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Comments 47501 to 47550:
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Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
Jose_X - It's a bit difficult to understand what you are discussing here. Are you asking for the current sum value of CO2 forcing? According to NASA numbers CO2 represents ~20% of the current greenhouse effect, water vapor and clouds ~75%, and other gases (methane, CFCs, ozone, etc) another 5%.
33C of greenhouse effect, or 6.6C directly attributable to CO2 by those numbers, means about 22-23 or so W/m^2 of total CO2 forcing at this time.
On the other hand, "forcing" is generally referred to as the change from previous conditions, usually 1750AD, in which case as of 2005 CO2 accounts for ~1.66 (1.49-1.83) W/m2 as a delta. Add in all the other factors +/-, and the total net anthropogenic forcing change since 1750 is about 1.6 (0.6-2.4) W/m2.
[Source]
But again, I'm not entirely certain what you are asking about.
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Jose_X at 03:30 AM on 13 March 2013Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
Tom Curtis, thanks for the response, but I was thinking of "theoretical" just as you explained, meaning that if we could actually do 2x over night then we would observe the full forcing value.
Tom Curtis #142. Rethinking the meaning of the words now after your 142 comment, I see that you were right and I did mean hypothetical. I didn't mean that the value couldn't exist under any circumstance, but rather that it could but would not unless the CO2 were eg done "over night". I concluded this from the statement by the IPCC (quoted on Wikipedia) that a reference value is used to define the forcing ("with surface and tropospheric temperatures and state held fixed at the unperturbed values") so that perhaps a perturbation "forcing" is not an entity (theoretical or measurable) that is manifested in reality if there isn't an imbalance at TOA of that magnitude at any given point in time.
Let me ask something about the meaning of the word "forcing". Would "yes" be the answer to the question, "is the forcing at TOA from CO2 a value greater than 5 W/m^2?" [ie, is it clearly greater than the 2x forcing quoted by the IPCC because it would include contributions from all CO2 in the atmosphere today?] -
Rob Honeycutt at 02:51 AM on 13 March 2013Drost, Karoly, and Braganza Find Human Fingerprints in Global Warming
HK... You don't understand my question. I'm not asking about the math. I know the equation.
I'm asking, by what method are you converting the mass to energy. It doesn't just magically change by itself. There has to be a mechanism by which the mass is changed to energy.
More to the point, I'm saying you can't just randomly change mass to energy. That is what you do in a nuclear explosion or a nuclear reactor. You can't say "if" that mass were converted to energy because you can't change the mass of 10 GT of atmospheric carbon into energy.
I'm telling you that you're making a completely meaningless point.
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Drost, Karoly, and Braganza Find Human Fingerprints in Global Warming
Rob Honeycutt
E (energy in Joules) = m (mass in kilograms) x c2 (speed of light in meters/sec)
When mass is multiplied by (3 x 108)2 you get a lot of energy!
That’s why 4.3 million tons of mass converted to energy every second is able to power the Sun.
Maybe this has got a little off-topic, but it should make it obvious that many gigatons of manmade carbon can’t disappear without a trace every year and that nature has been a net carbon sink for many decades.
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Rob Honeycutt at 01:34 AM on 13 March 2013Drost, Karoly, and Braganza Find Human Fingerprints in Global Warming
HK... Let me ask a question. How did you suddenly convert all that mass to energy?
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Drost, Karoly, and Braganza Find Human Fingerprints in Global Warming
8 Chriskoz & 10 CBDunkerson:
It seems that we pretty much agree!
I was also considering the mass balance of carbon, but left it out because it wasn’t included in figure 1. If nature was a net emitter of CO2 it would of course be very hard to explain how 10 gigatons of manmade carbon can disappear without a trace every year, unless we assume that it is converted into energy according to Einstein’s famous formula E = mc2. (a new climate myth?)
