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Brad Keyes at 01:32 AM on 24 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
shoyemore:
I listened to a very good poscast on conspiracy theories, and one of the scientists involved said that some conspiracy theories are TRUE
Was it Naomi Oreskes, by any chance?
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Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
For those interested in a social discussion on conspiracist ideation, I think one very relevant text (which I've referred to in previous discussions on LOG12 and RF) is Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics. There he discusses (in the light of some historically popular conspiracy theories) a number of characteristics exhibited by those holding such theories, such as dispossession, renegades/pendants, "emulation of the (perceived) enemy", and in particular the "double sufferer" - I highly recommend the embedded quote from Norman Cohn on that topic:
“...the megalomaniac view of oneself as the Elect, wholly good, abominably persecuted, yet assured of ultimate triumph; the attribution of gigantic and demonic powers to the adversary; the refusal to accept the ineluctable limitations and imperfections of human existence, such as transience, dissention, conflict, fallibility whether intellectual or moral; the obsession with inerrable prophecies…systematized misinterpretations, always gross and often grotesque.”
Note: The Hofstadter article dates from 1964.
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Brad Keyes at 00:57 AM on 24 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Tom Curtis,
you say to Geoff (my emphasis):
There is no question that you first latched on to the fact that "skeptic" blogs were contacted after the science defending blogs.
That is not an accurate paraphrase of anything Geoff has ever written or, to my knowledge, believed.
As Geoff is perfectly aware, the science-defending blogs were contacted last. They received their invitation emails after the other blogs.
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Brad Keyes at 00:35 AM on 24 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
(-snip-)
Moderator Response: [DB] False claims of ad hominem snipped. Again. -
Brad Keyes at 00:20 AM on 24 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
grindupBaker:
@geoffchambers#24 I don't blame you Geoff. If I was named as 1st to say "Recursive Conspiracist Hypothesis number 4" in public I'd be mad as hell. And I don't even have false teeth.
(-snip-).
As Philippe points out,
everybody should exercise restraint. A common characteristic of internet communications is the rapid loss of respect that people would keep toward each other if they were in presence of each other. All should imagine that they actually talking to a person.
Moderator Response:[DB] It is noted that a long series of comments were removed due to inflammatory rhetoric and tone by you in an initial comment. Accordingly, all direct responses to it were also needfully removed.
Moderating this site is a tiresome chore, particularly when commentators repeatedly submit offensive or off-topic posts. We really appreciate people's cooperation in abiding by the Comments Policy, which is largely responsible for the quality of this site.
Finally, please understand that moderation policies are not open for discussion. If you find yourself incapable of abiding by these common set of rules that everyone else observes, then a change of venues is in the offing. As indeed occurred over at Shaping Tomorrow's World.
Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.
False claims of ad hominem snipped)
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Klapper at 21:52 PM on 23 March 2013It warmed before 1940 when CO2 was low
@Bob Loblaw # 31:
Bob, your posts are too long. Don't waste your time bloviating about sociology/politics, just stick to what's wrong with my numbers. I have read your #18 post but I'm not going to respond to non-qualitative commentary (more or less, I might change my mind but for now let's just stick to numbers/quantitative type commentary).For example, if my delta TSI number of 0.09W/m2/decade is wrong, then show me a recent peer-reviewed number that is higher, and give me the reason it is better.
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shoyemore at 19:43 PM on 23 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
I listened to a very good poscast on conspiracy theories, and one of the scientists involved said that some conspiracy theories are TRUE - for example, the manipulated groupthink that led to the Iraq war, and the Tuskegee syphilisExperiment ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment )
Conspiracy theorists are reductionists who claim that because there have been SOME conspiracies, therefore EVERYTHING that undermines a core belief of theirs is a conspiracy. The critieria above are to an extent mental defence mechanisms to protect that core insight, which the theorist will perform incredible logical contortions to defend.
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Tom Curtis at 18:38 PM on 23 March 2013Newcomers, Start Here
gaiafollower @234, a Venus like runaway greenhouse effect is not currently possible on Earth based on the best evidence to date. That is, the Earth's oceans will not boil away, and cannot be made to boil away simply by adding CO2 (and/or methane) to the atmosphere; although in several billion years they will boil away due to the Sun getting hotter with time.
On the other hand, it is perfectly possible that feedbacks from anthropogenic CO2 could result in feedbacks resulting in an increase in temperature of 10 plus degrees C, a situation that will make parts of the Earth literally uninhabitable due to heat. Those scenarios are not plausible, however, in the short term. Only when temperatures start reaching 4-5 C above current levels will further increases plausibly push us into that sort of feedback regime.
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gaiafollower at 18:28 PM on 23 March 2013Newcomers, Start Here
I have a question. I read somewhere about a possible Venus effect with Earth's global warming. The writer posited that Venus' Runaway global warming hypothosis created Venus's atmosphere as it is today and could be a possibility for Earth if it succumbs to runaway global warming. The writer went on to say that the artic melt would allow large quantities of methane to be released into the atmosphere as well as acidification and warming of oceans would cause phytoplankton to die off and thereby the absorption of CO2 by the phytoplankton would cease or be greatly reduced and these along with other factors would cause Earth's atmosphere to become like Venus'. Is this scenario plausable?
