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Comments 1651 to 1700:

1651. nigelj at 07:51 AM on 12 August 2023
      At a glance - The tricks employed by the flawed OISM Petition Project to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change
      

      I agree with NP.

      It may also be about the term catastrophic which I believe is a strawman. Because climate science never claimed at that time that heating would be catastrophic, which is a colourful, imprecise, loaded term that many may associate with billions dying very fast. Science claimed anthropogenic warming will cause  very serious problems xyz, and cause a significantly increased mortality rate in the tropics.

      So its understandable that a petition saying there is no convincing evidence of catastrophic heating of the atmosphere would get plenty of signatures. If the petition had just said there is no convincing evidence of serious problems it probably wouldn't have got nearly as many signatures.

      But by using a strawman the denislists got plety of people to sign and thats what people notice more than the significance of the word catastrophic. Dont be fooled by the denialists tactics.

1652. nigelj at 07:01 AM on 12 August 2023
      A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
      

      MAR @14. Good points.

      Franks "wondrous theory" does indeed sound crazy. What mystifies me is how a guy with a Phd in chemistry, thus very highly scientifically literate could get relatively basic things like that wrong. Because its fairly well doumented that the up and down variation in year to year temperatures is due in large part to a component of natural variability cycles. And he does not seem like a person that would dispute the existence of natural climate cycles.

      It makes me wonder if he hasnt actually read much background information like this on the actual climate issue - and perhaps feels he is such a genius that he doesn't need to. Yet this would be astounding really that he is unaware of short term climate cycles and cant see their relevance. I do not have his level of scientific training by a long way, but its obvious to me. 

      It seems more likely he is he just being crazy about things for whatever reasons and this craziness seems to be the main underling characteristics of a crank. But their frequent narcissim means no matter how much you point out the obvious flaws they just go on repeating the same theories, thus their nonsense certainly compounds over time.

1653. michael sweet at 04:25 AM on 12 August 2023
      Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
      

      Davez

      Your unsupported claims also have no merit.

      Renewable energy is the cheapest electricity in the world.  While the turbines and solar farms cost billions to build, they saved more billions when gas prices went up. Carbon Brief has several articles where they analyze the enormous amounts of money saved by renewable energy and document that "cutting out the green crap" in the UK ended up costing consumers billions more when gas prices went up.  Simply stating how much it costs to build renewaable installations without considering how much low cost electricity is generated is deceptive.

      Battery storage currently competes on cost with gas peaker plants.  Battery costs are rapidly decreasing.  Batteries will replace all peaker plants due to economics in the near future.

      You argue that wind energy at night is wasted (without any citations to support this wild claim) and then say that nuclear, which cannot be turned off at night, is the way to go.  That is a direct contradiction that negates your argument.  In France nuclear generation is only 70% of nameplate because they have to close up on weekends.  They sell nuclear electricity at a loss at night. 

      Nuclear supporters like you ignore the fact that nuclear requires at least as much storage as renewable energy does.  The largest pumped hydro storage facilities in the USA were all built to store nuclear electricity generated at night.  This is a second contradiction in your arguments that negates your claims.

      In any case, nuclear is too expensive and there is not enough uranium to build a significant amount of nuclear.  

1654. michael sweet at 04:03 AM on 12 August 2023
      Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
      

      Dav8id-acct:

      Everyone knows that new build power supplies are rated by maximum capacity to generate.  You are simply arguing semantics when you object to the industry standard.

      I note that you have no citations to support your claims.

      The Jacobson et al paper you cite with no link concludes that a fully renewable system using batteries at the current cost would be the cheapest way to generate future energy.  He finds that there will be no problems supplying electyricity 24/7/365.  Renewable energy that produces 20% of rated capacity is the cheapest electricity in the world.  Your unsupported claims have no merit.

1655. Nick Palmer at 01:26 AM on 12 August 2023
      A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
      

      nigelj @13 wrote " I have never come across any articles in our media by climate scientists or experts addressing the climate denialists myths. The debunking seems to be confined to a few websites like this one and realclimate.org or Taminos open mind"
      
      That's true - but don't forget 'And then there's physics'... and Climate Adam and Dr Gilbz (both phd'd climate scientists) on Youtube quite often debunk stuff. Here's them collaborating - it's fun!
      
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojSYeI9OQcE

1656. Nick Palmer at 22:24 PM on 11 August 2023
      At a glance - The tricks employed by the flawed OISM Petition Project to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change
      

      I've always thought that the exact wording of the Oregon Petition

      "no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate"
      
      was grammatically constructed to actually have been technically signable AT THE TIME OF FIRST LAUNCH even by such climate luminaries as James Hansen.
      
