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John Mason at 21:31 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Where you say: "Strontium is produced by rock weathering, the process that removes CO2 from the air." I think you probably mean "Strontium is mobilised by rock weathering, the process that removes CO2 from the air." Sorry if that sounds a bit nit-picky - to me (a geologist) it read as if rock weathering results in an element coming into being!! Instead, Sr is present as a minor element in certain minerals e.g. feldspars, and upon their prolonged weathering it is taken into solution. Interesting piece: here in Mid Wales there are several localities that show the abrupt chance in sedimentary facies marking the transition from shallower to deep-water conditions that mark the end of this glaciation. The Cwmere Formation, mostly black, hemipelagic pyritic graptolitic organic-rich mudstones, represents the time following the major sealevel rise and cut-off from coarse sediment sources. It is an important marker-horizon across Central Wales, as things controlled by major eustatic sealevel changes associated with deglaciation tend to be! Cheers - John -
adrianco at 21:30 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
The OISM is a barn in the middle of nowhere (see the picture on their home page) with a P.O. Box as its address and an important sounding domain name. It has no credibility as an institute, it happens to be in Oregon, thats all. I have a Physics degree, so I could declare myself to be the Californian Institute of Science and Medicine, put a sign on the side of my garage, list all my buddies that have degrees as members and start collecting online signatures, big deal... If you google "oism location" you will find that Google Maps will show you their barn on the map. I've driven in that area (from Crescent City to Grant's Pass) and it's rural mountains on the south border of Oregon. Google "oism debunk" for the many other times the list has been debunked, including attempts to identify anyone on the list. On Facebook 350.org currently has 77,935 fans http://www.facebook.com/350.org and you can verify that there are more real people, and I would claim more real scientists and real climate scientists on that list than the OISM list. -
stevecarsonr at 19:58 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
For nerndt:Can someone please give the real scientific explanation why CO2 drives global warming.. Can someone create a valid scientific experiment to prove or disprove this
" There are 2 parts, and I can only answer one. This is the explanation of how CO2 adds radiation at the earth's surface. For the subject of "global warming" - well, everything else in the climate has to be taken into account. But I think your question is about the first issue - how in the first place does CO2 add heat at the earth's surface? Take a look at CO2-An Insignificant Trace Gas - Visualization What you see there, amongst other concepts, is the longwave radiation leaving the earth's surface - at 390W/m^2 on average, and yet at the top of atmosphere this outgoing longwave radiation is only about 240W/m^2. Where has this longwave radiation gone? It has been absorbed and re-radiated both up and down. This "earth experiment" should demonstrate the reality of the theory of how CO2 adds warming at the earth's surface. -
padruig at 19:31 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
While John Tyndall (1820-1893) gave us the first picture of the effect of the absorption of heat radiation by gases, his contribution should be taken in context. In 1896 Svante Arrhenius published his calculations on a basic heat budget for the earth based on his estimate and projection of anthropogenic CO2 being introduced into the earth's atmosphere. Broadly, the Arrhenius estimates remain valid today well over 100 years later. In his classic 1949 text Radiative Transfer, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar gave us a comprehensive view of the behavior of light radiation passing through a planetary atmosphere and how the gas mixture of that atmosphere would capture some of the radiation and re-release some or all as heat while some would be reflected back into space. A classic journal article that illustrates the contribution of CO2 to climate change must be "Carbon Dioxide and the Climate" by Gilbert Plass (American Scientist, 1956). Dr. Plass describes CO2 sources and sinks