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geoffchambers at 17:28 PM on 23 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
I agree with Ironcage (comment 18) that this work is “severely lacking of the social dimension”. If he wants to know more of the “life history, the societal relations of power, the practices of everyday experiences” to which this particular conspiracy theorist is exposed, please get in touch via my blog
geoffchambers.wordpress.com.
I’d be more than happy to discuss my “sense of disempowerment contributing perhaps to a sense of empowerment“ and “the institutional and societal relations that contribute to such unreflexive dispositions in the first place”.
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geoffchambers at 17:13 PM on 23 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
corrections to my comment 24 above:
For “Lucia Lindgren” read “Lucia Liljegren”
For:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/jul/27/climate-sceptics-conspiracy-theorists
19 July 2012 (400+ comments)
read:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wray-herbert/climate-change-denial-_b_1686437.html
19 July 2012 (400+ comments)
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Tom Curtis at 16:11 PM on 23 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
geoffchambers @24, perhaps you should read the OP more carefully:
"As well as the Recursive Fury paper, we also published Supplementary Material containing excerpts from blog posts and some comments relevant to the various observed recursive theories. In the paper, we characterise this as “raw data” - all the comments that we encountered that are relevant to the different theories. In contrast, the “processed data” are the excerpted quotes featured in the final paper, where we match the various recursive theories to the conspiracist criteria outlined above."
There is no question that you first latched on to the fact that "skeptic" blogs were contacted after the science defending blogs. You are not, however, quoted in any connection with the conspiracist versions of that theory that undoubtedly developed, as for example when Foxgoose wrote:
"It does seem rather extraordinary that Professor Lewandowsky was able to put up a slide giving some of the results of his survey (including number of responses) on September 23rd 2010 - when he didn't send out final emails inviting his primary sources (sceptic blogs) to participate until September 20th.
It almost seems as if he had decided on the number and nature of responses before the final data could possibly have been received.
Is there a word for this novel form of data acquisition?"
Oddly, he wrote that just three posts after your first suggestion, and you felt no need to respond reject his absurd, and undoubtedly consperacist take on your questions.
I also think it is hypocritical of you to take offense at purportedly being identified as a conspiracist when you are a self avowed conspiracy theorist. With regards to A Scott's "replication" of LOG12, you wrote:
"I won’t be completing the survey. Here’s why. First, I strongly agree with several of the conspiracy theories, (secret services assassinate people – that’s their job) and I don’t want that fact being used to dirty the name of scepticism. Of course, my decision is a way of gaming the survey ..."
Out of curiosity, do you think it is the job of secret services to kill incumbent presidents of their own country (President Kennedy)? Or royalty and the wife of the heir apparent of their own country (Dianna)? Or major civic leaders committed to bringing about morally necessary change through non-violent democratic means (Martin Luther King Jr)? As these were the only conspiracy theories in LOG12 involving assassinations by secret services you must agree with at least two out of three of these by your own words.
How odious of Lewndowsky et al to leave open the possibility that you are a conspiracy theorist when you, in fact, are a conspiracy theorist.
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grindupBaker at 15:18 PM on 23 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
@geoffchambers#24 I don't blame you Geoff. If I was named as 1st to say "Recursive Conspiracist Hypothesis number 4" in public I'd be mad as hell. And I don't even have false teeth.
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dana1981 at 14:49 PM on 23 March 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
Harold - whoever you spoke to was mistaken. We have not even seen your CPAC presentation. From what I read, Walter Cunningham's and Thomas Wysmuller's comments were kind of a joke, apparently denying that the planet is warming.
From the same story, you said sea level rise isn't a global problem (which is kind of silly – a whole lot of countries, including the USA, have coastal property), and said China is refusing to address climate change, which is wrong. Other than that, I don't know what was included in your presenation, so we haven't addressed it.
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Bob Loblaw at 14:38 PM on 23 March 2013It warmed before 1940 when CO2 was low
Klapper:
"Gavin ... should do a model run to see if that explains the model/observation discrepancy."
All the model runs in the world will not improve the accuracy of the observations. Gavin's quote clearly talks about the lack of suitable observations in the period in question. You cannot "improve" a model to the point where it is more accurate than the observations you are testing it with. Trying to fit the model to errors in the data will just introduce errors into the model. It is becoming increasingly obvious that you cannot see past this barrier to your learning.
"absolving everyone from having to think about this discrepancy.."
Now you're just creating strawmen. I never said the period wasn't worthy of investigation. There is a limit to what can be done, however, due to the limitations of the observations that are available to test the model. Unless the observations (or proxy reconstructions) can be improved, doing more model runs won't change that. It is far more productive to continue to work on comparing the models to more recent periods where observations are more complete.
Given the lack of any response to my question regarding my example at #18, I will conclude that you either haven't bothered reading it, don't understand it, or are just unwilling to deal with its implications. Until you provide an answer to my question (in #27), instead of avoiding it, there seems little point in watching you chase your tail.
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DSL at 12:44 PM on 23 March 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
Well I hope Harold's not going to pull a Tom Harris and mumble some non sequitur response followed by a general disappearance. In the interest of encouraging Harold's interaction, I suggest we avoid dogpiling.
