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Albatross at 08:36 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Muoncounter @273, Despite claims to the contrary by PT, I would even go so far as to say by using that image in the context of Rob's name suggests it was a threat of violence by PT against Rob. I trust PT has at least the decency to amend his blog post. I think it is time to close the thread or simply ignore PT. Remember this person has a track record of cyber stalking and posting someone's personal information on the internet, see here for the one example that I know of. To make matters worse, PT has even tried to justify and defend such outrageous behaviour. Now before someone takes offence at me resurrecting this issue, it does raise concerns as to the motives and intentions of the curator of the list, and it is important for people following this thread to know what we are up against here. We could argue with PT for days and the discussion will go nowhere. Rob raised a very valid point, and others here have raised even more valid and pertinent points that call into question the validity and credibility of the list. In the end, the theory of AGW stands, and has yet to be overturned. Unlike the potpourri of papers on the list, the theory of AGW presents a consistent, robust and coherent picture. The real skeptics are the reputable climate scientists who publish in the reputable literature, and whose research have withstood the test of time. -
DavidRobertson at 08:30 AM on 15 February 2011I want to earn my future, not inherit it
Thanks Don. Mike - I see no colossal mistake; I even agreed with the saying, just noted that it is a cliche! I don't point the finger at anyone in this article, so I fail to see how I let anyone off the hook. People in developing countries ARE the least able to cope with predicted climate change impacts. There are few major science bloggers from these areas. I merely pointed that out as a representation problem. "The resulting triumph of war, pestilence and famine as the whole biosphere degrades will make 'retirement' look like a really childish dream." You might be right. But I'm 23 - little more than a child. Why would I meekly accept a long, bleak future when I can try to shape it for the better? If young people take no action, we have no prospects. That's the equation. You agree with me: "our opportunities to "shape our own future" are rapdily retreating; we have lost too much time already." We don't disagree; I look at the situation with more optimism than you do. Billy, it's possible to live one day at a time AND look to the future. Short-sighted decision-making is a major reason we're in this mess. If I can help to convince people to make positive changes in their day-to-day lives now, then our collective day-to-day existence in 30 years might be a lot easier! The Bloggies are a platform for me to share such a message with a wider audience than I could normally reach. -
MattJ at 08:20 AM on 15 February 2011The Global Carbon Cycle by David Archer—a review
I am concerned that his final summary, "Wait and see" sounds too much like exactly what the 'deniers' want us to do: rather than act on reducing carbon, they want us to "wait and see" if the carbon cycle can automagically recover from the shock we are giving it. -
Don9000 at 07:45 AM on 15 February 2011I want to earn my future, not inherit it
MattJ: I think the word cliché fits the way the psalm is used by many people (as in situations where the meek are being trampled upon and there does not appear to be much likelihood that the particular meek in questions are going to either find their misfortunes overturned in their lifetimes, or posthumously discover themselves to be blessed). Here's the three noun definitions as given on-line by Merriam-Webster: 1: a trite phrase or expression; also : the idea expressed by it 2: a hackneyed theme, characterization, or situation 3: something (as a menu item) that has become overly familiar or commonplace These three meanings are fairly close, and I believe they can all be fairly applied to the phrase in question which has at times been overused. Thus, given the fact that all Robinson has basically said is that "The meek shall inherit the earth" is overused, I really do not see how you reached the conclusion that he has made "a colossal mistake." I think your claim is at best an example of hyperbole. At worst, it may reflect an overzealous response on your part to someone who has had the temerity to criticize contemporary uses of a biblical phrase ascribed to Jesus. As far as your comments on the past and future of retirement are concerned, I cannot really disagree, since I do not think most civilizations across the scope of human history ever formally adopted the kind of relatively recent models you take note of. That said, there is evidence dating back a fair ways into our ancestral past which shows that people past the prime of their lives were cared for by other members of their families, clans, or tribes. Indeed, there is evidence Neanderthals exhibited this kind of behavior. With this in mind, I don't find Robertson's hopes to be as naive as you seem to think they are. -