      It comes down to the artful use of "is causing" and "will cause" - instead of 'may cause' -  catastrophic heating and disruption etc. The petition does not state that its wording assumes that mainstream climate science was asserting that emissions will continue to rise sharply and that climate sensitivity to CO2e was at the top end of published expectations back then (somewhere around 6°C per doubling if I remember, although 10°C was mentioned https://skepticalscience.com/climate-sensitivity-advanced.htm ) but it is the underlying insinuation (of the text) that climate science was saying these things that enables the rhetorical deceit inherent in that exact wording. It allows any scientist who was fairly familiar with the science back then to jump to the conclusions that, because such emissions rises weren't certain to take place, and that ensemble figures for climate sensitivity were showing a 'most likely' figure of ~3°C per doubling, then it was definitely not certain that 'catastrophic heating' would occur.

1657. Nick Palmer at 21:36 PM on 11 August 2023
      A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
      

      Bob Loblaw @11
      
      I was interested in what the two reviewers listed actually said. I couldn't find it. Wunsch is highly unlikely to have given it a 5* review and I don't think Zanchettini, who is much less well known, would either.
      The reason it would be helpful to know is that Frank's recent '23 paper and its past incarnations, such as '19, are currently being promulgated across the denialosphere as examples of published peer reviewed literature that completely undermines all of climate science. If one knew that Wunsch and Zanchettini had both said seomthing like 'the overall construction of the paper was interesting but has some major logical and statistical flaws in it', and Frontiers in Science had decided to publsih it anyway, that would be very useful anti-denialist 'ammo'.

1658. MA Rodger at 18:52 PM on 11 August 2023
      A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
      

      Nigelj @13,
      The paper Frank (2019) did take six months from submission to gain acceptance and Frontiers does say "Frontiers only applies the most rigorous and unbiased reviews, established in the high standards of the Frontiers Review System."
      Yet the total nonsense of Frank (2019) is still published, not just a crazy approach but quite simple mathematical error as well.

      But do note that a peer-reviewed publication does not have to be correct. A novel approach to a subject can be accepted even when that approach is easily show to be wrong and even when the implications of the conclusions (which are wrong) are set out as being real.
      I suppose it is worth making plain that peer-review can allow certain 'wrong' research to be published as this will prevent later researchers making the same mistakes. Yet what is so often lost today is the idea that any researcher wanting publishing must be familiar with the entirety of the literature and takes account of it within their work.

      
      And for a denialist, any publication means it is entirely true, if they want it to be.

      In regard to the crazy Frank (2019), it is quite simple to expose the nonsense.

      This wondrous theory (first appearing in 2016) suggests that, at a 1sd limit, a year's global average SAT could be anything between +0.35ºC to -0.30ºC the previous year's temperature, this variation due alone to the additional AGW forcing enacted since that previous year. The actual SAT records do show an inter-year variation but something a little smaller (+/-0.12ºC at 1sd in the recent BEST SAT record) but this is from all causes not just from a single cause that is ever accumulating. And these 'all causes' of the +/-0.12ºC are not cumulative through the years but just wobbly noise. Thus the variation seen do not increase with variation measured over a longer period. After 8 years in the BEST SAT record is pretty-much the same as the 1-year variation and not much greater at 60 years (+/-0.22ºC). But in the crazy wonderland of Pat Frank, these variations are apparently potentially cumulative (that would be the logic) so Frank's 8-year variation is twice the 1-year variation. And after 60 years of these AGW forcings (which is the present period with roughly constant AGW forcing) according to Frank we should be seeing SAT changes anything from +17.0ºC to -12.0ºC solely due to AGW forcing. And because Frank's normal distributions provides the probability of these variations, we can say there was an 80% chance of us seeing global SAT increases accumulating over that 60 years in excess of +4.25ºC and/or decreases acumulating in excess of -3.0ºC. According to Frank's madness, we should have been seeing such 60-year variation. But we haven't. So as a predictive analysis, the nonsense of Frank doesn't begin to pass muster.

      And another test for garbage is the level of interest shown by the rest of science. In the case of Frank (2019), that interest amounts to 19 citations according to Google Scholar, these comprising 6 citations by Frank himself, 2 mistaken citation (only one by a climatological paper which examines marine heat extremes and uses the Frank paper to support the contention "Substantial uncertainties and biases can arise due to the stochastic nature of global climate systems." which Frank 2019 only says are absent), a climatology working-paper that lists Frank with a whole bunch of denialists, three citations by one Norbert Schwarzer who appears more philosopher than scientist, and six by a fairly standard AGW denier called Pascal Richet. That leaves a PhD thesis citing Frank (2019)'s to say "... general circulation models generally do not have an error associated with predictions"
      So science really has no interest in Frank's nonsense (other than demonstrating that it is nonsense).

1659. nigelj at 09:56 AM on 11 August 2023
      Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
      

      Davz

      "In 2020 wind generation of uk output was 25%, remember though that includes night time generation that went to waste. "

      I wonder if thats accurate. Because when demand for power is very low, I recall reading somewhere that wind farms get turned off. So I would think the 25% of generation would only include when the turbines are actually generating power. I stand to be corrected if anyone can post a link saying otherwise.

