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citizenschallenge at 01:34 AM on 26 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Sorry JH, but I'm going to bit, quick'n dirty:
The question: "So in what way; which parts of 'science' need defending? From what?"
~ ~ ~
Science needs defending from people who misrepresent it.
Science needs defending from people who believe it is OK to quote mind and cherry pick in order to defend a preconceived notion.
Science needs defending from people who mangle the intellectual playing field and ignore the fact that no Earth Science study is ever perfect and the job of scientists is to separate the grain from the chaff.
Science needs defending from people who forget that scientists learn from their mistakes, acknowledge doubts and flaws, and move forward in a nonstop effort to distill the best provisional consensus possible from the evidence that's available, as the pursuit of further understanding continues.
Science needs defending from people who refuse to acknowledge and learn from their mistakes.
Science needs defending from people who believe their political causes allow them commit intellectual atrocity after intellectual atrocity.
Science needs defending from people who resort to paranoid and vicious personal attacks rather than focus on LEARNING !
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michael sweet at 01:34 AM on 26 March 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
Jason
Thank you for providing some data about JvD's claims about France. I said at the start of this discussion that nuclear supporters on this site have provided little to support their position. Since JvD has a list of problems he says are solved, but do not appear solved to me, I remain unconvinced. On the contrary, I see that nuclear supporters are unable to justify their position. Perhaps we can power their computers with the truck mounted reactors JvD described here. The plans are in Isacc Asimovs Foundation novel.
Really JvD, you must recognise that you are proposing what you would like to be the situation and not what actually exists. Provide a reference for your truck mounted fission reactors, or even a link that suggests it might be feasible in the next 50 years. You must provide something beyond your strongly felt positions to convince others to change their minds. Your arguments have not proven credible here. You have made a number of claims that are obviously incorrect. When I see several claims (like truck mounted fiddion reactors) that are obviously false I doubt the rest of what you say. The rest of what you say has holes that I can drive a truck through and I am not even really opposed to nuclear.
I read an article in the most recent Scientific American that stated that nuclear power has the lowest Energy Invested for Energy Output of any of the currently used power systems. That doesn't look good for the long term.
Nuclear may have a place in the future energy system, and it may be large, but you have not provided convincing evidence that will be the case.
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John Hartz at 01:25 AM on 26 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
@Brad Keyes & Tom Curtis:
Your recent exchange of comments about "Schneider's ethics" has been deleted because it was "off topic." Please keep in mind that this comment thread (or the comment thread to any SkS article for that matter) is not a public chat-room. Please stay on topic, or refrain from posting comments.
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Lazarus at 01:16 AM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
Trenberth recently mentioned the mising heat here;
http://www.rmets.org/weather-and-climate/climate/energy-and-climate-dr-kevin-e-trenberth
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JasonB at 00:49 AM on 26 March 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
We can simply look to France, which have a couple of their nuclear generating plants working in load-following mode.
Yes, and exactly what is the average capacity factor in France? And how expensive is nuclear power once that capacity factor is included in the calculation?
The French obtain 80% of their electricity using nuclear power. So your claim that only 40% can be done with nuclear is falsified by reality.
Only if you ignore the fact that France is interconnected with its neighbours and so therefore can export electricity when demand drops (allowing it to have a much higher nuclear penetration than its own market allows, and it still has the lowest capacity factor of any nuclear country in the world) and also import electricity when demand exceeds supply (so even then there's actually not enough nuclear capacity to meet France's own peak demand). When you take into account the entire network what's the nuclear penetration work out to again?
And perhaps you can tell everyone what happened during the heatwave of 2003? Bit of a problem in a warming world, don't you think?
The French, by the way, have the lowest cost and lowest co2 intensity electrity of any OECD country, which proves that nuclear is low co2 *and* low cost.
Or that the French power price does not accurately reflect the true cost of generating that power, as evidenced by EDF's financial woes. That's the thing about state-owned utilities, they don't always charge the true cost for political reasons. We paid 12.5c/kWh here for our coal-fired power for about a decade before the government decided that the taxpayer could no longer subsidise electricity consumers and gradually started raising retail prices until they're now nearly double that.
Perhaps France wasn't such a good example after all.
We don't need to build fast breeders yet, although we know how to do it. Many countries have built fast breeders, such as France and Japan.
Ah, yes, Japan. This would be the reactor that's run for what, a total of 20 months since it was completed in 1991. Perhaps another bad example?