and makes salient predictions about their impact to our environment. For this and other contributions, Dr. Plass is considered the 'father' of modern greenhouse gas theory. From Jean-Baptiste Fourier to today we have a mountain of literature and journal articles but none of this in total can counterbalance a passionate "believer" because the "believer" is not constrained by calculus or physics or the aerosol and gas chemistry of our atmosphere. The "believer" chooses to not see the thermodynamics of our cryosphere where the arctic ice cover is now so reduced that German and Russian merchant vessel traffic is free to execute a polar transit cutting thousands of miles of travel off a voyage from Asia to Europe. The general public has been misled to the "belief" that anthropogenic global warming is an issue of public discourse and that in that discourse they can legitimately influence the outcome of changes in the earth's climate when in fact the outcome is influenced by physics and chemistry. If there is a 'problem' it is the in the public view the scope and impact of anthropogenic global warming has been reduced to a question that has a 'single answer'. Unfortunately, science in its essence subdivides any question into smaller, more fundamental questions and in answering those myriad of smaller questions assembles and answer which is a tapestry. -
Riccardo at 19:20 PM on 12 March 2010It's the sun
neerndt, "the irradiation has been quite a bit higher in the last decade." do you mean the solar maximum of the well known 11 years cycle? We're now at a solar minimum, a quite prolonged one indeed. But it does not look like it's going to impact the actual trend that much. -
Dan R at 18:47 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Some earlier work in this field: Press release - http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/earlyice.htm Paper itself - http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/33/2/109 Seems the argument hasn't held much weight for a few years now. -
Doug Bostrom at 18:25 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
gallopingcamel at 17:04 PM on 12 March, 2010 Several hundred words, chock-a-block with specific findings, supported by thirty references to other published works. Surely you did not stop after reading seven words of Trenberth's paper? What part of the rest of the paper leaves you unconvinced, specifically? What's your case? -
RSVP at 18:17 PM on 12 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
One "last" comment... about surveys. I dont think a survey is needed to know what people think. It's not what people think as much as what they are being told in so many way and on a continuous basis. This mass messaging is quite simple. "That the planet is warming due to energy trapped by the additional greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels, and that this is the most convenient truth until proven otherwise by the same folks that have concocted this theory. Your survival depends on this, so please be understanding about all the measures that will be taken." By the way, I did see a new field of solar panels going up. Reminded me of strip mining. An entire mountain was bull dozed. All vegetation removed. -
Doug Bostrom at 18:12 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
nerndt at 17:10 PM on 12 March, 2010 Also see The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect for more history about how C02 was identified as a substance that can alter the radiative transfer properties of the atmosphere. The link points to a chapter of Dr. Spencer Weart's excellent book on the topic. -
RSVP at 18:06 PM on 12 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
Ned I appreciate you answering my question, especially as you diagram the three possibilities so candidly. This helps facilitate the discussion in a meaningful way. As far as comparing options 1 and 2, simply based on the historical evidence of ice age cycles that option 1 is improbable. I would also assume that most people "out there" think of global warming as option 3, making it difficult to sustain AGW when, for instance, Venice is getting snow in mid March. Jeff Freymueller Thanks for your response as well, which coincides generally with Ned. -
Marcel Bökstedt at 17:49 PM on 12 March 2010Medieval Warm Period was warmer
