (Laws enacted by each state but having the same effect to avoid inconsistency between jurisdictions), for material to be defamatory

       "Finally, the material published must be defamatory. If the published material: exposes a person to ridicule, or lowers the person's reputation in the eyes of members of the community, or causes people to shun or avoid the person, or injures the person's professional reputation, then the published material is defamatory."

       McIntyre's opinion on this legal matter, as also his opinion on whether his communication constituted a legal threat, is without foundation.
56619. maximo at 09:05 AM on 17 July 2012
       It's the sun
       Thanks Riccardo, the information of what actual radiation wavelengths and the definition of "total irradiance" being measured by those satelites can seen on those links you gave. They are measuring in the nano meter range, which is within the visible spectrum though includes some of the Ultraviolet and Infrared wavelengths that are not visible. My issue still stands, 'total irradiance' is not all wavelengths that the Sun radiates. The Sun has microwave emissions and xray emissions and other high energy particles. Clearly not all wavelengths are being measured.. Also note these satelites have only been in orbit for a short period of time and the Temperature versus Solar Activity chart at the beginning of this blog dates back well before 2004 and I wonder how accurate modelling was done before these satelites existed?
56620. CJsPianos at 09:03 AM on 17 July 2012
       Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
       I'm not a scientist by formal training, but I question the H2O effect. Precipitation has an effect of lowering temperatures, but with 67% of precipitation re-entering the atmosphere through evapotranspiration how is this taken account for? With less ground water, doesn't the earth heat with less energy since the water mass isn't there to help absorb the energy? So, when precipitation contacts with the warmer surface, evaporation is accelerated? Owing to Conservation of Energy- wouldn't this mean more energy is transferred to the atmosphere rather than the Earth, where I suppose this hypothesis has its roots. Wouldn't it stand to reason that the less water in the ground, the more in the atmosphere?
56621. Byron Smith at 08:28 AM on 17 July 2012
       Phil Jones says no global warming since 1995
       Can we have an update on this post at the point at which warming since 1998 has become statistically significant? It's worth just being able to say "two years ago, it was true to say there was no statistically significant warming since 1998 (though there was still warming, of which we were more than 90% confident that it was not just random variation), but now, we have more than 95% confidence and so *yes* there is statistically significant warming".
56622. Doug Bostrom at 08:21 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       Fully evolved anti-science litigation in New Zealand; custom dummy trust created to serve as a firewall against taxpayers recovering costs of failed litigation against an NZ governmental research unit. Covered at HotTopic: When Asses Go To Court The legal action is being brought by the NZ Climate Science Education Trust, described by the NZ Herald as “a branch of the NZ Climate Science Coalition”. The trust was formed at the same time as the case was announced1, and appears to have been created solely to protect its trustees from bearing the costs of a failed legal action. In the nearly two years since it was formed, the NZ CSET does not appear to have been granted charitable status, and has made no discernible efforts to act as an “educational trust”. All it has done is pursue this legal action against NIWA and its climate scientists. The Heartland-funded NZ Climate “Science” Coalition is chaired by Barry Brill, a retired lawyer and former National party politician. Since he assumed the chairman’s role, the Coalition has discovered an enthusiasm for legal action. It’s an approach to climate affairs that Brill hopes to export to the rest of the world. Describing the genesis of the NIWA case at the Heartland Institute’s sixth climate sceptic networking event, held in Washington last year, Brill said “We are going to need to do this all round the world.” Who needs to hallucinate a conspiracy theory when Heartland's on the scene?