As for not needing them yet, perhaps you should actually look carefully at the actual (and probable) reserves and think about what that means for plants that you want to construct now that are supposed to last 40-60 years, and then think about the fact that you need to scale up nuclear power about 15-fold to replace fossil fuels. Oh, and also ponder just how much production is actually capable of ramping, and just how few mines actually contain the majority of the known reserves.
And it's funny what you think is "easy". :-)
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sauerj at 00:33 AM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
If we state that we know total OHC, then by definition, we are stating that we know the integrated profile of ocean 'masses X temps' globally from sea-surface to sea-bed. If so, then it is certainly possible to express OHC not only as joules but as avg-weighted temp by simply dividing OHC by total mass. Note: I am simplifying this math by assuming Cp is constant thru-out the ocean profile. Rigorous research would include Cp variations [=fx(T & salt-content, etc)] into the profiling if found significant.
Better yet: Has any research been done to express O+AHC (combine the two) on an integrated "mass x heat capacity" weighted-avg basis (I would be very surprised if not). If so, this expression would be better because it would keep ENSO events 'inside the thermal box' and thus eliminate the "confounding" ENSO factoring when looking at OHC or AHC in isolation (as is common on LST graphs & also done in Fig-1 above, i.e. with the 1998 El-Nino notation).
Same as with my paragraph #1 above, if we state that oceans are 90% of the heat content, then we are stating that we know all the masses & heat capacities globally (from outer atmos down to lower sea-bed). Therefore, we have all the know-how to express O+AHC on either a joule basis or, better yet, on a 'wgtd mass x Cp' temp basis (the latter simply by dividing the joule value by total 'mass x Cp'). In my opinion, the latter is a more visceral, and therefore, better expression.
Is any research moving in the direction of developing a total integrated weighted-avg O+A heat content or temp? This would seem to be worth consideration.
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New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
Craig King - In short, ocean variations such as the ENSO affect the rate of heat absorption by the oceans - La Nina exposing colder waters to the surface, warming the ocean faster but cooling the atmosphere, while El Nino slows ocean warming leaving more of the energy imbalance in the atmosphere. Given that >93% of warming is going into the oceans, ~2.3% into the atmosphere, even a small rate change in ocean warming relative to the total greenhouse gas imbalance will have a huge effect on air temperatures.
Note that the energy flow is sun -> ocean -> atmosphere -> space, not the atmosphere -> ocean. A warming atmosphere causes ocean warming by slowing that energy flow from the ocean to the atmosphere. But if ENSO and other variations bring cold water to the surface, reducing atmospheric heating, air temperatures will then drop.
In other words, the atmosphere is to the ocean as the tail is to the dog - tied to ocean temperatures, but far more variable, even moving backwards at times.
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Brad Keyes at 00:23 AM on 26 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Glenn,
So in what way; which parts of 'science' need defending? From what?
From scientists who've found a balance between being honest and being effective.
Moderator Response: [JH] I am tempted to delete this comment for being "off topic", but will let it stand because it is so obtuse. I encourage Glenn and others not to respond under the "Do not feed the trolls" doctrine that we all should subscribe to. -
Chuck123 at 00:22 AM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
Craig: One way that the ocean can transfer heat to the atmosphere even though the local air temperature is warmer than the water temperature is through evaporation. When water evaporates, the water vapor carries off the heat energy required to change from the liquid sate to a gaseous state, leaving the remaining water a little cooler. Air masses are more mobile than the ocean waters, and when they move to a cooler region, the water vapor condenses as rain or snow, leaving the heat energy in the atmossphere.
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DSL at 23:09 PM on 25 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
Craig, here's Levitus et al. 2012. The methodology section will give you part of the answer.
CO2 does not warm the oceans independent of the indirect downward longwave radiation mechanism (increased skin temp forces a "deepening" of the convective temp gradient) and the direct method of surface layer mixing.
Also, the ocean-atmosphere relationship is extraordinarily complex and is the reason why modeling requires massive computing power. One can also add ice into the mix: global ice mass loss has accelerated in the last decade, despite what appears to be a surface temp flattening.
Moderator Response: [JH] My apologies for inadvertently deleting the following post: "On Craig's last question: the ocean heats up until it overcomes the skin temp. This is a very complex process, since the ocean surface is churning at the same time. Also, atmospheric temp across the ocean's surface is not uniform, nor is solar input (cloudiness complicates things). Ocean circulation is another factor. That's why the SST map looks rather marbled (and would look even worse close up). "If you want to know much, much more, in excruciating detail, go to SoD." -
Craig King at 23:08 PM on 25 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
I am also curious about what would cause the proposed increased heat content of the oceans to "come out" and thus warm the climate. My curiosity is built around the assumption that the warmer air mass must have transferred heat to the ocean ( warmer to colder ) and that raises the thought that the atmosphere would have to get colder than the ocean for it ( the air ) to be warmed by the sea.
