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Ari Jokimäki at 17:31 PM on 25 July 2010Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line
RSVP, #75: The introduction text to my paperlist you quoted is outdated, as several of the papers now have full text available. Also, it is always possible for interested person to purchase the full texts of the papers. I have updated the introduction paragraph to reflect these things. In my experience, most of the "AGW counter arguments" are not even accompanied by abstracts on any peer-reviewed papers. Browsing your comments in this thread for example shows that you have made several claims and arguments but you haven't offered any references to peer-reviewed science. -
adelady at 17:17 PM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
At least Ken had the decency to put the word 'leakers' in quotes. I'm not much fussed whether it was an inside job or not. Theft is theft, illegal is illegal. I tend to use the prism of theft v. leak to make an initial assessment. If someone uses the word 'leak' rather than theft, I'm unsurprised to find that the following text contains a fair amount of silliness. -
Doug Bostrom at 15:51 PM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
By the way, Ken, every time a "skeptic" brings up the ancient, dusty emails it's essentially an admission that such a "skeptic" does not have anything useful to say about the actual science under discussion. Gossip is not science. -
Doug Bostrom at 15:41 PM on 25 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
GC, you don't appear to even be aware of what was being decided in the court case you yourself brought up. You've not even yet acknowledged that your original assertion that the judge found "dishonesty" on Al Gore's part was completely unfounded. Why on earth would anybody then take your advice to fill their heads with Monckton's silly twaddle? -
gallopingcamel at 15:36 PM on 25 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
JMurphy (#123), Al Gore was shown to be "in error" by a British high court on 11 issues mentioned in his book. My personal favourite stems from Al's claim that Ice Age temperature cycles were driven by CO2 when the data shows the exact opposite. In your post (#121) you mentioned Monckton. My first impression of the viscount was "another upper class British nincompoop with a plum in his mouth" but even so, he makes more sense than Al Gore does. While I doubt that you will take the time to read the link below, I am hoping that others will: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html -
Doug Bostrom at 15:36 PM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
Bottom line, Ken: Whatever person or group appropriated and published the emails thought it best we not see all of them. It's a familiar odor, no more honest than attempting to break into RealClimate's server to exploit it as a publication site, the perpetrator's first choice for dissemination. All the hallmarks of a juvenile political stunt, but unfortunately slipping into the minds of a receptive and credulous audience not known for critical thinking skills, hence the gullible acceptance of a careful set of selected quotes as a "coherent narrative." Your assertion that the victims of the perpetrators should defend themselves by publishing the material redacted by the perpetrators is frankly bizarre. -
Ken Lambert at 15:12 PM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
DougB #91 I agree that the 'leakers' of the Climategate emails had an agenda - either a closet skeptic(s) or a disgruntled insider assembled the files of emails. Corcoran says he read all the first 5 years and they form a coherent narrative. He says the more recent emails are obviously hurriedly assembled and difficult to follow. Corcoran acknowledges that they were deliberately released prior to Copenhagen for maximum effect. The critical issue is their authenticity - and that has not been challenged by the scientists involved. The emails revealed however that certain scientists were themselves planning a blitz: quote: "The last emails were sent between Nov. 10 and 12 this year (2009), five days before the whole cache was stolen. One of those last emails outlines an attempt to orchestrate a media blitz by scientists at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting. The strategy was aimed at shaping public opinion going into the Copenhagen talks that ended yesterday." endquote Maybe they were simply 'outblitzed'. Doug your argument tries hard to dismiss the emails as a 'selective dataset'. This is a strawman. They never constituted a 'dataset'. They are a valuable record of the behind the scenes discussion and modus operandi of key players in the AGW story. You also have to consider the difficulty of the leakers slanting the narrative by selectively quoting emails and leaving out others. The narrative for the first 5 years according to Corcoran is coherent - so leaving out vital 'AGW friendly' emails would tend to destroy the narrative, which those involved agree, are the scientists own words. If there are emails missing which would significantly change the story - the scientists involved should have released them in their own defence. If they have - point me to them. I think the shock to everybody with an interest in climate science, was the attempt to present to the world a front of robust high quality research; when in fact there was significant internal dissent, unprofessional personality clashes and far greater uncertainty hidden in the private communications. -