scaddenp> I don't see why Crowley and Lowery is relevant, could you explain? They just include the Keigwin paper in their data, on seemingly equal footing with some other sources. Jones, P. D., and M. E. Mann (2004), Climate over past millennia, Rev. Geophys., 42, is in about the only volume of Rev. Geophysics I can't access, maybe you could tell me why it is important? -
nerndt at 17:26 PM on 12 March 2010It's the sun
More data on total slar irradiation. The graph in the link shows the irradiation has been quite a bit higher in the last decade. http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/IRRADIANCE/irrad.html Total solar irradiance describes the radiant energy emitted by the sun over all wavelengths that falls each second on 1 square meter outside the earth's atmosphere--a quantity proportional to the "solar constant" observed earlier in this century. It measures the solar energy flux in Watts/square meter. The data contains six sets of satellite observations: values from NIMBUS-7, from the Solar Maximum Mission (SMM) spacecraft, from the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS), from the NOAA-9 and 10 platforms, and from the Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite (UARS). Measurements span the periods: NIMBUS-7 16 Nov 78-13 Dec 93; SMM 16 Feb 80-01 Jun 89; ERBS 25 Oct 84-21 Dec 94; NOAA-9 23 Jan 85-20 Dec 89; NOAA-10 22 Oct 86-01 Apr 87; UARS 5 Oct 91-30 Sep 94. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To get to our FTP archive of solar irradiance data, click here. For more information on the various satellies, click on the appropriate hypertext link: NIMBUS-7 UARS/ACRIM II ERBS go to Solar Data Services Home -
nerndt at 17:21 PM on 12 March 2010It's the sun
Total Solar radiation has had a large effect on climate chane based on the scientifc article below: Combine the information below with the closing of the ozone hole in the past 20 years and that in itself could explain all of the global warming from the past 25 years. Phenomenological solar contribution to the 1900–2000 global surface warming http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2005GL025539.shtml We study the role of solar forcing on global surface temperature during four periods of the industrial era (1900–2000, 1900–1950, 1950–2000 and 1980–2000) by using a sun-climate coupling model based on four scale-dependent empirical climate sensitive parameters to solar variations. We use two alternative total solar irradiance satellite composites, ACRIM and PMOD, and a total solar irradiance proxy reconstruction. We estimate that the sun contributed as much as 45–50% of the 1900–2000 global warming, and 25–35% of the 1980–2000 global warming. These results, while confirming that anthropogenic-added climate forcing might have progressively played a dominant role in climate change during the last century, also suggest that the solar impact on climate change during the same period is significantly stronger than what some theoretical models have predicted. -
Marcus at 17:14 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
From everything I've read on the subject, though, the temperatures at which glaciation occurred during the Ordovician Era were higher than the temperatures at which similar glaciation occurred during the entirety of the Quaternary Era. -
nerndt at 17:10 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Can someone please give the real scientific explanation why CO2 drives global warming? Correlation does not guarantee cause. Put C)2 in a large glass chamber and measure the change in the rate of heat dissipation compared to nitrogen and it will not alter the rate of heat transferrance. Can someone create a valid scientific experiment to prove or disprove this? Thanks.Response: The first scientific experiment proving the warming effect of carbon dioxide was conducted in 1861 when John Tyndal published laboratory results identifying carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas that absorbed heat rays (longwave or infrared radiation). Since then, the absorptive qualities of carbon dioxide have been more precisely quantified by decades of laboratory measurements (Herzberg 1953, Burch 1962, Burch 1970, etc).
Of course, there's no substitute for measurements made in the real world. Satellites have measured less infrared radiation escaping to space at the same wavelenths absorbed by greenhouse gases (Harries 2001, Griggs 2004, Chen 2007). The authors concluded this was "direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in the Earth's greenhouse effect".