56623. JohnMashey at 07:55 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       1) People might want to read about Jim Tozzi and the Data Quality Act in Chris Mooney's "The Republican War on Science." It is a well-established tactic to try to consume scientists' time to lessen the amo8unt of inconvenient research done. As usual, the tobacco guys led the way. 2) If people want to talk about defamation and typical steps in starting defamation proceedings, I'd observe that Canada (where McIntyre is) and Australia (where Karoly is located) are not identical, but are certainly more similar than they are to US or differently to UK. See CCC p.184 or as a start the Wikipedia reference. Even better would be to read "the book": Canadian Libel and Slander Actions, by Roger D. McConchie and David A. Potts, 1000 pages. Chapter 6 is especially relevant. If you don't have a copy handy, here's McConchie's useful website. 3) People might Google: "concerns notice" defamation OR defamation "notice of intended action" In general, that is the usual first step towards a possible defamation lawsuit, because {CA, or AU} have time limits. One has to send a notice to the potential defendant claiming defamation, explaining why ,etc ... but need not have an explicit threat to sue. In fact, such may likely be better omitted from that notice. 4) McIntyre writes at CA: "In addition, in order for a law suit to have any purpose, the plaintiff should have suffered actual financial damages – an element that does not appear to be present, for example, in the Michael Mann libel suit against Tim Ball, which, in my opinion, involves nothing more than personal vanity." McIntyre is of course free to express his opinion, which is in direct contradiction to the advice in McConchie and Potts (p.21 of my well-marked copy) and to well-established Canadian law: financial damage is simply not required I wonder if McIntyre knows AU defamation law better than CA's. Likewise, I wonder if others lining up behind him on this have bothered to read any of the law or consult relevant lawyers before offering opinions. 5) McConchie, of course, is the lawyer representing Mann versus Tim Ball, and Andrew Weaver versus Ball (read item 11 on p.15), and separately the National Post. Read items 64-66 on pp.43-44. In general, defamation proceedings start with a request to retract and/or apologize, and if a lawsuit is brought, such is cited to show the court that a reasonable effort was made short of a lawsuit.
56624. EliRabett at 07:48 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       Let Eli see, if one study gets a global warming rate of say .18 C/decade +/- 0.08 and a later one .17 C/decade +/- 0.02 has the second falsified the first? Popper has done a lot of damage, or more precisely Popper as interpreted by your average junior high school teacher and the squads of Galileo's roaming the INTERNET. Einsteins special theory of relativity did not falsify Newtonian mechanics, it just set limits on its range of use.
56625. ligne at 07:47 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       JBowers: "How many researcher salaries could be covered in 1985 or 1990 by the cost of a GB of storage? How many field trips, even?" and note that that's just for space on a single disk. you'll also need at least one backup. and then you need to park the disks in a carefully controlled environment. or in a server (in a carefully controlled environment). several carefully controlled environments, in fact, because data doesn't exist unless it's in at least two places, preferably far apart. and, because rust can't keep spinning forever, you need to copy all of that data to new disks every couple of years. more frequently if the drives spend a lot of time sitting unplugged. all the while making sure that none of it gets corrupted along the way -- fill up a modern hard-drive, and there's approximately a 1% chance you won't get it all back in one piece. you'll need to pay someone to do all this, natch. and sysadmins aren't cheap (i should know, i play one in real life). it's been a while since i last read them, but i seem to recall that those Ars Technica articles WheelsOC linked to up-thread gave a really good overview of all the things that always seem to get missed when this topic comes up. the actual hardware is only a tiny fraction of the total cost.
