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Ian Forrester at 06:11 AM on 25 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
Keithpickering, according to Roy Spencer UAH and RSS do not use the same data anymore. UAH switched to the newer NASA Aqua AMSU satellite while RSS use data from the older NOAA-15 satellite. Spencer claims that the older satellite "has a decaying orbit, to which they are then applying a diurnal cycle drift correction based upon a climate model, which does not quite match reality".
This is what is causing the divergence between the two data sets.
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tlitb1 at 05:08 AM on 25 February 2014MP Graham Stringer and CNN Crossfire are wrong about the 97% consensus on human-caused global warming
@ 37. Tom Curtis
As such, the two sorts of ratings do not, and cannot compounded into a conglomerate rating as you suggest.
I'd like to assure you that I do not think that the abstract ratings should be merged in any way with the self-ratings. On the contrary, it seems more logical to assume that scientist self-ratings of their papers override, or displaces, the former rating.
I think you agree with on this point since you say:
...on average the pattern of ratings by authors represents a check on the accuracy of both the method of rating papers by abstract alone and on the accuracy of abstract raters.
I.e. by using the author ratings as a 'check' like this, it implies they are trusted to be a reliable bench mark. I don't see anything in Cook et al's methodology for considering errors, or throwing out false answers from the surveyed authors. So by implication they are taken to be the correct categorisation.
So when you say:
In this case, Spencer makes an explicit claim about how he would be rated, a claim which is shown to be false by the actual facts.
I am not sure what actual facts have 'shown' any of his statements as false. Currently the only 'fact' I see is the category 5 rating of his papers' abstract as assessed by the Cook et al authors and bloggers here.
I don't think Spencers contradicted that this has happened has he?
I don't think Spencers statements have been explored thouroughly, but for the sake of argument, if Spencer is now publicly rating his own paper as category 3 I don't see how it can be said to be a false rating, or have any less validity than if he did this within the self-rating process.
Surely the argument here isn't just that Cook et al rated one of Spencers works as category 5 and that is enough to define his stance?
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rocketeer at 04:57 AM on 25 February 2014Our Facebook page reaches 20,000 likes
It even looks like a Hockey Stick, congratualtions!
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Paul D at 04:50 AM on 25 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
Cornwall Alliance - "Earth and its ecosystems—created by God's intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory."
Well the bit - '...are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting...' - is correct but since God has defined the rules of Physics and let us know those rules, we know that the rules can result in harm to humans.In other words it is self regulating and correcting, but that doesn't mean that process will always sustain humans. You would have to deny there was ever an Ice Age to believe that the only outcome good be good for humans.
I think the Cornwall Alliance statement is a creation of the human mind not God.
The problem Spencer has is that he may have to create 'fictions' eventually in order for his religion to match his science. It's already looking like that, which might explain why he and others are getting cornered and becoming more extreme.
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keithpickering at 04:48 AM on 25 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
Another huge discrepancy!
Here's Christy & Mcnider's WSJ graph:
http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/EG-AD687A_McNid_G_20140220095703.jpg
Note that these are supposed to be 5-year averages. Note that the satellite 5-year average begins in 1980, and ends in 2013.
So how did they get that 5-year average in 1980, when they only had 2 years worth of satellite data in 1980?
I smell a rat.
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keithpickering at 04:40 AM on 25 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
Regarding mid-troposphere datasets, it’s important to note that UAH and RSS differ by a factor of three in temperature trend, despite the fact that these two groups use the exact same raw data from the exact same satellites. Thus at least one of these two groups is doing something pretty badly wrong in their analysis. So when you average one good dataset with one bad one, as Christy and Mcnider have done (and as Spencer did before them on his blog), you know for sure you’ve got bad data in the mix.
The same criticism applies to balloon-borne datasets: the underlying data is the same, but it’s being analyized differently by different groups. Thus by averaging you’re putting bad data in with the good.