       

1660. David-acct at 08:09 AM on 11 August 2023
      Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
      

      Davz - do you have a good link to the electric generation by source data for the UK similar to the eia for the USA or the germany version https://www.agora-energiewende.de/en/service/recent-electricity-data/chart/power_generation/09.08.2022/09.08.2023/today/.

       

      I alway like to be able to cross check against the source data.  The 25% generation of capacity in the UK from solar seems slightly high given UK's latitude.  

1661. nigelj at 07:37 AM on 11 August 2023
      A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
      

      I enjoyed Bob Loblows article because it did a thorough debunking and I learned some things about statistics.

      Some of the errors look like almost basic arithmetic and I thought a key purpose of peer review was to identify those things? They did an awful job. It looks like they didnt even bother to try.

      Regarding whether such papers should be debunked or not. I've often wondered about this. Given the purpose of this website is to debunk the climate myths it seems appropriate to debunk bad papers like this, or some of them. It would not be possible to address all of them because its too time consuming.

      There is a school of thought that says ignore the denialists because "repeating a lie spreads the lie" and engaging with them gives them oxygen. There is some research on this as well. There has to be some truth in the claim that responding to them will spread the lies. It's virtually self evident.

      Now the climate science community seems to have taken this advice, and has by my observation mostly ignored the denialists. For example there is nothing in the IPCC reports listing the main sceptical arguments and why they are wrong, like is done on this website (unless Ive missed it). I have never come across any articles in our media by climate scientists or experts addressing the climate denialists myths. The debunking seems to be confined to a few websites like this one and realclimate.org or Taminos open mind.

      And how has this strategy of (mostly) giving denialists the silent treatment worked out? Many people are still sceptical about climate change,  and progress has been slow dealing with it which suggests that giving the denialists the silent treatment may have been a flawed strategy. I suspect debunking the nonsense, and educating people on the climate myths is more important than being afraid that it would cause lies to spread. Lies will spread anyway.

      A clever denialist paper probably potentially has some influence on governments and if its not rebutted this creates a suspicion it might be valid.

      However I think that actually debating with denialists can be risky, and getting into actual formal televised debates with denialists would be naieve  and best avoided. And fortunately it seems to have been avoided. Denialists frequently  resort to misleading but powerful rhetorical techniques (Donald Trump is a master of this)  that is hard to counter without getting down into the rhetorical gutter and then this risks making climate scientists look bad and dishonest. All their credibility could be blown with the decision makers. 

1662. nigelj at 06:31 AM on 11 August 2023
      A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
      

      Eclectic @7, agreed overall.

      I didnt mean to imply all cranks are narcissists or lean that way. It just seems to me a disproportionately high percentage of cranks are narcissists. It's just my personal observation but the pattern is rather obvious and striking. I tried to find some research on the issue but without success.

      Perhaps the crank tendencies you mentioned and narcissism are mutually reinforcing.

      And remember narcissists do frequently come as cross as nice, normal likeable people, just the same as sociopaths (psychopaths) often do. They find this front works best for them. In fact they can be especially likeable, but its about what lies beneath and eventually one notices oddities about them, or in their writings, and if you get into a close relationship with them it can end very badly. Have seen some ciminal cases in the media.

1663. Bob Loblaw at 05:39 AM on 11 August 2023
      A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
      

      MA Rodger @ 9:

      It is an open question whether it is better to ignore papers such as Pat Frank's most recent attempt, or spend the time debunking it. I chose to debunk it in this case, but to paraphrase Top Gun, "this is a target-rich environment". There are so many logical inconsistencies in that 46-page tome that it would take weeks to identify them all. Just trying to chase down the various references he uses would require months of work.

      I took this as an opportunity for a "teaching moment" about propagation of uncertainty, as much as an opportunity to debunk Pat Frank. Thanks for the reference to Lenssen et al. But what Pat Frank needs to do is start with a Statistics 101 course.

       

      Nick Palmer @ 10:

      I'm sure the general answer to your question is "yes", but I did not try to chase down every blog post and link in the lengthy chain exposed by the linked post at ATTP's. I did read parts of some, and remember that some of his earlier efforts to publish involved open review.

      Nigelj's comment that some people "...are unable to ever admit to themselves or others that they are wrong about something..." seems particularly true about Pat Frank.

1664. Eclectic at 05:10 AM on 11 August 2023
      Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
      

      Correction ~ my apologies Davz.  If the UK's 40 million vehicles use 2 gallons of lubricating oil per year each . . . then the wind turbines are using only about 1% of that (not the 10% figure I mentioned above).

1665. Eclectic at 04:43 AM on 11 August 2023
      Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
      

      Davz @3 , you are quite right that it is only the actual production of electricity that should be stated.  Like you, I am irritated by public announcements of XYZ generation capacity newly installed . . . when it would be more honest to quote the actual effective generation (which is in the 15-30% range, for various wind & solar).

      Since you have used UK figures (rather than the OP's North American bias)  ~ there we see wind turbines supplying around 20-25% of electricity needs.  Planned turbine growth will exceed expected growth of UK electricity needs.