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Klapper at 11:07 AM on 23 March 2013It warmed before 1940 when CO2 was low
@Bob Loblaw #28
If Gavin thinks there's reason to believe the lapse rate, or ocean heat mixing were different in the period 1910 to 1945, then he should do a model run to see if that explains the model/observation discrepancy. As it is, I checked a GISS Model E2-R model run of the 20th century and it predicts a warming rate of less than 1/3 the warming rate of the observations in this period. There is no excuse the trend isn't long enough either. There is also no excuse that volcanoes muddled the picture.
If the error boundaries overlap, absolving everyone from having to think about this discrepancy, they probably only barely overlap. I don't think I'm going to convince you this period is worthy of more detailed investigation, and may pose a problem for model assumptions, and I don't think I'll try. I've done enough back of the envelope calculations on TSI (and also aerosols, using some guesstimates for forcing from Hansen et al 2007, chart (a)), to believe the model/observations gap is larger than the posting above would have you conclude. Please no comments on "back of the envelope" after all that's all the above calculations are too.
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Klapper at 10:50 AM on 23 March 2013It warmed before 1940 when CO2 was low
@KR #26:
I checked the graph (a) from Hansen et al 2007 at the GISS website link you provided. In the period 1910 to 1945 the reflective aerosol and indirect aerosol effects combined look to almost cancel out the forcing from GHG's. There are postive forcings from BC and TSI in this period but these forcings estimates appear to be small compared to GHG's and aerosols.
To me this confirms what I've been saying all along: there is some forcing at play in the 1910 to 1945 period which the models have not captured. Since these forcings come from the GISS E model, I also checked the warming rate from a GISS Model E2-R model run of the 20th century from the CMIP5 database. The warming rate in the 1910 to 1945 period from that model is 0.043C/decade. Compare that to the actual observations of 0.14C/decade.
By including aerosols, the model/observations divergence just becomes that much worse. The error on the GISS model trend would have to be +/- .06C/decade to close the gap with the observations.
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Tom Dayton at 09:21 AM on 23 March 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
Harold, the major problem is the rate of change of temperature and the resulting other climatic effects (precipitation, sea level, sea chemistry, snow and ice cover, etc.). For example, nearly every dang land-living plant and animal (and some water-living ones) that people eat nowadays has been bred over decades to millenia to suit the current particular conditions of growing, harvesting, marketing, preparing, and eating. Changing those conditions makes those plants and animals less suitable. Re-breeding those plants and animals to suit the new conditions will take lots of time and money, during which time the producers and consumers of those products will suffer (in some cases starve to death). Production of the existing breeds cannot simply be moved to new locations that now have the desired conditions, because those locations already are being used for other things.
For example, some of my friends have a 20,000 acre cattle ranch. Their success depends on lots of climate factors, including not just how much it rains in a year (to make the grass grow), but also the precise timing of the rain in order to have the cattle fattened at the right time for market and even for the cattle's survival. If the rain total or timing change so that their ranch now is unproductive but the north-neighboring land's conditions now are suitable, my friends can move their ranch there only if they buy out the entire town that happens to occupy that land, level the town, haul out the resulting rubble, and plant grass everywhere. That's not feasible in the span of just a decade or two.
If instead that same change were spread out over 10,000 years, the compensating transitions would be inconsequential. My friends and many generations of their descendants would be long gone. The neighboring town might well have disappeared, rotted away, and turned into grassland anyway, making it available for someone else to ranch it.
Before you reply that we must just bite the bullet and pay the cost of accomodating the change to the new climate, stop to realize that there won't be any "the" new climate. As long as humans keep dumping CO2 into the atmosphere, the climate will keep changing. The target we try to accomodate toward will keep moving constantly. It is stupid for us to consciously accelerate the motion of that target.
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Dumb Scientist at 09:14 AM on 23 March 2013Tung and Zhou circularly blame ~40% of global warming on regional warming
You can not assume that ocean circulations only move heat around the earth system and have no effect on the net energy budget. [ptbrown31]
Lee and I already discussed the fact that AMO can change surface temperatures through strictly internal variability and by changing radiative forcings. I'm only focusing on internal variability because Tung and Zhou used that term six times in their paper.
This possibility can not be dismissed out of hand as simply being "unphysical"
Note that I'm not dismissing AMO radiative forcings as unphysical. Instead, I've repeatedly pointed out that it's unphysical to assume that anthropogenic radiative forcings are the same before and after 1950.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 08:53 AM on 23 March 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
Also Harold, a general class of problem one could study.
Take any agricultural region and look at which of the major grain crops are grown there and what the average climate is at that location. Then apply the various studies that have been done into how much yields for those crops vary with temperature. Apply different possible warming scenarios to that location, factor in that locations current climate and the temperature/yield data and estimate how much yields from crops at that location are likely to vary due to the warming in diffferent scenarios.
Then one would need to repeat such studies for many locations in order to integrate the results. In some locations this may be positive, in others negative. The common conclusion from the Biological Science community that has looked into this is that the projected climate change is more likely to be a net negative for larger levels of warming.
Critically, given the importance of sustained crop yields to food security, this needs to be considered as a probabalistic risk assessment, with appropriate weightings given to different possible outcomes based on what the severity of particular consequence might be.