The only problem is that if we put 10 gigatons of mass into that formula, we end up with about 9 x 1029 Joules of energy, enough to boil away the oceans nearly 250 times! JJ
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CBDunkerson at 21:48 PM on 12 March 2013Drost, Karoly, and Braganza Find Human Fingerprints in Global Warming
HK, rather than needing a combination of all the listed factors I'd say rather that none of the items listed proves AGW by itself. Rather various combinations of them do. As chriskoz said, mass balance plus item 7 is one proof. As are 5, 6, and 7 together. Or 4, 5, and 6. Or 1, 2, 3, and 7. Et cetera.
Each of the fingerprints rules out various other possibilities and together different sets of them rule out every possibility except AGW.
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bill4344 at 11:49 AM on 12 March 2013Drost, Karoly, and Braganza Find Human Fingerprints in Global Warming
Wow, chriskoz - that's a bright kid! ;-)
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Dave123 at 11:28 AM on 12 March 2013Skeptical Science launches PDF
I've got Personal Brain software, and I agree it would take a huge amount of time, and this sort of mind mapping is intensely personal. How one person sets it up isn't how someone else would feel comfortable navigating- that's why they call it Personal.
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chriskoz at 11:21 AM on 12 March 2013Drost, Karoly, and Braganza Find Human Fingerprints in Global Warming
HK@7,
You missed the simple accounting of C mass balance in the atmosphere: emissions vs. ΔCATM, after Cawley, 2011 and from the Keeling curve. A preschool child can calculate it (well, if told that ΔCATM = Δppm*earth surface) concluding that at least since 1958 (when Charlie started measuring Δppm) and likely for much longer, nature has always been the net sink of CO2. Therefore nature has always been helping to get rid of humen CO2 in the atmospher and not adding to it.
That, combined with your point 7) is the bottom line of evidence concluding the causation of AGW. The rest of your points (as well as this study) is just an icing on the cake. That's it, you don't need any knowledge beyond primary school arithmetics to understand that.
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Drost, Karoly, and Braganza Find Human Fingerprints in Global Warming
Maybe this is a little pedantic, but I just want to point out that none of the "fingerprints" in figure 1 is a proof of human-caused global warming by themselves, and that each of them in theory could have a natural cause. It’s the combination of all these factors together that represents a huge, clear-cut AGW-fingerprint.
1) The shrinking and cooling upper atmosphere could be caused by reduced solar activity, but that option is excluded if we accept that the ongoing warming is real.
2) The rising tropopause could be the result of any warming, whether this was caused by increased energy from the sun or decreased energy-loss to space, but 1) rules out the sun as the cause for warming.
3) The pattern of ocean warming (most in the upper layers) rules out geothermal heat, even if it had been physically possible for GH to change significantly during a few decades.
4) Winters and nights warming faster than summers and days, less heat escaping to space and more heat returning to Earth is a clear fingerprint of the greenhouse effect, but it could be the result of a natural increase of CO2 and other GHGs, which has happened several times in the distant past.
5) Less oxygen in the air clearly shows that the extra CO2 comes from burning of organic matter, which rules out volcanoes and oceanic out-gassing. It could in theory be a result of widespread forest fires and other natural decay of organic matter, but would there be any forests left on Earth today if that was the source of about 500 gigatons of extra carbon in the atmosphere and oceans since the industrial revolution?
6) More fossil fuel carbon in the atmosphere, trees and so on (if that refers to the increased C12/C13 ratio) could also be the result of widespread burning and decay of organic matter, but again, we still have a lot of forests on this planet. And I guess the lack of C14 proves that the source for this extra carbon has to be very old organic matter, not recently dead trees.
7) And finally, we know with absolute certainty – as far as anything can be certain in science – that CO2 is a heat-trapping gas, which is nicely demonstrated by John Nielsen-Gammon here.
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scaddenp at 06:52 AM on 12 March 2013Extreme weather isn't caused by global warming
Snafu - lets get this clear. Science works like this - you build hypotheses into models from which you make predictions. You test these predictions against the real data. Now you think you doing this. "Look AGW says xyz, and he is abc which shows its wrong". However, what you are really doing is constructing a straw man agument because climate models predict no such thing and all the handwaving in the world doesnt change that. So instead of constructing your own wild ideas on what the science predicts you could instead see what is actually predicted and compare that with systematic analysis of global records.