      The UK usage of lubricating oil is an interesting topic.  Davz, on your figures the oil usage by wind turbines is close to 10% of the lubricating oil used by the UK's 40 million vehicles.  More turbines = more oil, and yet more more electric vehicles = less lubricating oil.  A nett advantage for EV's  (and that also ignores the fuel oil used by ICE vehicles).

      Davz, please check the figures for lubricating oil used by nuclear plants ~ on the little that I have seen, it is reported that "nuclear" uses a much higher oil amount per MegaWatthour than does coal / gas / wind turbine.  And then there is the problem of nuclear's huge costs & very slow build times (but I presume you know that).

      Costs of batteries is red-herring.  When wind turbines are over-producing electricity, the turbines are feathered or stopped down.  Future battery costs . . . who knows? . . . but the technology is leading to much lower prices.   Eventually, a small household battery may get to the price of a household refrigerator.

       #  By the way Davz, please return to your comment on another thread, where you suggested that climate warming had no way of contributing to increased wilfires.  It would be ethical of you to discuss your point further ~ or acknowledge that you were wrong.

1666. Nick Palmer at 04:30 AM on 11 August 2023
      A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
      

      Did anyone ever see what the reviewers (including Carl Wunsch and
      Davide Zanchettin) said about Frank's similar 2019 paper in Frontiers in Science?

1667. MA Rodger at 02:40 AM on 11 August 2023
      A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
      

      I'm not sure Frank is responsible for 'propagation' or the spreading of nonsense. He is the creator of nonsense that others happily spread. But strangely the remarkable level of stupidity achieved by Frank and other denialists is not an issue for those who spread such denialist messages, or those who happily receive them.

      As for debunking Frank's crazyman attack on climatology, this debunking can be achieved in many ways. There is plenty of opportunity as the man is evidently heavily in denial over AGW and stupid enought to feel he is able to prove that his denial-position is correct while the whole of science is flat wrong.
      I'm not of the view that climbing down the rabbit hole to chase his nonsense round down in the wonderland world of Pat Frank is the best way to debunk Fank's lunacy. (I talk of 'chasing his nonsense' because his latest published serving of nonsense is an embellishment of work now a decade-plus old while a whole lot different from his nonsense from four years back featured in the video linked @4.) Yet this SkS OP is attempting such a chase.

      Frank's obvious stupidity does lend itself to debunking although his embellishments with lengthy coverage of associated stuff in this 2023 paper provides him a means of obfuscation. In such a situation, I'd go straight for the conclusions, or in Frank's latest paper 'final' conclusions.
      So Frank agrees that there has been warming since the 19th century (as shown by phenology which certainly does indicate "unprecedented climate warming over the last 200 years, or over any other timespan" has occurred in recent decades). But generally Frank's paper would suggest the instrument temperature record cannot show any warming. Indeed having told us of the phenological "direct evidence of a warming climate" he then tells us "The 20th century surface air-temperature anomaly, 0.74 ± 1.94 °C (2σ), does not convey any knowledge of rate or magnitude of change in the thermal state of the troposphere." That 0.74 ± 1.94 °C (2σ) surely suggests a 23% chance that measurement of actual temperature represents a cooling not a warming, with a 5% chance of a cooling of -1.2 °C or more.
      And really, if anybody were attempting to question the accuracy of the global temperature instrument record, it would be sensible to start with the work already done to establish such accuracy, eg Lenssen et al (2019). But Frank seemingly doesn't do 'sensible'.

1668. Davz at 01:12 AM on 11 August 2023
      Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
      

      All sounds great until a realistic analysis of the energy creation in countries that have invested billions into clean energy and it's not all it's cracked up to be.  Here in the UK we have over 12000 wind generators, mostly off shore.  The amount of energy they create looks on paper to be a reasonable return on the investment until you start looking at the numbers.  The issue is that generating the electricity carries on through the night and these figures are used by the govt to mislead the tax payer as the energy from the night isnt required, the vast majority of the population are asleep in bed.  It would be great if the energy could be stored but the cost of batteries is at the moment twice the gdp of the uk!  In 2020 wind generation of uk output was 25%, remember though that includes night time generation that went to waste.  In 2021 generation was 7% as the wind didn't do its job.  So to compensate for years the wind doesn't blow the Uk would have to invest in at least 100k wind generators and batteries for storage, that would cost many times more than gdp.....completely unaffordable. Then we have the problem that each wind generator Requires 80 imperial gallons of oil every year for lubrication, if the whole world invests in wind farms oil will still be needed.  The only realistic solution is nuclear.

1669. David-acct at 21:00 PM on 10 August 2023
      Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
      

      This article describes the massive increases in new electric generation from solar installations by noting the huge increases in solar "capacity" including the following quotes:

      "....project that the U.S. will install about 63 gigawatts of new solar capacity by the end of 2024"

      " the record 24 gigawatts of solar capacity added in 2021 will likely be broken in 2023 "

      Gross increases in solar capacity should be read in full context. If one is going to discuss increases in electric generation from solar, one should be using realistic numbers. As noted by Jacobson in his study of 100% renewables, the US actual solar generation is approx 20.8% of capacity . See his table S11 in his recent 2022 study. Canada actual generation from solar is slightly less at 18% of capacity and Europe is only 17.6% of capacity. Also note that the winter months, the northern US and Canada the electric generation from solar is in the range of 10% or less of capacity.