shawnhet at 14:51 PM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
johnd:"shawnhet at 04:31 AM, it applies as the overall NETT effect over longer time frames. As skywatcher makes mention of, depending on the seasons, types of clouds and regional conditions, the shorter term effects are much more complex and variable with the opposite occurring. It is the balancing out of all these factors that determines to NETT effect which is what is relevant in climate time frames." At the risk of repeating myself here, *if* higher temps lead to more WV in the air which in turn leads to more cloudiness and a reduction in temps, then there are only two ways I can think of for the observed inverse relationship btw cloudiness and temps to hold. Either this relationship is masked by some sort of natural variation OR the temperature feedback from increased cloudiness is so strong as to completely cancel out the original temperature rise. Personally, I don't think the latter possibility is at all likely. Perhaps an example will suffice help here: Imagine a world with no natural cloud variation, such that a 1C initial warming causes an increase in cloudiness of x% which reduces the temps by 0.5C in that circumstance, the relationship btw cloudiness and temps will be direct, right? Now assume that over top of that we add a natural decrease in cloudiness of -2x%, the temps will increase and the cloudiness will decrease, but they will not decrease *because* of the temp increase, but rather in spite of it. I don't disagree that seasons can make things more complicated. KR, I don't disagree that the observed relationship btw cloudiness and temps over recent history appears to be inverse. My point is whether this relationship should necessarily be consistent. chris:"”Thus it is reasonable to expect that as atmospheric water vapour content varies, so too would that of clouds.” No that’s not a “reasonable” expectation. The fact that a warming atmosphere (so far) tends to maintain a near constant relative humidity means that cloud cover doesn’t necessarily vary with water vapour content. A warmer atmosphere maintains a higher water vapour content than a cooler one, and there is no reason to expect the extent of cloud cover to vary with temperature." Well, I suppose it depends on your definition of reasonable here ;), but clearly temperatures a couple of kilometers above the Earth's surface aren't "maintained" - rather they are always heating or cooling. Assuming constant RH, cooling of 1C will condense more water from warmer air than cooler air. Since condensing vapor is one of the chief components of cloudiness, I agree with the idea that *everything else being equal* increased temps should increase cloudiness. Cheer, :) -
ScaredAmoeba at 14:31 PM on 25 July 2010Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single tweet
John, as ProfMandia said. Plus a big thank-you to Kieren Diment. -
chris1204 at 11:09 AM on 25 July 2010Assessing global surface temperature reconstructions
PS: Thanks Ned for the G&T :-) -
chris1204 at 11:09 AM on 25 July 2010Assessing global surface temperature reconstructions
dolormin @ 29: Actually, the Mosher reconstruction originally appeared on WUWT where he makes a review similar to Ned's of other data sets. He concludes: 'As noted above there are many questions about the calculation of a global temperature index. However, some of those questions can be fairly answered and have been fairly answered by a variety of experienced citizen researchers from all sides of the debate. The approaches used by GISS and CRU and NCDC do not bias the result in any way that would erase the warming we have seen since 1880. To be sure there are minor differences that depend upon the exact choices one makes, choices of ocean data sets, land data sets, rules for including stations, rules for gridding, area weighting approaches, but all of these differences are minor when compared to the warming we see. That suggests a turn in the discussion to the matters which have not been as thoroughly investigated by independent citizen researchers on all sides: A turn to the question of data adjustments and a turn to the question of metadata accuracy and finally a turn to the question about UHI. Now, however, the community on all sides of the debate has a set of tools to address these questions.' I guess it illustrates the reality that reasonable stuff does appear sometimes on WUWT. dhogaza @ 28: I haven't had a chance to check out WUWT on his CHC/halogenated compound gaffe. Although I happen to remember enough chemistry to know that CFCs are precisely that (at least when you say it explicitly), I probably wouldn't have remembered the Montreal Protocol. It's the sort of mistake I could easily have made. There's a saying which I'm sure has been called somebody or other's law: Before conspiracy, suspect stuff up. It's really a variant of Occam's razor (not an infallible instrument but often useful). At any rate, what is very interesting is the movement towards the middle ground on the part of a number of 'sceptical' players. -
ProfMandia at 09:59 AM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
Graham, This is an excellent piece. I will be forwarding to many. -
EOttawa at 09:55 AM on 25 July 2010Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single tweet
