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Comments 124251 to 124300:

  1. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    The Beck paper cited a few times is itself a classic example of this D-K effect. Beck is a high school biology teacher with no background in climate science. In reading about the work of Guy Stewart Callendar (who had been dead 40 years when Beck published) he objected to the fact that Callendar had discarded CO2 readings which he took to be anomalous due to proximity to industry. Beck felt that this was 'cherry picking' of the data and for his report went back to the same sources Callendar had used, but kept in the anomalous readings. The problem of course was that Callendar's results had long since been confirmed by proxy readings and the smooth curve (rather than Beck-like roller coaster swings) of the continuous CO2 records. The results of Beck's paper were provably false before he ever published it... he just wasn't aware of scientific progress in the half century following Callendar's effort. Beck had a partially valid objection... Callendar's selection of data COULD have been incorrect. It was an 'educated guess' on Callendar's part that global CO2 levels did not make wild swings over the course of just a few year. Had Callendar been wrong about that then his conclusion that wild fluctuations were due to local industrial emissions might also have been flawed and his results all wrong. But rather than checking further into subsequent science, which had proved Callendar's 'guess' correct, Beck just assumed that Callendar had it all wrong and proceeded to produce a study that was decades out of date. It would have been a solid rebuttal to Callendar in the 1950s, but in the 2000s it was just a bad joke.
  2. Is CO2 a pollutant?
    John - I've been arguing with a rabid sceptic/denier on a sceptic website and he came up with the "argument" below CO2 for the past 80 or 90 years has been increasing in the atmosphere at the rate of 2ppm. To double from its current 385 will therefore take almost 200 years His point was based on that if climate sensitivity estimates are that temperature goes up about 3 degrees C per doubling then we have far longer to wait or act (or not be bothered to act)than the IPCC view. This looked like a new denier argument to me that I hadn't seen before. I pointed out that IPCC graphs of projected CO2 levels must take into account increased outgassing of sequestered carbon from the oceans and permafrost as things warm up (which must, if his math about PPM/year stacks up, be much much greater than our emissions). He responded that if the oceans etc were warming due to a natural cycle, or indeed us, then we haven't seen anything like an acceleration in the CO2 ppm/year rate yet. On the face of it, his argument does seem to show that CO2 levels are not rising at a dangerous rate yet. I have my own ides about how to answer this conundrum but what am I missing?
  3. Is CO2 a pollutant?
    Whoops, sorry for misspelling Socolow.
  4. Is CO2 a pollutant?
    Marcus, I agree. I am often struck by the way in which a single comment will combine an absurdly high degree of "skepticism" towards mainstream climate science with a completely speculative assumption about the costs of action to mitigate climate change. There is a lot of peer-reviewed work that's been done on assessing the economic costs and viability of actions to reduce the magnitude and impact of climate change. We could start out with Pacala and Sokolow 2004 and go on from there. But in my experience, very few of the skeptics/contrarians/denialists (whatever term you prefer) are aware of, or interested in discussing, that part of the literature. They tend to just take it for granted that reducing anthropogenic CO2 emissions will obviously cost immense sums of money so why bother to even discuss it?
  5. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    Dave Keeling, the originator of the CO2 curve, often known as the Keeling Curve, confronted all these issues. His first clear data came not from Mauna Loa but from Antarctica... you'd think that was pristine, but it turned out to have fluctuation problems thanks to CO2 emitted by generators in the outpost. Keelng's solution was (a) measure CO2 continuously, and look for the flat low points on the curve indicating the "baseline" level when wind wasn't blowing from the generators... or, at Mauna Loa, the volcano vents; and (b) measure at a number of places around the world, again looking for the lowest and steady "baseline" level. For the whole story see my essay at http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Kfunds.htm
  6. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    jpark writes: Is this blog turning into sneer review rather than peer review? Actually, this blog pretty much is the best there is when it comes to discussing the peer reviewed literature on climate change. Go to the archives here and click on any of the more science-y topics and you'll see that John spends a LOT of time reading and discussing the literature. Given the amount of time and effort John donates to this more-or-less thankless task, I think you should probably be able to cope with the occasional post, like this one, which tackles the "meta" question of why exactly some people fall for some of the more absurd claims. For example, comment #4 in this thread (by Westwell) refers to the work of E.G. Beck. Now, everybody with even a passing understanding of the science involved knows that Beck's "CO2 record" is nonsense. Many people elsewhere have written at great length explaining why Beck's claims are nonsense. As I understand it, Steve McIntyre has banned discussion of Beck's work from his climate audit site because he understands that that stuff is nonsense and that hosting discussion of it would just make his blog (and the skeptic cause) look foolish. So ... John Cook could write a carefully documented explanation of why the Keeling CO2 record is right and the Beck CO2 record is wrong. And maybe he will do that someday! But when you get to "skeptic" arguments that are as willfully blind as that, I think the more interesting point is not why they're wrong but why someone would believe them. As I understand it, that's what this thread is about.