In science, the only thing better than direct measurements are multiple sets of independent measurements finding the same thing. Surface measurements also find an increase of infrared radiation heading back down towards Earth, confirmation of an enhanced greenhouse effect (Philipona 2004, Puckrin 2004, Wild 2008, Wang 2009). A close analysis of the downward infrared spectrum finds more energy coming back down at the same absorptive wavelengths of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, thus concluding "this experimental data should effectively end the argument by skeptics that no experimental evidence exists for the connection between greenhouse gas increases in the atmosphere and global warming." (Evans 2006) -
gallopingcamel at 17:04 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
Tom Dayton (#5), consensus is unimportant in science. I cannot say it any better than the first Einstein quote in (#62). You might claim that there was consensus about the validity of Newton's "Laws of Motion" for almost 300 years until Einstein's theories of Relativity were published. (#63), demeanor is not the issue; it is what these scientists say that determines their credibility. John Cook, you do a good job defending Trenberth but I am unconvinced. On the very first page of the paper you cited, the author states: "Given that global warming is unequivocally happening". I agree that this is slightly better than Bob Watson who assures us that "climate change" is happening. He can hardly be wrong on that one!Response: Trenberth has probably written as many papers as anyone on satellite data of outgoing and incoming radiation - if there was anyone who would know whether the global warming was happening (eg - that the planet is in positive energy imbalance), it would be Trenberth. -
Tom Dayton at 15:41 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
gallopingcamel, once again you have used your perception of people's demeanor in TV appearances as "evidence" against the objective scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change. That is inappropriate for this Skeptical Science site. -
gallopingcamel at 15:18 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
While the number of scientist heads does not matter, the quality of the heads does. Let's consider a couple of prominent scientists who are much quoted on AGW issues. Take a look at Bob Watson defending the IPCC on TV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dzb8FljvGGI&feature=player_embedded Professor Robinson expresses complete certainty in a way that shows he does not understand what science is about. Watson could use a lesson in humility and clarity from a great scientist: “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” Albert Einstein Here is a quote from Kevin Trenberth (UCAR), October 12, 2009: "We can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t." This is in sharp contrast to Trenberth's public statements. Albert Einstein has something to say about integrity: "Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters."Response: "This is in sharp contrast to Trenberth's public statements"
Actually, Trenberth's "can't account for the lack of warming" theme is expounded in frank, clear detail in the peer-reviewed paper An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth's global energy (Trenberth 2009). This paper is the topic of the email where that quote is taken from. Unfortunately, most people fail to read the full email. Certainly very few people read the paper he was refering to. I would highly recommend reading the paper or at the very least, this summation of the paper and what Trenberth was getting at. -
sammysoul at 14:12 PM on 12 March 2010iPhone app version 1.1 - now with search, image viewer and Twitter!
Phantastic app!!! Just one little thing that should be changed is the format of the bit.ly links. Instead of starting with "www.bit.ly" they should start with "http://bit.ly" instead. That way Twitter will format them into a hyperlink. Right now the links are not clickable in Twitter, which is a bit of a nuisance, especially since we all want for as many people as possible to easily download the app. -
yocta at 13:45 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
RE: 54 suibhne lol, It may seem that way but I don't. I have enormous respect for Paul Ehrlich and James Lovelock... i'm just thinking it just might take a generational change for skeptics to lose their weighting in the mainstream media. -
Ned at 12:21 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
chriscanaris writes: However, I accept that people have the right to ignore me sometimes with serious consequences. Well, one could make the argument that there are some fields where the consequences of ignoring the experts are worse than others. In this particular field, our current policy of ignoring (or worse yet attacking) the experts is likely to lead to increased misery for future generations especially in countries more vulnerable to environmental change, and to a drastically increased rate of extinction worldwide. That said, I agree with you that no group or profession should exist without scrutiny and oversight. The question is, what are reasonable mechanisms for that kind of oversight? Scientists working in universities are subject to the review of their departmental colleagues, tenure committees, deans, external funding agencies, etc. Scientists working for the private sector or for government have their own versions of these. What's unique (and problematic) is the fact that the entire field of climate science is being attacked (not merely "scrutinized") by people who are actively hostile to the fundamental nature of the field as it exists today. I know there are those who are sincerely motivated by honest skepticism or curiosity. But it should