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Comments 48251 to 48300:
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Philip Shehan at 22:21 PM on 28 February 2013The Y-Axis of Evil
Regarding my comment number 49. I must correct and apologise to Lord Monckton for attributing to him a comment he did not make. This was due to a failure of another comnentator tot indicate correct punctuation with regard to his comment which I took to be Monckton's:
“Today’s high CO2 levels – the 97% natural and the 3% human-released”
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MA Rodger at 21:35 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
AndyS
I think if you look you will find this is the Hansen report you were a little hazy on. Mind, thereis no actual use of the word "pause" or the word "hiatus."
But I forget that you are "not getting involved in a discussion of whether there is actually a pause or not." Ah ha. Now there is a phrase that has much more resonance when spoken with a heavy Troll accent. -
gws at 19:42 PM on 28 February 2013How big is the “carbon fertilization effect”?
chriskoz, some more explanation:
- the actual average increase was 57%, given in the post; that is much less than your "eyeball" estimate, but also varying a lot between biomes. "Eyeball" estimates are often wrong when the underlying data is not normally distributed. I thus dislike, and did not include in the post, that the authors gave an average 0.293 kg m-2 y-1 (range 0-2.12 kg m-2 y-1!) in the paper. That average may be realized in one biome, and is not representative in an ecological sense. In any case, it is applicable mathematically to an area of 123 M km2 (not all land area is vegetated). High increases occurred in the model where NPP was high in the first place, particularly the tropics.
- I guess one could define a "NPP sensitivity" similarly to climate sensitivity in order to have a common reference point (such as for comparing model outputs). But, similar to climate sensitivity, it remains a function of actual [CO2] level, i.e. incremental warming changes for each subsequent doubling and incremental NPP increase change with each doubling. If you follow the link in the post, you will find that between 280 and 560 ppm, the slope of the curve is still relatively large, but for any additional increases it will drop rapidly, more rapidly than the parallel warming effect. Meaning, even in the hypothetical case of a biosphere reacting solely to [CO2] and uptake of most of anthropogenic CO2, this counter-effect to warming could not be maintained as [CO2] increases.
- the current estimate for the land sink, 2.6±0.8 Pg C y-1, is calculated as the residual from better known fluxes, i.e. anthropogenic emissions, fraction remaining in the atmosphere, uptake by the ocean, and net land use change fluxes. The latter is positive, meaning gross land uptake is actually larger than 2.6 Pg (follow the Global Carbon Project link). The new paper (still in review in Earth Syst. Sci. Data) by Le Quéré et al. that is linked from the presentation shows that a current set of Dynamic Global Vegetation models (DGVMs) does a decent job in calculating magnitude and interannual variability of the land carbon sink. The models include the fertilization effect as well as deforestation, afforestation, regrowth, and climate variability. Some include nitrogen dynamics. In general, these models are more sophisticated than the one discussed in the post (which focussed on varying climate model parameters into one biosphere model), but they were all run with the same climatic inputs. You would have to turn off all other relevant effects for increasing NPP (regrowth, afforestation, nitrogen fertilization) in order to tease out the CO2 fertilization effect itself. Not yet done. Hence my announcement in the post ... wait for it to come soon.
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Tristan at 19:39 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
"that the observations do not effectively rule out the possibility that there has been no warming."
To emphasise the myopia in the sentiment we so often see:
"that those observations -when considered outside of the context of all the other observations and physical knowledge we have- do not effectively rule out the possibility that there has been no warming."
Even trying to deduce whether the world is warming solely from the SAT record is wrong. Not that it seems to stop people.
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Dikran Marsupial at 19:16 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
andyS wrote 'i.e there is a difference between the statement "global warming has stopped" and "there has been no significant change in surface temperature anomaly".'
Yes, there is a difference, which is that "skeptics" are misusing the concept of statistical significance. The lack of a statistically significant warming trend does not mean that there has been no warming, just that the observations do not effectively rule out the possibility that there has been no warming.Alternatively, we could ask "has there been a statistically significant change in the rate of warming?", and the answer there would be "no". However the skeptics never seem to want to discuss that point for some reason.
The funny thing is that the way that hypothesis testing should be used is to assume the null hypothesis (the thing you do not want to be true) holds and only proceed with your alternative hypothesis if you are able to show that the observations are inconsistent with the null hypothesis. If you are a "skeptic" and arguing that there has been a plateau, then your null hypothesis should be that there has been no change in the underlying rate of warming. If you are a "warmist" and aguing that there has been warming (purely on the basis of these observations) then your null hypothesis is that the rate of warming is zero and the onus is on you to reject the null hypothesis.
The basic idea is one of self-skepticism, you only proceed with your hypothesis if you can show that the opposite of what you are arguing for is inconsistent with the observations.
The "skeptics" in this case are ironically being utterly unskeptical, by effectively using a null hypothesis which is that their argument is correct, which totally goes against the whole idea of statistical hypothesis testing (unless you also perform a power analysis, which they never do).
The "warmists" on the other hand, are not basing their argument solely on land temperature observations (mega cherry pick on your part there! ;o); they also have physics, sea surface temperature and ocean heat content as well.