  7. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    Dunning Kruger effect is not the only trap. My global warming education has been entirely by the internet. So I may have heard or even read the latest papers and yet still be stunningly ignorant of the basics. Read a few papers on a subject and a degree of understanding ensues. Paywalls are a problem, I am not paying to read a paper that I will not understand entirely and may not understand at all. Word usage is a problem. Google methane hydrate and read a bit can give a different understanding than Googling methane clathrate and reading a bit. Knowing who to trust is a huge problem, and if you place your trust in a unreliable source the path to truth can be delayed a long time. Even for the trained seeing what you are looking for can be problem. For the untrained it is an immense problem.
  8. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    jpark, thingadonta did the usual contrarian trick of trying to equate climate science with religious belief, & tried to link climate science to some big bureaucratic conspiracy-both of which he- should know are deletable offenses on this site-as should you. His point was *not* valid because-unlike the Aztecs-our knowledge of the modern climate is based on direct, scientific observation of cause, effect & correlation (amongst other things)-not on the basis of an edict from some priestly caste-no mater how much the contrarians might say otherwise!
  9. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    Also, before we try & pin the blame for rising CO2 emissions on growing human populations (though I think we should be curbing population growth for our own sake) consider this: (1) if it were the result of breathing, we'd expect to see no change in the ratio of C12, C13, & C14 isotopes of CO2, yet in truth we are seeing a change in that ratio-indicating a "non-natural" source of CO2. (2) human population has been rising for over 10,000 years, yet CO2 levels have remained relatively static throughout all but the last 200 years of that period-so not much correlation there! Just FYI.
  10. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    Is this blog turning into sneer review rather than peer review? I thnk thingadonta's point was not about when climate science per se originated but about human perception - I thought his point quite valid. And I do know my level of incompetence!
  11. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    TOP, the biggest issue is this: the fossil fuels we're burning today are in fact fossilized trees from a time when CO2 levels were 10 times higher than today-& temperatures were about 6 degrees warmer (in spite of a sun which was 10% cooler). These massive trees sequestered those Carboniferous Era CO2 molecules & were subsequently buried under many hundreds of meters of sediment/rock. Then we pull them up & burn them-liberating that Carboniferous Era CO2 *back* into our Quaternary Era atmosphere (an atmosphere receiving 10% more sun than when those CO2 molecules were first airborne). So, based on that knowledge, what do *you* think are the odds that the burning of these fossil fuels might be able to impact on our global climate?
  12. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    TOP writes: The biggest problem with the presentation of this graph is the time scale. Using another well known graph that covers 500 million years of history instead of 12,000 years we get a totally different perspective. There is value in understanding the evolution of the earth's climate over long scales. But for a discussion of the impact of modern climate change on our agricultural/industrial civilization, the appropriate question is "How will the climate of 2050 (or 2100 or whatever) compare to the climate that we have experienced over the past 12,000 years?" There have been long periods in the distant past when the planet was much warmer, the sun was cooler, CO2 was higher, the continents and ocean basins were in different positions, and weathering of carbonate rocks occurred at different rates. The study of those times is useful for many reasons, but it would be absurd to suggest that farmers in the midwestern USA shouldn't worry about 21st century climate change because CO2 levels were really high back in the Ordovician Period and life survived. Surely that's not what TOP meant to suggest, right? That would be a ridiculous argument indeed.
  13. There's no empirical evidence
    40 Shades of Green, Phil Jones is a serious scientist in fact. If you read the whole answer, he says that there's a trend but it is "just" not statistically significant, and explains why. For sure he's not the kind of man that picks up an arbitrary time span and cry no trend! no trend! Statistics poses limits to the minimum time length of the record that allow us to make statements on the trend. It's not that hard to do it yourself, if you wish, or read from one who did
  14. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    If Beck's theory about the wet CO2 measurements had indeed been correct, then these enormous atmospheric CO2 excursions would be expected to show up clearly in the Law Dome ice-core. They don't. So we have a number of serious problems: a) No confirmatory evidence from independent sources. b) Logic indicates that in all likelihood that such natural mechanisms of around century ago would still be operating now, but clearly aren't. c) CO2 variations that disappear when accurate modern measurements begin. d) An unexplained change in the carbon cycle. e) Georg Hoffmann on Realclimate suggested that such enormous CO2 fluxes [10x annual global emissions] would leave a distinct carbon isotope in tree rings too, which has also not been found. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/beck-to-the-future/ Occam's razor indicates that the claims are likely wrong. [I am being overly generous] So we not only know that not only these measurements were suspect, but we know for certain that those measurements and any conclusions drawn from them were wrong. A question for followers of Ernst-Georg Beck and his ilk. What is his publication record in science citation index Journals? Note: this expressly excludes Energy & Environment which is a 'trade journal' and has a long record of publishing articles of highly questionable if not dubious merit.