Crop yeld changes due to temperature alone is only one possible impact of a changing climate at each location; precipitation changes, variations in the proportion of more extreme weather events occuring, changes in the timing of the growing season, changes in the timing of the life cycles of the crop plants relative to that of associated, necessary other species such as polinators are also potential impacts.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 08:32 AM on 23 March 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
Harold
Depends how 'specifc' you want your location to be. So here are two examples for some moderately specific locations.
The Arctic. Rising temperatures there have resulted in melting of the permafrost beginning. This is causing erosion, land subsidence, damage to roads, destruction of pipes and buried infrstructure. It is also causing venting of elevated amounts of Methane. Future projections of impacts can be based on known studies of permafrost distribution and temperature profiles overlaid by patterns of human infrastructure. The Russians have identified several entire cities at risk from these problems. Also potential risks to major Natural Gas supply pipelines.Next, 'dead zones; in the ocean. It is basic chemistry that warmer water cannot hold as much gas in solution. This matters particularly for oxygen. Colder waters are better oxygenated which is why the most productive parts of the oceans are mainly in the higher latitudes. The clear waters of the Tropics are so clear because there is much less microscopic life within them - biologically the tropical oceans are like deserts with coral reefs being like little oases. In the extreme, there are regions where there is virtually no life - oceanographers have colloquially labelled these regions 'dead zones'. These can be found for example in the Gulf of Mexico. With higher water temperatures, oxygenation will decline and such dead zones will expand. Generally, warmer oceans will be less biologically productive. Since the oceans are the primary source of protein for around a billion people, any decline in the biological productivity of the oceans must unavoidably lead to a reduction in available protein.
Declining oceanic productivity due to reduced oxygenation is something that biologists could predict with high confidence since the chemistry of Henry's Law is well understood, as are the relationships between biological productivity and oxygenation levels.
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geoffchambers at 08:17 AM on 23 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
This is the post I've been trying to put up at Frontiers...
To the editors, Frontiers in Personality Science:
In table 3 of this paper, I am mentioned by name and identified as having been the first to have mentioned in public Recursive Conspiracist Hypothesis number 4 - namely that Sceptic blogs were only contacted after a delay. This hypothesis is quite true, as Professor Lewandowsky has admitted. Nonetheless, the fact of having been the first to make this accusation leads to me being accused of exhibiting the following symtoms of conspiracist ideation:
nefarious intent, nihilistic skepticism, “must be wrong”; “no accident”, and unreflexive counterfactual thinking. From the definitions of these criteria given in the paper I extract the following:
Nefarious Intent: “... A corollary of the first criterion is the pervasive self-perception and self-presentation among conspiracy theorists as the victims of organized persecution. The theorist typically considers herself, at least tacitly, to be the brave antagonist of the nefarious intentions of the conspiracy; that is, the victim is also a potential hero.”
Nihilistic Skepticism: “The conspiracy theorist refuses to believe anything that does not fit into the conspiracy theory. Thus, nothing is at it seems, and all evidence points to hidden agendas or some other meaning that only the conspiracy theorist is aware of.”
“Must be Wrong”: “The underlying lack of trust and exaggerated suspicion contribute to a cognitive pattern whereby specific hypotheses may be abandoned when they become unsustainable, but those corrections do not impinge on the overall abstraction that 'something must be wrong' and the 'official' account must be based on deception.”
“No Accident”: “To the conspiracy theorist, nothing happens by accident ... Thus, small random events are woven into a conspiracy narrative and reinterpreted as indisputable evidence for the theory.”
Unreflexive Counterfactual Thinking: “Contrary evidence is often interpreted as evidence for a conspiracy [...] the stronger the evidence against a conspiracy, the more the conspirators must want people to believe their version of events.”
These definitions clearly identify me as being irrational and paranoid, and are therefore defamatory. I therefore request you to withdraw this paper.
I note further that , in the section on hypothesis (4) (“Skeptic" blogs contacted after delay) in which I am named, only one piece of evidence is produced, and that is a quote from Lucia Lindgren. If you don’t withdraw the paper, you might at least correct it and replace my name with that of Ms Lindgren.
However, that won’t absolve the authors of having defamed me. If we turn to hypothesis (3) “Presentation of intermediate data”, we see that the person accused of having been the first to pronounce it is Steve McIntyre. Despite the fact that this hypothesis also turned out to be true, it leads him to being accused of exhibiting the same irrational and paranoid tendencies as me, (except for “No Accident”). The link provided
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/ccc2.html#22
leads to a comment by Dr McIntyre (comment 8) to an article by Professor Lewandowsky. However, Dr McIntyre’s comment is not about the presentation of intermediate data, but about four entirely different subjects. The reference to the presentation of intermediate data is in two previous comments by me to the same article (comments 3 and 6). In Comment 5, a commenter notes that I had already made the same point in a comment at SkepticalScience, a blog run by second author John Cook, which for some reason was not included among the blogs analysed, despite being one of the “Principal web sites involved in blogosphere's response to the publication of LOG12” (title of table 2).
One reason for not considering SkepticalScience, despite the fact that this blog is widely regarded as one of the leading blogs commenting on climate scepticism, can perhaps be found in the paper, where, under the heading of “Potential Limitations”, it is explained why the content analysis of blogs was entrusted to authors Cook and Marriott:
“Two of the present authors also contributed to LOG12, and the present analysis may therefore be biased by a potential conflict of interest. This possibility cannot be ruled out [...]. [B]ecause data collection (via internet search) was conducted by two authors who were not involved in analysis or report of LOG12, the resulting “raw" data - available in the online supplementary material - cannot reflect a conflict of interest involving the LOG12 authors.”