So is the penguin going to get a cape? :) -
ProfMandia at 09:49 AM on 25 July 2010Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single tweet
John, You continue to be cutting edge with regard to communicating the science. You are a hero to many of us. Thank you. -
chris at 09:32 AM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
johnd at 08:55 AM on 25 July, 2010 "If CO2 levels remained apparently constant from the ice age until the industrial revolution, how could the inter-glacial warming occur if CO2 works the way it is postulated?" It's not obvious what you mean by that johnd. Can you expand on your point or reframe it? After all CO2 levels clearly didn't remain "apparently constant from the ice age until the industrial revolution". The pre-Holocene "ice age" [CO2] was around 180 ppm, and the pre-industrial [CO2] was around 270 ppm. Did you mean something else?? -
mothincarnate at 09:21 AM on 25 July 2010Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single tweet
Awesome John. We need more short punchy replies to denial (I do bits and pieces, but obviously not to the same quality). We waste a lot of energy have circular debate with those who reject the science when we should be able to deflect this kind of thing to standard places and begin the more interesting discussions of what to do from here! :) -
chris at 09:17 AM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
johnd at 04:21 AM on 24 July, 2010 ”…clouds have been determined as having an overall nett cooling effect…” One needs to be careful. As Palle et al (2006) have described an albedo change due to secular cloud variation doesn't necessarily imply a surface temperature response since clouds have warming ("heat trapping") as well as cooling (albedo) effects. Palle have more recently (Palle et al., 2009) described the total albedo variation (expected to be mostly cloud-related) and found that this has been pretty trendless during the last 10 years. E. Pallé et al (2006) Can Earth's Albedo and Surface Temperatures Increase Together? Eos Trans. AGU, 87(4), doi:10.1029/2006EO040002 link to paper Palle et al. (2009) Inter-annual variations in Earth's reflectance, 1999-2007 J. Geophys. Res. 114, D00D03 link to abstract ”But there is still that indecision as to whether temperature is a function of clouds or clouds a function of temperature. We may find that there is rather little relationship between Earth temperature and cloud cover, largely due to the fact that a warmer atmosphere maintains a higher concentration of water vapour ( KR has described this), and so cloud cover has no necessary systematic relationship with temperature. After all the Earth has warmed by an amount (0.8-0.9 oC) since the middle of the 19th century, that supports the conclusion that the climate sensitivity cannot really be below 2.0 oC (i.e. the temperature rise is that expected even without factoring in the slow response times of the climate system and the cooling effects of atmospheric aerosols, although one should consider non-CO2 contributions like nitrous oxides, methane and black carbon). So there pretty much has to be a positive feedback from water vapour as predicted by our knowledge of the greenhouse effect. Otherwise one might ask: “where is this supposed cooling effect of clouds”?! So far (as far as I’m aware) there is only one direct analysis of the cloud response to warming surface temperatures. This study (Clement et al., 2009) tends to support the conclusion that the cloud feedback is a positive one (i.e. a warmer equatorial sea surface results in a reduced cloud cover). However more data is needed on this. A. C. Clement et al. (2009) Observational and Model Evidence for Positive Low-Level Cloud Feedback Science 325, 460 – 464 link to abstract Likewise many of the determinations of climate sensitivity (Earth equilibrium surface temperature response to increased greenhouse gas concentrations) are phenomenological, in that they assess the relationship between CO2 and surface temperature during ice age transitions or during the deep past. In these analyses all of the feedbacks (whether positive or negative) are “lumped in”. Since these analyses pretty uniformly find a climate sensitivity near 3 oC, it’s difficult to support a significant negative cloud feedback (unless there is a positive feedback we’ve not yet discovered). R. Knutti and G. C. Hegerl (2008) The equilibrium sensitivity of the Earth's temperature to radiation changes Nature Geoscience 1, 735-743 link to paper johnd at 09:26 AM on 24 July, 2010 ”Thus it is reasonable to expect that as atmospheric water vapour content varies, so too would that of clouds.” No that’s not a “reasonable” expectation. The fact that a warming atmosphere (so far) tends to maintain a near constant relative humidity means that cloud cover doesn’t necessarily vary with water vapour content. A warmer atmosphere maintains a higher water vapour content than a cooler one, and there is no reason to expect the extent of cloud cover to vary with temperature. That’s not to say that there may not be more rainfall in a warming world (Allen et al. 2008). But remember that rain clouds are just a proportion of total clouds. We expect in a warming world that rainfall will decrease in the equatorial regions of the Earth (consistent with Clement et al’s observation of reduced cloud cover above warming sea surface) and we will have increased rainfall at higher latitudes. That’s pretty much