  15. 40 Shades of Green at 21:02 PM on 15 February 2010
    There's no empirical evidence
    As it happens, I don't think Plimer is a serious skeptic. His inability to acknowledge the Volcano error is an embarrassment. Interestingly, since I posted this, no less a personage than Phil Jones has confirmed that there is no statistically significant warming for 15 years - remember that is half a climate timeframe. His BBC piece also acknowledges the presence of volcanos in the earlier part of the Satellite record but does not draw the obvious conclusion that I did. IE, volcanos in the firest half depresses temperatures, no volcanos in the second half increass them, run a trend line over the full period and you get warming. But then again that might be me doing a Dunning Krueger :-) Thanks for the Schuckmann link. Will go off an read it. 40.
  16. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    Something that I find very interesting is this. My work as a Microbiologist/Molecular Biologist in the field of Agronomy brings me into contact with a lot of farmers. Now most of these guys are fairly old & extremely self-reliant, yet none of the ones I've met suffer from the "all scientists are idiots" syndrome. Most of them *care* about their land, but recognize that they-& their forebears-have made a *lot* of mistakes due to lack of knowledge. Therefore, I've found them very, very willing to listen to the advice the scientists have to offer. So if a fairly conservative, self-reliant bunch such as farmers are prepared to listen to scientists, then why are these so-called "skeptics" so unwilling to listen? Oh, & another thing, these farmers-almost to a man-all are of the view that anthropogenic global warming is *real*, because they're seeing it directly impacting on their land.
  17. 40 Shades of Green at 20:46 PM on 15 February 2010
    The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    As a skeptic, whenever I come across a new arguement either for or against, the first place I come to ameliorate my personal Dunning Krueger effect is here.
  18. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    An antidote could be reading Spencer Weart book or any other history of climate science, a good first step to be taken. Looking at the history of science anyone can find that many of the questions that keep crawling around had already been answered many decades ago (e.g. the reliability of the Mauna Loa record or the high variability of the old measurements by wet chemical methods reported by Beck we are reading in the comments here).
  19. Dikran Marsupial at 19:48 PM on 15 February 2010
    The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    JohnMoseley said: "The only way one could scientifically come to the conclusion that "CO2 mixes well throughout the atmosphere" (in the context of what you are arguing) is to MEASURE CO2 throughout the world, introduce a significant increase in CO2 into one location, and then MEASURE the rate at which the marked increase in CO2 diffuses throughout the world." An experiment of that nature has been performed (sort of). Fossil fuel use is concentrated in the northern hemisphere, and there is a small difference in CO2 concentrations (about 2-3 ppm IIRC) between the north and south hemispheres as a result, which is what you would expect if atmospheric concentrations were "well mixed" (if it weren't there would be a big difference between north and south as fossil fuel emissions accumulated around areas of greatest use). The difference between north and south hemisphere concentrations is also proportional to emissions, which strongly suggests CO2 from fossil fuel emissions in the north is transported fairly quickly to the southern hemisphere. See U. Siegenthaler & J. L. Sarmiento, Atmospheric carbon dioxide and the ocean, Nature 365, 119 - 125 (09 September 1993); doi:10.1038/365119a0 also CO2 is measured around the earth and I suspect that a spaghetti plot of the data from all measuring stations would confirm that concentrations are well mixed.
  20. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    As a skeptic myself to both sides, I have commented on several blogs. In the case of the origin of the increase of CO2 levels, I have had a lot of discussions with other skeptics. The main result is a page completely devoted to that point, where all arguments are ordered and the only conclusion possible is that humans are responsible: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html CO2 levels are measured at 10 "baseline" stations and some 70+ other places, which show that besides a seasonal (vegetation induced) amplitude and a N-S lag, the yearly averages at all places far away from local sources are within a few ppmv with similar trends. Thus we may say that CO2 is "well mixed" in about 95% of the atmosphere. Besides that, in 5% of the atmosphere, that is below the inversion layer over land, CO2 levels are not well mixed, depending of local sources and sinks and wind speed. Even there, some 400+ stations measure CO2 fluxes trying to understand the local/CO2 balance of vegetation and human sources. Unfortunately, it is in the 5% non-well mixed part of the atmosphere that many measurements in the pre-Mauna Loa era were made. Especially the "peak" around 1942 found in Beck's compilation of CO2 data, was mainly from a few series made in a polluted area. The same peak is not found in high resolution ice cores (Law Dome) neither in stomata data or (as 13C/12C ratio) in coralline sponges of the oceans. This shows that there was no such CO2 peak and that Beck's 1942 peak is biased by local/regional contamination. See further: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/beck_data.html But that humans are responsible for the increase in CO2 of the past 1.5 century, doesn't say anything about the influence of the increase. The real influence of more CO2 depends mainly of the feedbacks (both positive and negative) on the about 1 degr.C for 2xCO2, which is the basic response of CO2, based on its absorption spectrum.