In the meantime the atmospoheric CO2 continues to rise leading to a warmer atmosphere.
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Brad Keyes at 22:15 PM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
mandas,
there is no controversy about the well established fact that many climate change deniers are also conspiracy theorists.
Huh?
Climate change deniers do not exist.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 21:55 PM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Brad @52:
"Tom, you may find this hard to believe but I don't doubt the reality of AGW. My only agenda, or axe to grind if you like, is defending the integrity of science.Tom, you may find this hard to believe but I don't doubt the reality of AGW. My only agenda, or axe to grind if you like, is defending the integrity of science."
So in what way; which parts of 'science' need defending? From what?
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Chappo at 20:53 PM on 25 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
Thanks Chris. But you'd do your yourself a service, and us, and perhaps the planet, if you'd use plain english :)
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Neven at 20:36 PM on 25 March 2013Arctic freezing season ends with a loud crack
Thanks for the good suggestion, gpwayne. Fixed now.
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Pete, that's a good question, but keep in mind, as useful a tool the DMI temp graph is, it doesn't measure, but models temperatures above 80N, which is only a part of the Arctic Circle (see for instance the Uni Bremen SIC map to get an idea of the area above 80N, second circle from the North Pole). I think this is the main reason for the discrepancy between this year and last year.
On this post's image with the temp anomalies in the lower right corner you can see that most of the heat since January has been around the Greenland and Baffin Bay area. You can compare that to this image I used last year for my winter analysis. Again, see lower right image for 2012 JFM temp anomalies. There, more heat is within the 80N circle.
A comparison between the images gives an idea, but they are not completely identical. For this year's image the anomaly colour range extends from -7 to +7, but for last year's image it's -5 to +5. In April's winter analysis I will of course compare apple to apple.
It's also good to remember that high pressure areas cause cloudless skies, meaning that a lot of heat gets radiated out of the Arctic. Last year didn't have highs of this magnitude.
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Craig King at 20:30 PM on 25 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
What brought about the shift from increasing atmospheric temperatures to increasing ocean temperatures?
Will this change be sustained or will the air go back to rapid warming again?
Presumably the oceans are being warmed by the atmosphere, or alternatively the atmosphere is being cooled by the ocean acting as a heat sink. With the reduced warming of the atmosphere will the warming of the oceans slow down or is the CO2 concentration warming the oceans independently of the air temperature?
I was under the impression the ARGO buoys only measure down to 700m at present. Is there a program under way to measure temperatures all the way down to the sea bed?
Sorry for all the questions but the paper seems aimed at specialists who probably know all this wheras I am just an inquisitive amateur.
Moderator Response: (Rob P) See this SkS post:How Increasing Carbon Dioxide Heats the Ocean. -
chriskoz at 20:15 PM on 25 March 2013Enhanced SkS Graphics Provide New Entry Point into SkS Material
Nice work guys.
I wonder what's the criteria for some of the graphics to be honoured in SkS Climate Graphics page?
I ask because in those ~5y of its existance, SkS produced far more graphics that included therein. For example, in the Carttons category, we have new image every weeks, but only one (santa on melter NPole) in Graphics page... Just curius.
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Neven at 20:12 PM on 25 March 2013Arctic freezing season ends with a loud crack
Thanks for the good suggestion, gpwayne. Fixed now.
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Pete, that's a good question, but keep in mind, as useful a tool the DMI temp graph is, it doesn't measure, but models temperatures above 80N, which is only a part of the Arctic Circle (see for instance the Uni Bremen SIC map to get an idea of the area above 80N, second circle from the North Pole). I think this is the main reason for the discrepancy between this year and last year.
On this post's image with the temp anomalies in the lower right corner you can see that most of the heat since January has been around the Greenland and Baffin Bay area. You can compare that to this image I used last year for my winter analysis. Again, see lower right image for 2012 JFM temp anomalies. There, more heat is within the 80N circle.
A comparison between the images gives an idea, but they are not completely identical. For this year's image the anomaly colour range extends from -7 to +7, but for last year's image it's -5 to +5. In April's winter analysis I will of course compare apple to apple.