what is observed (Zhang et al, 2007). Thus during the 20th century, the latitude band from around the equator to around 30 oN has become drier (reduced rainfall; enhanced drought) as the Earth has warmed during the 20th century, much as predicted. This latitudinal band of reduced precipitation will widen as the Earth continues to warm (and so, for example, Amazonia is expected to dry progressively towards the South as the Earth continues to warm). The higher latitudes (especially above 50o N and below 10 o) have seen enhanced precipitation. Global warming and shifts in precipitation regimes is expected (and already observed) to lead to amplification of extreme precipitation events (e.g. Allen et al. 2008). X. Zhang et al. (2007) Detection of human influence on twentieth-century precipitation trends Nature 448, 461-465 link to abstract RP Allen et al. (2008) Atmospheric warming and the amplification of precipitation extremes Science 321, 1481-1484 link to abstract -
Doug Bostrom at 09:13 AM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
JohnD regarding the paltry record for longitudinal cloud data there may be some hope for improvement at seeing into the past. Though they're presently focused on sea ice there's a group working on reprocessing Nimbus satellite data providing nearly continuous twice-daily coverage capable of reasonable cloud imagery from approximately 1964 to 1972 See this site. Also with regard to the behaviors and role of clouds I still encourage taking a look at the leads to a Science paper I mentioned upthread looking at their non-obvious properties. -
johnd at 08:55 AM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
scaddenp at 06:42 AM , I think generally data is collected first and published papers come somewhat afterwards. It must be appreciated that the ISCCP research is very much a work in progress, and that our understanding of how the climate works will advance beyond whatever the latest IPCC report contains. The whole subject of clouds is acknowledged as being the least understood of all the factors driving climate by scientists on both sides of the debate, and it would be a brave person who claims that they know better than that. Thus the door has been left open to the possibility that advances may place a different perspective on current understanding, and that is what I find interesting and worthy of discussion. I really don't subscribe to the notion that all that there is to know is already known, in any field, or that we should reinforce that notion by endlessly patting ourselves and each other on the back, and rejecting anything that might challenge such a comfortable enjoyable existence. The correlating of clouds and global temperatures is only one, perhaps small part. The most important part, at least I think so, is getting a fuller understanding of all the factors that are involved in the formation of clouds. The difficulty for understanding clouds is that there is very limited amount of what could be described as high quality data, and that available is only for a very limited time span, a couple of decades. It also appears impossible to reconstruct proxy historical data. It therefore puzzles me how clouds have been adequately accommodated in climate models as the assumptions cannot be validated by back-casting, given that they are a significant factor in determining the energy balance. With regards to the ice age question, firstly it needs to be appreciated that even during the ice ages, the planet was not one solid block of ice. It still had the tropical regions with the accompanying temperature differentials, resulting wind circulations and varying ocean currents, and clouds I presume. The types of clouds present would have to be considered, but it still comes down to knowing what are all the factors involved in the formation of clouds. An equivalent question could be asked about CO2. If CO2 levels remained apparently constant from the ice age until the industrial revolution, how could the inter-glacial warming occur if CO2 works the way it is postulated? -
Doug Bostrom at 08:36 AM on 25 July 2010Part One: How do ice sheets lose ice?
"Agwscam" what we know is that regardless of what else may be happening with the climate the modifications we're making to the atmosphere will impose their own warming, added to whatever else is going on. It's worth noting also that so far there's no known natural variability in play just now to explain the long term trend in climate we're seeing while on the other hand the changes are a reasonable fit to predictions arising from our understanding of physics and how the climate functions. Think of it this way: starting with a balance of $0 you deposit $10 in your bank account and when you check your balance you see $15 available. Your $10 is there and some unknown (rich uncle? bank error?) has gifted you with $5. The $10 you expected to find is present, leaving a separate puzzle to be solved. By the way, did you know your chosen handle here violates the comments policy and thus technically speaking all of your remarks should be deleted? Give a thought to changing it or resign yourself to possible frustration with having your comments reliably appear in public on this site. -
dhogaza at 07:37 AM on 25 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
To answer your question, agwscam, we'd have to know what an "organization with a pro-AGW theory position" is. Can you give some examples?