    Response: Many thanks for posting those links. To those following the discussion on CO2 measurements, I strongly recommend you visit his webpage CO2 Measurements which is a comprehensive and illuminating discussion of CO2 measurements - a definite antidote to Dunning-Kruger effect! :-)
  21. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    The inability to recognize the limits of one’s own knowledge is certainly a serious handicap confronting many non-experts when approaching the topic of climate change. Two additional, interrelated handicaps are bias and the phenomenon of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing". Combine these with the tsunami of misinformation, fallacious reasoning, and dubious science comprising the bulk of AGW "skepticism" and it’s no surprise that many skeptics--even those having the best of intentions--are unable to gain a valid understanding of the evidence for (or against) anthropogenic global change. The corrupting influence of "a little bit of knowledge" is not evident in the data from Kruger and Dunning, but I believe it becomes particularly hazardous when linked to what K&D term "motivational biases". I suspect this is a prominent reason why the professions of broadcast meteorology and geology include an unusually high proportion of AGW skeptics, as both professions entail at least some understanding of climate change, while falling well short of expertise in climate science. Accordingly, many geologists cite the paleoclimate fallacy mentioned by John (above). Bias by itself is enough of a hazard, but coupled with the inability to recognize competence in one’s self or in others, plus the self-delusion that one has expertise that is actually lacking, leads to the situation we currently face, with a growing, even if irrational, backlash against AGW. Several of the preceding posts also address the cultural phenomenon of bashing the know-it-all, egghead intellectuals, on the premise that seat-of-the-pants wisdom trumps ivory tower book-learnin’. This can provide an added boost to the self-confidence of those lacking the ability or the will to read actual science papers, and is a card played by some politicians who have weighed in as AGW skeptics.
  22. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    Yes, Yes, a similar one to "people wil rise to their level of imcompetence" in work situations, but skeptics have been saying for years that (some) climate scientists also fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect: eg: those climate scientists that think they can understand all/most of the complexity of the climate, and therefoe make overly-confident predictions and geustimates (eg most of the error bars in the IPCC reports). A good test of these is to look at past IPCC reports, the IPCC often get their predictions wrong (references needed), but the over-confidence in their predictions seems to just continue. Another major bone of contention, is yes, most skeptics are aware that climate science/scientists in its current understanding is aware of various skeptical arguments, and can point to various peer reviewed papers to support their positions etc etc, but the skeptics also believe and/or are very suspicious that the process of peer review within climate science in general has become corrupted (anbd also including within the IPCC process), and the peer review system now exists simply to maintain and support the status quo and those with vested interests. So, referring back to the 'peer reviewed literature' is not going to convince them unless, and until, the peer review system is reformed. (I also don't need to point out the various current events surrounding this issue).
  23. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    #2 Jon Moseley: CO2 well mixed? Although the argument "CO2 is so well mixed that CO2-concentration is the same in the whole atmosphere and we can rely on measurements in one location" is probably true, poster #2 is right that you do not provide the evidence for it. Presumably, if I studied diffusion and wind global wind patterns more (thus avoiding the D-K effect), I could prove well-mixedness from the physics, but that would still be theory. If you showed some measurements from other locations which gave identical results to Hawaii, or if ice cores from both Greenland and Antartica showed identical CO2 levels, that would really clinch the case. I am 100% convinced (D-K again?) that people have done these measurements (and that results were as expected). Can you show such data?
  24. Is CO2 a pollutant?
    Marcus If you will allow me to add a small touch to my last comment. So the path for heat outward is radiation into space. And greenhouse mechanisms obstruct this path as they should. Extra CO2 does indeed increase this obstruction. However... The real problem is not this path. The real problem is the additional heat needing to use this same path. Like a highway with traffic. All it takes is one accident to create a giant slowdown. The traffic is due to the fact that the highway is already saturated. Now you have more cars plus an accident. The point here is that you cant avoid generating the extra heat, which accompanies all technologies.