BillyJoe at 07:37 AM on 15 February 2011I want to earn my future, not inherit it
David, I'm sorry, I hate to attack a young man full of enthusiasm, but there is very little that inpires me in your article. In fact, I'm feel sort of sad and concerned. ASt the ripe age of 23 you are looking at what retirement might bring! My god, man, live one day at a time. The future gives you no guarantees, even that you'll get there. But today is guaranteed to be a good one if you just set your mind on it rather the future. Then you spoiled it completely with your appeal to help you win the Best Science Blog for 2011! Just do your best with each blog you write and let the cards fall where they may. Winning or losing the competition will make no difference if you are happy with what you've done. -
muoncounter at 07:35 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
#254: "put something dangerously misleading out of it's misery." However humorous you feel that is, the use of that image in context with Rob's name is in exceedingly bad taste. -
Gemmahook at 07:25 AM on 15 February 2011How Jo Nova doesn't get past climate change
David what an excellent article, are you going to be writing any more posts?x -
Rob Honeycutt at 07:15 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
PopTech... Okay, I'll even concede that another 10% of those papers are editorial or other than specific peer reviewed research. Heck, make it 50%! But there are a large number of other journals left to count. You can't win this PopTech. The 850 papers you so liberally define as not supporting AGW are a very tiny fraction of the body of peer-reviewed research. I'm really sorry to crush your project into such nothingness but that's what it is. Nothing. The amount of real research into climate change that does not support the consensus theory of AGW is very very small. -
michael sweet at 07:13 AM on 15 February 2011Crichton's 'Aliens Cause Global Warming'
BP, The standard explaination for the flat curve between 1940 and 1980 is sulfate aerosol pollution counteracting the warming from CO2. You certainly know that. When the west cleared up sulfate pollution (to counteract acid rain), it started to heat up again. It is not even worth me providing a link. What is your point anyway? Have you given up on trying to find data that supports your position and now you argue that no-one knows anything,it is all "Argumentum ad Ignorantiam"? You will have to forget a lot of the data in the IPCC report to do that. -
Eric (skeptic) at 07:04 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Albatross, I think "alarm" can be defined fairly rigorously by refering to papers with global tipping points, negative impact trends, or sea level projections that lead to the conclusion that BAU is unacceptable. I have seen a number of papers in the denominator that do not express alarm and in fact do not support alarm. I don't know if it is a significant percentage or negligible. -
RSVP at 07:02 AM on 15 February 2011Crichton's 'Aliens Cause Global Warming'
Is there any reason why the ocean's "sea level" is not a good proxy for describing average global temperature, going back 10,000 years? Shouldnt there be a direct relationship between the total water line and overall temperature? And taking this just a tad further, I would ask if there be any proxy around that can mark the rate of such changes? If so, I guess maybe someone could know if climate had ever changed so fast in the past, or could theoretically change even faster due to some natural occurrence. And what exactly justifies the assumption of linear and or continuous climate models, there being many natural phenomenon that are sporatic and intermittent? An observed change may just be a fluke of natural variation not unlike a hurricane that has a beginning and an end.Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] As always, please use the Search function to find an appropriate thread where(far more likely than not) these questions have already been dealt with here at SkS. You already know this, RSVP. -
MattJ at 07:01 AM on 15 February 2011I want to earn my future, not inherit it