A far better procedure is to actually look at the way these groups analyze data and figure out who’s doing it best. For example, when you take RSS as the best of the two satellite datasets and RATPAC as the best of the balloon datasets, most of the discrepancy between that and models disappears.
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Dikran Marsupial at 04:26 AM on 25 February 2014Models are unreliable
sapient fridge - the start date isn't cherry picked in this case as 1979 is the start of the satelite record, ut the use of a single year baseline is still incorrect for the reasons I demonstrated to jsmith on the previous thread.
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Sapient Fridge at 04:20 AM on 25 February 2014Models are unreliable
jsmith, I think it's the same tricks as described on HotWhopper i.e. they picked a nice big spike in the observation data to "align" the models starting point with. My understanding is that models should be started at a multi-year average temperature - not a particular cherry picked start year e.g. 1979 in this case.
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Dikran Marsupial at 04:13 AM on 25 February 2014Models are unreliable
jsmith, they are essentially using the very same trick I already explained to you here.
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Dikran Marsupial at 04:08 AM on 25 February 2014Models are unreliable
jsmith - Christy and McNider are using the same "on-year baseline" trick that they have been using for quite a while. This is a method used to make the difference between the models and the observations look bigger than it actually is, for details see dana's recent blog post at the Guardian (don't be put off by the title - the stuff about Christy and McNider is the second half of the post after the stuff anout Roy Spencer's unfortunate meltdown). Of course this won't fool anybody that understands how the models work and what the ensemble method does, but it does make great fodder for the media and "skeptic" blogs.
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jsmith at 03:36 AM on 25 February 2014Models are unreliable
A recent article in the WSJ by John Christy and Richard McNider (I'm sure many of you know about it) claims that the models predicted more warming than was actually observed. I'll leave it here so that other contributors can explain why it is either misleading or flat-out wrong. The image I am referring to is entitled "Warming Predictions vs. the Real World". I would just add the image, but I can't figure out how, so here's the article.
Moderator Response:[RH] Hotlinked url.
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Jim Eager at 02:56 AM on 25 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
Elmwood, it could just be the evolution of the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, since the Carbonist Barons seem to see themselves as the new Monarchy.
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Tom Dayton at 02:10 AM on 25 February 2014CO2 lags temperature
dwm, I replied to you on an appropriate water vapor thread.
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Tom Dayton at 02:08 AM on 25 February 2014Humidity is falling
dwm: The NASA press release you quoted was written in 2004--ten years ago, and one of the authors was Dessler, whose more recent work is cited in the orginal post at the top of this thread you are reading now.
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Joel_Huberman at 01:06 AM on 25 February 20142014 SkS Weekly Digest #8
What is meant by "TCP"?
Moderator Response:[JH] TCP = The Consensus Project undertaken by the all-volunteer, SkS author team lead by John Cook.
The TCP culminated in the publication of the peer-reviewed paper, Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature. Environmental Research Letters, 2013; 8 (2): 024024 DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024
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One Planet Only Forever at 00:48 AM on 25 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
Reflecting on the Parking Fees point in my list of things fought against @27, it is very pertinent to the possible actions regarding CO2.
Parking is a limited opportuity that everyone tries to enjoy. But it is actually something that needs to be discouraged until the use of private vehicles is sustainable, something that everyone can choose to do forever.
However, a parking fee is only addressing part of the issue, the fighting over the limited opportunity. And it addresses it in a socially unacceptable way, by saying those with more money get the right to benefit from doing the thing that only a few can be allowed to do. A better solution would be much more effective ad affprdable public transportation systems (subsidized by taxation of the wealthier people who want to park). But even that better solution creates the socially unacceptable desires to be like the wealthy and be able to do unacceptable things.
A focus on parking, like a focus on CO2, can become a distraction from the bigger issue of the wealthy needing to be the leaders toward totally sustainable living.