      Below is a link to the German electric generation by source. Note that during the summer months, solar generates 12k GW's -15k GW's daily, while in the winter months, the electricity generated from solar ranges from 1k GW/s -4k Gw's and often falls below 1k GW's.

       

      www.agora-energiewende.de/en/service/recent-electricity-data/chart/power_generation/09.08.2022/09.08.2023/today/

       

      LINK

      Moderator Response:

      [RH] Shortened link

1670. sailrick at 13:26 PM on 10 August 2023
      Just how fast will clean energy grow in the U.S.?
      

       If only we could expand wind and solar as fast as China has.
      In 2020 they installed 72 GW of wind and 48 GW of PV solar.
      In 2022, they installed another 37.6 GW of wind and 87.4 GW of solar.
      In just the first two months of 2023 they installed over 20 GW of solar.
      But then, I think they have invested a lot in HVDC long distance transmission lines.

1671. Eclectic at 09:12 AM on 10 August 2023
      A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
      

      Correction : should be Nigelj @ post 6.   Almost certainly!

1672. Eclectic at 09:08 AM on 10 August 2023
      A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
      

      Nigelj @8 , you are correct about some of the characters that you yourself encounter at RealClimate blog.   Psychiatrically though, the WUWT blog presents a "target-rich environment" for a wider range of pathologies.   And Dr Pat Frank is still to be seen making brief comments in the WUWT threads . . . but mostly his comments match the run-of-the-mill WUWT craziness stuff, rather than relating to the Uncertainty Monster.

      Anecdote ~ long ago, I knew a guy who had spent a decade or more tinkering in his garden shed, inventing an electrical Perpetual-Motion machine.  Continual updates & modifications, but somehow never quite hitting the bullseye.  He had a pleasant-enough personality, not a narcissist.  But definitely had a bee in his bonnet or a crack in his pot [=pate].    R.I.P.

      And the Uncertainty Monster still lives in the darker corners of public discussion.   Living sometimes as a mathematical nonsense, but much more commonly in the form of: "Well, that AGW stuff is not absolutely certain to six decimal places, so we ought to ignore it all."    Or existing in the practical sphere as: "It is not certain that we could eventually power all our economy with renewables & other non-fossil-fuel systems . . . so we should not even make a partial effort."

1673. nigelj at 07:04 AM on 10 August 2023
      A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
      

      Pat Frank sounds like a classic case of a person promoting crank science. Scientific crank for short.

      I'm no expert in scientific cranks, or crank science, but I have a little bit of background in psychology having done a few papers at university, (although I have a design degree). I have observed that cranks have certain attributes.

      1)They are usually moderately intelligent, sometimes highly intelligent. This helps them come up with inventive nonsense.

      2)They are very stubborn and dont admit they are wrong, either to themselves or anyone else.

      3) They also frequently tend to be egocentric, arrogant, very confident and somewhat narcissistic. Some people have a disorder called NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) or lean that way:

      "Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. People with this disorder may lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence, they are not sure of their self-worth and are easily upset by the slightest criticism." (mayo clinic)

      Narcissists are usually overconfident and very arrogant and they can sometimes be very dishonest.

      We all have some egoism or self love, but narcissists are at the extreme end of the spectrum. Maybe its a bell curve distribution thing.

      I've noticed that narcissists are unable to ever admit to themselves or others that they are wrong about something and perhaps its because its exceptionally painful for this personality type. So they just go on repeating the same nonsense forever. 

      While nobody loves admitting they are wrong, or have been fooled or sucked in, either to themselves or others most people eventually do and move on.

      Unfortuntately this means the cranks hang around influencing those who want reasons to deny the climate issue.

      And of course some of the scientific cranks prove to be correct at least about some things. Which confuses things further. But it looks to me like most cranks  aren't correct, especially the arm chair cranks who may not have science degrees.

      The Realclimate.org website attracts some of these cranks, including both climate science denialists and also warmists usually with dubious mitigation solutions. You guys probably know who I mean.

1674. Bob Loblaw at 22:18 PM on 9 August 2023
      A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
      

      Yes, Eclectic. That video - and the comments from Pat Frank - are rather mind-boggling. That video is one of the key links given in the AndThenTheresPhysics blog post on Propagation of Uncertainty that I linked to above.

      There were many other red flags in the recent paper by Frank. On page 18, in the last paragraph, he makes the claim that "...the ship bucket and engine-intake measurement errors displayed non-normal distributions, inconsistent with random error." There are many other distributions in physics - uniform, Poisson, etc. - that can occur with random data. Non-normality is not a test for randomness.

