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Comments 104301 to 104350:
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Daniel Bailey at 11:13 AM on 18 November 2010Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
It is a testimony to the sad saga that this thread has become that none of the usual "skeptic" habitues of SkS have chosen to weigh in. The Yooper -
JMurphy at 10:58 AM on 18 November 2010Climategate a year later
It was amazing watching the hyper-ventilating outpourings of the so-called skeptics, when this all came out, and I could just imagine many of them hugging themselves with false glee - thinking that they were witnessing the final (final) nail in the coffin of AGW. Unfortunately for them, though, reality eventually returned and they had to move onto more diversions, hopes, dreams and disappointments. Any unbiased observer would have watched all this, seen the outcomes of all the enquiries, understood that the science still stood, and moved on. Not the so-called skeptics. No, they have to regurgitate the same old disinformation and keep gnawing at the old bones of broken dreams (if I can mix my metaphors). Ken Lambert, you need to read more to understand the banal (and non-conspiracy) meaning of the words you have quoted and posted : What does Mike's Nature trick to 'hide the decline' mean? Real Climate George Monbiot Memorandum submitted by Dr. Timothy J. Osborn to the Science & Technology Select Committee As for Lindzen's comment : he is a desperate, desperate man. -
Riduna at 10:46 AM on 18 November 2010Climategate a year later
I find it gratifying that science and scientists have been vindicated and the contention that the IPCC should be infallible or discredited as totally ridiculous. On the other hand I respect the right of anyone to honestly and genuinely question scientific findings and theories and to do so publicly. By honestly and genuinely, I mean without resorting to the deceptions employed by those who describe themselves as sceptics but are more accurately climate change deniers. Journalists have a responsibility to write on such matters in an informed and balanced way and editors to ensure the accuracy – rather than the “newsworthiness” of what they publish. Of concern is that journalists who are neither knowledgeable or informed nevertheless produce articles which, to be kind, are less than balanced and editors, particularly those employed by Rupert Murdoch. -
Rob Honeycutt at 08:03 AM on 18 November 2010Climategate a year later
Albatross... Ironically, though, just today Richard Lindzen was in front of a congressional subcommittee making this statement: "Climategate is proof of overt cheating by climate scientists." This after there have been numerous, in depth, independent reviews into the matter. It's almost like Lindzen and his smoking. No amount of evidence can sway his opinion. -
Albatross at 07:43 AM on 18 November 2010Climategate a year later
The "skeptics" really do need to move on. "Climategate" was the mother of all ad hominem attacks on the climate science community. They will debny it of course, but Climategate was also an epic fail for them, and history will not document it in the way they would like to. It has also afforded us a scary insight into the tactics and behavior of "skeptics", namely their willingness to distort, misinform and manipulate information to suite their own ideology and further their campaign of doubt and confusion. Not to mention highlighting the desperate lengths they will go to to come by that information. Dismissing six investigations as whitewashes just does not cut it. The skeptics are in fact very lucky that, until now at least, criminal charges have not been brought against those who organized and oversaw vexatious FOI campaign or those who were involved with the theft of the emails. Posts by some "skeptics" here just go to prove the points made in the above post-- sad that they fail to see that. Also, it seems that said "skeptics" have not taken the time to read the reports from the various inquiries, especially the comprehensive (and at times rightfully critical) report by Sir Russell. But instead insist on parroting long debunked myths and misinformation that have done the rounds on various internet blogs and in misguided elements of the media. For example, as for the fallacious claims being parroted here about fudging code and numbers, please read this. Did "climategate" undermine the validity of the theory of anthropogenic climate change? No, not one bit. Now that is a very inconvenient truth for the "skeptics". And here is another, the extremely troubling revelations concerning the Wegman report. -
muoncounter at 07:20 AM on 18 November 2010It's the ocean
Just noticed your other notion in #21: "should have selected the alleged additional heat flux from anthropogenic global warming as comparison." Yes, the 'alleged' GHG forcing, as shown here still trumps this 0.087 W/m2 from geothermal 30 or times over. What was your point? -
SRJ at 07:20 AM on 18 November 2010The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
In comments 65 and Berényi Péter refer to papers by R. Dewar. A new comment on two of Dewars papers is online. The comment apparently show that results of two his papers are based on an physical unrealistic assumption. The comment discuss the following papers by Dewar: Information theory explanation of the fluctuation theorem, maximum entropy production and self-organized criticality in non-equilibrium stationary states [R. Dewar, J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 36 (2003), 631–641] Maximum entropy production and the fluctuation theorem [R. Dewar, J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 38 (2005), L371–L381]. -