It's a slur ... the write is George Monbiot. In our modern up-is-down world, if you accept the conclusions of science, you are a "moonbat", unless you're "fat" (that's for gallopingcamel, I don't understand why he hasn't brought up the most important fact that proves climate science wrong). -
KR at 07:17 AM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
shawnhet - the long term inverse relationship of global cloud cover to temperature is something shown by johnd's 1983-2008 data here as compared to the temperature data over that period. Some additional information comes from the Warren paper I referred to earlier, showing no trend in coverage from 1952-1981, when the temperature wasn't showing much of a trend either. This doesn't prove the relationship, but does demonstrate that over that 29yr period global cloud coverage didn't appear to change independently of global temperature. Looks like a clear inverse relationship - I will freely admit to not having any solid theories why. I could always make some wild guesses, though... :) -
ptbrown31 at 07:14 AM on 25 July 2010It's Pacific Decadal Oscillation
Tom Dayton - Here is the WHOLE actual definition: "Updated standardized values for the PDO index, derived as the leading PC of monthly SST anomalies in the North Pacific Ocean, poleward of 20N. The monthly mean global average SST anomalies are removed to separate this pattern of variability from any 'global warming' signal that may be present in the data." If the "global warming" signal wasn't subtracted out of the index there would be an upward trend. -
scaddenp at 06:42 AM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
johnd - I struggled to find adequate metadata or published papers that illuminate your ISCCP data set. I asked at realclimate and got this response from Gavin Schmidt. "First impressions are that this has a number of artifacts in it likely due to inhomogeneities in the satellites (varying levels of spatial coverage through time as satellites drop in or out). The definitive precipitable water vapour analyses are discussed in Chapter 3 of AR4, and I'd start with those publications and authors to see what the differences are with the ISCCP product". And indeed a very different picture is shown there. There is a danger here again of amateur analysis drawing a long bow from data that is improperly understood and not fit for purpose. Before you get carried on cloud reducing sensitivity, please consider how the ice-age cycle could happen if clouds worked the way you postulate. -
AWoL at 06:34 AM on 25 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
I keep on hearing an AGW proponent referred to as "George Moonbat". Can anyone confirm that such a person exists? I must say it is an unusual name, and I wonder if it is a nickname rather than a real name. Thanks in advance. -
johnd at 06:33 AM on 25 July 2010Models are unreliable
JMurphy at 02:56 AM , I think it is quite clear that I was referring to "long term weather forecasting capabilities". It is not so much about insufficient localised information, but about forecasts that are so vague that they are meaningless (a 50% chance of above average rains and a 50% chance of below average rains is a common forecast) and despite the vagueness they still have a poor strike rate. In contrast, private forecasters are able to demonstrate an overall much higher degree of accuracy plus provide detailed local information to satisfy their customers requirements. In the meantime as long as the government injects sufficient funds to upgrade to super computers, we still have to wait perhaps 3 to 7 years before we get forecasts that are "good enough to be useful". -
agwscam at 06:19 AM on 25 July 2010Part One: How do ice sheets lose ice?
Even if one were to concede your theory it brings to mind two questions; How do you KNOW that this isn't all a perfectly normal progression of a natural gradual warming climate cycle when you have no satellite data to compare it to because all of this satellite data is brand new (this information would be impossible to reconstruct)? Even if you were somehow able to prove the point above, how do you KNOW that you can definitively exclude other causes and that anthropogenic CO2/GHG is to blame? -
Mal Adapted at 06:18 AM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
Pete Ridley:Reliable analysis and prediction of global climates is impossible due to the significant scientific uncertainties.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." --Charles Darwin -
johnd at 06:11 AM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
shawnhet at 04:31 AM, it applies as the overall NETT effect over longer time frames. As skywatcher makes mention of, depending on the seasons, types of clouds and regional conditions, the shorter term effects are much more complex and variable with the opposite occurring. It is the balancing out of all these factors that determines to NETT effect which is what is relevant in climate time frames. -
skywatcher at 05:51 AM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
On cloudiness, something else to bear in mind is the season or the climate in which the clouds appear. In summer/warm climate, increased cloudiness leads to lower temperatures by reducing incoming radiation. In winter/cold climate, it can lead to higher temperatures due to inhibition of outgoing radiation. Not an issue if you're considering a long-term global dataset, but it is an issue if your dataset is either spatially or temporally partial. It's a complex problem, not easily open to simplistic solutions! From what I've read, it looks like the effect is somewhere between no impact and a slight positive feedback, but uncertainties are understandably larger than other feedbacks. -
JMurphy at 05:05 AM on 25 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