If this article is typical of the thinking of twenty-somethings on the topic, no wonder their voice has so little impact. Now that may sound harsh, and I realize there is a risk it will call down a Moderator's wrath, but alas, it is fully justified, and that NOT based on any ad hominem. Why? Because the author starts off right away with a colossal mistake, calling one of the beatitudes a "cliche". Or was he referring to "I want to earn it, not inherit"? If the latter, then he is guilty of very bad ambiguity. Unfortunately, it gets worse. If, for example, the author had studied a little history, he would have realized that the milieu in which it was/is reasonable to expect to retire is actually the exception in human history. Historically, life has been a struggle for survival that ends only with death. Often, it has been an intense, brutal struggle -- as it still is for a lot of people around the world. More importantly, even where retirement has been achieved, it is fragile. Consider, for example, how many people's retirement savings were wiped out by Bernie Madoff's fraud, or by the financial collapse of 2007/2008, even for people who followed all the best financial advice available at the time; ignore the "Monday morning quarterbackers" who claim that they knew a better financial plan. Even more dramatic, yet still too easily overlooked by so many, is the total collapse of retirement for the Soviets, who were looking forward to a comfortable pension thanks to the Soviet system. But the inflation of the Yeltsin years wiped it out completely. Entire generations of retirees lost everything they had. Not just their retirement, everything. Of course, even the later generations lost their opportunity for retirement as well. The economic shocks caused by the financial collapse and the collapse of the Soviet Union were small compared to the shocks that AGW will cause. So it is not at all unreasonable to expect that "comfortable retirement" is one of the first casualties of AGW. There will be many more, our opportunities to "shape our own future" are rapdily retreating; we have lost too much time already. Oh, BTW: the "developing countries" share the blame for this, too. The article author is quite wrong to let them off the hook. For it is out of a sick, misguided sort of envy that the developing countries are insisting on matching and even surpassing our carbon footprint in the name of building their own economies, making the excuse that it is the only way to pull their peoples out of poverty. That is why India and China both teamed up to sabotage the Copenhagen conference; the Chinese with their ridiculous insistence on no binding carbon goals, agreeing to the document only after its emasculation. Both of them, and even Brazil too, insisted on the gross fraud of referring to carbon targets/taxes etc. as "the developed world forcing its will on the developing countries" India Times article Exposing BRIC's Hypocritical Sabotage Now I realize that I yet again run the risk of having this comment being deleted on the grounds that it is political. But again, there is a connection to the science here. Not to mention: it is no more political than the article itself. The connection to the science is: all these nations have political reasons for ignoring the science and despising the Cassandras who insist on reminding them of the truth. As long as this is not understood, no matter how sound the science, the political motives, bad though they are, will win out until it is far, for too late. This IS a fact of political science. The resulting triumph of war, pestilence and famine as the whole biosphere degrades will make 'retirement' look like a really childish dream. -
Eric (skeptic) at 06:56 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
This /The-value-of-coherence-in-science.html might be a good article to establish coherent frameworks of non-GHG, non-GW, non-AGW, non-CAGW and group the 850 papers accordingly. There will be some overlap, but I would certainly exclude any non-GHG paper from the subsequent groups. For example, non-GHG is the adiabatic theory of warming earth (condution-based warming with trivial effects from back radiation) is not coherent with non-AGW, in which existing CO2 is necessary for existing warmth but added CO2 does not add warmth. This is a large effort, but it is easy to do incrementally: take any pair of papers and look for contradictory assumptions or conclusions. I try to do the same with a the mainstream science, but it is not without controversy (see thread above). -
Rob Honeycutt at 06:52 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
PopTech said... "I have not received an email from any scientist negative in any way about the list." Oh, yeah, but there was Dr Pielke... -
Daniel Bailey at 06:51 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Re: P/t (254)Ron, "I would assume shooting the Denominator to be tantamount to a desperate need to not have his number put into context." No, it is to put something dangerously misleading out of it's misery.