Eric (skeptic) at 07:08 AM on 18 November 2010How significance tests are misused in climate science
KR, thanks. You haven't demonstrated that my pre-Newtonian physics example above is not "universal" or "complete" (nor have you defined those). Next I will read Salmon since he seems to have the best counterargument. -
muoncounter at 07:04 AM on 18 November 2010It's the ocean
#21: "the data that is referred to are from a paper published in 1993" The paper I cited was published in 2009. Do you think those authors knowingly used the 1993 data (which has been cited by 167 subsequent papers through 2010) without some consideration of whether or not they were still appropriate? More to the point, do you think the earth's geothermal heat flow into the oceans varies by a 3 orders of magnitude (we're talking watts vs. milliwatts) over the course of 17 years? Everybody would have noticed that! -
Norman at 06:59 AM on 18 November 2010Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
#30 scaddenp Your statement "However, this has nothing to do with chaos. Albedo is straightforward and well-behaved." Does not seem valid in the material I have looked into. Wonder why you believe this statement to be true. I have another calcualtor for you. It is on a site you probably do not like but the calcultor is still valid. It includes the atmosphere and the Greenhouse effect in the calculator. Small albedo changes can cause large climate changes. This seems to fit the concept of sensitivity into the climate system. Very sensitive to small changes and the changes to climate can then effect the albedo, very nonlinear effect. Global Temp calculator that includes atmophere for scaddenp. -
Norman at 06:52 AM on 18 November 2010Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
Moderator I am still working on the possibility that Climate is indeed chaotic and the reasons I feel it may be so I think I am still on the correct thread. I have read your intermediate version of chaos and see you do not include albedo as a means to induce a chaotic climate. Here you state "If the sources and sinks of CO2 were chaotic and could quickly release and sequester large fractions of gas perhaps the climate could be chaotic." Forget about CO2, what about albedo? A change of 1% in the albedo is equal to the effect of CO2 doubling. The reason I still suggest climate may easily be chaotic is because the major climate variables (temperature and precipitation) will have an effect on albeo and albedo in turn can easily change these two variables so it makes for a very unstable situation. -
JMurphy at 06:47 AM on 18 November 2010Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
Poptech wrote : "Quality and validity are subjective. I consider the papers to be of high quality and valid, you don't. None of this changes the fact that they are all peer-reviewed and published and support skeptic's arguments against AGW alarm." No, no, no : no matter how many times you try to convince yourself (well, you can't convince anyone else but those who want to believe in your little list), those 'papers' 'support' YOUR own rather convoluted arguments against AGW alarm (whatever that might be) - even using papers whose original authors have told you that their particular papers do not support skepticism against AGW alarm, no matter what you think. -
Philippe Chantreau at 06:47 AM on 18 November 2010Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
To all: it would be wise to stop feeding the troll -
CBDunkerson at 06:23 AM on 18 November 2010It's the ocean
h-j-m wrote: "But my understanding about science tells me that in order to establish any hypothesis (e. g. anthropogenic global warming caused by increasing emissions of - mainly - CO2) you need to look at all possible causes and either rule them out or show their insignificance. The history of the AGW hypothesis seems to have developed the other way round." You must be reading a different history than the one I've seen. When Arrhenius first proposed enhanced greenhouse warming from human CO2 emissions in 1896 a whole host of objections (CO2 absorption is saturated, water vapor absorption overlaps, oceans can absorb all the extra CO2, human emissions are too low, et cetera) were raised and the idea was dismissed. It is only as each of those, and many other, objections has been disproved over the subsequent decades that it has become clear that Arrhenius was correct. -
It's the ocean
h-j-m - In that case, prior to accepting your hypotheses (and yes, you did propose three of them) and dismissing the mass of evidence for greenhouse enhancement via increased anthropogenic CO2, you need to display both some evidence for your hypotheses. And point out why that evidence is better than the evidence for CO2. You don't do science by hunting for and debunking all possible and dreamed of hypotheses (as that is an infinite set), which is what you seem to be asking for - you do it by following the evidence, learning what common events and generalizations can be made, and examining the evidence for and against them. -
h-j-m at 06:13 AM on 18 November 2010It's the ocean