It's also good to remember that high pressure areas cause cloudless skies, meaning that a lot of heat gets radiated out of the Arctic. Last year didn't have highs of this magnitude.
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JvD at 20:06 PM on 25 March 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
"So... extracting uranium from the oceans is a feasible plan, but storing wind and solar power for later use is not.
Right, we've crossed the 'five fold crazy' line. I'm done here"
Extracting uranium from the oceans is proven technology:
www.neutron.kth.se/courses/reactor_physics/NEA-redbook2003.pdf
See page 22.
Fo course, we don't need to mine uranium from the oceans yet, but perhaps in a hundred or two hundred years it will be worthwhile. Until that time, there are still vast amounts of uranium in conventional mines. But it's good to know that the amount of uranium we can get is virtually limitless.
BTW, don't worry about going crazy. It happens to a lot of people once they start realising that everything they thought they knew about nuclear power is wrong. Breaking down one's own indoctrination can cause feelings of stress and uncertainty, but it will pass. Don't give up!
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JvD at 19:56 PM on 25 March 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
"How would you propose to solve the mismatch between supply (which is ideally constant at a high capacity factor) and demand (which fluctuates over a wide range) at high penetrations of nuclear power?
The places I've checked have a difference between minimum demand and maximum demand over the course of a year of about 2.5:1, and over the course of a day as much as 2:1."
We can simply look to France, which have a couple of their nuclear generating plants working in load-following mode. The French obtain 80% of their electricity using nuclear power. So your claim that only 40% can be done with nuclear is falsified by reality. The French, by the way, have the lowest cost and lowest co2 intensity electrity of any OECD country, which proves that nuclear is low co2 *and* low cost. French electricity is far, far less co2 intensive than German power, and is far cheaper, for example.
"Also, if you're going to use fast breeders to counter the claim that there are genuine and well-founded concerns about uranium supply, then you should also be up-front about the cost of electricity from those fast breeders and the current state of production readiness of the technology. Exactly how far away are we from large-scale rollout of fast breeders (especially given how far behind schedule and over budget the first two EPRs are, and they're conventional reactors!)? How much CO2 can be abated by continuing to build wind farms at the present rate in the meantime?"
We don't need to build fast breeders yet, although we know how to do it. Many countries have built fast breeders, such as France and Japan. The Russians have a fast reactor, the BN600 which they are already selling commercially for export. The technology is here. It works. Yes, it is a little bit more expensive than conventional once-through nuclear power plants, but this will probably change sometime this century or the next. In order to move to a low-co2, nuclear energy supply, breeders, fast breeders, and fast reactors will be built. Another reason to build such plants is because they result in far less nuclear waste. However, since the amount of nuclear waste is already very small for nuclear, making it even smaller is not a very important goal. For example, in the French nuclear power system, the total amount of nuclear waste per Frenchman is the size of a 20 EURO-cent coin. Tiny, tiny amount of waste, in other words. Easily handled.
Wind farms can abate a lot of co2 emissions. But not enough, because they cannot supply most of the electricity you need. You need backup, which will be powdered coal or natural gas. Burning coal or gas releases huge amounts of carbon per unit of energy, compared to nuclear power. An energy system running on wind farms (and solar farms) and natural gas backup generators will not nearly achieve the amount of co2 reduction that we need, unless the amount of wind farms and solar farms becomes unreasonably large, leading to massive curtailment and massive hits to the economics.
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chriskoz at 19:53 PM on 25 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
Chappo@4
OHC - Ocean Heat Content (you found it)
LST - Land surface temps
AHC- Atmosphere Heat Content (I concede may have made it up)
ENSO - ElNino Southern Oscilation Index
ARGO - refered in the article itself
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Tom Curtis at 19:51 PM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Geoff Chambers @89, if I understand you correctly, you have asked me to not analyze what you say because you feel free to express opinions you do not believe online. Is that correct?
If so, there is indeed no point in analyzing, or responding to any thing you write; for there is no reason to suppose you willingness to express opinions you do not hold is limited on any point.
It also raises an interesting point for the moderators. What exactly is the comment policy on people who accuse themselves of dishonesty?
Regardless, given your now stated policy on being truthful in expressing your opinions online, I feel that I have no choice but to regard you as a troll in future.
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chriskoz at 19:46 PM on 25 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
Dana,
Eyeballing the figure, it look as if the warming rates of all layers have been faster in the first half of last decade 2000-4 than today. What's the explanation? Would it be that current ENSO have been slowly transitioning to ElNino?