  25. Is CO2 a pollutant?
    Marcus We are all inhabitants of a beautiful planet that everyone wants to conserve. In that sense, we are all in the same camp. I am not sure which post of mine got you going on this thing about a "last line of defense". At some point, I was asking about comparative technologies and impact studies. SNratio accused me of being political for asking these questions, which only science and engineering can answer. Believe it or not, I am the first to "wish" CO2 levels were back to "normal". If there was a magic wand to wave, I would be the first to wave it. However there is no magic wand, in the sense that reducing CO2 emissions does have an unavoidable economic burden simply due to the inertia of current capital investment. Things are precarious as it stands. It is not a political statement. It is a fact. (Example. I have an automobile I can barely afford to drive, and it is not an expensive automobile by the way). What could be a "last line of defense" for the cold winter we are having than to say it would actually be colder if it wasnt for anthropogenic warming? This comes out over and over again (and even if this were true, I for one am not complaining. It's suppose to snow today, again). If it helps you understand where I am coming from, all I can say is that I try to separate what I wish for from my beliefs or assessment of the technical issues. To be concrete, I find it very difficult to swallow this pill that claims that a .01% or .02% volumetric increase of a gas in our atmosphere is driving planet temperatures dangerously upwards. Like tying a mouse to a refrigerator and expecting to see it move. It just isnt intuitive, now matter how many "peers" signoff. One of the first things I ever posted, was that you can't destroy matter or energy. As far as your second comment, 104, urban centers do tend to be comparably warmer than surrounding rural areas. Winds typically clear out this extra heat and make city life livable, however that heat doesnt just go poof, because as I just said, you cant destroy energy. It either needs to find its way to the black of space, or be absorbed here and elevate the Earth's temperature. At some point this energy turns ice into water, and then people take notice. In this case, the location of cause and effect can be thousands of miles apart.
  26. Is CO2 a pollutant?
    @ 81 & elsewhere : I see here the nearly universal misconception , and if really thought about - shear nonsense , that albedo of a radiantly heated uniform gray ball affects its equilibrium temperature . That this leads to absurdities such as being able to construct a cryogenic cooler just by coating the inner chamber of a vacuum bottle with MgO was Kirchhoff's great insight 151 years ago . This ubiquitous error , which comes from calculating the temperature of a ( gedanken ) body which reflects with a measured albedo , but emits as a black body , is the source of the misleadingly cold numbers , such as 255k for earth upon which the notion that GHGs account for about a 33c increase in our temperature . Far more relevant , and orthogonal , is that , as calculated on my http://cosy.com/Science/TemperatureOfGrayBalls.htm , we are about 9c warmer than a gray body in our orbit . Our temperature is linear with that of the sun , and inversely proportional to the square root of our distance from it . See http://cosy.com/ for the graph which shows that Venus is the only inner planet which consequentially deviates from those functions beyond observational precision . Even a disk , black facing the sun , white facing 3k space in Venus's orbit would only be about 390k . Since since the SB law for radiant heat transfer is T ^ 4 from hot to cold , and Fourier for conduction is down the gradient of Temperature , and convection is also , by Carnot at a minimum , hot to cold , how can the surface temperature of Venus exceed the energy it is receiving from the sun unless it has some substantial internal heat source . There is no question that blankets can keep heat IN , and the heat conductivity of CO2 at . what , 90 atmospheres , would be very interesting to know . It happens my bathtub reading this year is a dog chewed copy of my niece's electrodynamics textbook at Boulder . Compared to it , the understanding of the physics displayed by both sides of this debate is pathetic .
  27. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    I'm not sure if we are seeing pure D-K in action here. It's more the "all scientists are idiots" syndrome (perhaps the "Horton-Cook effect"?) Moseley and Westwell above have seen something, somewhere, perhaps on the WUWT site or similar deniablog, to the effect that CO2 concentrations in the air are variable. They see that CO2 can be higher in cities, and higher in the lower levels of the atmosphere, perhaps, if a bit more sophisticated they may have read that CO2 level can vary diurnally and seasonally and with wind speed. "Ha ha", they scream with delight, "how can anyone measure CO2 levels, those hockey stick style graphs are the result of cooking the books, hiding the decline, or are all just computer models. Gotcha. No One World Government for us now you evil Frankensteins." It never occurs to them for a moment that those people whose occupation it is to measure CO2 levels might, just, be aware of those issues. Might, just, after a lifetime of studying the subject, of refining techniques, of building on the work of hundreds of other scientists, past and present, of testing results against proxy measures, might, just, have taken them into account. Might, just, be in the business of comparing like with like, of siting measuring stations to reduce variation from pollution, of averaging out diurnal and seasonal and other effects. Might, in fact, be working like scientists do in all such areas of expertise. No, they cry, "all scientists are idiots, Anthony Watts says so, hah, couldn't measure the CO2 in a brown paper bag. I'll just go on to Skeptical Science and tell that idiot John Cook all about it." And they do.
  28. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    Westwell at 14:57 PM on 15 February, 2010 :
    Beck found, “Since 1812, the CO2 concentration in northern hemispheric air has fluctuated exhibiting three high level maxima around 1825, 1857 and 1942 the latter showing more than 400 ppm.”