      In this blog post, I focused on the most basic mistakes he makes with respect to simple statistics - standard error of the mean, etc.

      Frankly, it is Pat Frank that does not know what he is talking about.

1675. Eclectic at 10:44 AM on 9 August 2023
      A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
      

      There is a 2017 YouTube presentation by by Dr Patrick T. Brown (climatologist) which is highly critical of Dr Patrick Frank's ideas.  The video title is:-  "Do 'propagation of error' calculations invalidate climate model projections of global warming?"   [length ~38 minutes]

      This video currently shows 7235 views and 98 comments ~ many of which are rather prickly comments by Patrick Frank . . . who at one point says "see my post on the foremost climate blog Watts Up With That" [a post in 2015?]      # Frank also states: "There's no doubt that the climate models cannot predict future air temperatures. There is also no doubt that the IPCC does not know what it's talking about."

      Frank has also made many prickly comments on WUWT at various other times.  And he has an acolyte or two on WUWT who will always denounce any critics as not understanding that uncertainty and error are not the same.  [And yet the acolytes also fail to address the underlying physical events in global climate.]

      In a nutshell : Dr Patrick Frank's workings have a modicum of internal validity mathematically, but ultimately are unphysical.

1676. John Mason at 10:08 AM on 9 August 2023
      At a glance - The tricks employed by the flawed OISM Petition Project to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change
      

      Nigel J #5: Thanks for this feedback. If plenty of people "only read the headline or first paragraph, or half of articles", then there's the huuuuge problem with humanity/for our community straight away! That aside, I take your point here: it is a valid criticism. Noted for actioning at some nearby date (this is a big project so has to be time-managed appropriately)....

1677. nigelj at 08:05 AM on 9 August 2023
      At a glance - The tricks employed by the flawed OISM Petition Project to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change
      

      "How the OISM Petition Project casts doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change......Do you think that a lot of scientists reject the idea that human-caused carbon emissions are responsible for climate change - and is that because you once read about a petition signed by them to that effect? If the answer is yes, then this is for you."

      It is well known that plenty of people only read the headline or first paragraph, or half  of articles, and here you are stating in the headline that a petition casts doubt on the consensus on climate change, and the very first paragraph states that lots of scientists reject that human emissions cause climate change. With not even a  mention of how flawed the oregon petiton was in the first paragraph.

      Is this the impression you wanted to leave those readers with? It looks self defeating to me. 

1678. Bob Loblaw at 03:06 AM on 9 August 2023
      At a glance - The tricks employed by the flawed OISM Petition Project to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change
      

      Whenever these kinds of petitions come up. I always like to mention the National Center for Science Education's Project Steve. Although targeted at similar petitions related to evolution/creation science, it is equally applicable here. From their preamble:

      NCSE's "Project Steve" is a tongue-in-cheek parody of a long-standing creationist tradition of amassing lists of "scientists who doubt evolution" or "scientists who dissent from Darwinism."

      Creationists draw up these lists to try to convince the public that evolution is somehow being rejected by scientists, that it is a "theory in crisis." Not everyone realizes that this claim is unfounded. NCSE has been asked numerous times to compile a list of thousands of scientists affirming the validity of the theory of evolution. Although we easily could have done so, we have resisted. We did not wish to mislead the public into thinking that scientific issues are decided by who has the longer list of scientists!

      Project Steve pokes fun at this practice and, because "Steves" are only about 1% of scientists, it also makes the point that tens of thousands of scientists support evolution. And it honors the late Stephen Jay Gould, evolutionary biologist, NCSE supporter, and friend.

      We'd like to think that after Project Steve, we'll have seen the last of bogus "scientists doubting evolution" lists, but it's probably too much to ask. We hope that when such lists are proposed, reporters and other citizens will ask, "How many Steves are on your list!?"

      Even more tongue-in-cheek was when a federal political party in Canada was proposing a process where a referendum could be forced if a group could get 3% of the electorate to sign a petition. The leader's name was Stockwell Day, and a comedy show gathered names on a petition asking Stockwell Day to change his name to Doris Day. (Yes, they got enough signatures. No, he did not change his name.)

1679. John Mason at 02:02 AM on 9 August 2023
      At a glance - The tricks employed by the flawed OISM Petition Project to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change
      

      Re #1 - a very good geologist colleague of mine totally fell for the petition, mainly because I guess he was politically very conservative and the very notion of global warming did not fit with his worldview. I soon realised good scientists can let politics get in the way of trusting other scientific disciplines to have the same rigour as one's own. In a sense, I learned an important lesson right there.

1680. Bob Loblaw at 01:18 AM on 9 August 2023
      A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
      

      Gil @ 1:

      Who is "he"? Patrick Frank? Can you specify in which part of his article he makes this reference?

1681. John Hartz at 01:14 AM on 9 August 2023
      At a glance - The tricks employed by the flawed OISM Petition Project to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change
      

      I suspect that many of the OISM signers have passed away over the past 25 years. The petition is now an irrelevant historical artifact. 