gallopingcamel, to show that you have actually read the judgement, please state what you mean by "Stewart Dimmock (the truck driver) won his case challenging Al Gore's book". And what was the "correct conclusion" drawn by the UK judge - as you see it in the written judgement ? -
gallopingcamel at 04:55 AM on 25 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
JMurphy (#121), Your suggesting that Stewart Dimmock (the truck driver) won his case challenging Al Gore's book because he was well funded makes no sense. The book sales alone were reported as $23 million; if British justice could be bought, Al would surely have prevailed! The real problem with Al Gore's book is its unrelenting alarmism that is not justified by the evidence. The UK judge did not have to be an expert in climate science to weigh the conflicting evidence and draw the correct conclusion. -
shawnhet at 04:31 AM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
johnd, I agree with your post #87, however, I don't agree with the contention that the relationship btw cloudiness and temps will always be inverse. Assuming arguendo that the proximate effect of a temp increase is an increase in cloudiness, under what circumstances will the observed relationship btw cloudiness and temps *appear* to be inverse? I can only think of one consistent way for this to be the case and that is where the cloud feedback signal is masked by a natural variation of some sort. Cheers, :) -
dorlomin at 04:24 AM on 25 July 2010Assessing global surface temperature reconstructions
It was posted about here. http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/new-work-on-temperature-reconstructions/ -
chris at 04:21 AM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
HumanityRules at 12:25 PM on 23 July, 2010 I don't object to the "formal aademic process" I was just trying to ask what is an expert? You fetishise the publication process too much. It is a very important if not dominant means of disseminating scienctific ideas but it is not the only one. I'm pretty sure McIntyre et al do not prioritize publication. Saying their ideas aren't published so aren't valid is just a way of avoiding those ideas. Many strains of science do not develop ideas primarily through peer-review, pharmaceuticals for example. fetishise very funny! ”McIntyre et al do not prioritize publication” McIntyre/McItrick (not sure who else your “et al.” refers to) have had a go at publication but they’re not very good at it. Their critique of Mann et al was found to be incorrect and of little merit in a very detailed published scientific analysis. McItrick had a go at publishing some work on the contribution of the UHI to temperature variation but got it hopelessly wrong by mistaking degrees for radians.... In any case you are talking about “disseminating scientific ideas” and “McIntyre et al” don’t do that, do they HR? They’re "auditors"; after all that's what they call themselves. The only other of your possible “et al”s that I can think of is Craig Loehle (another “auditor”), and he doesn’t “disseminate scientific ideas” either I think we’d agree, although he did in the past when he was a scientist. ”pharmaceuticals” Not a good example I think, ‘though without specific examples it’s difficult to know exactly what you mean. I would say the vast majority of “dissemination of scientific ideas” that underlie development of pharmaceuticals is done through the scientific literature. I’ll give an example of why I think this is the case. Perhaps you can give an example of your idea of pharmaceuticals as “a strain of science [that] do[es] not develop ideas primarily through peer-review”. Anti-HIV pharmaceuticals. There are many of these based around inhibitors of HIV-protease, reverse transcriptase inhibitors, inhibitors of virus-cell fusion. One can trace the development of ideas for these treatments through the scientific literature. The fundamental “scientific ideas” that lead to HIV protease inhibitors, for example, was (i) the identification of HIV as a retrovirus and its isolation (largely from publically funded science in France and the NIH in the US, and published in numerous scientific papers as the discoveries and ideas emerged); (ii) the sequencing of the HIV genome (published in the scientific literature by scientists (largely) at the NIH); the realization that the HIV protease was an aspartic protease through identification of sequence homologies with earlier discovered proteases from different organisms (all of which as disseminated via the scientific literature)… …and the key “scientific idea”, which was the observation that the unique structure of HIV protease gave the possibility of designing specific inhibitors (aka “drugs”) by modelling into the now-known structure of the active site of the enzyme (this work done variously by scientists at the NIH, London University, Case Western University, Pfizer and (the then) Merck, Sharp and Dohme was all published in the scientific literature – e.g. the X-ray structure of cloned and synthetic HIV-protease in several papers in 1989. Of course the pharmaceutical industry then took over to do what they do best: they screened their massive compound databases for possible HIV-proteases inhibitors and their chemists set about making compounds that might “dock” into the HIV-protease structure. Now pretty much all major pharma companies market HIV-protease inhibitors that compete in the marketplace based on the scientific ideas” that were developed and published in the scientific literature. One can follow a similar development of other anti-retrovirals (e.g. reverse transcriptase inhibitors ; cellular fusion inhibitors etc.) through similar trains of “scientific ideas” published in the scientific literature. I would say that's pretty standard fo develpment of new pharmaceuticals. Much of the work that develops the "scientific ideas" that underpin the development of pharmaceuticals is published in the broad (and vast) biomedical scientific literature, and pharmaceutical science specifically has a large number of journals in which research is described and scientific ideas are disseminated. -