    Beck's work shows wild fluctuations in CO2 up until the point where regular measurements started. The fact that the period of highest quality measurements do not show wild fluctuations should provoke skepticism of those older measurements. As it happens, there is plenty of reason to believe the older measurements Beck relied upon are in error. Furthermore - they're in conflict with every well-understood proxy for CO2. More info here and here
  29. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    Ah yes, Westwell, the Beck "Paper"-a perfect case of bad technique masquerading as science. Beck has simply collated every single recorded CO2 measurement made in the 19th century through to the early 20th century. There were manifold problems with this data though-the samples were all taken at near surface locations; many were taken in urban environments, where CO2 emissions from urban sources were extremely high; many of the samples were measured without internal controls & the measurement tools had a massive error by today's standards. Didn't you ever wonder why the error bars in his graph are actually *larger* than the actual levels of CO2 measured? The only reason this paper ever saw the light of day is because Energy & Environment has well known connections to a number of contrarian organizations. Meanwhile, Mauna Loa is located hundreds of kilometers from any urban source of CO2 & is at an altitude at which it is above the Inversion Layer. However, if you doubt the results of Mauno Loa, Westwell, then might I suggest you look at the almost identical readings from Cape Grim in Tasmania? Or are you suggesting that there is some kind of conspiracy between these two measuring stations to hide the "naturally high levels of CO2 which have have always been present in our atmosphere" (as you seem to imply)? Yet strangely these high CO2 concentrations never turn up in *any* of the correlating ice core segments.
  30. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    Regarding John Cook's last paragraph, about how to counter the D-K effect: For people who are asking scattershot questions or who have broad misunderstandings, I like to send them to cce's online book, "The Global Warming Debate." It was down for a while, but he's got it back up on a new server with a new address: http://laymans-guide.com/. It's nicely narrative rather than pedantic, definitely accessible to laypeople, has both a readable version and a narrated-slides version. Also, most of its references are live links straight to the sources, for more detail.
  31. Karl_from_Wylie at 16:18 PM on 15 February 2010
    The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    If one wants a lay audience to support (i.e. spend tax dollars) then one's arguments must be appropriate to the audience. Scientist must take responsibility to use audience appropriate communication if they want to convince anyone other than their own peer group. Its easy to get Amens from the choir but not effective in growing your cause.
  32. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    I have a lot of catch-up to do. Work at school -- I had been a VB6 programmer, but with everything moving to the web I now have to expand my skillset. But it is probably worth saying that I have had my own intimate experiences with Dunning-Kruger... I'd certainly admit that I make a fair number of mistakes. Some of them I don't realize were mistakes until a few hours later (often fairly stupid ones it seems) and some only months later. However, one thing I pride myself on is the ability to quickly admit when I was wrong. At moments of extreme self-doubt and even anxiety, that is the one thing that I have held onto -- even though I sometimes fail. * Since I don't have the time at present to participate I would like to make available two little essays from evolution/creationism days. I can actually imagine one being somewhat offensive to people on either side of that debate. Hopefully no one will find them too offensive. I don't really think that either of them is fundamentally about evolution or creationism though, but personally more about what it means to be human. At least in my view. Religion and Science http://axismundi.hostzi.com/0/002.php A Conspiracy of Silence http://axismundi.hostzi.com/0/004.php PS If anyone wants to contact me about either piece (express their indignation, whatever) or about something else... timothy chase [at] g mail [dottish] com (remove the spaces) But it might take a few days for me to respond.
  33. Skeptical Science now an iPhone app
    As someone who has made presentations on climate change for the last three years, I depend on your excellent resource. But I have a BlackBerry - does this mean I'm going to have to break down and get an iPhone? Thanks for what you do!
  34. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    #6 That's what happens, John, when you think you are an expert on Nobel Prizes!
  35. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    Your mention the Dunning-Kruger effect. From what I read of the paper there a number of issues that possibly need to be addressed before you can apply the Dunning-Kruger effect. Just mentioning one briefly. The person you are talking about - purportedly less skilled - may be less skilled than the experts who are in the very top quartile. However - is that less skilled person in the first and second quartile of less skilled or in the third quartile? From the paper, unless your less skilled is in the bottome two quartiles the Dunning-Kruger effect is very much less pronounced. How one sets the knowledge quartiles in climate science is anyones guess. Suggest that as with climate science/knowledge etc care is needed in applying results from one example to another.
  36. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    Westwell at 14:57 PM on 15 February, 2010 Sorry, fella, that's a dog that won't hunt. Here's are the actual methods employed for measurement: How we measure background CO2 levels on Mauna Loa Pieter Tans and Kirk Thoning, NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory This focus on sampling at Mauna Loa seems to be quite the fad right now, but if you think about it for a few minutes it just does not pass the smell test, to imagine that all of a sudden we find out the whole thing's a botch.
  37. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    A delightful bit of D-K irony at post 2. Indeed it would be very difficult to track a single localised CO2 release across the globe. Thankfully it is not necessary to do this, as one can visually see that the localised Mauna Loa data matches well with the more contemporary global data that has been available since 1980, by simply looking at figure 2. Using one set of older data alongside another set newer data is hardly a "trick", especially when they almost overlap.
  38. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    John, D-K won an Ig Nobel, not a Nobel. I have nothing else to add that hasn't been said, so I'll provide the obligatory illustration.