So far you are sloganeering. Before we waste further time, perhaps we should ask whether data would change your mind or are you only looking for something to sure up an opinion that wasnt based on data in the first place?
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DSL at 06:51 AM on 12 March 2013Skeptical Science launches PDF
TB, I thought about it, but it would take a pretty huge chunk of time -- too much for me.
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TreeBanker at 05:55 AM on 12 March 2013Skeptical Science launches PDF
Are you guys familiar with 'Personal Brain' software? If so do you know if anyone has built a brain around your material?
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Doug Bostrom at 05:43 AM on 12 March 2013Cherrypicking to Deny Continued Ocean and Global Warming
Jac: ...[Rose] allowed Tillerson to soft sell his "we have to balance economic growth" approach climate change ...
This is actually a tough feature of our dilemma; our nature and habit is to "balance" opposing requirements, think in terms of some kind of budget that allows supporting several notionally exclusive objectives. Rose isn't alone in faltering at this mental hurdle.The fact is, every gram of CO2 we emit now is like pushing a drowning man's head just that little bit deeper underwater. Meanwhile nothing less than "let him breathe air" will do; saying that my objective is to keep as much of my hand wet as possible while letting the man's head emerge from underwater is useless unless I allow the fellow to take a breath. My knowledge of anatomy tells me my hand will be entirely in air if I do so; how do I "compromise?"
In the following lecture (youtube) Tyndall Centre's Prof. Kevin Anderson explains better .
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BillWalker at 05:14 AM on 12 March 2013Drost, Karoly, and Braganza Find Human Fingerprints in Global Warming
Of course, the climate "skeptics" takeaway from this will likely be "Although the range of trends as simulated by the models cover the range of possible trends as indicated by the observational data quite well, there is a tendency for some models to overestimate the trend in GM..."
I can see the headline now: "Models overestimate warming, says new paper!"
Sigh. -
dana1981 at 04:24 AM on 12 March 2013Drost, Karoly, and Braganza Find Human Fingerprints in Global Warming
John H @4 - climate models should anticipate these 'fingerprints' pretty well. I'm not aware of an example where an observation was determined after-the-fact to be an anthropogenic 'fingerprint', though there might be some examples I'm not aware of.
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Rob Honeycutt at 03:25 AM on 12 March 2013Skeptical Science launches PDF
snafu... I would think you could do better than that! Try Aug 1998 of +0.83C and Jan 2012 of +0.32 (GISS LOTI). Yikes, we're headed for an ice age in the next 50 years! (/sarc)
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jerryg at 03:06 AM on 12 March 2013Skeptical Science launches PDF
Are they only available from the articles themselves, or do you have a central repository where they can also be downloaded from?ThanksModerator Response: Not a bad idea. A direct list could indeed be incorporated into the "Arguments" menu item item at upper left. -
John Hartz at 03:05 AM on 12 March 2013Drost, Karoly, and Braganza Find Human Fingerprints in Global Warming
@dana #3:
You said: Something that we expect to see if humans are causing global warming.
Aren't we also seeing fingerprints that we didn't expect to see? (We certainly are seeing some fingerprints sooner than we had expected to see them.)
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Composer99 at 03:03 AM on 12 March 2013Extreme weather isn't caused by global warming
snafu:
At the risk of being accused of 'cherry-picking' single events [...]
Got it in one.
A handful of individual weather events is not the equivalent of a global aggregate of extreme weather events over long time frames.
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dana1981 at 02:49 AM on 12 March 2013Drost, Karoly, and Braganza Find Human Fingerprints in Global Warming
John @1 - 'fingerprint' is basically shorthand for 'evidence specific to or consistent with human-caused warming'. Something that we expect to see if humans are causing global warming. I didn't update any rebuttals with this one. I could probably update 'it's not us' with some of this info. I'll let you know if I do.
jsam @2 - thanks, typo fixed.