be obvious to everyone by now that those voices are far outnumbered by others who are convinced that the whole climate science thing is a scam and everyone associated with it needs to be run out of town on a rail. Near the beginning of his talk at AGU last December, Richard Alley showed an email that was sent to the administration of his university: "Dr. Alley's work on ... CO2 levels in ice cores has confirmed that CO2 lags earth's temperature.... This one scientific fact alone proves that CO2 is not the cause of recent warming, yet ... Dr Alley continue[s] to mislead the scientific community and the general public about 'global warming' ... I await your prompt response confirming that an investigation into ... Dr Alley's activities will ... start prior to the end of this year. (His) crimes against the scientific community, [Pennsylvania State University], the citizens of this great country, and the citizens of the world are significant and must be dealt with severely to stop such shameful activities in the future." Now, the author of that email might be dismissed as one lone and unimportant individual ... except that over the past few years, and increasingly now, these kinds of attacks are becoming mainstreamed in the media and on the internet. Ultimately, in a democracy, "scrutiny" of every profession comes from the public at large. But most people have no direct experience or interactions with climate scientists, and so their views are shaped by the media, blogs, etc. In the current environment, a large and growing fraction of that "information environment" is being shaped by voices that have a gut-level hatred for the entire field and want to see it and everyone working in it utterly destroyed. That's rather different from the normal social oversight that most fields and professions are subject to -
Mike1637 at 12:09 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
I think the question of political affiliation is quite valid. Political influence and interference doesn't just apply to climate science, but many other scientific disciplines as well. Evolutionary Biology. Medical research. The list goes on. While it's true that not everyone can be lumped into the same camp and there are exceptions on both sides, there is a very clear pattern of how certain "sides" of politics treat scientific results that they don't like. -
Tony O at 12:09 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
Do we know how thoroughly OISM checked the respondents? Do all of the signatories exist, have the degree stated and are the actual person stated? Can we access the list still? Here id deltoids take http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2004/05/oregonpetition.php -
scaddenp at 12:02 PM on 12 March 2010Medieval Warm Period was warmer
Perhaps look at the cites for that paper. Eg Jones & Mann 2004, and Crowley & Lowery 2000. -
chris1204 at 11:59 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
robhon: Being subjected to scrutiny is one thing. Being made the object of a witch hunt is completely another. Well yes, sounds like psychiatry in the Soviet Union. Or the dominance of the Lysenko evolutionary paradigm in the Soviet Union. Or the rejection of Jewish science in Nazi Germany. Power tends to corrupt. Scientific bodies are not exempt from its corrupting influence, whether warmist or denialist. Again, one would hope that appropriate scrutiny by the Courts will protect. -
Rob Honeycutt at 11:40 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
chriscanaris... Being subjected to scrutiny is one thing. Being made the object of a witch hunt is completely another. Don't forget that people like Sen. Inhofe and others are literally trying to get people thrown in prison for practicing science that comes to a conclusions they object to politically. -
chris1204 at 10:47 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
angliss & shdwsnlite I am quite used to having my professional opinions ignored by folk who know much les about my subject than I do. Sometimes it annoys me because I am human. However, I accept that people have the right to ignore me sometimes with serious consequences. Besides, on occasions, my profession (I mean psychiatry) has perpetrated some serious atrocities. Firthermore, I daily read reports by colleagues acting as 'hired guns' for insurance companies - a situation that my professional organisations has singularly failed to address. In the end, oversight by the courts (non-expert judges trained in law assisted by lawyers skilled in evaluating evcidence) has been the only corrective. So to get back on topic, climate scientists need to be subject to scrutiny just like everyone else. -
suibhne at 10:39 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
yocta You seem to have it in for "old guys" remember Beethoven wrote his best music near the end of his life! -
GFW at 09:41 AM on 12 March 2010Accelerating ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland
Some quick math. If you take the current sea level rise as 3mm/y, apply 0.17mm/y^2, and run that out 90 years, you get a total sea level rise of 0.97 meters. So meter scale sea level rise by 2100 is perfectly in line with these observations. -
NewYorkJ at 09:39 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