    Response: Whoops, thanks for clarifying that, an embarrassing error.
  39. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    The Dunning-Kruger effect strikes again in post 2! In thread after thread, post after post, from climate change/environment/political site around the world D-K appears with increasing frequency it seems. And no matter how often an apparent simple misunderstanding is corrected, back it comes like a rock rolling down a hill. What is even more frightening is the Dunning-Kruger Shock-Jock effect, which is D-K on steroids. Andrew Bolt and MIranda Devine are a classic examples, as is Paul Sheahan just today - "The heat sinks in Sydney and Melbourne will be getting hotter, writes Paul Sheehan in the National Times. "Modern culture is built around creating urban heat sinks, yet governments obsess less about this real-world, everyday problem than the more abstract problem of carbon pollution. Fixing the first problem would help ameliorate the second."" You see - all us silly scientists concerned about an "abstract problem" when the only problem is that the cities are warming the world (not, you understand, merely possibly affecting measurements, as per Watts, but actually warming the planet more than that silly old CO2 those climatologists keep muttering about). And the terrifying thing is that this stuff, written from the bully pulpits of newspaper and radio, will be believed far more readily than the conclusions of thousands of scientists presenting the results of tens of thousands of studies.
  40. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    Your CO2 graphs are very simplistic and don’t tell the whole story. Beck found, “Since 1812, the CO2 concentration in northern hemispheric air has fluctuated exhibiting three high level maxima around 1825, 1857 and 1942 the latter showing more than 400 ppm.” Elimination of data occurs with the Mauna Loa readings, which can vary up to 600 ppm in the course of a day. Time to revisit the science of CO2 http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/18343 50 years of Continuous measurement of CO2 on Mauna Loa -Ernest-George Beck – Energy and Environment 2008 http://icecap.us/images/uploads/08_Beck-2.pdf
  41. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    The problems I have with this are the presentation of the graph which to a person unskilled in graph reading looks like a big spike. The scale for atmospheric concentration does not start at zero. As a CO2 source not many people have correlated with this graph: http://ldolphin.org/poprecent.gif or this one http://www.susps.org/images/worldpopgr.gif The biggest problem with the presentation of this graph is the time scale. Using another well known graph that covers 500 million years of history instead of 12,000 years we get a totally different perspective. http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/7/76/Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png
    Response: "The scale for atmospheric concentration does not start at zero"

    Here is another way of looking at CO2 levels - with the CO2 axis going down to zero.




    Re CO2 levels going back 500 million years, that is an interesting question all on its own and worthy of a few posts (in fact, we touch on it here and here).
  42. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    YOU WROTE: "The reason why it's acceptable to use Mauna Loa as a proxy for global CO2 levels is because CO2 mixes well throughout the atmosphere. Consequently, the trend in Mauna Loa CO2 (1.64 ppm per year) is statistically indistinguishable from the trend in global CO2 levels (1.66 ppm per year)." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is a classic example of circular reasoning. The only way one could scientifically come to the conclusion that "CO2 mixes well throughout the atmosphere" (in the context of what you are arguing) is to MEASURE CO2 throughout the world, introduce a significant increase in CO2 into one location, and then MEASURE the rate at which the marked increase in CO2 diffuses throughout the world. Because the global atmosphere is complex, with wind patterns and the complex behavior, one CANNOT make the leap that diffusion in a small sample of air can be compared to the world-wide global atmosphere.
  43. Is CO2 a pollutant?
    Another point I'd like to make is in relation to RSVP's attempt to blame warming on thermal pollution rather than CO2. If his claim were correct, then industrial centers would be warming significantly faster than non-industrial &/or rural sites. Yet there is no noticeable correlation between warming & industrial activity up into the lower troposphere. Indeed, some of the fastest warming places on Earth are places like Antarctica & the Arctic, yet last I looked there were no Steel Mills or Aluminium smelters in these locations!
  44. The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
    Thank you for this article. I spent some years in the Air Force as a weather analyist and forecaster, way back when. I have tried to keep up in the meanwhile as the subject has been of interest since my pre teen years. It is refreshing to see some one else tell us to try to know what we don't know and remember that the more we know about this subject, the more we need to know before we can consider ourselves knowlegeable enough to argue absolutes.I don't believe that there are any absolutes. I wish we had had the technology back in the fifties and early sixties like we do now. I think that the "climate change" subject would be less contraversial.