But if you are just looking at land surface temperatures, then over a period as short as 15 years, the observations don't rule out the existence of a plateau, nor do they rule out warming having continued at the same rate since 1970 or so.
Hope this helps.
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John Brookes at 17:28 PM on 28 February 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
It is interesting that "climate skeptics" are so angry at Lewandowsky for pointing out the obvious. They are going to be apoplectic now that their anger at how they were originally portrayed is being studied as well.
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dana1981 at 15:40 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
AndyS @51 - Unfortunately The Australian still hasn't made the transcript or recording available, so your question is impossible to answer. However, the most likely answer is #1 (that The Australian misrepresented what Pachauri said), given what the IPCC communications office told me. That being said, it's possible that he mis-spoke, and hence he isn't making any accusations regarding misrepresentations. #1 is most likely, but we can't be sure (frankly due to Lloyd's shoddy journalism).
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Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
AndyS
- Was Pachauri misrepresented by The Australian? - Apparently so. He certainly doesn't agree with their presentation, and the Australian lacks direct quoting in the critical sections. Shame on The Australian.
- Was he badly briefed? - Don't know, don't care. Misrepresenting an interview is the fault of the journalist.
- Does he actually hold the views as presented, and if so why? - Did you not read the opening post, where it states: "it (the reported interview) does not accurately represent Pachauri's thoughts on the subject"?
- Is he playing a political game to make the sceptic arguments sound irrelevant? - No, and that would be silly. The only "gaming" I see (IMO) is folks who are misinterpreting the story.
You seem determined to state that Pachauri said something silly, or deceptive, and to claim that warming has halted. I don't believe any of that is justified by the facts...
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DSL at 14:06 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
AndyS, you asked, "Leaving aside the ocean warming issue, does SkS accept that there has been no warming of land temps for the last 15 years or so?"
Why ask it if you don't want the details or don't want to get "involved in a discussion"? That discussion is essential to understanding why Pauchari would not have made the claim that the claimers claimed he claimed.
Pauchari, simply by having read AR4 and having the critical thinking capacity necessary to put 2 and 2 together, knows that 1) surface temp is not very representative of the overall system energy accumulation (TOA imbalance), 2) less-than-climate-scale trend periods are interesting but not very meaningful with regards to the basic theory of AGW, and 3) the period in question is especially susceptible to misinterpretation. That's all no-brainer stuff. For Pauchari to have simply ignored all that and told the notorious Australian that global warming had paused stretches the bounds of believability. It's possible he was jet lagged, sick, and on meds, and the claim actually did come out of his mouth, but I kind of doubt it. If he did say it in full control of his mental faculty, he's a blithering idiot. It wouldn't be the first time that a scientist opened her/his mouth and said something stupid. That's why getting one's opinions on science from mainstream media is a Bad Idea (and I recognize that it's the only option most people have, or believe they have). The science renders The Australian's claim and anything Pauchari might have said meaningless apart from the playing of rhetorical games with the general public.
What's funny about all of this is that the alleged "hiatus" says exactly the opposite of what "skeptics" think it says. What it actually says is that in 1997/8 global temp spiked to its highest value in probably several thousand years (the change from 1996 to the 1997/8 peak is about .25C in Had4), and then over the next decade or so it didn't just stay there but rose slightly (also encompassing a value that surpassed 1997/8). It's like a baseball player hitting, in consecutive years, 32, 33, 37, 35, 40, 45, 39, 42, 47, and 48 home runs, and then the next ten years hitting 70, 73, 45, 60, 65, 62, 60, 75, 62, and 63. Yah, sure, the trend over those ten years appears to be falling or flat. Has the player somehow lost his game (or steroids dealer)? In the middle of the hiatus is the period from 1999 to 2007, which gives a trend of .146C per decade. The 2000s were the hottest decade in the instrumental period, despite being La Nina-ish and despite the instrumental record low for TSI in the 11-year cycle. Note that global ice mass loss accelerated during the surface temp "hiatus" period, a fact that Pauchari would be very much aware of.
And, yes, at your request I'm ignoring the 80,000 ton gorilla in the room (OHC).
One final thought on significance. The Rose trend is roughly .038C per decade. It is, by the common definition of statistical significance, insignificant. It's also about 9x the rate of PETM event warming. That's significant.
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AndyS at 14:05 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
I think this thread might be hitting its recursion limit.
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Rob Honeycutt at 13:39 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
I'm sure he's been made aware of the whole issue. He's a very busy guy with a very important position. I'd venture to guess this is too small an issue for him to even bother responding. The facts about global climate change do not hinge on the misrepresentations of a single reporter.
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AndyS at 13:36 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
As I posted a while back on this thread, you could just ask him.
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Rob Honeycutt at 13:26 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
If I'm not mistaken, Pachauri wasn't even actually quoted. The reporter merely stated that Pachauri made the statement without providing an actual quote, nor providing a reference to where or when he was supposed to have made such a statement.
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chriskoz at 13:22 PM on 28 February 2013How big is the “carbon fertilization effect”?