KR, no I don't have any evidence, but neither did I forward any hypothesis. But my understanding about science tells me that in order to establish any hypothesis (e. g. anthropogenic global warming caused by increasing emissions of - mainly - CO2) you need to look at all possible causes and either rule them out or show their insignificance. If I were a scientist that is I would do prior to finding evidence to back my intended hypothesis. The history of the AGW hypothesis seems to have developed the other way round. About water vapour: I just wanted to point out that the cited quote can't be correct as there is an established method of heat transfer from the ocean to the atmosphere while I still could not find any hint of significant heat transfer the other way round. By the way, so far the only explanation I encountered about AGW causing oceanic temperature rise was that the oceans are (due to their thermal capacity) the only available heat sink. That clearly qualifies as an assertion without evidence. muoncounter, Thanks, this is the kind of reply I would have generally expected (but seemingly I'm asking too much). Unfortunately the data that is referred to are from a paper published in 1993 and is therefore rather useless given the fact that reports about rising ocean temperatures state them to be most significant in the last decade. Besides, due to the theme of this site you should have selected the alleged additional heat flux from anthropogenic global warming as comparison. -
How significance tests are misused in climate science
Eric - What was Newtonian physics prior to the more accurate measurements? Was it a universal proposition? A complete truth? Or was it rather the best we could do at the time? As is Einstein's physics now? I would recommend for your reading topics on The Problem of Induction, in particular David Hume, Karl Popper, and Wesley Salmon (who I had the pleasure of taking some courses with). Those links contain some overviews and multiple links to further discussions. -
robert way at 05:54 AM on 18 November 2010Are ice sheet losses overestimated?
"What I am saying is that based on the known conditions of Greenland at the time of the MWP, compared to the current conditions, it is very likely that the ice loss was as great or greater than it currently is." What are these known conditions that you assume are contributing to ice losses? You know that there is more that matters than just melt right? We have to remove sea-ice, buttressing ice shelves and provide warmer water into the fjords so that the grounding lines of glaciers begin to retreat and cause glacier accelerations when backpressure is reduced... We can't just say "hey Greenland was nearly as warm during the MWP so it means it lost as much ice!" -
robert way at 05:50 AM on 18 November 2010Are ice sheet losses overestimated?
Good testimony. -
Eric (skeptic) at 05:35 AM on 18 November 2010How significance tests are misused in climate science
KR, here is a simple pre-Newtonian physics: Velocity = Force * Constant. For example, as I push a shopping cart with a constant force, it travels at a constant speed. It attained that speed (from rest) as I applied the force and maintains that speed as long as I apply the force. You might argue there is some sort of theoretical "friction" in the wheels but you will have to show how to measure that friction along with your new theory. Once you demonstrate your Newtonian theory, my theory is not "useful in many cases, but not correct", it is simply wrong and discarded unless your theory allows it to be true in special cases. In your example above, Newtonian theory is 100% incorrect. The fact that it is "useful in many cases" simply indicates that measurements are being taken and utilized with low enough precision to appear correct in Newtonian theory. Those measurements are not "probabilistically correct" in any way, they are simply too imprecise to be correct (for relativity theory) or impossible to ever measure precisely (for quantum mechanical theory). -
Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
Poptech, last but not least, I give you Global Warming and Ozone Hole Controversies A Challenge to Scientific Judgment, by Dr. Frederick Seitz. Here he dismisses challenges to: 1. Nuclear power reactors and the associated radioactive wastes. 2. The use of asbestos in any form - for example, for thermal insulation or brake linings. 3. Acidic and radioactive emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels, particularly coal. 4. The disposal of domestic waste in landfills or by combustion in waste-to-energy facilities. 5. The disposal of toxic chemical wastes. 6. Genetic engineering as applied to agriculture and medicine. 7. The employment of pesticides and fertilizers in agriculture. 8. The passive inhalation of even small amounts of tobacco smoke. 9. The addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels with the asso- ciated hazard of global warming. 10. The use of freons, halons, and related halogenated compounds as refrigerants, fire-suppressor agents or fumigants because of their presumed depletion of the atmospheric ozone layer. Bring a shovel. -
Stephen Leahy at 05:21 AM on 18 November 2010Climategate a year later
Orsekes is a very good historical scholar on this issue. Here's detailed interview with her about role of media and christian evangelicals in pushing climate denial. http://stephenleahy.net/2010/07/13/proof-of-anti-global-warming-cabal-fossil-fuel-interests-christian-evangelicals-and-the-media/ -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:16 AM on 18 November 2010Are ice sheet losses overestimated?