dhogaza at 04:12 AM on 25 July 2010Assessing global surface temperature reconstructions
"The bad faith mentioned by David above is also patent, I have seen it on a number of occurences, in which Watts trumpeted papers that did not support a "skeptic" position at all as if they actually did" I don't know such cases demonstrate bad faith on Watts part, rather than simple ignorance. A year or so ago he was touting a paper which discussed the role of halogenated compounds in ozone depletion as "proving science wrong about CFCs causing ozone depletion". He was simply unaware that CFCs banned by the Montreal Protocol are, in fact, halogenated compounds! -
RSVP at 03:49 AM on 25 July 2010Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line
Ned Following your link brings me to these words... "In the context of these paperlists this is a difficult subject because none of the papers seems to be freely available online, so we have to settle on abstracts only. However, I don’t think that matters that much because the main point of this list really is to show that the basic research on the subject exists. " Just imagine if AGW counter arguments tried this. -
Ned at 03:44 AM on 25 July 2010Assessing global surface temperature reconstructions
apeescape: Thanks! I hadn't seen that before. It doesn't seem to be on the English version of their pages. chriscanaris: G&T is Gerlich & Tscheuschner. dorlomin: Do you have a link for Steve Mosher's temperature reconstruction? Does it differ much from the others, either conceptually or in the appearance of the results? -
apeescape at 03:21 AM on 25 July 2010Assessing global surface temperature reconstructions
Ned, the Japanese version of their website seem to have monthly and yearly (World, Northern, Southern hemisphere) datasets in an HTML table. -
JMurphy at 02:56 AM on 25 July 2010Models are unreliable
johnd, I believe you are mixing up your climate forecast models and your weather forecast models. SAFF weren't impressed with the seasonal forecasts they are given, especially as they are not yet detailed enough to give localised information. Weather, not climate. -
JMurphy at 02:41 AM on 25 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
gallopingcamel, it is obvious that you still haven't read the original transcript of the judgement and still prefer to rely on the version you have read that has been filtered by a secondary website. Why ? Anyway, to anyone else who may be interested, if you DO read the judgement, you will find that there are no mention of 'whoppers', because there were none; the 'plaintiff's case was not proven, because the film is still shown in schools and he only received about two thirds of his costs back; there were 9 minor 'errors' pointed out (written as 'errors', not errors, by the judge, for obvious reasons, i.e. they weren't errors as such but claims that couldn't be determined to the fullest degree, etc.), so no-one should be confused as to whether there were 9 or 11; Al Gore wasn't 'proven wrong in court' about his film, because it is still being shown, albeit with some guidelines attached, albeit those guidelines were already produced as part of the whole process of showing the film in schools; there was no 'irrefutable evidence' against Al Gore, whatever evidence that is supposed to be about; and the 'truck driver' was also a local election candidate for the right-wing New Party, whose manifesto was written by our favourite peer Monckton, who also persuaded a rich friend of his to put the money up for the court case. Some 'mere truck driver', eh ? Now, before you go any further gallopingcamel, please read the original transcript of the judgement. -
Peter Hogarth at 01:30 AM on 25 July 2010Assessing global surface temperature reconstructions
Thanks Ned, I wasn't aware of these other individual reconstructions, but it is encouraging to see they are in agreement with the official versions. -
RickG at 01:28 AM on 25 July 2010Assessing global surface temperature reconstructions
@ 21. That's one of the reasons anomalies are used rather than absolute temperatures. Think about it. -
Doug Bostrom at 01:18 AM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
Ken, I believe your post here illustrates a fundamental problem with the utility of the "climategate" data, leaving aside entirely questions of the legality or ethics of its provenance. You remark, "The best article on Climategate I have read is by Terrence Corcoran, who analysed the first 5 years of the 13 year record and gives a detailed chronology." Terrence Corcoran cannot render a "detailed chronology" of the thoughts and communications touched upon in the emails in question; the record is acknowledged as incomplete and thus a complete, detailed and fully precise chronology is impossible to produce from what was published. The people who obtained the emails did not provide the rest of us with the complete dataset, they chose to pass along certain portions of the record while redacting other parts. Worse, we cannot know the editorial intentions of those choosing whether we'd be enlightened or remain in ignorance. An example from the National Post article you cited: What really rocked the paleoclimate work at CRU, and ultimately shook the IPCC, was a seemingly out-of-the-blue email on June 17, 1998, from Michael Mann to Phil Jones, then head of East Anglia’s CRU centre. Before then, no mention had been made in the email cache of Michael Mann... "Seemingly out-of-the-blue." Was it? How do we know? Corcoran seems to understand at some level that the detail necessary to draw broad conclusions cannot be derived from what we're allowed to see by the people who obtained the email. Here's how he expresses the problem: The emails are not a random grab of email records from one scientist’s computer or extracted in