  45. Is CO2 a pollutant?
    I know we're discussing the science-& not the economics, of CO2-emissions, but I think RSVP's claims need to be addressed. The idea that reducing anthropogenic CO2 emissions will come with great economic pain, for all, is often the "last line of defense" of the contrarian camp. Yet this is, in fact, far from the truth. Around 30%-50% of all electricity use, across the world, is the result of energy inefficiency in the domestic, commercial & industrial sectors of the economy. Similarly, about 20% of all fuel use is due to inefficient use of transportation. So here we have measures for reducing CO2 which-far from being painful-might actually *improve* economic well being. Aside from direct efficiency issues, there are also things like Co-generation, moving freight long distance by rail rather than road, increasing the use of car-pooling, public transport & tele-commuting to eliminate peak-hour traffic snarls & improvement in street lighting to reduce lighting scatter & thus eliminate light pollution & allow for lower wattage globes. Beyond this there are things like using methane from land fill & sewerage plants to generate electricity-thus killing 2 birds with one stone-& implementing bio-sequestration at all fossil fueled power stations. So, even without considering electric vehicles or solar/wind/tidal power, we already have a host of measures at our disposal for reducing CO2 emissions with no long-term harm (&, in fact, with long-term economic & health benefits). Of course there is also the need to consider our obsession with perpetual economic growth. Instead of focussing on ever-increasing GDP growth, our society should instead focus attention on increasing GDP/capita. Remove this "need" for perpetual growth, & many of our current economic & environmental problems might just start to solve themselves!
  46. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    diogene, no, this line of logic does not rely on assumptions, because Menne (2010) analyzed the observations. The "poorly" sited stations (one graph line) had the same trend as the "well" sited stations (a different graph line). No, airconditioner users were not given instructions about use of the airconditioner. (The stations should not have been installed there in the first place.) But that doesn't matter, as has been shown empirically by Menne. No assumptions required. Just look at the actual trends. It turns out to be a fact that any such effects are inconsequential. That was not a foregone conclusion; as you wrote, it is easy to imagine that the effects could be profound. But facts are facts.
  47. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    diogene at 12:59 PM on 15 February, 2010 Probably what is most difficult about Watts' fallacy is its fundamental simplicity. The very fact it is so -wrong- makes it easy to overshoot the basic error Watts committed and get lost in a myriad of irrelevant details. Think of it as a word problem you might have encountered in middle school. Remember all the extra information that used to be thrown in, distracting you from the actual question? Don't let the extra verbiage devoted to this topic fool you. Tom Dayton explained Watts' fallacy nicely, and there are numerous other simple explanations scattered throughout the comments in this thread. I suggest you read through and find an explanation that works for you.
  48. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    Uhh, does this line of logic rely on assumptions, that the thermometer heating is constant over short and long timeframes? I'm concerned that the counterargument will be that the onset of AGW might be said to be at a similar time as the onset of widespread airconditioner installation at USCRN networks. I imagine that some might say the A/C installation would have an anomalous effect on the "anomaly". Are the A/C users at CRN 3,4,5 stations directed to use the A/C unit in a consistent way to ensure the constant differential due to thermometer heating? I didn't see this treated in Menne2010. One other point; Did Watts analysis determine whether the A/C units were operable in winter as 'heat pumps'? Thanks for trying to help. I am up against some nontrivial resistance here... Dio
  49. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    diogene, a major part of the answer to your question 4 is that for a "bias" to be a bias relevant to climate change, it must be a bias in the trend of the same station - the change in the same day's or month's temperature over years, of the same station. If Station A in the northern hemisphere is next to an air conditioner coil and Station B (also in the northern hemisphere) is not, on July 18 Station A probably will be warmer than Station B--but that's in the absolute temperature on that one day. On that same July day exactly one year later, A probably again will be warmer than B, but by the same amount as on that day the previous year. The year-to-year trend in the temperature of Station A compared to itself is the measure that is relevant to climate change. Ditto for Station B. The difference in temperature between A and B easily can be imagined to be constant from year to year, and the actual observations support that imagination. Temperature "anomaly" is what you see graphed in nearly all climate change graphs. That "anomaly" contains the information about that year-to-year difference for the same station on the same day or month, but filters out the absolute temperature that is the difference between Station A and Station B.
  50. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    Hello; I was trying to explain the implication of Menne2010 regarding Watts' work, and I was unable to make my point. There seemed to be ~4 issues for which I had no answer. Hopefully the experts here can help me clarify my thinking and the people around me. 1. Did Watts incorrectly apply the purported URCRN Siting Handbook criteria http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/uscrn/documentation/program/X030FullDocumentD0.pdf section 2.2.1? 2. Assuming that the criteria were correctly applied by Watts, why does the handbook list estimated errors of 1C, >=2C, and >=5C for CRN classes 3,4,5? 3. How does Menne2010 address questions 1 and/or 2? 4. I'm having trouble conveying a simple explanation of how Menne2010 or anyone could prove that nearby heatsources would not create a heat bias in measuring air temperatures. I see the analysis. But I can't explain it to anyone. What is the mechanisms that apparently immunizes the CRN 3,4,5 thermometers (MMTS or LIG) from nearby heaters? Thanks, I wish I could handle this myself, but I need help. Dio

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