Related to this topic is Dr Richard Alley's testimony before the subcommittee on Energy and Environment given today (Nov 17). -
The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
Michele - I may have misinterpreted your post here. Are you agreeing with this article by Tony Wildish or disagreeing? It's not clear to me from your comments. -
Bibliovermis at 05:10 AM on 18 November 2010Animals and plants can adapt
h-j-m, A problem is not rendered inconsequential if an implementation of a proposed (partial) solution may cause more harm in a given area than it aleviates. Arguing against biofuel farming practices is in no way a valid argument against the effects of global warming. -
The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
Michele - EM wave superimposition doesn't create or destroy energy, it just moves it around a little. Waves pass through each other unchanged - surface energies may be redistributed by interference. Given incoherent IR (the very definition of thermal radiation involves incoherent emission scaled by object spectra and temperature), wave superimposition really has no effect whatsoever on the greenhouse effect. This is a complete red herring argument. As to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, a cold object (yet warmer than absolute zero) can keep a nearby warm object warmer than it would be without the cold object, simply by not being as much of a heat sink as empty space. See Yes, Virginia, Cooler Objects Can Make Warmer Objects Even Warmer Still and In Defense of the Greenhouse Effect, by Dr. Roy Spencer (self described skeptic). Energy flows in all directions. The sum of energy flows is what is described by the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Consider a warm object (internally heated with 100 watts) radiating 100 watts to empty space, it's at equilibrium. If a nearby cold object radiates 20 watts to the warm object, the total outgoing energy is only 80 watts - and the warm object will increase in temperature until it's radiating 100 watts again. -
Dikran Marsupial at 05:02 AM on 18 November 2010How significance tests are misused in climate science
BP wrote "Induction is not a scientific method. It is an heuristic method (one of many) used to arrive at universal propositions of any kind, some being scientific among them. But what makes a universal proposition scientific is not the fact it is supported by data, but that it is not contradicted by any of them." No, creationism is not unequivocally contradicted by any observation, but it isn't a scientific theory. According to Popper the *possibility* of falsification distinguishes scientific theories from unscientific ones. Creationism is non-falsifiable as the deity may have buried dinosaur bones as a test of our faith etc. -
Dikran Marsupial at 04:58 AM on 18 November 2010How significance tests are misused in climate science
BP, can you provide a deductive chain of reasoning that establishes the theory of evolution? If not, does that mean the theory is not scientific? -
Michele at 04:37 AM on 18 November 2010The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
I don't tend to divert the attention from the talking point, but the waves superposition is more relevant to energy exchange at Hearth’s surface. Indeed, at any point of the surface there are acting (and traveling opposite each other) at least two EM waves along any direction. The energy flux (Watt/m2) coming in/out at that point is the amplitude of Poynting vector, the cross product of resultant electric field and resultant magnetic field, both obtained applying the superposition principle (notice, there’s a quadratic relationship between resultant field and flux that doesn’t allow to sum the fluxes of component fields because the flux quadruples as the field doubles). Thus, for any frequency, at any point of surface exists only a resultant electric field, only a resultant magnetic field, only an energy flux. Moreover, the standing wave that reduces the flux coming out induces the temperature increase of surface to restore the energy balance at surface. Thus both the energy transfer problem and the GH effect are simply and definitively explained by vector kinematics. The thermodynamics isn’t needed because it muddles up our ideas instead of making them clear. Yet I want to point that the 2th law of thermodynamics doesn’t refer only to the heat flow between two objects; it have an overall meaning that concerns the flow of every energy form, induced by its density gradient. The thermal radiation density, given by Planck’s relationship B(T), is a monotonically increasing function of the absolute temperature. In the empirical relationship between temperature and pressure of a gas, at constant volume, p = const*T, both the terms depict an energy density and are monotonically increasing functions of absolute temperature and pressure. For an energy exchange is needed an energy flow and that occurs only if there’s a not-zero grad(T) or a not-zero grad(p) and the flow happens along the decreasing T or p. If were true to assume that the thermal radiation energy can flow along increasing T, then also heat and the other form of energy could flow along increasing pressure/temperature. In other words it would be (almost sometimes) normal for an adrift boat to sail upstream the river, or for the outlet flow of a water turbine to return spontaneously into the higher feeding reservoir, and again, for a gas escaped by a cylinder to re-enter it naturally. All the cases are obviously absurd because all they contradict the second law of thermodynamics. -
h-j-m at 04:24 AM on 18 November 2010Animals and plants can adapt
CBDunkerson, I just wanted to point out that at the current time loss of biodiversity is due to direct human intervention by far outranking that what can be attributed to global warming. Chances that tropical rainforests are threatened by it are rather slim as studies show that in the tropics forestation is the main factor governing local weather patterns(i. e. they show that deforestation leads to major changes in weather patterns). Some small scale endeavours on the other hand show that rainforest farming (using the biological productivity of rainforests to support the local population) is a viable and sustainable alternative - capable not only to fight poverty but even to allow for modest prosperity -, but they are not getting a chance due to the profits that biological fuels are promising. So far I can only see that in result the global warming theory has led to nothing but an increasing pace of destroying the ability of this globe to support human life. -
Rob Honeycutt at 04:00 AM on 18 November 2010Are ice sheet losses overestimated?