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One Planet Only Forever at 00:34 AM on 25 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
Correction of my @27 comment: My list is a muddled mix of unacceptable things that are fought for, and actions to try to limit unacceptable things that are fought against
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One Planet Only Forever at 00:30 AM on 25 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
Spencer's participation in the Cornwall Alliance appears to indicate that his Doctorate of Philosophy is in Spiritual Reflections that cannot be proven or disproved, just be discussed for as long as some are willing to potentially believe them.
That explains his persistence at a hobby he has little evidence of skill in, climate science.
However, his person view that "God has ensured that Humanity can do no wrong" contradicts the clearly established and open admission of the fallibility of humans and the need many have to confess their sins. And it is not likely to be the motivation for his persistence in arguing against climate science (he is not participating in developing the fullest and best understanding. He is clearly struggling to argue against that effort.
There has always been a strong motivation in some people to disbelieve that benefiting from burning fossil fuels was unacceptable. It fits the pattern of reluctance to accept any new information and better understanding that indicates the unacceptability of what a person is accustomed to enjoy getting away with. As examples of this obvious and powerful motivation to dismiss new information and discredit those attempting to lead to a more sustainable society and economic arrangement I offer the following unacceptable things that are persistently fought against:
- driving after drinking
- speeding
- newly established parking fees
- smoking in public places
- high-fructose corn syrup
- pesticides and herbicides used for pleasure or convenience
- antibiotic use to deal with the problems developed by cows fed grains to make them grow quicker. Feeding grain to make cows grow quicker also leads to greater risk of contaminated meat because the bowels of those cows contain compounds poisonous to humans.
- non-Caucasians are equal and acceptable (and the versions that have struggled to be applied in many other cultures).
- non-Christians are equal and acceptable (and the versions that have struggled to be applied in many other cultures)
- private ownership of killing devices and carrying them in public is unacceptable.
The motivation of Spencer and others is clear. Their interest is not in the Science, it is abusing their understanding of the popularity of Non-Science to prolong the ability of some people to benefit more and longer from unacceptable attitudes and behaviours. Al Gore may be best known for "The Inconvenient Truth", but his book "The Assault on Reason" is more pertinent to the climate science 'debate' (and calling it a debate is clearly debatable)
The actions of the contrarians are unsustainable and damaging, just like the popular and profitable activities they persistently struggle to defend. The sooner they are unable to get away with the unacceptable things they want to get away with the better it will be for everyone else.
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How we know the greenhouse effect isn't saturated
I’m aware of that, nealjking. My calculations only considered transmittance of the original radiation entering the path of air, not re-emission within the air itself. That, combined with the cooling and thinning air with altitude, is a crucial part of the non-saturation argument, as Glenn Tamblyn pointed out in the blog post.
If the only radiation escaping to space came directly from the surface while the atmosphere only absorbed without re-emitting, much of the radiation shown in the MODTRAN graph in @67 would be virtually zero. -
Dikran Marsupial at 20:49 PM on 24 February 2014CO2 lags temperature
dwm wrote "All the data shows is that as temperature increases, the oceans breath out co2, then as temperatures decrease, they inhale and store it until it heats up again."
This is basically true, but only if temperature is the only thing that is changing. An important feature of the science that is missing here is that the uptake of CO2 into the oceans is also governed by the difference in partial pressure between the atmosphere and the surface ocean. If the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the solubility of CO2 in the oceans also increases. Fossil fuel emissions have caused atmospheric CO2 concentrations to rise, which in turn has resulted in a strengthening of the oceanic sink. The fact that atmospheric CO2 levels have only risen at about half the rate of anthropogenic emissions shows that the effect of the change in the difference in partial pressure dominates the effect due to the increase in temperature.Thus, as Daniel correctly pointed out, we know for sure that the oceans are not the source of the post-industrial rise in CO2 (in fact the oceans have been opposing the rise by taking in more CO2 than it emits).
The water-vapour feedback mechanism seems to be off-topic for this article, so if you want to discuss that, please take the discussion elsewhere on SkS.