"I am not the only one, for example Gavin Schmidt has a degree and a PhD in (applied) mathematics, I'm sure you wouldn't want to ignore his views. " To be clear, here are Gavin's credentials (from RC): "He received a BA (Hons) in Mathematics from Oxford University, a PhD in Applied Mathematics from University College London and was a NOAA Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Global Change Research. He serves on the CLIVAR/PAGES Intersection Panel and is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Climate. He was cited by Scientific American as one of the 50 Research Leaders of 2004, and has worked on Education and Outreach with the American Museum of Natural History, the College de France and the New York Academy of Sciences. He has over 60 peer-reviewed publications. " I think some are missing the main point of this post. No matter which criteria (debatable or not) one uses (stringent or lax), with any remotely reasonable criteria, the resulting numerator / denominator indicates a very small percentage of the scientific community are "skeptics". Those who move the goalposts with a "consensus isn't fact" argument are seemingly entirely oblivious to the main thesis put forth by Petition Project or Inhofe 700 style arguments (focusing on the numerator and ignore the denominator): that there is widespread dissent and a raging scientific debate over the key issues. It's an argument refuted nicely here, but one much of the public buys into. -
Marcel Bökstedt at 09:37 AM on 12 March 2010Medieval Warm Period was warmer
I just looked at the OISM petition project. They present a number of not very strong argument against AGW, one of them being that the Medieval Warm Period was about 1 degree warmer than today. That would in itself not contradict AGW, but lets not go there now. Anyhow, being biased, I would prefer that there was some solid reason for dismissing the claim...:) They quote the paper "The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period in the Sargasso Sea Lloyd D. Keigwin, Science, New Series, Vol. 274, No. 5292 (Nov. 29, 1996), pp. 1504-1508". I looked at it, and it seems that by using sediment cores he can give some evidence that at least locally, at the "Bermuda rise" in the Sargasso sea, the MWP was indeed 1 degree warmer. Of course that does not prove too much about global temperature, especially since there is a lot of evidence to the contrary which is not mentioned in the OISM advertisment. What intrigues me is that Keigwin's paper is neither mentioned nor contested in the paper by Mann et al. which is the basis for the temperature map above. Is the Mann paper cherry picking and spitting out Keigwin's sediments at this point (which would seriously damage its credibility), or is there some good reason for dismissing Keigwin's results, and painting the Sargasso sea in cool colors on the world map of the year 1000? (There is also a map in fig 2 of the paper that makes it clear that sediment records from the Sargasso have not been used). Or am I just missing something obvious here? -
hadfield at 09:26 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
"At this point it’s literally impossible to know because the names and degrees on the list cannot be verified by anyone outside the OISM." Why not? Has a list of the names not been published? Has the code by which the statistics were calculated not been published? Surely not! -
yocta at 09:22 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
RE#31-Robhon I have to say I agree with you there. Performing a survey about which supposedly qualified person believes what is clearly not the best approach to bring prove anything to people. They can always be manipulated and misquoted by anyone in the media. “Science is not done by consensus” Policy is and requires weighting of the scientific evidence and action on it. RE#39,47-1077 What is your point? It is the science that should be judged not what peoples politics (assuming they live in a country with the freedom to choose) or lifestyles. Being forced to tick a box makes so many assumptions of people that it would be superfluous to the discussion of AGW. The whole discussion in the comments only highlights how poor such a survey would be. -
J Bowers at 09:22 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
The people who make and promote such a thing as the Oregon Petition don't seem to realise that historians of the not so distant future will be scrutinising it even more than here. Literally every name will be looked at and checked out. -
NewYorkJ at 09:01 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
Good post. My first thought when thinking of the Petition Project is how large the denominator must be given such lax criteria (I suspected it was in the millions). Thanks for crunching the hard numbers on this. It's arguably much higher since the names aren't verifiable. Theoretically, it's infinite, and thus the percentage of skeptical scientists approaches zero from this technique. I know many individuals who could be on that list who know very little about climate science. -
Jack_Kelly at 08:50 AM on 12 March 2010There's no empirical evidence
Excellent article. Just a quick housekeeping note: the link to Griggs 2004 no longer works (the university have updated their website)Response: Thanks for the tip. It's a shame, a full paper of Griggs 2004 no longer seems to be online so I had to link to the abstract. -
dhogaza at 08:09 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
"Statistically, if "science" was indeed the ultimate object of the exercise, one may reasonably use the hypothesis that science is apolitical and therefore the political affiliation of those on one or the other of the AGW is randomly distributed. Thus the poll should yield an equal percentage of liberal and conservative sympathizers on both sides of the controversy." Let's see ... Inhofe wants to jail climate scientists, the right wing in this country is on a witch hunt against climate scientists, and you think that unless 50% of climate scientists are Republicans it will prove that *climate scientists* are politically driven? Why would you expect climate scientists to join a party whose leaders talk about, among other things, criminalizing their work? -
scatter at 08:08 AM on 12 March 2010iPhone app version 1.1 - now with search, image viewer and Twitter!