It might have been wise to indicate that:
1) the two authors whose data collection “cannot reflect a conflict of interest” both run blogs which concentrate on countering the views of sceptics (SkepticalScience and WatchingtheDeniers)
2) John Cook of Skeptical Science is coauthor with first author Stephan Lewandowsky of “Debunking Skepticism”; and
3)SkepticalScience was the scene of some of the most lively debates about (LOG12) and of at least one of the first occurrences of a conspiracist hypothesis.
I therefore suggest that, in the interest of accuracy, the authors replace the name of Dr McIntyre with mine, (since I do believe that my comment at Skeptical Science was the first to raise this hypothesis, the truth of which has been confirmed by Professor Lewandowsky) and my name with that of Lucia Lindgren.
I haven’t looked at the attributions of earliest mention to the other hypotheses mentioned in table 3. However, I noticed that a quote attributed to me is false, and it wouldn’t surprise me if there are other errors.
Finally, I would like to point out that by the time Cook and Marriott began their content analysis (August 28), the paper (LOG12) had already been the subject of numerous comments on blogs for at least five weeks, beginning with:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/jul/27/climate-sceptics-conspiracy-theorists
19 July 2012 (400+ comments)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/jul/27/climate-sceptics-conspiracy-theorists
29 July 2012 (1300+ comments)
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/discussion/post/1904675
30 July 2012 (70 comments)
http://manicbeancounter.com/2012/07/30/lewandowsky-et-al-2012-motivated-rejection-of-science-part-1/ http://manicbeancounter.com/2012/07/30/lewandowsky-et-al-2012-motivated-rejection-of-science-part-2/
30 July 2012
http://talkingclimate.org/are-climate-sceptics-more-likely-to-be-conspiracy-theorists/.
August 2 2012
The claim to have identified the earliest occurrences of the conspiracist ideation starting on 28 August is therefore moot.
I therefore respectfully suggest that the wisest course might be to withdraw this paper.
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Bob Loblaw at 07:18 AM on 23 March 2013It warmed before 1940 when CO2 was low
Klapper: if you haven't already seen it, I suggest you read the comment here, posted on another thread. Look for the quote half way down, from Gavin Schmidt (RealClimate) on the 1910-1940 period.
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Bob Loblaw at 07:09 AM on 23 March 2013It warmed before 1940 when CO2 was low
Klapper @25: "They are the most recent I could find so I'll assume they are the best."
Why would you assume that? If they do not reflect the range of reasonable values that are supportable in the literature (remember, we have no direct satellite-based measurements of TSI from the 1910-1940 period to check the reconstructions against), then you are assuming that TSI for the period is known with greater accuracy than it is. "The best" in science isn't necessarily decided by "the most recent".
You just may be on your way to assuming your conclusions again.
Have you read and understood my example in #18? Do you agree with it, or do you find fault in the reasoning? IMO, you keep sending yourself off on the Bad Idea path...
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Tom Dayton at 07:02 AM on 23 March 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
Harold, in the "It's Not Bad" post, be sure to click the links in the "Further Reading" green section below the post (but above the comments).
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Paul D at 06:59 AM on 23 March 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
Harold H Doiron "I am trying to define one specific temperature problem for at least one location on earth that will help me be able to prove root cause of the problem."
Simple question...
Why?
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Doug Bostrom at 06:55 AM on 23 March 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
Harold, thanks for visiting.
I can't answer your other questions, but here's a question for which I was unable to find an answer when your letter made the rounds earlier, despite my contacting some of the parties apparently involved in promoting your opinions. Who paid for the press campaign around your work? I see that your summary was mostly publicized via PR Newswire, which of course charges for service. Did you guys pass the hat amongst yourselves, or failing that who stepped forward to pay for your PR campaign?
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Tom Dayton at 06:53 AM on 23 March 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
Harold Doiron, you can start with the post that responds to the myth "It's Not Bad". Be sure to click the Intermediate and Advanced tabs for more details and links to the peer-reviewed scientific publications containing even more specifics. You might also check out the U.S. Department of Agriculture's reports.
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DSL at 06:49 AM on 23 March 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
Harold, you're constructing a strawman. No one ever said that the average temperature increase for any given location was going to be the feature problem of the climate change associated with rapid global warming. You can look at, for example, Petoukhov et al. (2013) and Johanson & Fu (2009) and research on the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, a decent analogue for the current situation (although we're warming much, much more rapidly than that extreme event).
Unless, of course, you're going to utter some nonsense about the greenhouse effect not existing.
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Harold H Doiron, PhD at 06:34 AM on 23 March 2013NASA Retirees Appeal to their Own Lack of Climate Authority
I will identify myself as the leader or Chairman of The Right Climate Stuff research team that published a one page summary of our findings (discussed above in this blog and comments) from a year long study of the question: Are human related CO2 emissions causing alarming warming of the planet that requires swift corrective action by our government?