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dwm at 20:39 PM on 24 February 2014CO2 lags temperature
To make my point completely clear, also from the NASA article:
"Using the UARS data to actually quantify both specific humidity and relative humidity, the researchers found, while water vapor does increase with temperature in the upper troposphere, the feedback effect is not as strong as models have predicted. "The increases in water vapor with warmer temperatures are not large enough to maintain a constant relative humidity"
Moderator Response:[TD] An appropriate place to discuss water vapor is What Does the Full Body of Evidence Tell Us About Water Vapor?
Anybody who replies to dwm about this topic in future, please do so there, not here.
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dwm at 20:21 PM on 24 February 2014CO2 lags temperature
The data on this page shows co2 rising after (lagging, as in the title) temperature rises, and vice versa. That's "all we know." I didn't say "the" source, the data shows that the oceans are a source. The data on this page is a historical record going back thousands of years and has nothing to do with anthropogenic co2 production. Your erroneous reply avoids the point of what I wrote: that "without reliable data regarding humidity, theories about the positive feeback loop caused by water vapor are no more likely than any other theory." The current climate models predicting catestrophic rises in temperature rely on humidity levels to remain constant in order to trigger a positive feedback loop from the water vapor in the atmosphere, however the most recent data suggests humidity levels are falling, or in other words, from NASA's website:
" Since water vapor is the most important heat-trapping greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, some climate forecasts may be overestimating future temperature increases. "
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/warmer_humidity.html
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Elmwood at 18:25 PM on 24 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
As far as I can tell, the Cornwall Alliance basically holds that God wouldn't let the environment be seriously harmed by the burning of fossil fuels because oil and coal have allowed some people to become more prosperous.
It sounds like a health and wealth gospel more or less, that God desires his elect to be materially rich. This is really very dangerous stuff because it’s confusing a scientific question with a religious one and will only make the denier movement more fanatical.Funny, I thought Pope Francis mentioned that "when nature-creation-is mistreated, she never forgives". I guess he's reading a different bible.
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Rob Honeycutt at 16:05 PM on 24 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
It always strikes me as self-serving to label anyone today who is ideologically opposed to you as Nazi. The Nazis were such a mish-mash of ideological positions both left and right (though, generally fascism is accepted by scholars to be a right wing ideology). Nazism is sort of a food fight buffet of positions. You can pick and choose what you like to splatter onto someone you don't agree with.
Ultimately, whenever one discusses Nazis the first thing that should come to mind is the fact that we're talking about the politics of 70 and 80 years ago. It's so far removed from today as to be mostly not comparable.
What is shocking to me is that Spencer, who is supposed to be a respected scientist, who is repeatedly being selected to present to Congress, doesn't have the presence of mind to realize this. Not only that, he's so lacking in presence of mind that he actually doubled down on his own position... and has yet to retract his comments.
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dhogaza at 15:12 PM on 24 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
"Villabolo, another good comeback would be to inform them that American socialist joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and went off to fight fascism on the side of the Republicans while Hitler gave support to Franco."
Indeed, such socialists were labelled "premature anti-fascists" ...
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Magma at 14:43 PM on 24 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
As I recall, many of the older, distinguished physicists who rejected the new field of quantum mechanics eventually retired, their reputations largely undamaged but resting solely on their earlier work. The same was true for the leading geologists who rejected plate tectonics ('continental drift'), and I suspect for eminent biologists who dismissed evolution in the late 19th century. The main paradigms of their fields had shifted, leaving them behind, but their contributions were acknowledged and respected.
I do not think the same will hold for the small group of climate scientists (in the broadest sense) represented by the likes of Lindzen, Spencer, Christy and more recently Curry.
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Global warming stopped in
1998,1995,2002,2007,2010, ????
jsmith - The 'Weekly Digest' posts appear to be basically open threads, I would suggest that if you find something without a relevant post (see the Search box on the upper left) you might post it there. At the very least someone might be able to direct you to an existing conversation on that topic.
The 'stadium wave' is, IMO, a case of inappropriate bandpass filtering and of curve fitting.