Good work Shine on producing an Android version! Looking forward to it. -
1077 at 07:33 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
Steven Sullivan under 42 is striking an appropriately disparaging tone but avoids responding to my suggestion for a poll. Anyone willing to guess as to how the results may fall out? Statistically, if "science" was indeed the ultimate object of the exercise, one may reasonably use the hypothesis that science is apolitical and therefore the political affiliation of those on one or the other of the AGW is randomly distributed. Thus the poll should yield an equal percentage of liberal and conservative sympathizers on both sides of the controversy. Anecdotal evidence indicates that this may not be the case. Hence a "scientific" poll may be in order... and also relevant, regardless of "who started it?" issue which is better left to the playground of those who are striving to mature. -
Dennis at 07:30 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
"Of couse if you are going to exclude on the basis of formal qualifications, then the skeptics should be able to leave out the opinions of all IPCC authors who are engineers, computer sceintists, mathematicians etc" I believe that IPCC authors are nominated and selected based on their formal qualifications. -
Ani at 07:19 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
I just read an article at about.com that talked about a study by UW Madison and WHO that stated 150000 people dying a year because of warming. My gut feeling is that it would be significant to them. -
angliss at 05:31 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
DIkran Marsupial (#47) - Thank you for clarifying, and now that I understand your point better, I'll concede it. -
Dikran Marsupial at 05:11 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
angliss @ 40 You are missing my point, if someone can have an informed opinion that is independent of their formal qualifications then deleting names from the list based solely on formal qualification is an obviois source of bias and weakens the argument. If you are going to do that, then why leave in the phycisists, chemists and biologists - none of those qualifications is a guarantee of informed opinion on climatology either, and the skeptic list would be even shorter. Of couse if you are going to exclude on the basis of formal qualifications, then the skeptics should be able to leave out the opinions of all IPCC authors who are engineers, computer sceintists, mathematicians etc. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The point is if you are going to argue against a rhetorical/political assertion, it is best not to use a counter that has any visible, let alone obvious bias, as it invites the obvious complaint of "bias! bias!". Much better to show that the skeptics are wrong, even with a generous interpretation of the evidence, which in this case, they are. -
Steven Sullivan at 05:08 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
1077 wrote in 42: "So if the discussion is now openly political, which it always was anyway, wouldn’t it be relevant to start a poll as to what the political affiliation is of those who support AGW vs. those who oppose it and those who are on the fence?" Nice attempt at framing here. The discussion wasn't always political, and it's not ONLY political, now. And you conveniently neglect to note who has been driving the 'politics' of this. Historically, long before Al Gore;'s movie, the ones with POLITICAL objections to climate science have been the right wing/conservative/free marketeers. And that's where most of the blogospheric and mainstream media 'critiques' of climate science come from today. -
kwinters79 at 04:54 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
In his book "Premature Factulation", Philip Hansten argues quite convincingly that scientists addressing complex issues outside of their own field of expertise are often wrong. Because of their prestige and arrogance (often well deserved in their own field), they fool themselves into thinking they are better informed on other subjects than they really are. Though he's very intelligent, I would no more give credence to my surgeon neighbor's view on AGW than I would ask a brilliant PhD EE friend for advice on cancer treatment. -
Riccardo at 04:53 AM on 12 March 2010Scientists can't even predict weather