Second question. Those dashed W/m2 lines are hard to align with 3 trends in order to estimate how the ocean is balancing its energy. If we were to estimate that, would it be in the order of 0.5 or 0.7W ? And what's the relationship between that energy flux and TOA radiative imbalance? I guess not necessarily 1:1...
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JvD at 19:45 PM on 25 March 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
"Let's start with understanding the basics before we move to extract all the uranium from the world ocean. How do we keep rats out of the switchboards of nuclear power plants? More to the point, how do we account for the foible of human nature that means we overlook the possibility of a rat interrupting the primary flow of cooling water at a fission generation facility?"
The best solution would be to use fission technology that is not dependent on flowing cooling water. Inherently safe reactors, in other words. Current commercial reactor technology is based on scaled-up versions of 1950's submarine reactor technology. While the submarine reactors are inherently safe, when they were scaled-up for commercial power generation, the inherent safety feature was lost due to core power scaling more quickly than heat dissipation capacity (i.e. volume increased more than surface area of the core), and the need for uninterrupted cooling was introduced.
In order to mitigate the problem of not having absolute containment, all nuclear reactors today were fitted and are fitted with secondary containment structures which will capture most or all of the radioactivity in case of 'rats in the swithcboard'. This worked well at TMI and reasonably well at Fukushima, although at Fukushima, some volatile radioactive material escaped through human failure (wrong operation of emergency vents), although the amount lost was arguably not very dangerous. While Fukushima is measurably contaminated with radionuclides, the contamination is rather benign, as stated recently by the WHO. Even in the worst case prognosis, about 1000 lives will in future be cut short due to Fukushima, which of course is a tiny, tiny amount of health effect compared to the at least 1.000.000 people *every year* who die from fossil burning polution world wide. In the EU alone, the usage of coal burning generating plants causes 18.000 people te die *every year*. While we need nuclear power to be as safe as possible, it is necessary to compare any health effects to the alternative: coal. To make nuclear power safer, it would be good to move to reactor designs that are not dependent on forced cooling. -
Chappo at 19:43 PM on 25 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
Chris - could you kindly translate your plethora of acronyms into plain english please ?
Ps: OHC - Acronyms and Abbreviations - The Free Dictionary
acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/OHCAcronym, Definition. OHC, Overhead Camshaft. OHC, Outer Hair Cells. OHC, Ocean Heat Content. OHC, Ontario Health Coalition (Canada). OHC, Order of the ...
- What does D-LST stand for? D-LST Acronym / Abbreviation Meaning ...
worddetail.org/acronym_and_abbreviation/d-lst25+ items – Find out more on D-LST similar meanings, acronyms and ...
No Abbreviation Stand For
1 D-LST Drug lymphocyte stimulation test
1 D-M Diencephalon-mesencephalon
What does LST stand for? LST Acronym / Abbreviation Meaning ...
worddetail.org/acronym_and_abbreviation/lst/2LST abbreviation stands for: Leishmanin skin test. There are 62 meanings or full forms for LST in total. | Page: 2. -
perseus at 19:42 PM on 25 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
Does the ocean heat data suggest that 'global warming' only started around 1975 (ironically as solar irradiance started to decrease somewhat). Or rather what little warming did occur before that date was being dumped into the low thermal mass of the atmosphere? I suppose we would need to know more about ocean temperatures before the 1950s to confirm that, but based on the limited timespan of measurements it's an interesting possibility.
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chriskoz at 19:15 PM on 25 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
That confirms my opinion pronounced here a year or two ago, that we should use OHC as the measure of GW rate. We should virtually discontinue watching the LST with their ElNino/LaNina perturbations. Those perturbations have much lesser impact on OHC. In fact, current LaNina cycle should have "apparently" increased the OHC, contributing to the subject acceleration.
Few yaers back, we did not know how to measure OHC, now with the ARGO float we do measure it better and better. At some point I guess we may measure it so accurately that the difference betwen OHC and AHC (from global and vertical temps profile) will be used as a measure of ENSO.
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geoffchambers at 18:48 PM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Tom Curtis
Please stop analysing my answers. I gave Timothey Mcveigh etc as examples of things I might say in an online survey. Or not. Since I see what you’re getting at, I’ve decided that I no longer believe that Prince Philip killed Lady Di. So there.
See what I mean? Ask someone face to face who they’ll vote for and they’ll likely give you an honest answer. Ask questions on-line about subjects hardly anyone knows about , with no possibility of saying you don’t know and anything can happen. Or nothing.