Band pass: Take a signal, any signal, and add a bit of noise (white, pink, red, it matters not). Then bandpass filter it (drop slow and fast variations) to remove anything outside your frequency of interest. What remains will match your filter, guaranteed. It's extremely likely that your result is part of the noise, but unless you examine the entire spectrum you may not realize (or, in some cases, care) that the dominant signal falls outside your bandpass.
An exemplar of this is McLean et al 2009, making claims about the ENSO causing climate change - after a bandpass filtering that removed long term (climate) trends.
Curve-fitting: See basically anything by Scaffeta; given a number of free parameters and an array of cyclic phenomena, you can always find cycles correlation (causation be damned) with a dataset. But if you don't have a physical mechanism, and if you don't treat such correlation as a motivation to see if there might be some causal connection, it's nonsense. At some point I'm going to have to try fitting climate change to multi-year cicada populations and grey vs. black squirrel ranges - I'm sure I can make a fit occur. But like the astrology inherent in Scafetta's work, it won't mean anything. And such a decomposition won't have any predictive power, because it's not based on actual physics.
Moderator Response:[JH] The comment threads of both the Weekly Digest and the Weekly News Roundup posts ae indeed open threads. Of course, all comments posted on them must comply with the SkS Comments policy.
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Tom Dayton at 13:35 PM on 24 February 2014Global warming stopped in
1998,1995,2002,2007,2010, ????
jsmith, the Stadium Wave Theory is nothing but curve fitting. There are a bazillion other cycles that can fit as well or better, but none of them nor the Stadium Wave has any physical science basis nor any other a priori basis. For just one devastating critique, see Stoat's Part 1 and then Part 2. A short summary was written by a rabbett. Another brief critique is at And Then There's Physics.
But as Dana noted, Marcia Wyatt herself stated: "While the results of this study appear to have implications regarding the hiatus in warming, the stadium wave signal does not support or refute anthropogenic global warming. The stadium wave hypothesis seeks to explain the natural multi-decadal component of climate variability."
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One Planet Only Forever at 13:25 PM on 24 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
I agree with TC @14,
Staged trials are not what is needed. They would just create bigger False Idols for the deniers. Winning in the court of public opinion is required. And that is an uphill battle. A lot of Science can be brought to the creation of deliberately deceptive message creation and delivery. The marketing community has tremendous amounts of research showing the effectiveness of attempts to succeeed through deliberate deception. They have less evidence of success from full communication of the facts of the matter.
I admit that the infatuation with Image makes winning public opinion a challenge. However, as Susan Cain presents in her book "Quiet: The Power of Introverts", the switch from admiring substantive claims and civil character to simple adoration of Image is rather recent. It happened in the late 1800s. That unsustainable and damaging change just needs to be reversed.
I would like to see more people actually want to become better informed. People could read the IPCC Summary Report for Policy Makers for themselves in less time than it takes to watch 'part' of a sporting event. Or they could read publications by the WMO or NOAA, or many other extensive presentations of information on this issue. However, I know that a few refuse to do that because they anticipate the result of becoming better informed will not suit their preferred interest.
Even the majority of Americans ackowledge that the CO2 from burning fossil fuels is causing consequences that people in the future will have to deal with. The main problem I see is the way the unsustainable and damaging socioeconomic system they are immersed in makes it very difficult for them to accept the small sacrifice that must be made, because deliberately deceptive fear mongering tells them they will suffer horribly.
I believe the real focus needs to be on using issues like climate change and other evidence of unacceptable impacts of human activities, particularly when one group benefits frmo creating harm that other suffer the consequences of, to highlight that the socioeconomic system needs to change. It needs to include consideration for thsoe in the future who have no vote and have no buying power.
The unsustainable and damaging activities need to be seen as unacceptable, rather than somehow deserving a 'fair and balanced' treatment (that is heavily biased in their favour), compared to the fundamental requirements of sustainable activity. No amount of percieved profit or popularity should trump the requirement to meet the fundamentals of sustainability.