Marcel Bökstedt, definitely we will never know for sure untill it will happen, or not happen for that matter. But we know a lot more things of the past climate than you are admitting. They tell us that at least to a first order aproximation if forcing increases so does temperature. (ok, it's clearly an over-simplification, but i hope it gives the idea). I can not see any room for chaotic behaviour of climate, it can just be an abstract hypothesis; to become a real one there have to be something pointing in this direction. Maybe in the future, who knows; but as far as actual knowledge is concerned it's still abstract. -
kwinters79 at 04:42 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
Dennis (27) wrote: "There is an important angle to the manner in which the petition was originally circulated that is worth repeating ... Whether intentional or not, it was clearly misleading to some people." Exactly. There's some additional points that need to be recognized: 1) Many signatures came from 1997. This was well before most scientists outside of the field had any reasonable understanding of the on-going research and the evidence was far less solid even to practicing climate scientists. 2) When Scientific American randomly contacted 26 of the signatures with related PhD's, only 11 (1 active researcher, 2 with relevant experience, and 8 based on an informal evaluation) said they still agreed with the petition. 6 would not sign it now, 3 don't remember ever signing it, 1 died, and 5 did not respond. gallopingcamel (1) wrote: "The folks who wrote this post need to lighten up; this is something to laugh about." It would be funny if it weren't repeatedly brought up and deceiving so many people. Having been raised on a farm I know that if someone keeps throwing cow manure against the barn wall, some is bound to stick. Unless you regularly scrape off the manure, your barn will start to look pretty bad (no matter how solid the structure). The same is true for communicating the reality of AGW to the general public. Sadly, it's necessary to repeatedly clean up the manure repeatedly thrown at it. -
1077 at 04:32 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
The very discussion triggered by this article indicated the essentially political nature of the subject, with polling and efforts to infuence and evaluate them and with “science” being nothing more than a tool. And an imperfect one as any reasonable person should be willing to admit at this stage. So if the discussion is now openly political, which it always was anyway, wouldn’t it be relevant to start a poll as to what the political affiliation is of those who support AGW vs. those who oppose it and those who are on the fence? Assuming that a clever pollster can get predominantly honest answers, the results might be worth beholding. How about “Skeptical Science” trying its hand at it? -
shawnhet at 04:30 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
As to the issue of the cost of reducing emissions, that is primarily a function of technology IMO. At current technology levels, reducing CO2 would be **massively** expensive. Arguably the most effective countries at actually reducing carbon emissions are the Europeans and their emissions are still going **up**, even while supposedly being committed. Presumably, most of those countries "green"-spending has been directed towards the low-hanging fruit. That is to say that the spending so far has most likely gone to the most cost effective ways of reducing GH gases. Future spending will, thus, most likely be much less cost-effective than past spending(this is the fundamental flaw with the Kyoto-type approach IMO). Luckily, however, technology does not stand still. Google Kurweil solar power exponential if you want some further detail. Cheers, :) -
angliss at 04:16 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
DIkran Marsupial (#35) - you said "Actually no, I have worked (and published) with climatologists in the past and had to learn enough of the science to be worth collaborating with." Thank you for supporting my point that engineers etc. don't have the inherent expertise that the OISM assumes. After all, if you had to learn the climate science yourself before climatologists would consider collaborating with you, then other engineers etc. would also have to learn enough climate science. The OISM offers no way to know and no guarantees that their signatories are qualified. As an EE myself, I'm not going to denigrate engineers or claim that they have nothing to offer climate science. I'm saying that there is nothing inherent in their degree that ensures that they are qualified. Ultimately, however, I think you've latched onto a secondary point here. The primary point is, by the OISM's own criteria, they cannot justify the claim that their petition disproves the IPCC consensus claim. Including or rejecting engineers et al does not affect that conclusion.
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