I have two questions for the author or readers of this blog:
1. Can anyone define for any current specific location on earth, a temperature "Problem" stated in terms of a harmful deviation in temperature from the normal variation range at that location of the last 10,000 years of very stable climate on earth? What are the high confidence projected consequences of this problem or problems if no corrective action is taken? I'm not interested in global average temperature that seems to be a metric subject to anthropogenic mischief. I am trying to define one specific temperature problem for at least one location on earth that will help me be able to prove root cause of the problem.
2. Can anyone tell me what the critique published at SkepticalScience regarding my Powerpoint Presentation given at CPAC on March 15, 2013 said? I was encouraged by a well-known climate scientist to visit this blogsite to review and respond to it, but apparently that critique has been removed from this site? Why?
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2013 SkS News Bulletin #4: Alberta Tar Sands and Keystone XL Pipeline
sotolith7 - Having read MacKays book, I would have to agree with him - on the point that the UK cannot generate enough renewable power within the confines of the UK to replace all of their energy use. Not enough area, too far north WRT solar, etc. Note that he does not argue this on a world-wide basis, however.
Of course, even now the UK is an energy importer according to the World Bank, importing between 20-30% of its energy over the last few years. If they were to import that as electricity sourced in, say, North Africa, rather than oil from the MidEast, I really don't see that as a barrier.
If you wish to discuss such matters further, I would suggest taking it to whichever thread on renewables you feel is most appropriate. Most readers follow the recent Comments page, and will see such a post on whatever thread it is made.
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Tung and Zhou circularly blame ~40% of global warming on regional warming
dvaytw - I always think of it as Anything But Us (ABU), an attempt to disavow all responsibility so that we can keep on with what we're doing without change.
And yes, the holding of multiple, contradictory crack-pot hypotheses is a red flag. To everyone else. But apparently not to those who push such nonsense...
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It warmed before 1940 when CO2 was low
Klapper - I would suggest as a starting point following the link I previously provided for tables of forcings, and from there to the tropospheric and stratospheric aerosol measures. Those include listing multiple supporting references that you can read for questions you might have regarding those measures and uncertainties.
Again - if you are leaving out major forcings such as aerosols, you are basically guaranteed to have incorrect results.
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garethman at 04:20 AM on 23 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Ironcage, that was an excellent post and sums up some of my personal concerns with the reductionist methodolgy used in the paper.
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Barry Woods at 04:06 AM on 23 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Kevin (17) My questions was whether and IF significant changes were made (especially the title), prior to publication to a journal of a work (LOG12) that was cited in other papers, whether it would require withdrawal (or minor) revision or rewrite of subsequent article, this is a fair question, I think. And an entirely sensible thing to consider, with no implications on the authors. As it would certainly be considered in very many other fields of science, that this might be considered, I do not know the niceties of the social sciences..
I do not think it fair to represent this/me as wanting to supress knowledge, nor a characteristic of denial.. Please note, I also stated:
Personally, I would like to respond to the journal Psychological science - Barry Woods
It is unfortuanate that I have not had the opportunity to respond to the journal yet, as LOG12 is currently still press (soon to be published I understand) yet we have another paper responding to named people that criticised the paper, yet they have not had the chance yet to formally respond to the journal Psychological Science
May I draw your attention to a Tom Curtis comment here about LOG12 about his call for withdrawal of LOG12 when the paper was dscussed last year (in full please, as I do not want to misrepresent Tom, Tom's bold), what are your thoughts on his comment, which express similar concerns, and he sought withdawal for a re-write, ( I asked now if this occured, and that I want to respond) and is why I asked whether any changes had occured since the press release:
"Tom Curtis - at Skeptical Science)
A (hopefully) final comment on Lewandowski (in press):
I have been looking through the survey results and noticed that 10 of the respondents have a significant probability of being produced by people attempting to scam the survey. (-remainder of long block quote snipped-)
There were no comment that suggested knowledge supression or characteristics of denial about Tom, so why for me with a far tamer comment, please do not assume motivations for someone percieved to be on an 'opposing side'?
Moderator Response: [DB] Extensive block-quoting snipped per the Comments Policy. Link to quote snipped hyperlinked. -
dvaytw at 03:49 AM on 23 March 2013Tung and Zhou circularly blame ~40% of global warming on regional warming
I'm almost embarrassed to pipe up in these threads because my science knowledge is so sub-par, but I can't resist pointing out: at WUWT right now this AMO is undoubtedly the hot topic.
Does it ever occur to anyone there that this is the God-only-knows-how-many-eth "alternative explanation" they've embraced for warming? First it was the sun, then it was volcanoes, then it was cosmic rays, then it was the Pacific decadal oscillation, now it's the ~Atlantic~ decadal oscillation (I might have the order wrong).
Funny how the one unifying "theory" seems to be Whatever It Is, It ~Ain't~ Greenhouse Gases! That right there to me ought to be a huge red flag to them that motivated reasoning and not genuine curiosity is in the driver's seat.
Moderator Response: [DB] All-caps converted to bold per the Comments Policy. -
Klapper at 03:44 AM on 23 March 2013It warmed before 1940 when CO2 was low
@Bob Loblaw #23:
Skip my TSI reconstruction. I'll use the average of Wang et al 2005, Dora & Walton 2005, Krivova & Solanki 2008 and Kopp 2012 instead to calculate delta TSI. They are the most recent I could find so I'll assume they are the best. Also, if I can find an aerosol forcing model, I'll add the aerosol component for 1910 to 1945 to the calculation.