56626. Riccardo at 07:36 AM on 17 July 2012
       It's the sun
       This is what I found on the solar irradiance monitor instruments: ERBE 0.2 - 50 micron ACRIM 200-2000 nm SORCE 1-2000 nm (95% of the total) Where did maximo get that information from?
56627. Composer99 at 07:32 AM on 17 July 2012
       It's the sun
       maximo: From what I can see your claim It might surprise people to know the term only includes visible light and does not even include the ultraviolet spectrum. is unequivocally false. One of the sources cited in this article defines TSI in the introduction as: Variations in solar total (i.e. integrated over all wavelengths) and spectral irradiance [...] [Emphasis mine.] This webpage (material taken from what appears to be some form of textbook) defines TSI as: Total solar irradiance is defined as the amount of radiant energy emitted by the Sun over all wavelengths that fall each second on 11 ft2 (1 m2) outside Earth's atmosphere. [Emphasis mine.] Similarly, other discussions of TSI do not discriminate between spectra of radiation emitted by the Sun (e.g. visible light, UV, shortwave IR, &c), such as the IPCC AR4 WG1 Glossary or this University of Colorado solar radiation project site. Do you have sources for your claim about the spectra covered under TSI?
       Moderator Response: [DB] Fixed html tag.
56628. maximo at 07:07 AM on 17 July 2012
       It's the sun
       My main issue with it is the term: "Total irradience" from which the conclusions are based. It might supprise people to know that the term only includes visible light and does not even include the ultraviolet spectrum. If conclusions are based on less than 10% of the measured EMR emitted from the Sun how realistic are the results ?
       Moderator Response: [DB] A prudent person would ensure that they had read both the Intermediate and Advanced versions of this post before making such a strong demurral.
56629. grypo at 05:56 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       I see there has yet to be any pushback on my thesis that any remarks using a derivative of the phrase "to defame" are premature without a specific behavior attributed to a specific person, or a defense of all behaviors named. Nor has anyone said anything to combat the notion that "promulgated misinformation" is a subjective phrase marking an opinion and not under any purview of defamation, legal or otherwise. Karoly is allowed to have opinions, whether or not he chooses to defend them, take them down, or take his time on a decision to escape real or alledged legal ramifications is up to him. These points should mark a turning point in the discussion. Is not using the word defamation wrongly or prematurely a large part of the issue?
56630. Mike3267 at 04:53 AM on 17 July 2012
       New research special - methane papers 2010-2011
       There have been recent reports that U.S. CO2 emissions have started to decline largely because of increased reliance on natural gas in power plants at the expense of coal (and the Great Recession). Does anyone know if U.S. methane emissions have changed in the past few years?
56631. JBowers at 03:44 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       134 Carrick "Also, British research it seems is going open source. Hopefully they give them the extra money needed for this." They're not. It's to come out of existing budgets. * Why the UK Should Not Heed the Finch Report
56632. dubious at 03:40 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       Without question, undeniably, replication is the essence of science. But replication is also the process of falsification - trying to prove something wrong, not trying to prove it right. (-Snip-) (-Snip-) KR: "Reanalysis of raw data and "audits" are usually the work of the lazy." The reviewers of the Gergis article (-Snip-) The first notice time anybody suggested publicly that the article did not do what it said (which was before the article was withdrawn) came from people reanalysing what raw data had been made available. People here might not consider that role to be important, but I'm happy that there are people who are willing to actually go to those efforts.
       Moderator Response:

       [DB] Please see the moderation reply to the comment immediately prior to this one.

       Multiple comments policy violations snipped.

56633. Dikran Marsupial at 03:12 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       dubious, your approach to science is an extremely bad one, as you are abandoning a system that has shown good ability in deretmining the truth (science) for one that hasn't (rhetoric). It is a bit like saying that you will vote for a politician depending on how much you trust them, rather than on their policies, just think of where you would end up if everybody voted that way! Sorry, bad example... ;o)
       Moderator Response:

       [DB] A note to all parties: This recent turn of the discussion has at least one foot over the line of acceptability, and is teetering into the brink of mandatory moderation. No further pushing of the envelope will be permitted.

       Please compose all subsequent followup comments to very closely comply with this site's Comments Policy to ensure those comments survive any future moderation efforts.

       [DM] just to clarify, I didn't mean that dubious was engaging in rhetoric, just that ones view of the character of someone we don't personally know is very susceptible to rhetoric, and hence isn't a good basis for judgement.

56634. Doug Bostrom at 03:12 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       dubious: 1) If you don't trust a scientist, it doesn't matter what he says the science is, because you don't know if what he says is reliable. Therefore conduct is the top issue. It is absolutely the #1 issue for me. Not to trivialize, but if a bank robber tells you that Big G is 9.81 m/s2 could you test that number? What does trust have to do with your intellect? Skepticism doesn't hinge on the assumption that one is being told a lie. Doubts over a person's character and doubting the truth of something that person says are not inextricably entangled; an axiom and the person reciting it are separable. In my specific case, I was interested (my comment @11) in seeing whether Dr Karoly could support his comment that "I have just received a threat of legal action from Steve McIntyre". As I mentioned in my comment (@48), I'm trying to gauge Dr Karoly from his behaviour. You've seen it demonstrated several times in this thread how Karoly's and McIntyre's and a lawyer's (Chris McGrath, upthread) interpretation of the letter sent Karoly may all be simultaneously valid even though their conclusions are different. As you say, conduct is an important issue. Your conduct is to stubbornly imply that Karoly may have deceived himself and is in any case deceiving us, ignoring parsimony.
56635. JBowers at 03:02 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       "1) If you don't trust a scientist, it doesn't matter what he says the science is, because you don't know if what he says is reliable." You do know if you can replicate their results. They may well put Attila the Hun or Bernie Madoff to shame, but that has nothing to do with the veracity of their science. Briefly on the use of "denial": Least-Cost Climatic Stabilisation. Lovins & Lovins (1990)
56636. Rob Honeycutt at 03:02 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       dubious... You're completely missing the point of what the scientific process is about. The whole point of the process is to not trust any scientist. The scientific process is there because we are all humans and ultimately our human perceptions and biases are fallible. You don't have to trust any scientist. It would be completely extraordinary if all the scientists were corrupt in exactly the same way. So extraordinary as to be functionally impossible. I always use Mike Mann's work as example. Say that everything McIntyre says of Mann's work is correct. Say Mike has completely mucked up his research. Say his statistics are crap, his proxies flipped, say he's using individual trees rather than wide samplings. Say he's gone out of his way to deliberately select proxies that show the conclusions he wants to find. Just imagine the worst of everything McIntyre says and more. Mann's results are what they are. But then, how does the scientific process work? Automatically the system is skeptical. Other scientists attempt to do similar work and see if they get similar results. If several researchers get completely different results then we know that Mann really did do an awful job like McIntyre said. Do you throw him in jail? No, scientists are allowed to be wrong because that is part of the process. Mann's reputation as a scientist would probably be irreparably harmed and he'd be unlikely to receive much more in the way of grants. He'd be marginalized as a researcher. But the exact opposite has happened. There have been nearly a dozen more multiproxy reconstructions done, all of them supporting Mann's original conclusions. My contention is that McIntyre knows all this. He knows that he can't do a reconstruction that shows anything substantively different than Mann's work and thus only spends his time attempting to undermine people's perceptions of the research. McIntyre has found that he has a very effective weapon in the creation of doubt. His work has had zero impact on the actual body of scientific research. But his work has had a great deal of impact on the broad public perception of the scientific research on global warming.
56637. Bernard J. at 02:59 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       Heh, it seems that KR and Professor Rabbet think similarly...
56638. Bernard J. at 02:55 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       

       If you don't trust a scientist, it doesn't matter what he says the science is, because you don't know if what he says is reliable... People are generally quite well equipped [really?!] to judge for themselves whether an excuse is plausible or not, or whether behaviour is acceptable... I'm trying to gauge Dr Karoly from his behaviour.