I know nothing about McVeigh, so the only honest answer would be “don’t know”. But this wasn’t permitted in the survey, and so I would have been tempted to go for ”strong belief” one way or the other. I believe strongly in people having strong opinions. I don’t believe in on-line surveys, (-snip-).
By the way, the age range was from 10 to 95, according to the paper. Another reason for naming LOG12 as Unusual Survey of the Year.
Moderator Response: [DB] Inflammatory snipped. -
gpwayne at 17:03 PM on 25 March 2013Arctic freezing season ends with a loud crack
Could I suggest it might be more accurate, and appropriate, to echo Neven's description - that the Greenland ice sheet surface was melting, rather than claim that "almost all of the Greenland Ice Sheet was melting at one point" which is not the kind of scientifically accurate description I have come to expect from SkS?
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Tom Curtis at 13:50 PM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Geoff Chambers @78 (conspiracy theory).
Well, I'm glad we have that sorted. I cannot help noting, however, that your "I tend to find it credible" is considerably weaker than your WUWT statement that "I strongly agree". It is also a far cry from considering it credible that CIA agents may be tempted to perform illegal acts, and considering simply part of their job (as indicated at WUWT).
For the record, I have no opinion on Timothy McVeigh because I lack relevant information (and have never tried to find it). I consider a plot to kill Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jnr implausible, and that while there is some suggestive evidence in the first case (I have not examined the second), it is insufficient to overcome the inherent implausibility of the theory and there is counter evidence. So, my response is to refuse to answer the McVeigh question as any answer would mispresent my opinion; to weakly disagree on the Kennedy assassination, and to strongly disagree on the Martin Luther King assassination. I strongly disagree with all other CY theories on the survey.
All three scenarios are sufficiently plausible that they could be true (absent all evidence); but not sufficiently plausible that you would accept them in the absence of strong evidence.
The question though, is not whether they are true or not. In LOG12, the survey tests for the likelihood of accepting a conspiracy theory. Somebody who accepts only one theory is still a conspiracy theorist but is not particularly prone to accepting them. Somebody who accepts three, particularly somebody who strongly agrees with three... Well, it seems to me they are setting a very low bar for acceptance for conspiracy theories. They are reasonably classified as prone to conspiracist ideation.
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Tom Curtis at 13:29 PM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Geoff Chambers @78:
1) Each recursive theory which shows "unreflexive counterfactual thinking" shows counterfactual thinking in that they could only be valid criticisms of LOG12 if at least one of the "skeptic" blogs had posted the survey. As none of them did, the theories in question presupose counterfactual conditions for relevance.
This is most obvious in theory 5:
"Di fferent versions of the survey (5). Because question order was counterbalanced between di fferent versions of the LOG12 survey, links to the various versions were quasi-randomly assigned to participating blogs. The existence of di fferent versions of the survey gave rise to several hypotheses, for example that ". . . the most troubling new revelation appears to be that some climate skeptic blogs got di fferent questionaires [sic] than their counterpart AGW advocate blogs. . . . this negates the study on the basis of inconsistent sampling". This hypothesis rests on counterfactual thinking: Even if survey versions had di ffered on some variable other than question order, given that none of the "skeptic" blogs posted the link and hence did not contribute responses, any claim regarding the published data based on those di fferences among versions rests on a counterfactual state of the world. Arguably, this hypothesis also rests on the presumption of nefarious intent and the belief that something must be wrong (NI, MbW )."
(My emphasis)
Clearly the quoted claim that the different question order "negates the study" is counterfactual in that, as the "skeptic" blogs never published the survey, the different question order for "skeptic" blog versions of the survey had no impact on the data collected. Ergo it has no impact on the published paper.
This is explained in LCOM13 each time the claim is made. It is even explained that the claim that "skeptic" blogs were contacted later "... never matured to the point of clarifying how this delay could have had any bearing on the outcome of the study ...", but it is included as counterfactual in that any criticism of the database and hence paper based on the delayed contact must necessarilly be counterfactual.
Your inability to understand the explanation represents neither a flaw in the paper, nor a slander of any person (named or otherwise).
2) The fact that John Cook notified people of the survey on the SkS twitter feed rather than on the blog site itself is not an error in LCOM13 as LCOM13 does not make any claim to the contrary. Rather, they quote a claim in LOG12, which does make that claim. That is entirely appropriate because the actual event is not germaine to LCOM13, whereas the reported event against which the various hypotheses where directed was.