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jsam at 02:42 AM on 12 March 2013Drost, Karoly, and Braganza Find Human Fingerprints in Global Warming
Typo alert, first line, "the physical reality that global warmig continues unabated" - warmig.
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Rob Honeycutt at 02:30 AM on 12 March 2013Extreme weather isn't caused by global warming
snafu... You know that you're not making a lot of sense here. How do you come to the conclusion that weather events are getting more extreme but not because of global warming?
Moderator Response: [JH] Snafu is also skating on the thin ice of sloganeering.] -
John Hartz at 01:58 AM on 12 March 2013Drost, Karoly, and Braganza Find Human Fingerprints in Global Warming
Dana:
Kudos on yet another excellent post.
Question: In scientific circles, is "fingerprints" short-hand for "lines of evidence"?
Also, does your above article update any of the existing SkS Rebuttal articles?
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Jac_RTP at 01:15 AM on 12 March 2013Cherrypicking to Deny Continued Ocean and Global Warming
It never seems to end. Just this morning, RedState, the conservative misinformation site, published this denier’s piece the author called: Alternate New York Times Headline: ‘Global Warming Saves Civilization’… http://www.redstate.com/2013/03/10/alternate-new-york-times-headline-global-warming-saves-civilization/
The MSM isn't that far behind the conservatives. Charlie Rose made sure his interview with Rex Tillerson last week was rose colored from the ExxonMobil POV. Charlie could've asked the tough questions, but didn't. Instead he allowed Tillerson to soft sell his "we have to balance economic growth" approach climate change with just enough cherrypicking and other denier rhetoric to make it palatable to average American's worried about climate change, but more importantly paying this month's bills... http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12808
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Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 00:54 AM on 12 March 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #10
If anyone is interested (in light of snafu's comments), I made a gif animation of part of that incredible heat wave over Australia. (You probably need to know what's 'normal' in January to fully appreciate it. Definitely what happened was a long way from 'normal'.)
Not that what we're getting now down in SE Australia is 'normal' for autumn, either. It's too hot for this time of the year.
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Robert Murphy at 00:36 AM on 12 March 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #10
What Snafu is leaving out is the fact that,
"On average, Marble Bar experiences about 154 such days each year. The town is far enough inland that, during the summer months, the only mechanisms likely to prevent the air from reaching such a temperature involve a southward excursion of humid air associated with the monsoon trough, or heavy cloud, and/or rain, in the immediate area. This may sometimes be associated with a tropical cyclone or a monsoon low. In the record year of 1923-24 the monsoon trough stayed well north, and the season was notable for its lack of cyclone activity. (In fact, the entire Australian continent was untouched by tropical cyclones throughout the season, a rare event in the 20th Century)."
www.bom.gov.au/lam/climate/levelthree/c20thc/temp1.htm
This "great record" only broke the average number of 100+ days at Marble Bar by 6, and it was weather freakiness that year that did it. That's not much of a heat wave; that's just a touch above normal for Marble Bar. It says absolutely nothing about the relative global temps from back then and now. How coould it possibly?You'll have to do a lot better than that to even begin to make a case it hasn't been warming.
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Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 00:32 AM on 12 March 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
Just a quick observation on the silliness going on over at WUWT arguing over which is their current conspiracy theory. I see that Foxgoose was most put out because he reckons Lewandowsky et al got his conspiracy theory wrong. Foxgoose seems to have clarified to all what his actual conspiracy theory was and is (I think); and is still sticking to it apparently, despite indisputable evidence to the contrary.
I bet he's thankful to Brandon for clearing that up :D
(Before tackling that thread, make sure you put your head in a vice! Barmy is a good descriptor, if it's allowed. Otherwise Rob Honeycutt's "never have I run across such who are so self-unaware" will do.)
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snafu at 00:30 AM on 12 March 2013Extreme weather isn't caused by global warming
I hope I have put this in the right place.