       It's interesting that even before I finished typing, an example of several of my points was provided. I find it extraordinary that in none of these points provided by 'dubious' was there any mention of testing the veracity of the work itself. It's this irrational and essentially ad hominem knee-jerking to the implications of human-caused global warming that underpins the necessity for a Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. I'm surprised that 'dubious' so easily admitted to his motivations, especially after it's already been explained to him that Karoly's comment about legal sabre-rattling is validly-based. Frankly, I would have thought that anyone who genuinely wanted to understand the veracity of the science would first investigate whether the science was reliable, by testing it rather than the people who conduct it.
56639. EliRabett at 02:48 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       What is revealing is that the language of McIntyre's letter was obviously interpretable as a threat and that McIntyre should have taken responsibility for that. Mr. McIntyre incessently holds others to a very strict standard of being guilty even when shown to be innocent, and never accepts that others have been shown to be innocent. OTOH, what we see is careful parsing from the usual characters. The same thing that we saw with the infinitely fine parsing about whether climate scientists had received threatening Emails. The normal human response to such is to simply walk away from the nonsense being uttered about how, if in a particular light, using this dictionary, and some interpretation etc. What it really does is establish who is playing with 53 cards. This whole thing is much more revealing about McIntyre than Karoly. From Karoly's POV the logical thought is who need the agro from this clown.
56640. KR at 02:48 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       dubious - "If you don't trust a scientist, it doesn't matter what he says the science is, because you don't know if what he says is reliable. Therefore conduct is the top issue. It is absolutely the #1 issue for me." That is absolutely not the case for me, and I would venture to say for most people in the sciences. Science is the top issue, the #1 issue for me. That means results supported by the data, replicable by others using other data and other methods, results that advance our knowledge. While I may have expectations of various scientists (Church, for example, consistently produces interesting results regarding sea levels), "trust" is not what supports science. Strong, replicable results are. That doesn't mean (for me) pushing everyone to put out all of their raw data - that's the equivalent of asking every scientist to also post the contents of their lab notebooks with every paper. It means evaluating the results of their work, and whether it holds up under examination. The current kerfluffle over raw data is, in my opinion, simply the results of folks who (like ATI) produce little or no primary science, but who take it upon themselves to criticize the works of others, resorting to what are essentially ad hominem attacks and lawsuits rather than producing any results - politics and policy, not science. We've managed (oddly enough) to accomplish a great deal without poking through scientists sock drawers in the past - doing so now is simply not part of the scientific process. Judge the results. Not the scientists. The conclusions in light of other data, not the raw data. Reanalysis of raw data and "audits" are usually the work of the lazy.
56641. Bernard J. at 02:41 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       Kevin C at #138. Yes, it is indeed a peculiar phenomenon. I suspect that this tendency to often focus on the people rather than on the facts has its roots in several separate psychological ætiologies. With a hat-tip to the subject of this thread, doing so distracts scientists from their serious work, which is desirable for anyone opposed to hearing what the results are of such work, or who might want to avoid the permeation through to public policy of the consequences of such results. There is also the propaganda value of an ad hominem approach - a tried and true strategy for stirring the lizard brains of the scientific laity in our societies. Another visceral appeal is that which engages the common propensity of many for giving credence to conspiracy, that bastard child of gossip. And I suspect that for many people predisposed to deny the validity of the consensus science, actually constructing a defensible, scientific counter-argument is simply too difficult (heck, even maverick scientists have failed to date), so they go for something that they are capable of doing. I'd be intersted to see more additions to this list.
56642. dubious at 02:28 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       Kevin C: "...the conduct of scientists generates a prolific and heated discussion, with many contributors who would not normally post here. Why?" I'd like to suggest a few possibilities - as someone who hasn't posted here before. 1) If you don't trust a scientist, it doesn't matter what he says the science is, because you don't know if what he says is reliable. Therefore conduct is the top issue. It is absolutely the #1 issue for me. 2) Conduct is something people deal have been dealing with every day since childhood. People know what office politics is. People are generally quite well equipped to judge for themselves whether an excuse is plausible or not, or whether behaviour is acceptable. 3) In my specific case, I was interested (my comment @11) in seeing whether Dr Karoly could support his comment that "I have just received a threat of legal action from Steve McIntyre". As I mentioned in my comment (@48), I'm trying to gauge Dr Karoly from his behaviour.