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Alexandre at 03:37 AM on 23 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
From the list above, the self-sealing reasoning is the most efffective tool for the ignorance seeking.
Even the fact that there is no evidence to back up denier claims becomes evidence of the conspiracy.
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Klapper at 03:31 AM on 23 March 2013It warmed before 1940 when CO2 was low
@KR #22:
I'm not doing model "runs". If you read my posts, I'm accepting the CO2 calculation for temperature change in the period above as done by Dana81. I'm not accepting the calculation for TSI; I think it's too high, but I'm using Dana's TSI formula for the temperature change in this period, but my own delta TSI. Actually, I made a huge mistake by calculating my own TSI reconstruction from SSN's/ACRIM. I should have said "For TSI I'll use the 3 most recent reconstructions I could find" (i.e Wang et al 2005, Dora & Walton 2005 and Kopp 2012). It's pretty much the exactly same number, but no one would have wasted time arguing with me about my TSI estimate.
If I can find a source for the aerosol forcing, I will add a calcuation for aerosols, since adding aerosols to the equation helps my argument by adding a negative number to the model temperature change.
In the end I'm just cross-checking the calculation done by Dana above, but with a different TSI number. My analysis of the various reconstructions indicates his number of 1 full Watt/m2 increase in TSI in the period of interest is too high, even his first statement on 0.5W/m2 increase in the period looks high.
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citizenschallenge at 02:34 AM on 23 March 2013Hurricanes aren't linked to global warming
Seems like this thread is in need of some updating.
Here's the most recent news :
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Recent intense hurricane response to global climate change
Greg Holland, Cindy L. Bruyère | March 2013,http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-013-1713-0
Abstract
An Anthropogenic Climate Change Index (ACCI) is developed and used to investigate the potential global warming contribution to current tropical cyclone activity. The ACCI is defined as the difference between the means of ensembles of climate simulations with and without anthropogenic gases and aerosols. This index indicates that the bulk of the current anthropogenic warming has occurred in the past four decades, which enables improved confidence in assessing hurricane changes as it removes many of the data issues from previous eras. We find no anthropogenic signal in annual global tropical cyclone or hurricane frequencies.But a strong signal is found in proportions of both weaker and stronger hurricanes: the proportion of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has increased at a rate of ~25–30 % per °C of global warming after accounting for analysis and observing system changes.
This has been balanced by a similar decrease in Category 1 and 2 hurricane proportions, leading to development of a distinctly bimodal intensity distribution, with the secondary maximum at Category 4 hurricanes.
This global signal is reproduced in all ocean basins. The observed increase in Category 4–5 hurricanes may not continue at the same rate with future global warming. The analysis suggests that following an initial climate increase in intense hurricane proportions a saturation level will be reached beyond which any further global warming will have little effect.
Full article: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-013-1713-0/fulltext.html
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Bob Loblaw at 02:26 AM on 23 March 2013It warmed before 1940 when CO2 was low
Klapper @21, etc.
You still fail to see the error of your ways. It's not that your reconstruction of forcings is not possible, it's that it is not possible to exclude the others that are different (based on current knowledge). So you can come up with something that falls within the range of values in the literature? That's like saying "gravity still works!". The answer is "so what? - we've already included that in our estimates of our uncertainty."
You error is assuming that your reconstruction is the correct one, and therefore the models are wrong.
The fact that numerous attempts to reconstruct TSI (or aerosol forcings) lead to different results forces us (pun intended) to conclude that the uncertainty in those forcings is too large to come to reliable conclusions beyond what has been stated in the literature.
By choosing to rely on one estimate of forcings - even if it is within the range of values in the literature - to the exclusion of others that do not conform to your conclusion is called cherry picking and confirmation bias.
The proper way to handle the uncertainty is to accept it. Unless you can provide an independent evaluation of your TSI reconstruction, you are chasing your tail in the noise of uncertainty.
Different estimates of past forcing in the literature may later be identified as problematic through more study of the physics of solar output, and future reconstructions may improve on that basis, but what you are doing is choosing which reconstruction to believe because it agrees with your desired conclusions.
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Bob Loblaw at 02:02 AM on 23 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
bratisla@8
Please re-read my comment. I do not say that the authors of the paper think that all critiques represent conspiratorial ideation - I say that someone has accused them of of defining their criteria that way. The paragraph (in the post) begins with "A common misrepresentation of Recursive Fury is..." The contradiction is that someone also accuses the authors of ignoring certain critiques (which the authors did not include specifically because it didn't exhibit traits of conspiratorial ideation).
The inconsistency I speak of is with reagard to the criticisms, not the paper itself.
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RyanStarr at 01:56 AM on 23 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
...because the criterion for inclusion was simply whether or not they referred to one of the hypotheses.
May I ask which hypothesis Richard Betts referred to?
Perhaps one of the six criteria listed above, or something else? The term hypotheses appears an alwful lot in the paper so I'm vague to the usage in the above quote.