I keep hearing this theme from TIS that the current warming is not out of the ordinary. Problem there is, I don't believe that is what sciences asks. The question is not, is current warming out of the ordinary, but rather why is it warming? What are the causes? What might this mean for the future? You can't just say, "Eh, it's been this warm before" and just abandon why. I would be as excited as anyone if science turned up an alternative mechanism to CO2 that has driven current warming, and that mechanism showed that we were just in a temporary warming phase and would now be headed into a cooling phase. The whole world could breathe a huge sigh of relief. But that's not what's happening. CO2 clearly explains past climate change as well as current warming. And the continuing trend in the rise in CO2 suggests that we are in for much more warming that could potentially cause a great deal of disruption. There is a well understood mechanism here with CO2. There is no viable alternative theory that explains what we currently see. Saying, "It's natural" does not explain anything. In fact, it is a casual abandonment of scientific explanation. John, if current warming is "natural" and not driven by man made CO2 it is incumbent upon you to explain the natural mechanism behind that warming. You need to show what it is, why it works, how it explains paleo record of climate, all at the same time as showing exactly why the basic physics of CO2 is so widely misunderstood. -
Phila at 03:25 AM on 18 November 2010Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
Poptech, I hate to break it to you, but caps and bolding do not make your failed "arguments" any more compelling. -
How significance tests are misused in climate science
Ned - I think you may be right! I must have mixed that story with the Diskworld series, where the disk rests on the back of four elephants (who themselves stand on a turtle). Sigh. I have to work on my metaphors a bit, obviously. One more note on induction - Our data (outside the most simplistic cases) is never perfect, there's always some noise in the measurements. Newtonian physics was fine until our measurements improved, whereupon we got Einstein. We take these inductively generated hypotheses, test them against the data (hopefully increasing the probability, the inductive likelyhood of being correct), and judge them against other hypotheses based on those inductive supports. After enough evidence accumulates, enough tests performed, we can accept these hypotheses as generally applicable. But - our knowledge is not perfect. Newtonian physics was thought to be a 'universal proposition'; turns out it's useful in many cases, but not correct. We have to keep in mind the separation between the world we live in [the baseline against which we work] and our theories of how it operates [which are our best evaluations, not crystalline truths]. -
Stephen Baines at 03:05 AM on 18 November 2010Climategate a year later
KL...In another thread, we get an unfounded claim that climate scientists don't know how to code and annotate code. Then when someone properly annotates code to clearly indicate what is going on to avoid later confusion, you pick it up out of context as evidence of malfeasance. This feels like another of the internally inconsistent set of arguments used to confuse, in your words, "the great unwashed" about the evidence for climate change. It also makes it impossible for climate scientists to do anything right -- a proper double bind. Very convenient (from a denialist perspective). -
Ned at 02:59 AM on 18 November 2010How significance tests are misused in climate science
KR, that reference seems a bit garbled. I've seen versions where it's elephants standing on the back of a turtle, and where it's turtles all the way down ... but is there really one where it's elephants all the way down? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down -
Karamanski at 02:55 AM on 18 November 2010It hasn't warmed since 1998
When ENSO-adjusted, why is 2006 the hottest year on record? But NASA GISS shows 2005 as the hottest year on record. Which year is the hottest 2005 or 2006? -
Stephen Baines at 02:45 AM on 18 November 2010Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
It is not in of itself evil to take money from tobacco companies, but that argument is obviously a red herring. Remember Poptech, the tobacco companies were succesfully prosecuted for exactly this distortion of research under US racketeering laws. Look at the executive summary published by the department of justice. A central tenet is the tobacco companies knew smoking caused cancer and was addictive, and then sponsored and disseminated false scientific research to make it appear otehrwise to the public and lawmakers to put off regulation. Seitz was intimately and knowingly (unless he is completely incompetent!) involved in that process. -
CBDunkerson at 02:43 AM on 18 November 2010Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
Poptech #79: "NO THEY HAVE NOT LINKED TO ANY SUCH THING!" Ah, so your position is pure denial. Got it. -
Philippe Chantreau at 02:40 AM on 18 November 2010Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
Poptech, I totally agree that "reports" from the Marshall Institute constitute by no means any kind of valid scientific information. -