Surely I am not the only one seeing the irony in this statement? The Yooper -
RickG at 06:49 AM on 15 February 2011The Global Carbon Cycle by David Archer—a review
I recently finished viewing his class lectures (23) from PHSC 13400, Global Warming for non-science majors, Fall, 2009. Its a good primer for understanding Earth's heat balance and how the planet is warming as well as the acidification of the oceans. The lectures can be found here. -
Rob Honeycutt at 06:48 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
PopTech... "Yet failed due to a meaningless denominator based on erroneous results." Here. I did a little extra homework for you... Here are a few peer-reviewed journals and the number of results (sans "citation") that come up in search results for the term (complete phrase) "climate change." Nature - 2290 Science - 16,900 AGU - 5440 E&E (dubious, but...) - 125 Geophysical Research - 7780 CSIRO - 1320 PNAS - 3230 Journal of Climate and Climate Research - 8850 Climatic Change - 1830 That's a VERY short list of peer reviewed papers and the total number of papers is 47,765. Now, if you will kindly go through and figure out what papers in your list are actually skeptical of AGW then we will start to be on even ground and can provide useful data. Being that E&E is so dubious I would suggest we pull all E&E papers from both of our figures. At very best I'm guessing maybe 1% of peer reviewed papers on climate change are skeptical of AGW. -
Albatross at 06:47 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Pop, "Your "context" is not why the list was created." Aaah, it is all becoming clearer now ;) I think we all here (even you) know why the list was generated. If your measure of success is blog traffic and emails from goodness knows who, then I'm afraid that you are horribly misguided. I'm still waiting for some examples of skeptic theories (see my post @240). And you have not answered this yet: "Please tell us at what point (i.e., warming above pre-industrial levels) does AGW become alarming?" It is relevant, as you use the word "alarm" in your title. -
pbjamm at 06:44 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Wow, that is some pretty serious word mincing. I thought it pretty clear in the context of the discussion. Since you believe your list of 850 papers is a "significant amount in direct relation to the amount of peer-reviewed papers that explicitly endorse AGW theory", how many peer-reviewed papers endorsing AGW theory do you believe there to be? -
Albatross at 06:38 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Pop @249, You are not making sense anymore. I never made reference to that. And I just love your display of D-K when you were arguing with Brooks about tornadoes. He was not happy about you including his research in your list, that much is very clear. "I have not received an email from any scientist negative in any way about the list." How am I meant to validate that? -
pbjamm at 06:34 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech@260 If you have no idea how many peer review papers there are then why did you say @229 "I personally believe 850 peer-reviewed papers is a large amount. I also believe this is a significant amount in direct relation to the amount of peer-reviewed papers that explicitly endorse AGW theory." -
Rob Honeycutt at 06:18 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
PopTech... I'd like to ask, how many peer reviewed papers would you venture to guess there actually are? -
pbjamm at 06:17 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Time to inject some semi-relevant humor: Dean Yeager: Doctor... Venkman. The purpose of science is to serve mankind. You seem to regard science as some kind of dodge... or hustle. Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable! You are a poor scientist, Dr. Venkman! -
Lou Grinzo at 06:15 AM on 15 February 2011The Global Carbon Cycle by David Archer—a review
I also liked Archer's book quite a bit, although, like others here, I wasn't thrilled with the illos or the long sidebars (those boxed pieces of text). There's no excuse for the former, but the latter is really tough to get around because of the nature of the material. Sequester that material (pun intended) into appendices, for example, and few people will read it. Leave it in place and you wind up with the problem of forcing the reader to make a lot of side-trips in his or her journey through the book. On the issue of the PETM burp, I have to wonder if we're approaching a realization that aerosols have a higher cooling effect than expected. Notice in the current IPCC report that the error bars on aerosol cooling are quite large. Low aerosols in the PETM (no one was burning coal) means more warming from a given CO2 content. For us, here in bright and shiny 2011, that's exceedingly bad news because one area where we seem to be making progress on the environmental front is reducing those aerosol emissions from coal plants in the US, EU, and China. If we wind up exposing a lot more warming effect than expected, the "aerosol whiplash" effect could be a very nasty surprise. -
Berényi Péter at 06:14 AM on 15 February 2011Crichton's 'Aliens Cause Global Warming'
#49 Dikran Marsupial at 03:54 AM on 15 February, 2011 nice attempt to distract attention from the fact that you had used a regional trend to try and refute a claim about global trends NH extratropics is quite some region. However, if you have global data going back to several millenia with annual resolution, just drop a link. That way anyone can see your point. Otherwise it is Argumentum ad Ignorantiam once again. You basically say as we do not have global data for 950-990 AD, it proves global trend was different. As to Argumentum as Ignorantiam, that would be true if I had said that the AGW hypothesis rests solely on the fact that we can't explain the current warming without AGW, but I didn't write that. Instead I wrote that there was a known mechanism with good support from experiments, observation and theory. You are right. Based on that knowledge would you please explain to all why global SST increased between 1910 and 1940 at a 0.165°C/decade rate, dropped by 0.24°C during the next decade, then increased again at a rate of 0.1°C/decade ever since?