56643. Rob Honeycutt at 02:20 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       Kevin C... That's a really great observation and cuts straight to the heart of much of the debate in my opinion. For myself, I really don't worry too much about the conduct of individual scientists. Ultimately that doesn't matter. If some scientist mucks up his work and it gets through sloppy peer review, so what? What matters is the consistent message that is coming out of the overall research, not the precision of any given paper. That's where the overall picture of any field of science is judged. And what if all the scientists were mucking up their work and all the peer review were sloppy? Then the results would be all over the board and no one would be able to make heads or tails on anything. This is my big problem with Steve McIntyre. If he really wanted to contribute to the understanding of climate change, and he felt like there were researchers out there getting it wrong, the correct way to go about it is to produce research. If that research shows that previous conclusions were wrong then we have to figure out why and who is correct. As it is all McIntyre is doing is turning up what he considers to be niggling points that ultimately make no difference in the overall research. BUT what he knows his work does do is, it creates doubts in the minds of a segment of the public perception. And I think that is what his ultimate goal is. It's not to improve the understanding of climate change, it's to influence public perceptions of climate change.
56644. Kevin C at 01:56 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       There is something interesting going on here. SkS posts on science do not generate this sort of discussion. However the conduct of scientists generates a prolific and heated discussion, with many contributors who would not normally post here. Why?
56645. chris at 01:51 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       Carrick, "open source" (by which I think you mean open access) is another matter altogether, and refers to research outcomes in the form of scientific papers. In fact a fair amount of UK and US medical research is already open access; i.e. that funded by the NIH in the US and by some research charities (especially the Wellcome Trust) in the UK. And you'll notice that everything that NASA Giss publish is immediately deposited on their website (i.e. completely open access already). This diverts a significant amount of money (around £1500 per published paper), from research funds. However this doesn't refer to the primary data which is the subject of the harrassment FOI requests discussed on this thread, although as already discussed, this is increasingly being deposited for wider access anyway as computer storage capacity evolves. In addition most published papers are now accompanied by sometimes voluminous electronic "Supplementary Information" files which are already in many cases freely downloadable. Scientific publishing is in a state of flux as the traditional paper-based practices evolve towards various electronic models. The open access model favoured by the current UK government isn't completely satisfactory since it will divert a large chunk of unreplaced funds from research to publishing costs without reducing the costs of scientific journal subscriptions (since direct UK-funded open access papers constitute a small proportion of the total scientific output, and so everyone will still have to pay journal subscription costs to access the vast majority of scientific papers). It's only when a critical mass of countries adopt the UK approach (of funding open access models) that there will be something approaching a cost-neutral switch from scientific dissemination funded by journal subscription to that funded by the author and their sponser. It does mean that those who do research on a shoestring with little or no funding are going to find it hard to publish..
56646. Daniel Bailey at 01:30 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       Further comments about the usage of terms such as denier should be placed on the thread delineated by Tom above. As such, they are off-topic here. Please return the discussion to the OP of this thread, What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
56647. Carrick at 00:45 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       Eli & John, there are even crazier reasons I've seen for sequestering data: The fear that NGOs who live to harass legitimate military-based research will use the fact that the data are being collected to prevent the research from going forward. (See Devine Strake, which by the way, there would have been no mushroom cloud, that was a misreporting by the press.) Also, British research it seems is going open source. Hopefully they give them the extra money needed for this.
56648. Gingellenator at 00:40 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       Sorry - thanks for the link - wrong page to post. Not trolling!
       Moderator Response: [d_b] And we'll draw a line under the skid right here.
56649. Albatross at 00:37 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       All, While I understand the impulse to address the strawman argument made by Gingellator@119, can we please try and stay on topic. Specifically, the post @119 is off topic, the term "denier" was not used once in the main post, and what is more this "argument" has been addressed many times before. To me @119 has the appearance of concern trolling.
56650. Tom Curtis at 00:36 AM on 17 July 2012
       What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?
       Gingellenator @128, further discussion of this issue is unquestionably off topic on this thread. May I suggest you go to this thread, read the linked Drum article and then, if you have any questions, ask them there.

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