Paul Hawkin presented an example of the type of changes that could be made and would be benficial in his book "The Ecology of Commerce" written in 1993. Of course Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" was published in 1962. And there is so much that has been provided over the decades that I hope it eventually all "Just Makes Too Much Sense to be Ignored Anymore". The sooner the better for the future of humanity.
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Sceptical Wombat at 13:15 PM on 24 February 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 1
Bob@2
Thanks for the response. Of course you need to determine your own enhancement priorities. I only make the point that the fact that you can decrypt the passwords means that the method for doing so is somewhere in your code and in principle at least hackable. That's one reason why secure sites use one way encryption and only ever send out new, temporary passwords which have to be changed on first use. That's why I was surprised when I received my old forgotten password in plain text via Email.
Moderator Response:[BL] The thing is, a site like this shouldn't need all that much security. All you can really do (now) by stealing someone's password is to post comments using their user ID... annoying, but it's not like stealing credit card info.
Of course (as you'll learn in future posts) at the time of the hack, that wasn't the case.
And I am all in favor of salting passwords -- and we have on the new forum -- but salting is protection against dictionary attacks, rainbow tables and other intricate password hacking schemes. Our DoS protections would pretty much also thwart a dictionary attack or brute-force attack.
If I had the time, and for any site that I set up from scratch, salts are easy and painless. Working with a site that's been in existence for 7 years, and has evolved considerably over that time, however, presents a much greater coding problem.
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Stranger8170 at 13:02 PM on 24 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
Rob @19
I can only read a few of those comments. It's too bad that for what ever reason, we don't teach students any relevent history. I suspect they're just to many inconvient truths that the status quo finds disturbing.
I think Jonah Goldberg got the ball rolling on the whole of liberals and Nazi's. What folks don't realize is that in 1932 all German political parties and their members were socialists, except Hitler who also ran as anti abortion as well as restoring German values.
Villabolo, another good comeback would be to inform them that American socialist joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and went off to fight fascism on the side of the Republicans while Hitler gave support to Franco.
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jsmith at 11:57 AM on 24 February 2014Global warming stopped in
1998,1995,2002,2007,2010, ????
I wasn't exactly sure where to put this, so if it's considered "off-topic" here just tell me and I'll repost it in the appropriate thread. A new study in Climate Dynamics, according to its lead author, Marcia Wyatt, identifies a stadium wave signal which may be responsible for the pause in global warming and, Wyatt said in a press release, "predicts that the current pause in global warming could extend into the 2030s." Is there some reason we should not believe her but instead believe those, such as the IPCC, who contend that this is a short-term trend that will soon be overtaken by more global warming?
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villabolo at 11:36 AM on 24 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
Rob @19:
A good comeback to that is to inform them that Hitler killed the Socialist leaders in the Nazi party. The Nazis originally drew from both left (socialist) and right (Nationalists) Germans. This was to attract disaffected Germans from both sides and win (barely) the elections. After they won the real face of anti-left Fascism showed itself.
Then there's Franco, Spain's Fascist dictator. The Socialists were trying to kill him during Spain's civil war.
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lucia at 11:19 AM on 24 February 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 1
To be more complete:
http://torstatus.blutmagie.de/
or:
https://check.torproject.org/cgi-bin/TorBulkExitList.py?ip=198.41.222.255
after ip= you can put the IP of your server to get a list of IPs whose exit policies hit your server. -
Rob Honeycutt at 11:13 AM on 24 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
Stranger @5...
You should go read the comments on Spencer's website. I can hardly count the number of times people post saying, "Oh, you know, actually, Nazis were left wing...blahblahblah."
If you can stomach the comments, it's fascinating to read.
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lucia at 11:12 AM on 24 February 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 1
1) It would be nice to know the IP that hit you and the time it hit you so we could check if it was really Tor here https://exonerator.torproject.org/
2)It's trivially easy to block Tor. The IPs are publicly available for free.