a coarse raid on the central computer facilities of one climate institute. Only by reading the emails in chronological order, from the first email sent March 7, 1996, by Russian scientist Stephan Shiyatov, from the Laboratory of Dendrochronology, Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology, in Ekaterinburg, Russia — complaining to British scientist Keith Briffa about funding problems for his tree-ring research — does it become clear that the emails are part of a conscious and systematic assemblage of 13 years worth of vital communications among some of the world’s leading climate scientists. Emphasis mine. Corcoran acknowledges an agenda on the part of the people who obtained and disseminated the email as well as their selectivity in deciding what we may or may not know about its content. We can't do science with this sort of data, we're left with intuitions and thus are fully at the mercy of our prejudices. My prejudice leads me to wonder why the folks who obtained and published the emails in question chose to preserve ambiguity over certainty by not providing us with the complete dataset. Is that ambiguity necessary for making the strongest impression, and what would happen to our conclusions if we were able to see the entire record? -
muoncounter at 01:09 AM on 25 July 2010Assessing global surface temperature reconstructions
#21: "urban heat island effect" Where have we heard this before? UAH and RSS are satellite temperature measurements. For the global columns in Ned's Fig 8, they average a trend of 0.14ish. All others average 0.16ish; if there is such an effect, then its magnitude is limited by the difference, 0.02 or so. And how does UHI impact the ocean temperatures, which are equally self-consistent? (or is that a part of the conspiracy?) -
chris1204 at 01:07 AM on 25 July 2010Assessing global surface temperature reconstructions
David @ 18: Thanks for your kind comments. You're probably right when you say that advances in my field would eventually have come for the right reasons. Still, I do do think the contrarians may have helped stimulate research by highlighting the flaws in the prevailing paradigm. In medicine, many advances occur with serendipity. Often, there's folks out there in underfunded labs beavering away at something highly specialised and obscure in the basic sciences. The relevance to clinical medicine may not be immediately apparent - however, more clinically oriented folk looking for answers stumble across the work and suddenly something very obscure becomes very interesting and hot stuff. Work on the retroviruses focused inter alia on transcription of DNA to RNA (an important topic to be sure) is an excellent example - without that foundation, we would have been very much slower in identifying the HIV virus. We see similar processes in climate sciences - think of the extraordinary interdisciplinary collaboration underpinning GRACE. Phillipe @ 20: I'm conscious of the limitations of WUWT. I did say the readership is far less sophisticated than the bloggers - that's not a glowing endorsement of the bloggers. Some of the posts have a very puerile quality. Still, one does come across enough pieces which are food for thought - hence I visit but almost never post (in marked contrast to this site). In fairness to them, they have put up corrections and counterarguments and more recently they seem to have been trying to align more closely with consensus science. I find it much easier to cope with ideologies I disagree with than with bad faith. While ideology may be impervious to evidence, it has its own internal logic. All of us partake of some ideology (even if we would be loath to call it that). BTW, I have to confess my ignorance: who are G&T? -
robert way at 00:54 AM on 25 July 2010Assessing global surface temperature reconstructions
The issue of urban heat island effect is still extremely important to consider in all this though lets remember... I have not seen many reconstructions at all that can effectively keep this effect at a minimum. -
Sean A at 00:48 AM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
Thingadonta, on the definition of theory: "This word is employed by English writers in a very loose and improper sense. It is with them usually convertible into hypothesis, and hypothesis is commonly used as another term for conjecture." In the correct sense, a scientific theory is not a hypothesis. Theory: "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena; theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses." -
tobyjoyce at 00:45 AM on 25 July 2010The nature of authority
chriscanaris, @85, I have no problem with a civilzed conversation with the Hulmes and Currys, or with anyone else for that matter. However, when they tell me that there is a point to prolonged exchanges (or "debates") with people who have adopted the tactics of the tobacco industry in relation to science, there I part company with you and them, unless you can convince me otherwise. Gould gave up debating with creationists because (1) it lent the oppsition an intellectual credibility they did not deserve, and (2) the debates were reported by creationists invariably as "Evolutionist gets his ass kicked". You could see the same thing happening in this case. -
Philippe Chantreau at 23:50 PM on 24 July 2010Assessing global surface temperature reconstructions
Chris, no work that is rigorous, well thought out and scientifically carried out receives contempt. The likes of Carter et al, Soon-Baliunas or G&T should reeive contempt. The bloggers at WUWT are not that sophisticated. See the Western snow pack thread, CO2 snow, etc... The bad faith mentioned by David above is also patent, I have seen it on a number of occurences, in which Watts trumpeted papers that did not support a "skeptic" position at all as if they actually did. WUWT is not a credible source of information.
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