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Rob Honeycutt at 06:10 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
PopTech... Which is what my original article was also doing. -
Rob Painting at 06:05 AM on 15 February 2011Guardian article: Australia's recent extreme weather isn't so extreme anymore
Ken Lambert @40 - To suggest that 30 years is a significant period to judge changes in flood/drought events is preposterous........Not even 100 years is a significant period . And yet you drone on and on and on......... about ocean heat content over a 5 year period, when the ARGO & XBTproblems have yet to be sorted. Do you see your lack of internal consistency?. -
Albatross at 06:04 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Pop, Well, you are stubborn to a fault, that is all I can say. Again, context is important. Again, as I and others have demonstrated, your title and the content in many of the papers are oftentimes inconsistent with each other. My comment about "uncertainty not being equal to skepticism" is not a strawman. Your list includes papers which speak to uncertainty. That is not reason to be "skeptical", or question AGW or be cause for alarm. That disclaimer of yours is interesting (not to mention that I'm sure it almost never gets included when people reference the list). Can you provide some concrete examples of "yet their paper(s) or results from their paper(s) support skeptic's arguments against AGW alarm". And just what do you mean by "alarm"? That sounds emotive, not scientific. Please tell us at what point (i.e., warming above pre-industrial levels) does AGW become alarming? You did not answer my question about Brooks. And are you going to remove refuted papers such as McLean et al. (2009) and G&T09? "For obvious reasons I don't take "advice" from people who are intent on misrepresenting the list or making false allegations about it. I have ignored their "advice" to great success." That sounds hypocritical coming from you-- your list does in fact mis-represent the science on so many levels. Many of my papers have been greatly improved by the critical observations and comments made by reviewers-- i did not always appreciate the receiving the (terse) advice, but in the end they were right. Can you please quantify "great success". Your list has in part gained some traction in certain ideological circles, because people are ignorant of the science, have misguided ideas, confirmation bias, do not have time to properly review the list and its contents. It is no more than something to throw up when debating someone on the internet..."hey have you hear there are 850 papers which...." -
Rob Honeycutt at 06:01 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
I would assume shooting the Denominator to be tantamount to a desperate need to not have his number put into context. -
John Hartz at 05:50 AM on 15 February 2011I want to earn my future, not inherit it
Kudos to David Roberston for an excellent post. Here are my personal words to live by... "Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children." Ancient Native American Proverb -
muoncounter at 05:41 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
#206: "are you denying the existence of peer-reviewed social science journals?" Surely you don't claim E & E is a 'social science' journal? If so, how is it also a climate science journal? Or is this more PT doublespeak? Example (note an actual item from your 'list', not a made up illustration to make a point): Biased Policy Advice from The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (PDF) (Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 929-936, December 2007) Richard S.J. Tol Interested readers (if there are any left) looking for a laugh should read PT's rebuttal to this post, in which he appears to be shooting a Terminator. Real classy choice of images there, shooting those we disagree with. -
Stu at 05:40 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech at 232: I'm pretty sure quoting someone who has the same opinion as you on that matter doesn't count. It's recycled hearsay, not actual evidence. As for John Kerry, one man's statement does not make it a 'popular belief'. -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:31 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
PopTech... "No not among all of them but that is not the point of the list, it is a resource. I do not discriminate among skeptic's theories." So, in reality, you really have several alternative theories of climate change within the broader list? I would suggest it is appropriate to apply each of these smaller theories up against the broader theory of AGW. That would make the results an even smaller fraction than suggested in the main article here. -
muoncounter at 05:29 AM on 15 February 2011Crichton's 'Aliens Cause Global Warming'
#47: "warmed by 0.66°C in 40 years between 950 and 990 " Fascinating how you can so sharply discern a 40 year event on data filtered with a 40 year low pass. The 20 year filter shown earlier in the Esper 2002 paper (their fig 2, which you did not present here) has a distinct break in this so-called 'multidecadal event'. Of course, tree rings are mere proxies and who gives them any credibility? "while no paper is found which would explain this particular event by natural causes" Maybe such papers are found. How about a Krakatoa-class volcanic eruption (the Tianchi eruption, with a volcanic explosivity index (VEI) of 6) immediately before your so-called multi-decadal event? From Zou 2009: The great 10th century Tianchi (or Baitoushan in Korean) eruption represents one of the two largest explosive eruptions (along with the 1815 Tambora eruption) in the past two thousand years. ... The huge eruption ejected about 100 km3 of tephra and resulted in the formation of a 5 km diameter caldera: the Tianchi (Heaven Lake) caldera. If Zou's 100km3 is correct, Tianchi produced an order of magnitude more eruptive debris than Pinatubo and is nearly VEI 7. Yin et al. 2010 pin down the date of this eruption with tree rings: Tree-ring widths were measured and cross-dated. Almost 69 AMS ages were obtained from Yalujiang section. These dates allowed estimation of the time of the eruption with high precision by wiggle-match analysis to 935-942 AD. We can obviously expect a few years of post Pinatubo-style cooling following this event, similar to that in the image shown below.