How significance tests are misused in climate science
Berényi - "Induction is not a scientific method. It is an heuristic method (one of many) used to arrive at universal propositions of any kind, some being scientific among them. But what makes a universal proposition scientific is not the fact it is supported by data, but that it is not contradicted by any of them." I would have to disagree. Induction is not only a scientific method, it is the scientific method. Generalizing from observations and forming a 'universal' proposition is done via induction - deduction cannot teach you anything you don't already know. Testing inductive hypotheses for validity, yes, you've described that quite well. But the universal propositions you describe are generated by induction. In fact, even deductive logic is based on induction. Given deductive logic, you can derive interrelationships and implications, starting from your premises and reasoning through first and higher order logic. 1. All men are mortal 2. Socrates is a man 3. Therefore, Socrates is mortal But your premises - those are inductive. You believe them because you have observed them to be valid (all men are mortal), an inductive statement from experience. From a book I read recently - A: "The world is a disk, which sits on the backs of four giant elephants." B: "What's under the elephants?" A: "Oh, from there it's more elephants all the way down..." -
Philippe Chantreau at 02:34 AM on 18 November 2010Climategate a year later
Real Climate had a complete discussion of exactly what "hide the decline" was all about, and Ken missed it. Oh well. So-called skeptics have already "redefined" what peer-review is by including such sources as E&E, a publication that claims bias as its vocation: "platform for skeptic authors" were Sonja B.M. own words. The vast campaign of harassment organized by McIntyre by underhanded way of FOI requests is more of a scandal than all the non existing whatevergates balloons launched and deflated. -
michael sweet at 02:33 AM on 18 November 2010Climategate a year later
It is interesting that in a thread titled "Climategate a year later" Ken Lambert quotes Monbiot from a year ago. Soundoff then updates Monbots quote. Why can't the skeptics even keep up with what their own side says? The continual wack a mole gets tiring. -
Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
Poptech - also see the Rockefeller University bio of Frederick Seitz. Seitz was apparently responsible for the disbursement of $45M in R.J. Reynolds funds donated for research - and the documents revealed in the legal case against tobacco revealed that this was part of the strategy to "obfuscate the true health effects of smoking", simply a PR campaign. Did the research give the tobacco industry political cover? Seitz - “I’ll leave that to the philosophers and priests.” -
Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
Poptech - I would refer you to the Philip Morris Feb. 1994 Activity Report, paragraph 1, on strategies for dealing with second hand smoke (ETS). "Initiated a strategy to publicize and communicate the results of a Marshall Institute report that challenges the scientific basis of various environmental regulations . The report was written by Dr . Frederick Seitz who is a world renowned scientist. Dr . Seitz is President Emeritus of Rockerfeller University and past President of the National Academy of Sciences . In addition to his criticisms of the global warming and ozone depletion issues, Dr . Seitz also addressed the ETS issue. With respect to ETS, Dr . Seitz concluded that ". . .there is no good scientific evidence that moderate passive inhalation of tobacco smoke is truly dangerous under normal circumstances" . The report will be used to challenge the EPA's report on ETS in domestic and nternational markets." - emphasis added. Dr. Seitz received approximately $585,000 over his contracts with RJR (see We should like to renew the letter agreement dated July 12, 1978 between you and RJR Nabisco, Inc., and also While Washington Slept), although he denied this in several interviews. This was a "report", not peer-reviewed. However, RJR, Philip Morris, and the other companies represented it as such, and as evidence that the science behind the tobacco/cancer link was false. That's bad science, known to be false by the tobacco companies (as per documents on record), and far outside Seitz's area of expertise; he completely compromised his integrity by doing so. For you to defend him does not do your credibility any favors. -
SoundOff at 02:01 AM on 18 November 2010Climategate a year later
Re: Ken's Monbiot from NOV30 - He has somewhat backed away from he said in the heat of the moment about Dr. Phil Jones, as shown in the following: George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 8th July 2010 So was I wrong to have called, soon after this story broke, for Jones’s resignation? I think, on balance, that I was. He said some very stupid things. At times he squelched the scientific principles of transparency and openness. He might have broken the law. But he was also provoked beyond endurance. I think, in the light of everything I’ve now seen and read, that if I were to write that article again I would conclude that Phil Jones should hang on - but only just. I hope the last review gives him some peace. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/07/07/filth-and-fury/ -