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Doug Bostrom at 01:47 AM on 23 March 20132013 SkS News Bulletin #4: Alberta Tar Sands and Keystone XL Pipeline
Sotolith, I'd say that a remark such as "it's highly controversial as to whether renewables can provide more than a minor contribution to the AGW problem" is at least suggestive of a bias in itself, let alone for the moment being contradicted by facts.
A case can be made that many people are deeply conflicted over technological choices we need to make in order to confront the subsitution problem required to deal with global warming. This dissonance might express itself as antipathy to a particular technology due to perceived ideological associations, which I think is often the case w/"renewable" (fusion-powered) energy capture/liberation systems, or it might be expressed by unreasoning fear of more judicious and scrupulous application of technologies with a somewhat dubious history of failure statistics.
Pragmatism expresses itself best in such cases as China, where even as the country moves to consolidate and improve coal generation systems, plans for nuclear generators go ahead and simultaneously the WE of well over10 fission plants has been already installed in the form of "renewable" (fusion-powered) domestic hot water augmentation. Parenthetically, it is in the latter case that your supposition of the scant potential contribution of "renewable" (fusion-powered) energy capture/liberation schemes fails to comport with facts.
Compartmentalizing distaste for so-called "enviromentalists" and separating actual risk and hazard from visceral fear will be very helpful in performing clear-eyed assessments of technological choices. In at least some cases doing so makes the matter of choice much easier; paralysis over unjustified and often irrelevant abstractions is not helpful to improving our situation.
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Ironcage at 00:52 AM on 23 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
I have been following this and it is an interesting direction for the psychology of climate change responses. However as a sociologist I find this approach - typical of the psychology discipline - to be severely lacking of the social dimension. What of the life histories; the societal relations of power; the practices of everyday experiences to which these conspiracy theorists are exposed; what of the historical processes involved in conspiracy making; the historical societal structures that have contributed to conspiracy making; what are the comparable occurrences of such reasoning in other aspects of daily life (do people often respond in similar ways to criticisms about their team, political party, or work?) ; are senses of disempowerment contributing perhaps to a sense of empowerment by belonging to such conspiracy believers; and for me most importantly what are the institutional and societal relations that contribute to such unreflexive dispositions in the first place. To move forward with this study it could really benefit from further interdisciplinary investigation involving people trained in investigating the (largely unconscious) social. I’d suggest a few qualitative investigations would go along way –especially looking into the regularities of people’s backgrounds. I think Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘Social space’ involving a history of practices, and his methodological concepts of habitus, capital and field, would be a good methodological starting point.
On a separate note I was very much glad to see the more sociologically endowed work of Norgaard (socially organized denial) getting a mention on this fine blog.
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ptbrown31 at 00:52 AM on 23 March 2013Tung and Zhou circularly blame ~40% of global warming on regional warming
In regards to the last paragraph:
You can not assume that ocean circulations only move heat around the earth system and have no effect on the net energy budget. This is because ocean circulations can modulate the distribution of radiativly active clouds, water vapor, and sea ice.
Here is a very simple example to illustrate the point:
(increase AMOC) => (increase north atlantic temperatures) => (decrease artic sea ice) => (decrease albedo) => (increase net energy absorbed at the surface).
Where did the extra heat come from? It is POSSIBLE that it did come from internal variability changing radiativly active parts of the system. This possibility can not be dismissed out of hand as simply being "unphysical"
See the following paper for a rigorous explanation for this:
http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/17627276/why-ocean-heat-transport-warms-global-mean-climate
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Kevin C at 00:44 AM on 23 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
If it does not have the same title (or has revisions), then presumably the recursive fury paper will need to be withdrawn?
Papers are not retracted for requiring minor clarifications, or even for being subsequently shown to be completely wrong. Papers are retracted for serious misconduct or fraud.
The paper was published in an academic sociology journal. Anyone working in the field will be intimately familiar with both the differences between a signifier and the signified, and the unpredictability of the academic publication process. Therefore I don't see much likelihood of future research being compromised by researchers reading this paper and failing to realise that the version of the first paper which the research subjects were responding to may not be word-for-word identical to the final publiction.
Nonetheless it is a point which could benefit from clarification to avoid tripping up the lay reader or perhaps the odd novice researcher. It's a slightly unconventional thing to do, but under the circumstances including an additional webcite to the original draft would do the trick. Or include the original as supplementary data.
But here's the puzzle: Rather than suggesting a clarification, you ask if the paper should be withdrawn. That seems to me to be a knowledge-suppressing rather than a knowledge-seeking approach to the problem, i.e. characteristic of denial rather than true skepticism. Surely it is better to have the work out there so that it can be evaluated, tested, built on or rejected, rather than making it disappear into a black hole for a trivial point of unclarity?
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Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Barry Woods, all - Refreshing your page results in multiple submissions; I've certainly done it more than once.
Moderator Response: [Sph]: I know. Sorry. I need to find time to add code to recognize exact duplicate comment submissions and ignore them. Too much to do, however, and too little time... I'll get there. -
It warmed before 1940 when CO2 was low
Klapper - Just to be clear: are you or are you not using all of the observed forcings in your model runs?
You've stated: "I've said let's ignore aerosols in the 1910 to 1945 period..."
If you are not applying all the forcings to your model runs (by ignoring or assigning arbitrary forcings to aerosols, for example), it is entirely unsurprising that you aren't seeing a good match to observed temperatures.
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