At the risk of being accused of 'cherry-picking' single events, I ask everyone to take note of these dates;
Typoon Tip -1979
Marble Bar - 1923-24
Furnace Creek Ranch (formerly Greenland Ranch) - 1913
Oodnadatta, South Australia - 1960...actually, instead of listing them, please go here;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_recordsNow open the SkS trend calculator, HADCRUT4, 1850-2013, moving average - 1 month.
I'm not interested in temps or trends as such, this is not a 'it's getting hotter or colder' question. I'd like you to take note of the 'extreme' weather events from the link above and see which period(s) the bulk of them occur in.
Have weather events become more 'extreme'? Yes...............and it's not because of Global Warming.... ;) .
Moderator Response: [JH] Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can and will be rescinded if the posting individual continues to treat adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum. 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. 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. -
DSL at 00:18 AM on 12 March 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #10
snafu, I don't know if you've noticed, but the general circulation system is quite complicated. If it were a fixed system, some of your complaints would be valid. It is not a fixed system. First, there are a variety of short- and long-term regional oscillations that pulse energy across the system. These oscillations are dynamically integrated, and the pattern of that integration can result in anomalous regional conditions regardless of global warming. Second, when energy accumulation is taking place (as it is now), the system itself begins to change. For example, the Hadley circulation has shifted about 5 degrees poleward in the last 30 years. That's a change to a major system component, and it is affecting other components. The polar cell is going through a fundamental change. If you look at a close analogue to the current warming, you'll see that the general circulation system has been radically altered by rapid global warming in the past.
Do you get it? The circulation system is complex and can concentrate energy in specific regions while other regions remain "normal" or even undergo record cold. The confidence with which you speak is not supported by your demonstrated understanding of the science.
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willard at 22:53 PM on 11 March 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
I'm not sure the Auditor can argue that he was not following Lucia's:
> Climate Audit was not contacted and grants permission to be “outed”.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/tweet-your-permission-for-lewandowsky-to-out-you/
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Anne-Marie Blackburn at 22:40 PM on 11 March 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #10
No, the world record for the longest period of days in one location doesn't need to be broken to show that the globe is warming. We have global temperature datasets for this, as well as the melting of ice, the shifting of species, etc. Again, you're cherry-picking one aspect as well as building a strawman, since no one's ever made the claim you're making, instead of looking at the whole body of evidence. For Australia, we're talking about the warmest summer of record, with each state and territory setting new records and national daily temperature records reaching new levels. 26 daily rainfall records were also broken at the national level, and 5 river-height records were broken. To suggest the globe isn't warming or the climate isn't changing because one record hasn't been broken yet doesn't make any sense when you look at all the evidence.
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willard at 22:39 PM on 11 March 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
Forgot the link to the Auditor's comment at Tony's:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/09/stephan-lewandowsky-and-john-cook-making-things-up/#comment-1244764
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willard at 22:38 PM on 11 March 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
At Tony's, the Auditor saith:
> Other than Spencer, no one made categeorical statements that they’d not been contacted. [...] Contrary to Lewandowsky’s claim, none of us made “public” statements that we had not been contacted.
Perhaps this might not be considered categorical enough:
> He didn’t even bother contacting me, or apparently any serious skeptics, for their opinions.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/skeptics-are-conspiracy-theorists/#comment-102339
Or perhaps this does not count as a statement.
Paying due diligence to the context where the Auditor denied having been contacted should make one see what was implied at the time.
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By the same token, notice the deflection [1], the excuse [2], and the red herring [3]:
> [Jo's] blog post reported our information in more categorical terms than I or the others had expressed [1]. I wasn’t following her blog and didn’t notice this at the time [2]. Lewandowsky made no attempt to verify what we had told her with us [3].
That [3] is a red herring is obvious, as Jo's post does not need to be verified to have been published. The point of citing Jo's post does not rest on the truthfulness of her story. The concept of ideation definitely deserves due diligence.