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villabolo at 11:05 AM on 24 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
Moderator-JH @5:
"The use of all caps is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy"
In all fairness the word nazi is an acronym like, for example, the nra. :-)
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scaddenp at 10:53 AM on 24 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
Someone actively publishing climate-related research in mainstream peer-reviewed journals would be my definition. Works by replacing "climate" for any other science discipline too.
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Terranova at 10:35 AM on 24 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
Dana,
What is the definition of a "climate scientist"? Is it based on training, education, research, etc...?
Anyone can answer the question, but I am most interested in Dana's reply.Thanks
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nealjking at 10:30 AM on 24 February 2014How we know the greenhouse effect isn't saturated
HK (#76):
I don't know if this was covered earlier on; but you need to be careful about trying to apply Beer's law to thermal radiation.
Beer's law describes an exponential dying away of intensity as radiation progresses. But thermal radiation does not fritter away to zilch, it fritters away until it reaches the intensity of radiation appropriate for the frequency and the temperature of the gas through which it is passing.
If thermal radiation were simply dissipated by passing through a medium, visible light would never escape the Sun. Visible light is the thermal radiation in the Sun, just as IR is the thermal radiation in the atmosphere.
The subject to look into regarding this is "radiative transfer".
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John Hartz at 08:45 AM on 24 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #8
@YubeDude #3:
Thank you for your suggestion.
The CNN interview that you linked to was posted on Thurs, Feb 20. It will therefore not be included in the next News Roundup which will focus on articles posted on Sat, Feb 22 thru Fri, Feb 28.
Given the volume of articles about climate change that are posted each day on websites throughout the world, it is impossible to list them all in a weekly roundup that provides only a carefully selected sample of such articles.
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scaddenp at 07:48 AM on 24 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
TC - no need to wrestle in the mud with them.
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chriskoz at 07:37 AM on 24 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #8
YubeDude@3,
If US congress is composed of such silly buffons as Cruz, I'm just realy happy right now that I defected from that country 10y ago (now I'm living in Australia). I'm saying that in public for the first time.
Back to thte topic, the climate science myths and misrespresentations by this buffon have been debunked many times. His last myth however:
It is ironic that he sees a greater threat from your SUV in your driveway than he does from the nation of Iran, with their radical Islamic jihad...
has not been debunked here because it falls outside of this site's scope. Read the book by Thomas Friedman Hot, Flat and Crowded in order to understand the role of radical jihad in this phenomenon of western civilisation's quest to quench their urge for petrol like that of a doper's for drugs. That book could be an eye opener for lots of americans and not only.
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Tom Curtis at 07:33 AM on 24 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
funglestrumpet @6, I have been through this a couple of times with others (and given my poor memory, possibly with you). Let me again categorically reject the idea nurnberg climate trials. There is a case that can be made for the trial of deliberate misinformers where the misinformation leads to deaths but in such a trial, it must be established "beyond reasonable doubt" that:
1) The person being tried knew the information they were providing was false;
2) That they also knew that people acting on their false information would result in very many deaths;
3) The people who acted would not have acted in the way that resulted in many deaths even without the misinformation; and
4) That the deaths actually occurred.
That is a set of conjunctions. That means to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt, each individual term clause must be proved beyond reasonable doubt. It is very dubious that we will ever have sufficient information about any individual to prove all four terms, and we certainly will not and do not have that information about prominent deniers in general at the moment. Until you have a prima facie case that you can prove these points beyond reasonable doubt about anybody, you should not call for the trial of anybody.
I will add that if we had enough people convinced to make such trials possible, we would have enough people convinced to make mitigation possible politically. Consequently such fantasies about trying the deniers are pointless, in addition to being wrong.
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Tom Curtis at 07:23 AM on 24 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
Further to my @13, I would be more persuaded by scaddenp's point if it were not so obvious in so many cases that the offense taken by our opponents is false umbrage - as is demonstrated by the sheer distortion of the language involved, and by their free use of the term to describe others with whom they disagree.