MarkR at 01:43 AM on 18 November 2010Climategate a year later
Calling the Himalaya mistake a 'typo' is wrong IMO. It was a mistake from a failure in the reference reviewing process... Ken: the "nature trick" is well explained, see Briffa's 2000 paper in Quart. Sci. Rev. for an introduction to the divergence problem and elsewhere for further explanation (e.g. the caption of the WMO graph that the furore is about) The last one is from a small program of which there is no evidence it was ever used in a paper or for published data. Such programs to test stuff during research are very common. I must have dozens of them on my computer, for example, because I've recently been looking at the sensitivity of the model. -
Stephen Baines at 01:16 AM on 18 November 2010Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy
Karamanski #24 The argument that climate scientists exagerrate the role of climate change to get more research dollars has never made any sense to me whatsoever. If you want money for research, you don't go around saying that the problem is essentially solved. You argue that there is an interesting/important problem that needs solving (e.g. cancer). Think about this analogy...my car has been acting funny so I go to a car mechanic. He explains that he knows what's wrong with my car, in fact he's been predicting for years that something will happen because of how I drive it. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the tools to fix it. He then asks me to bring the car back next week so he can diagnose it again, without fixing it. Am I going to give him the money to do so? Not if I'm sensible. The irony is that only a "skeptic" (of the current climate sort) would make the mistake of doing so. (And maybe that's why they find the argument so compelling!). After talking to some crazy uncle (who has a grudge against the car mechanic) he goes back to the mechanic thinking he may be wrong, and pays him again to diagnose the car using more elaborate machinery. He then gets angry when he gets the same answer yet again. Repeat a thousand times... Now the focus on climate science has improved modeling capacity dramatically and resulted in work on a lot of processes that weren't that well understood, and that is a good thing. We would have benefitted from a better understanding of climate even in the absence of AGW. Climate relates to human health, economics, agriculture, infrastructure planning... you name it. We know it changes for a range of reasons so understanding that is important. So even if there has been an increase in funding for climate science resulting from the doubt about AGW, it has large societal benefits in the long run. Other branches of earth and environmental science (including mine) are doing a lot of work trying to suss out the less obvious implications of climate change, so you could argue that those areas could profit from an argument for AGW. But those areas are not funded via the same channels as climate scientists that argue for AGW(at least in the US), a point which climate skeptics seem to miss entirely in their case for a self-interested rational for supoprting AGW. Also I can tell you from bitter experience that those areas have been been rather flat funded over the last decade, so what has really happened is a shifting of priorities forced by the shadow of an impending disaster, not an increase in funding. It's a shift that many are not happy about, but it is unavoidable. As I tell my students, we now talk a lot about climate change in our core courses simply because it will be the main thing they will be asked to address as professionals in the future. That's not a strategy, it's just a reality. -
Eric (skeptic) at 01:12 AM on 18 November 2010How significance tests are misused in climate science
KR (#51), thank you for pointing to your reply here. My disagreement with Tom on the other thread was almost purely philosophical akin to arguing religion or politics and should be ended as irresolvable (my friends always say "just shut up"). Therefore I appreciate your (and BP's) efforts in this thread to keep the focus on climate science or at least empirically based science. I do not believe a hypothesis in climate or any other science can be solely conditioned on statistical measurements. If we did that, we could say (a la Nixon): "We are all Bayesians now". But in reality there are physical connections (which could be chained) and statistical measurements are merely a result of the physical connections (chained or not). We can start with the handy fact that everything in the universe is physically connected albeit in some cases extremely weakly and chained in other cases. For example, the fact that we can detect a distant quasar means its fields impact the earth in some way (thankfully not enough to complicate weather or climate predictions). I could hypothesize that having more clouds in Norway causes my garden in Virginia to be warmer. There may be some extremely small direct connection (e.g. via gravity) which I would ignore. I can make measurements and find some correlation. But I know from well supported theories of weather and geographic limits of weather systems that there is no direct physical connection. The existing theories point to many possible confounding (and causal) factors