I would have posted this at Tony's if I could. But I can't post there. Nor can I post at Steve's anymore.
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snafu at 22:19 PM on 11 March 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #10
How is the world record of the longest period of days over 40C a cheery pick? It has not been broken anywhere on the globe since 1923-24.
If the globe is supposed to warming (as we are lead to believe), this record should have been broken long ago. No place on the planet has got anywhere near it in 89 years!
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Anne-Marie Blackburn at 22:10 PM on 11 March 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #10
Snafu, you are cherry-picking temperatures at one location whilst the report looks at all extreme weather events happening in the whole of Australia, including national records.
Ironic that you have a dig at this blog when you are going out of your way to misrepresent a report.
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snafu at 21:55 PM on 11 March 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #10
In regards to Australia's 'angry summer' (superstorms, angry summers, snowquesters).....LOL.
World record of most consecutive days of 100 °F (40 °C) or above, during a period of 160 days from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924. Marble Bar, WA.
(-snip)
Moderator Response: [JH] Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can be rescinded if the posting individual treats adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum. 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. -
Leto at 21:47 PM on 11 March 20132013 SkS Weekly Digest #9
Perhaps you could add this remarkabe Curry quote to your profile on her (uless it's already in there somewhere and I missed it):
Is it “cherry picking” to start a trend analysis at 1998? No, not if you are looking for a long period of time where there is little or no warming, in efforts to refute Hypothesis I*
*[Hypothesis I = AGW].
(http://judithcurry.com/2012/02/07/trends-change-points-hypotheses/)
The ignorance demonstrated in that single statement really tells me everything I need to know about this woman. Cherry-picking is bad enough, but defending it because, well, you were earnestly trying to pick the bit that was cherry-flavoured... is amazing. And note that this is not a bit of ill-considered daydreaming that popped out when she wasn't paying full attention. It's there on her own blog, in the main post.
I can't see how someone capable of saying this can be employed by a university.
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Doug Bostrom at 17:10 PM on 11 March 2013Skeptical Science launches PDF
Snafu, try the "search" box to learn more about the topics you're wondering over. This thread is a housekeeping announcement and isn't going to be a productive place for your sense of curiosity, or much of a useful soapbox for that matter.
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Doug Hutcheson at 16:53 PM on 11 March 2013Skeptical Science launches PDF
snafu, if you want proof without any doubt, you are wanting religion, not science, which means you are in the wrong place.. If, on the other hand, you want reasonable projections based on the available evidence, you are in the right place. Which will you choose? I think double-posting may not the only thing you have trouble with at SkS.
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snafu at 16:41 PM on 11 March 2013Skeptical Science launches PDF
Are SkS going to release any PDF's on why the Global average mean temperature hasn't risen in 15 years according to the Uk Met and the Hadley centre?
1997 - 14.37C
2012 - 14.45C(which I might add is lower than Hansen's pre 1988 Global average mean temperature of 15C). Oh wait.....I thought the GAMT was 14.5C. Never mind.
Are SkS going to release any PDF's explaining, according to your own 'trend calculator', HadCrut4 from 1850, shows two distinct and almost identical warming periods of ~0.5C and two distinct cooling and almost identical cooling periods of ~ -0.4C, each of around 35-40years to present?
Are Sks going to release any PDF's with the evidence that proves, without NOW occuring on their own 'trend calculator' using HADCrut4 1850-2013?
Moderator Response: (Rob P) - Use the search function to find the most relevant thread and post your enquiry there. I can assure you that the myths you are propagating are hardly novel. -
Rob Honeycutt at 14:24 PM on 11 March 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
Oh, why do I ever click the WUWT links? I've met a lot of people in my years but never have I run across such who are so self-unaware.
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Bernard J. at 13:27 PM on 11 March 2013Greedy Lying Bastards - Now In Theaters
Interesting to note that Anthony Watts' response was essentially "it's a fake because they photoshopped the oil slick on the cover". He could as well have gone with "it's a fake because they photoshopped a guy floating on the ocean in an arm chair".