3) I am disinclined to say anybody is without bias, myself included. More importantly, so were LCOM13, who only indicated that the two authors of LCOM13 who were also authors of LOG12 had a particular cause of bias, and that as a control for that, they were excluded from the data collection.
Consequently, your claim that LCOM13 "... insist on the fact that the authors of the content analysis have been chosen for their lack of bias", is pure bunk and a straightforward misprepresentation of the claims in LCOM13. Where I as hypercritical as you are, I would no doubt charge you with lying here. Instead, I suspect you are simply so upset by the paper that you have not bothered to read carefully what it actually says.
Again, your inability to read and comprehend what was written in LCOM13 is not a valid criticism of LCOM13
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mandas at 13:14 PM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Geoffchambers @78
"...I tend to find it credible that the fascist Timothy McVeigh had assistance from his fascist friends; that the communist / CIA agent Lee Harvey Oswald had assistance from his friends of one kind or another......I have no difficulty in imagining that the CIA (and possibly Texan Oil interests) conspired in the murder of Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Therefore I am a Big Oil funded conservative...."
No Geoff. Those things do not make you a conservative - they make you a conspiracy theorist.
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DSL at 12:44 PM on 25 March 2013David Rose Hides the Rise in Global Warming
Cicco, if AR4 is too ancient for you, there's always Jones et al. (2013).
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Bert from Eltham at 11:45 AM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
It all seems to me that denial of having symptoms of conspiracist ideation is on the rise. When plotted as a time dependant function it looks just like the dreaded 'hockey stick' so often derided by deniers of AGW. There is a positive feedback in all this denial of having conspiracist ideation. Even when redefining your posts as being on the side of science or defending real science it is adding to these symptoms. Bert
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Steve Metzler at 10:56 AM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
I'm so glad that Tom Curtis explained that Brad Keyes imagines sites like Skeptical Science, Real Climate, and Open Mind are anti-science, whereas SPPI, Morano, Bishop Hill et. al. are 'science defending'. His perception of reality is completely flipped. I thought I was going crazy there for a while the other day reading the comments here, but now I understand why Brad has a thread all to himself on Deltoid. One word: containment.
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Rob Honeycutt at 10:52 AM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
RE: John @ 80....
As opposed to how many people have used the term "fury" over the same period. :-)
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jmsully at 10:36 AM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Out of curiosity, how many readers of this thread have used the word, "recursive" in casual conversation during the past twelve months or so?
When discussing implementation strategies for an algorithm? Not exactly casual, but it has been done...
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Doug Bostrom at 10:04 AM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
JH: ...how many readers of this thread have used the word, "recursive" in casual conversation during the past twelve months or so?
Raises hand.
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David Rose Hides the Rise in Global Warming
Cicco - I would have to say one of the most clear illustrations of a climate null hypothesis, that of what we would expect with only natural forcings, is incorporated in the IPCC AR4 report:
[Source]
Where the top illustration is the result of modeling temperatures with both natural and anthropogenic forcings, and the bottom is the result of modeling temperatures with only the natural forcings. Natural forcings alone, given the physics, would have resulted in temperatures some 0.8C cooler over the Industrial Era.
Add to that, in the context of this thread, that ocean heat content has done nothing but rise in the last 50 years (see Fig. 1 in the opening post) whereas the null hypothesis would be no change.
Finally - in every temperature record we have,when you include enough information to separate between a null hypothesis of no warming and a long term warming trend (19-24 years, depending on the record and its short term variations) - you see statistically significant warming. There is really no doubt about that whatsoever.
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Cicco at 09:19 AM on 25 March 2013David Rose Hides the Rise in Global Warming
Hello everyone.
Normally in statistics the null hypothesis is that "nothing will change". In the case of the global mean temperature that would mean that it would remain where we would expect it based upon "natural" events.
Given that has anyone seen a 95% or 99% confidence interval of where we'd expect the temperature to be if there was not an underlying change brought about by carbon dioxide?
For a skeptic, or denialist, to pick on the confidence interval of a "prediction" is inconsequential. There is no way that that could be modelled in a super accurate manner as there is no way that anyone can know for sure what the strengths of ENSO and solar cycles will be.
I'm guessing that if someone was to do a 99% confidence interval of stationarity of global mean temperature, allowing for know cycles that are out of humanity's hands, that the temperatures we have seen in the last few decades would have exceeded that.
In other words can we finally put up a statistical arguement to say that "almost surely" the global mean temperature is increasing?