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Tom Curtis at 07:20 AM on 24 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
scaddenp @12, that depends on the purpose of the conversation. Due to the unusual nature of the situation, we are forced (at various levels) to have conversations with people who are not open to rational persuasion on the facts. We have those conversations for onlookers, not the person with whom we are debating. For those onlookers, it is convenient and appropriate, IMO, to signal that our opponents are not open to rational persuasion. That is, to signal that they will use (variously) blatantly fallacious arguments, outright falsehoods, and deceptive graphing to win the debate.
Not only is it appropriate. It is necessary. In any discussion, we will face a gish gallop of sorts. It may not be intentional, but simply as a matter of fact, we will have far more points of disagreement than can be covered in any single discussion. Therefore, we need to advise onlookers to no trust our proponents claims, even if we did not get around to discussing a particular point.
Our opponents feel the same need, and have no hesitation in making accusations of fraud and conspiracy against working scientists to serve that need. Are we then to hesitate in likewise advising onlookers that we do not trust Watts or Spencer to pursue, or be persuaded by rational argument?
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scaddenp at 07:08 AM on 24 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
Regardless of the rights or wrongs associated with labels, it is still got a good idea to labels which cause offense when trying to a have dialogue with someone.
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Dumb Scientist at 06:13 AM on 24 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
Dr. Spencer's outrage presumes that the first stage of grief is "Holocaust denial" and not "denial". However, some accusations of denial are more explicit:
"While most environmentalists continue to insist that there is no connection between international bans on DDT and human deaths, such protestations really are like denying that the Holocaust ever happened." [Dr. Roy Spencer, 2008]
Because I deny Dr. Spencer's DDT conspiracy theory, Dr. Spencer referred to me using a more explicit version of the "repulsive, extremist" comparison that pushed his buttons. But I won't call Dr. Spencer names, because that seems unproductive and incredibly unprofessional.
(h/t to Kilby at Hot Whopper and Tim Lambert.)
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nigelj at 06:02 AM on 24 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
I may be wrong on this, but doesnt Roy Spencer have a huge conflict of interest? Someone with those particular types of religious and political beliefs, putting together satellite data? It must be right on the edge of acceptability.
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Tom Curtis at 05:40 AM on 24 February 2014Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
Andrew Mclaren @7, very interesting. I fact checked this to the limits I was able without going down to a good university library, and can confirm that while the term does not appear in Johnson's original dictionary of 1755 (at least as searchable on the internet), it does appear in the version of 1785 (page 567 on the 127 MB PDF).
We also have from the online version of Mirriam-Webster:
"1 de·ni·er noun \di-ˈnī(-ə)r, dē-\
Definition of DENIER
: one who denies <deniers of the truth>
First Known Use of DENIER15th century"
I can also confirm that the term appears in the 1992 edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary:
Denier: One who denies.
They also give a as a different term:
Denier: The act of denying or refusing
with an earliest noted precedent in 1532; and which is the meaning used by King Charles in the passage quoted by Johnson.
The term "denier" has a more ancient history than that, being a moderately common title of the Apostle Peter. I that use it appears as the title of a poem by William Preston Johnston.
It is offensive that AGW deniers are trying to blacken the name of people who describe them with a very standard word of the English language that has been in common use for over 500 years. It is even more offensive that while doing that, they use the term themselves of more extreme deniers, thereby showing that their puffing and blowing about the term is sheerest hypocrissy. But more offensive even than that is Spencer's latest where, in essence he claims that because he has been compared to people who downplay the Nazi's greatest crime, it is OK for him to compare his opponents to the Nazis themselves. In doing so, he treats inaccurate history of the holocaust as morally equivalent to the holocaust itself. And, of course, he does so on the on false grounds. Calling him a denier is not a direct comparison to holocaust deniers, and is only an indirect comparison in that they are alike in denying facts well established as true. No moral equivalence is asserted by the term.
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