This is the (ground-) level of thinking of which Watts is only capable.
Apparently it would be more believable in Watts' opinion if the producers has prepared a real oil slick for the publicity photo (would a photoshopped guy floating in a chair then escape notice?). Of course, had it been a real oil slick Watts was all oiled up to rant about the environmental damage thus caused...
On a more interesting note (for me), is there any indication when the documentary will be released in Australia?
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Tom Curtis at 12:56 PM on 11 March 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
Shollenberger has noticed my critique, and responded at WUWT, saying:
"Over at Skeptical Science, Tom Curtis responded to this post by saying this post is a non-substantive response. All I have to say to that is… wow. It’s already been established the authors grossly misrepresented the views of Jeff Id in their paper, and now it’s been established they misquoted multiple people.
How much deception has to be shown before it matters?"
First, if the misquotes were inadvertent (as Shollenberger purports to believe), they were not deception. Shollenberger's continued use of over the top descriptions and dog whistle words makes clear that his purpose is to vilify Lewandowsky and his co-authors, and by so doing to avoid the need for substantive criticism while giving the appearance to those who do not think critically that Lewandowsky 2013 has been rebutted.
Second, a substantive criticism of a paper is one which shows that its conclusions do not follow from the evidence presented. As Shollenberger himself acknowledges (ironically in the comment immediately preceding his response to me),
"The fabricated[sic] quote doesn’t even help their case much so why take the risk?"
If the quotes do not help their case, then removing them does not weaken their case. Ergo, criticizing these quotes does not contribute to showing that the evidence presented overall is faulty; or that the conclusions drawn do not follow from the evidence.
A thorough critique should indeed include criticism of the misquotes; but they cannot be the substance of the criticism because if that is all there is to criticize, the paper still stands unrefuted.
Put another way, if Shollenberger had done all that was needed to refute Lewandowsky 2013, then I can as easilly refute AGW "skepticism" by noting that Watts has "managed to do that [make a fool of himself] a number of times".
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chriskoz at 12:28 PM on 11 March 2013Greedy Lying Bastards - Now In Theaters
This "gem" piece from James Taylor pointed by philipm is very revealing. It suffice to read the very first reader's comment:
The survey the author cites isn’t “scientists” as stated in the title of the op-ed, it is a survey of the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta. That’s like surveying tobacco company CEO’s about the dangers of smoking. It would be a reasonable piece about the opinion of petroleum engineers in Alberta if that was made clear, instead that was hidden. I wonder why?
My answer to this question is: because it's a professional lie. It cannot be a "mistake" that an experienced journalist like James Taylor, confuses those two categories of professionals. And as DSL revealed that James Taylor works for Heartland, that explains it all: he's a professional liar. One more person on my black list.
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Doug Bostrom at 12:12 PM on 11 March 2013Skeptical Science launches PDF
Thanks for the heads-up, Jonas. It looks though some other PDF versions have the same quirk-- namely the last few letters of the last word cut off. We'll it out.
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Doug Hutcheson at 11:44 AM on 11 March 2013Skeptical Science launches PDF
Mods, in this article, there are numerous occurrences of the term 'PDF', meaning 'Portable Document Format', but these have become mouse-hover hot-spots(?) leading to the definition 'Probability Density Function'. I guess there is an automatic parser which embeds these hot-spots, but it seems to be a bit aggressive.
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Doug Hutcheson at 11:31 AM on 11 March 2013What doesn’t change with climate?
Just a note to the mods: on my system, in the second-last paragraph, there are many instances of the word 'molecule', where the initial 'mol' is underlined by a row of dots and is a hot spot (?) where hovering the mouse over the underlined part pops up a definition of mol = mole. I guess there is an automatic parser that looks for instances in a text, of terms defined in the database, but it seems to be a bit aggressive in this case.
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Jonas at 10:23 AM on 11 March 2013Greedy Lying Bastards - Now In Theaters
There also is a film "Climate of Doubt" from Frontline:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/climate-of-doubt
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