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John Hartz at 09:18 AM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Out of curiosity, how many readers of this thread have used the word, "recursive" in casual conversation during the past twelve months or so?
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Pete Dunkelberg at 09:12 AM on 25 March 2013Arctic freezing season ends with a loud crack
This year so far, the Arctic has not matched last years high temperatures:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Yet it seems that more cold air is pouring south from the Arctic than last year, at least in March. Is there a unified explanation for last year's high temperatures and this year's overall cooler Arctic?
Why did the Arctic temperature plummet at around day 50?
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John Hartz at 09:08 AM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
@geoffchambers:
Out of curiosity, what is your position on Agenda 21?
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geoffchambers at 08:43 AM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Tom Curtis
I’ve added a couple more errors at Frontiers, including the one which you admitted here. (-snip-).
The point is, when you accuse named people of “counterfactual thinking” in a scientific paper, you need to be whiter than the whitest sepulchre. And when you insist on the fact that the authors of the content analysis have been chosen for their lack of bias; and (-snip-).
On me and conspiracy theories:
I tend to find it credible that the fascist Timothy McVeigh had assistance from his fascist friends; that the communist / CIA agent Lee Harvey Oswald had assistance from his friends of one kind or another, and so on. I would regard those who deny such possibilities as “conformist”.
It’s odd, don’t you think, that those like Lewandowsky who treat the questioning of the official version of events as psychologically deviant, consider themselves as radical? I have no difficulty in imagining that the CIA (and possibly Texan Oil interests) conspired in the murder of Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Therefore I am a Big Oil funded conservative. Go figure.
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mandas at 08:31 AM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Brad Keys @69
You have missed dghoza's point completely.
There is no controversy, because:
1 - climate change is well established by science and evidence. Thrre is no controversy about it at all, except in the minds of those who deny science.
2 - there is no controversy about the well established fact that many climate change deniers are also conspiracy theorists. Anyone who has spent any time at all on climate change blogs knows that - from beliefs like scientiists are faking the science to obtain grant money, to its all a conspiracy to impose a socialist world government. I have seen them all, time and time again. Now there is supposed to be a conspiracy by Lewandowsky and Cook to discredit climate change 'sceptics' by equating them with conspiracy theorists. My irony meter explodes every time I read threads like this. It is one of the most entertaining and hilarious things I get to read each day.
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Tom Curtis at 07:02 AM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Geoff Chambers @60:
"I can’t answer you in detail for reasons I can’t explain"
In that case the evidence from your WUWT will have to stand. And on that evidence you believe strongly at least three of the LOG12 survey conspiracies, including at least one involving assassinations.
"LCOM13 contained errors. More than 3; more like 30. It was wrong."
No where near 30. More like three, or possibly 4 substantive errors which at least one of the authors wants corrected prior to the paper being in print; and no error invalidating the primary thesis.
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Tom Curtis at 06:55 AM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Geoff Chambers @61, that again? Obsess much, do we?
OK, John Cook tweeted the survey for LOG12 rather than posting it on SkS proper. He then advised Lewnadowsky that the survey had been posted, and a year later when you questioned him, remembered only that it had been posted, and not that the post had only been by tweet. Indeed, he's a busy person so posting on SkS proper may have slipped from his mental "to-do" list to his mental "done" list almost immediately.
What follows?
Is LOG12 distorted by an under representation of acceptors of the IPCC concensus as a result? Does it make any substantive difference to the paper?
The answer clearly is no to both. The "error" in the paper is properly corrected prior to publication by a footnote saying that the SkS notice was tweeted rather than blogged; and is of so minor consequence it requires no erratum after publication.
Only those determined to find every fault and blow them up without regard to any sense of proportion would care, let alone care and be pursuing the issue a year later. That you are doing so tells us nothing about the quality of LOG12, but shows that as a reviewer of LOG12 you are obsessive and biased. That you are a conspiracy theorist suggests why. The thesis of LOG12, ie, that people prone to conspiracist thinking are also more prone to anthropogenic global warming denial than are the rest of the population, strikes a little too close to home for your comfort.
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Uncle Pete at 06:49 AM on 25 March 2013Enhanced SkS Graphics Provide New Entry Point into SkS Material
Well done, thank you guys.
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John Hartz at 06:43 AM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
@John Cook:
Do you now have enough raw material from this comment thread for another paper in your series?
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Brad Keyes at 06:13 AM on 25 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Sphaerica,
You can't see the irony? Really?
Er, if we could both see it it wouldn't be ironic, would it?
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