with supporting evidence including statistical measurements and direct physical connections. Based on these relationships we end up building a model which is (AFAIK) always an oversimplification. There is then a strong argument for the applicability of statistical measurements to support the oversimplified model. Assuming that there are alternative oversimplified models to choose from, do we "rank order" them based on the data as KR says? I suggest we do not. What appears to be imprecision in the data is actually inapplicability to the modeled relationship. The essential difference between the applicability of a measurement (the hypothesized causality in a theoretical model) and a conditional probability as defined by Dr Ambaum is that the former is either true or not true and the latter is a measurement. This difference may appear obvious and superficial for most directly connected phenomena, but it is easily confused in a complex model. This is because the imprecision of the measurements gets conflated with the weakness of the causality. -
Berényi Péter at 01:11 AM on 18 November 2010How significance tests are misused in climate science
#51 KR at 05:17 AM on 17 November, 2010 We can only state that a particular hypothesis is more probable than others given the evidence, the statistics of our data. And whether using Bayesian or frequentist methods, we can estimate from the statistics the probability (second definition) that our hypotheis is supported by that data. That's how induction works, and how we can learn something new. Induction is not a scientific method. It is an heuristic method (one of many) used to arrive at universal propositions of any kind, some being scientific among them. But what makes a universal proposition scientific is not the fact it is supported by data, but that it is not contradicted by any of them. In Galileo's time according to the prevailing theory of heavenly bodies they were supposed to be perfect spheres. Up to the moment Galileo have constructed his first (improved) telescope in late 1609 and started to study the skies with it in November, this theory was consistent with observations. However, it was not based on induction in any sense, that is, it was not the case many heavenly bodies having thoroughly been observed and all of them found to be perfectly round with a smooth surface, a universal law of their shape was arrived at. In fact only angular extents of the Sun and the Moon are large enough to be seen as other than point sources with a naked eye. So, quite the contrary, there was a general principle stating the Heavens were eternal and perfect, while the Earth was home to transient and imperfect phenomena (supported by the cosmological role of each, well known to anyone familiar with Scriptures). From this distinction the Theory of Roundness follows easily. What is more, it is also consistent with Occam's Razor. Why should, after all, Heavenly Bodies assume any shape other than the most perfect one, the sphere? A single lunar observation of Galileo was enough to falsify this theory and replace it with another one, stating all the Heavenly Bodies are like Earth, at least in principle. Not an inductive step either. (He saw bright spots on the dark side of the Moon, more than 1/20 lunar diameter away from the terminator, concluded correctly, using simple geometry, those are peaks of mountains more than 4 Italian mile - 7320 m - high, illuminated by the rising sun at the first streak of lunar dawn). In fact the motivation behind new revelations are seldom true induction. They're more often than not based on novel application of general principles coupled to a few select facts, like Einstein's Geometrodynamics, based entirely on symmetry principles with a healthy addition of fact in the form of the Weak Equivalence Principle verified by Baron Roland von Eötvös and his team with a 10-8 precision for a few samples, as reported in 1909 at the 16th International Geodesic Conference in London. Mathematics, as the language of Natural Philosophy plays a very special role in this process. Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics Volume 13, Issue 1, pages 1–14, February 1960 DOI: 10.1002/cpa.3160130102 (article first published online: 12 OCT 2006) The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences Richard Courant lecture in mathematical sciences delivered at New York University, May 11, 1959 by Eugene P. Wigner "The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve." -
Ken Lambert at 00:56 AM on 18 November 2010Climategate a year later
Anyone care to 'reinterpret' these quotes, one year on? Just a little massaging of the story in order to avoid misleading the great unwashed or perhaps a small snapshot of the way science is done these days: Quote: Phil Jones, head of the CRU, in 1999: “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” Phil Jones in 2004: “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report,” “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” Jones in 2005 after a request for data: “I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.” Notes in the Harry_read_me computer file for CRU data: “These will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures.” “Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!” Endquote
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