The subsequent warming is thus partly a rebound effect, as seen 1992-93 (~0.5 degrees C in just two years!) So the mere observation of warming rate is not the point here -- it's the driving mechanism behind that rate.
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Meet The Denominator
pbjamm - Entirely correct. Many of the papers on that list are rather infamously invalid upon larger scrutiny, despite repeatedly turning up in skeptic/denial discussions. Incidentally, in regards to the G&T 2009 paper (one I've had particular issues with, as heavily bandied complete bunk) - that was not peer reviewed, but was instead an editor invited review paper. Is peer review a requirement for that list? -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:28 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
PopTech... "... the word "Alarm" was added to make the title more clear as to the purpose of the list." You know if you keep going I think you can qualify the title even further so that you encompass ALL papers on climate change. -
rustneversleeps at 05:25 AM on 15 February 2011The Global Carbon Cycle by David Archer—a review
Nice review, Andy. I will second the book recommendation. I often think that organizing a high-school or first-year university science curriculum around a parallel track studying the carbon cycle (and maybe other biogeochemical cycles) would be an effective teaching tool, because the latter inevitably intersects with biochemistry, paleontology, geology, fossil fuels, marine chemistry, and on and on. In that vein, I also rather liked Tyler Volk's "CO2 Rising" and Eric Roston's "The Carbon Age". Regarding the mystery of the terrestrial biosphere's "missing sink". You might enjoy this recent video of a seminar at Stanford with Stephen Pacala. Specifically the first 3:40 and then from 8:20 to 34:50. He references upcoming work from Oliver Phillips, Stefan Gerber and others, which seems to suggest that much of the missing sink may have been identified: it/has been in the tropical forests, and CO2 fertilization is the key driver. (Interestingly, he makes the point that tropical forests are not limited by nitrogen fixation to the same degree as temperate and boreal forests so that would at least help explain why would see the CO2 fertilization effects in some forests but not others.) If this is true, then, in a way, that would be an interesting and encouraging result. If CO2 fertilization were the driver, it would have the potential to scale up with atmospheric concentrations, whereas if the "missing sink" were due to things like secondary forest regrowth it would just be one-time bumps. But if one then considers the 2005 and 2010 droughts in the Amazon, it is somewhat disconcerting, because this sink could quickly reverse! Of course, these are new - and therefore, preliminary results - which circles back to Archer's point of how much more there is to learn. But it's fascinating watching the carbon cycle mysteries as they are being investigated and resolved. -
Bibliovermis at 05:24 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech, Your definition of alarm lumps substantiated negative effects with bluster. -
pbjamm at 05:23 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Arguing about what papers should be included on Poptech's list is not really constructive since it is his list and his subjective criteria. Discussing the quality of those papers is entirely fair. Just because they made it past peer review and were published does not mean they held up under further scrutiny. As he stated @215 "All I have to demonstrate is his conclusions are based on erroneous results" for the list to be invalid. -
Albatross at 05:23 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Potech, "I do not discriminate among skeptic's theories." In other words-- anything goes. Nice. And IIRC, they are not "theories", but hypotheses. Hypotheses which repeatedly get overturned or refuted. I am curious though, please name one such "skeptic theory", with a citation form your list. -
Meet The Denominator
Poptech pbjamm, "What exactly is it you are arguing for here?" "That the percentage of climate change papers in relation to AGW and AGW alarm is undetermined and cannot be determined without evaluating each and every paper individually." I see... Have you never heard of sampling theory? As I discussed here, it's quite simple to apply sampling to the thousands of results from various databases and Google searches. Even a simple sampling indicates well ~2% +/- some amount displaying disagreement with AGW, ~2% disagreeing with consensus estimates of how much warming is caused by AGW; >96% indication of agreement with AGW as a critical involved factor in climate change with some level of consequences to the field of study. Extrapolating from that I estimate <4% papers disagreeing with AGW or denying consequences in the field of climate science, subject of course to +/- sampling error. And I consider that percentage inconsequential. -