1682. DavidS at 00:38 AM on 9 August 2023
      A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
      

      You cannot validate science with marketing, nor marketing with scientific processes. In this article there is a lot of taking something hot in one hand as proof the other hand is not cold. A lot of selling going on here. 

       

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] - Contents snipped. This is a return of a previously-banned user, using a new name, which is strictly prohibited by the Comments Policy.

1683. Gil O at 23:46 PM on 8 August 2023
      A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty
      

      He lost me when he called nominal thermometer precision with accuracy. Maybe it was a typo, but such an elementary mistake really takes a toll on any presumed ethos the author may have wanted to project. 

1684. ubrew12 at 17:33 PM on 8 August 2023
      At a glance - The tricks employed by the flawed OISM Petition Project to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change
      

      My Dad signed that petition.  He was a Crop Scientist.  I'm sure he meant well, but 'damage done'.  How hard is it to sign your name?  I took two terms of Atmospheric Physics.  For a few months I was working to get a PhD in climatology, but I later left to get a Masters in Mechanical Engineering.  Did I sign any petitions?  Have I signed any since?  Because I was lightyears more qualified to do so than my Father, who knew a lot about Plant Genetics, and a little about anything other than Plant Genetics.  But, regarding the Scientific opposition to AGW, that has rarely been a disqualifier.  As long as you 'wrote the book' on Plant Genetics, then you must certainly know everything there is to know about the subset of GeoPhysics called Atmospheric Science...

1685. BaerbelW at 02:27 AM on 7 August 2023
      Extreme weather isn't caused by global warming
      

      Please note: the basic version of this rebuttal has been updated on August 6, 2023 and now includes an "at a glance“ section at the top. To learn more about these updates and how you can help with evaluating their effectiveness, please check out the accompanying blog post @ https://sks.to/at-a-glance

1686. John Mason at 21:15 PM on 6 August 2023
      The difference between land surface temperature and surface air temperature
      

      Here's a telling chart: July 2023 would have been warmer than average against 1961-1990 climatology, but against 1991-2020 it was a bit cool:

      

1687. John Mason at 16:46 PM on 6 August 2023
      The difference between land surface temperature and surface air temperature
      

      And according to Trevor Harley, July 1922 was the coldest on record with an average temperature of 13.7C.

1688. John Mason at 16:29 PM on 6 August 2023
      The difference between land surface temperature and surface air temperature
      

      also re - #2, I just checked and in the UK, July 2023 had a mean temperature across the month of 14.9C, 0.3C below the average for the period 1991-2020. Ironically, June was the warmest UK June on record with a mean temperature of 15.8C, this being 2.5C higher than average. Note the mich wider margin by which the heat record was broken; July was only a bit sub-par (no record there).

1689. John Mason at 16:15 PM on 6 August 2023
      The difference between land surface temperature and surface air temperature
      

      re #2: As Eclectic points out, wildfires have occurred in the geologic record ever since land plants colonised the landmasses. Charcoal horizons in terrestrial sedimentary rocks provide the evidence. Dry lightning is a very obvious cause and is a key causal factor in many parts of the world today.
      
      Vegetation does not spontaneously combust but can become well-primed by prolonged hot rain-free conditions to become an inferno should a fire start from any cause.

      The UK has certainly had a below-average July but that's because it was stuck on the cold side of the jetstream for much of the month.

      Looking back through reanalysis charts, 'Cerberus' was a flabby anticyclone but nevertheless it caused northwards warm air advection from northern Africa, just as UK heatwaves involve warm air advection from southern Europe as a rule, hence the meteorological term, 'Spanish Plume'. In a warming world, the chances of such events causing even hotter conditions are obviously increased.

1690. PollutionMonster at 15:03 PM on 6 August 2023
      It's not urgent
      

      Eclectic@40

      Thank you I found the quote, would have taken me a very long time to find on my own. I could only find a much lower number before. Going to argue with some deniers now. :)

1691. citizenschallenge at 13:38 PM on 6 August 2023
      The Cranky Uncle game can now also be played in Romanian!
      

      Congratulations.

      Keep up the good work.

1692. prove we are smart at 10:35 AM on 6 August 2023
      Skeptical Science New Research for Week #31 2023
      

      MA Rodger @2,

      Thanks for that reply, I agree entirely with your comments and the link you shared was especially informative, cheers Col.

1693. Eclectic at 10:02 AM on 6 August 2023
      The difference between land surface temperature and surface air temperature
      

      Davz @2 ,

      You have many questions ~ but I would be grateful if you would clarify your second question.

      Your second question does not seem to make sense.  I assume that you are correct in that the ignition temperature of scrubland materials would be high (for instance, the wood-based material known as paper has an auto-ignition temperature above 200 degreesC ).   And climate range does not extend anywhere near 200 degreesC, or even 100 degreesC.

      And yet wildfires have occurred throughout pre-history, before humans & hominids, and even well before 1 million years BC.   So your "question" presents a paradox ~ wildfires cannot occur naturally . . . and yet wildfires have occurred naturally.

      Perhaps the paradox can be resolved by you expressing yourself more logically.  Were you perhaps meaning to say that climate favoring hotter drier days would make wildfires worse in extent & intensity . . . which would make sense ~ but that makes nonsense of your second question.

1694. Davz at 08:04 AM on 6 August 2023
      The difference between land surface temperature and surface air temperature
      

      could the author kindly explain the role of the anti-cyclone known as Cerberus on the heat wave in southern Europe?  Could you also explain how wild fires were started by climate change as spontaneous combustion of scrubland normally takes place at a much higher temperature, temperatures beyond that of the climate, so how can wildfires be attributed to the climate?  Can you explain why the temperatures in Europe are now normal and have not been maintained and lastly why has the UK experienced the coldest July on record.  Events like these need explanation If they are going to be attributed to global warming.

1695. Jim Hunt at 08:01 AM on 6 August 2023
      The difference between land surface temperature and surface air temperature
      

      "People who create and/or circulate such myths are denying plain reality."
      
      There's a lot of it about at the moment John! My own recent article on the creation and circulation of similar myths takes a look at some theory whilst also debunking some specific "skeptical" memes:

      https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2023/08/the-information-war-with-the-fossil-fuel-industry/

      By way of just one example, if you can spot the difference between these two graphs of Arctic sea ice extent you may well wonder why a certain "Steve Goddard" has been continuously blasting the former data at his flock of faithful followers rather than the latter?
      
      
      
      

      Events, dear Tony, events!

1696. MA Rodger at 04:03 AM on 6 August 2023
      Skeptical Science New Research for Week #31 2023
      

      prove we are smart @1,

      You ask "Is all if this video true?" The answer is 'No'.

      It is true that the sulphur emissions from shipping causes cloud formation. But the assertion that the absence of such emissions is the cause of the high 2023 Atlantic SSTs is a difficult one to accept.

      The annual June anomaly for such SSTs is plotted here in this Copernicus item on the heat waves, as is the daily year-on-year plot (as seen in the video @0.25). Note that we are not seeing a rise in SST through recent years as we would expect to see resulting from a lowering of sulphur pollution. This is, as the Copernicus item describes, primarily a weather-driven event. The contributions from GHG forcing and pollution are not the the immediate cause of the specacular temperature anomalies.

      And the assertion that we could through geoengineering cool the planet and reverse AGW is exceedingly naive. Significant cooling of the planet through geoengineering would come with unintended and very likely unwelcome climatic impacts. A better plan is to put all our efforts into reducing CO2 emissions and after that intentionally removing past emissions.

1697. prove we are smart at 20:15 PM on 5 August 2023
      Skeptical Science New Research for Week #31 2023
      

      Just a few questions for the scientists here:

      Is all of this video true?

      Do ocean vessils create "sea tracks" making clouds that shade out the ocean more than the dust blowing off-shore from the Sahara Desert often does?

      Can it be simply done to seed the ocean air with air-blast sea-water droplets when atmospheric conditions are suitable and make clouds bigger to create shade and should it be done? Just wondering..

      www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk8pwE3IByg

1698. Eclectic at 17:55 PM on 4 August 2023
      It's not urgent
      

      PM @39 ,

      Nordhaus's comments are found in the online Washington Post, in an interview with Steven Mufson on 14th June 2021.

      About halfway down the rather short interview.   To me, Nordhaus seems very reasonable ~ apart from his obliviousness to the vast misery consequent on a 3 or 4 degree warmer world.   He also opines that "Carbon Price" would sound much better than "Carbon Tax" . . . so yes, I think he is very aware of the delicate sensibilities  of many of his American audience!

1699. PollutionMonster at 15:49 PM on 4 August 2023
      It's not urgent
      

      Eclectic @38

      
      You've made some interesting points. One week I really dug in and was arguing for 8 hours + a day with deniers, did not make me happy. Do you have a source for the $100 per ton tax on carbon emissions from Nordhaus? I've searched and searched but could not find. Thank you.

1700. David-acct at 08:31 AM on 4 August 2023
      2023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #30
      

      Nigelj - 44.304% number was the same as yours (though I was rounding ) ..

      Thats what I like about cross checking the data in a dispassionate manner against actual source data so the I can honestly evaluate the factual evidence without being swayed by activists talking points.  

       

      for example Michael makes mention of Hydro  to cover the shortages, though there is no Hydro in the ercot grid, nor is the geography  or water storage needs compatable with utilizing hydro.  

      Michael also makes mention of the battery storage such as being used in the De Cordova plant near grandbury with 260mw battery storage,  though that battery storage is only good for 1 hour at full usage.  The 260mw is comparable to the plant hourly capacity, so it the plant shuts down, the backup power is only good for 1 hour ( longer if shut down occurs in non peak season)  The backup power is used to reduce the  peaking power requirement , thus is nearly fully discharged daily during the summer.  

       

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