Albatross at 05:14 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech @215, "I have to do no such thing. All I have to demonstrate is his conclusions are based on erroneous results, which I have done." Actually you do. You disagree with 0.1%. Pray tell then...what is the correct fraction? In this sort of endeavour, context is everything. to the man on the street 850 (an inflated number) sounds like a big dent. Well, it is anything but a big dent. And you should very much consult the authors of each paper, b/c by including their paper/s in the list (which is essentially a politically-motivated list) list you may be misrepresenting their position on AGW, and perhaps even misrepresenting their science by lumping it in with a) refuted papers and b) dodgy journals and c) a propaganda list. Again, uncertainty is not equivalent to or suggest a reason to be skeptical of the theory of AGW. you title really does not make any sense, and i suspect that you were trying too hard to cover too many aspects. Didn't Harold Brooks request that you remove one or more of his papers included by you on the list? I still see his name there, more than once in fact. While your merry dance here is intriguing and at times entertaining, I would advise you that it is not helping your credibility one bit. People are trying to help you improve your list. Ignore their advice at your own peril. -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:10 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
PopTech... Is there a consistent theory amongst the 850 papers you list? Or are you merely listing papers supporting a variety of dissenting opinion? -
Dikran Marsupial at 05:09 AM on 15 February 2011The Global Carbon Cycle by David Archer—a review
I am reading this book at the moment, the main problem I have with it is that the boxes (which house various digression) are rather distracting (works well in a magazine with large pages, but no so well in a standard paperback). The content is excellent though, I'd certainly recommend it to anyone wanting to know a bit more about the carbon cycle. -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:07 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
PopTech... Do we really have to bring up Pielke? -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:05 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
PopTech... 850 is a large amount relative to what? And, again, the standards you apply to what qualifies for the list is highly questionable. Therefore a more rational number is likely closer to half of that. But again, the number of 850 unto itself has no context. You have to provide context. -
Stu at 04:58 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
"The context and meaning of the 850 list is that they exist contrary to popular belief and it is a valuable resource for skeptics" Ooh here's an opportunity. Can you please point out an example showing popular belief to be that 'skeptical' papers don't exist? That'd be real handy. PS. It's only a valuable resource for throwing a number out there. Thereafter, a real skeptic will look at the papers and analyse them, finding that a very large number are simply crap. Then the 'skeptic' (the person the list was supposed to help) is left trying to defend scores of sub-standard, contradictory papers and looks foolish. Like I said earlier, if you were trying to make your fellow 'sceptics' more wrong, mission accomplished. -
Rob Honeycutt at 04:57 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
PopTech... When you have authors of papers who specifically say that the papers they wrote do not say what you suggest they say, what is that? -
pbjamm at 04:57 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Rob Honeycutt @225 Exactly. The papers in the list may or may not have scientific merit. I am not arguing that, nor would I be qualified to make such an evaluation. The point is that without the denominator the quantity is meaningless. -
Rob Honeycutt at 04:53 AM on 15 February 2011Meet The Denominator
PopTech... The only thing of value to skeptics is the number you try to throw out. You create a false impression that there is a large body of evidence running contrary to AGW and it's just not true. It's a lie.
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