Thanks gws.
To recap my understanding, together with some numbers. Looking at this Carbon Cycle picture and figures 1 (NPP at preindustrial CO2 280ppm) and 2 (dNPP per doubled CO2 to 560ppm, let's call it "NPP sensitivity" or dNPP) above, I deduce:
- NPP 60Pg (or 60Gt) per 150Mkm2 (land surface area) means 0.4kg/m2 and that is the average value on Figure 1
- It's hard to eyeball the average NPP sensitivity from Figure 2 but it looks as "green" as Figure 1, then in the order of 0.2-0.4kg/m2, therefore average NPP sensitivity could result in a staggering doubling of 57pG NPP flux shown on carbon cycle and drawing that +204Pg from the atmosphere pretty quickly. That conclusion sounds incredible, prodived that fertilisation effect has hard limits and levels out in most autophytic species. I would not expect that dNPP could have such potential (in the ideal conditions of abundance of water & other nutrients). Perhaps I read Figure 2 incorrectly or my calculations are wrong.
- How much of that red 2.4Pg "Land sink" flux shown on Carbon Cycle picture is due to dNPP, remians highly uncertain.
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AndyS at 13:18 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
Yes I am familiar with The Escalator. I am not getting involved in a discussion of whether there is actually a pause or not. See #51
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Rob Honeycutt at 13:14 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
AndyS... If you look at the animated GIF near the top of the right-hand column of this page you'll see "The Esculator."
The surface temperature record is a noisy data set. We expect to see periods that are level in a rising trend. What you might take note of is, the observed trend of the past 15, 16, 17, whatever number of years is not negative. You don't see temps falling anything close to what the have risen in recent decades.
The other thing you should note is that the radiative forcing from increased GHG's continued to rise. No one can expect that we can continue to increase radiative forcing and anything but warming, in spite of its stocatic behavior of the surface temperature record, to continue.
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70rn at 13:14 PM on 28 February 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
Wait, suggesting this at you guys? Lol, no. I don't think taking down websites really has that much organizational bent to it. It has to do with people having an overly personalised view of the world, and seeing suppression of opinion counter to theirs as some form of defensive action. It's pretty obvious to me that such behaviour been heavilly directed towards pro-CC science urls, and a typical component of the mindset set appears to be focusing on specific individuals, and their supposed motives. I just find it really obnoxious regardless of the target.
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AndyS at 12:50 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
Yes I did mean surface temps, thanks for the clarification. I am not really querying the technical details. I do accept the relatively short time scale and large error bars. What I am querying is the message presented to the public. Not just Pachauri, but also James Hansen in the "state of temps" report he did recently where there was some reference to pause or hiatus (can't remember the exact details).See #51 for my actual questions
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Rob Honeycutt at 12:43 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
AndyS (not Andy S) said... "...does SkS accept that there has been no warming of land temps for the last 15 years or so?"
"Land temps?" I think you're actually looking to ask about surface temps because land only temps are certainly greater than surface temp alone.
What is continually missed in the "temps have plateaued" argument is, this is yet another discussion about statistical significance. Temps have risen, but the observed trend doesn't rise to the 95% confidence level. That means that there is a chance the trend may be an element of noise in the data.
So, if you think about it for just a short moment, there is also a likelihood that the observed trend is actually higher rather than lower than the observed trend. But (fake) skeptics tend to ignore this fact.
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AndyS at 12:38 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
#48 Phillippe Chantrelle. Unlike your ad hom comment directed at me, my last one was directly relevant to the post.
So if the SkS postion is that there is no "pause" in warming by any definition, then these questions arise.(1) Was Pachauri misrepresented by The Australian?
(2) Was he badly briefed?
(3) Does he actually hold the views as presented, and if so why?
(4) Is he playing a political game to make the sceptic arguments sound irrelevant?
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Tom Curtis at 12:13 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
AndyS @46, the IPCC AR4 prediction for increase in global mean surface temperature over the period from 2001 - 2030 is 0.2 C per decade. Checking Gisstemp, the only global surface temperature record (HadCRUT3 and 4 and NCDC are not global, and UAH is not a surface temperature record), I find the that 15 year trend is 0.058 +/- 0.248 C per decade. That indicates that the short duration of measurement means there is insufficient data from the temperature record from Jan 1998 forward to determine whether trend is 0.306 C per decade, or - 0.19 C per decade, or some point in between. The error bars do not just tell you that the trend cannot be distinguished from zero. They also tell you that it cannot be distinguished from a value 50% greater than the IPCC projections.
So, I am certainly happy to accept the temperature record since 1998 is two short to distinguish between accelerated warming, and a reversal of warming. That, of course, being all that the error bars tell you. I am also happy to accept that the measured trend is positive, not zero.
I am not happy, as the deniers are trying to do, to say that the temperature record alone since 1998 is insufficient to distinguish between zero trend and 50% greater than IPCC projected trend, and that therefore the IPCC projection has been falsified - which is what the deniers have been repeatedly trying to do.
I will certainly not do so when the use of additional information beyond the temperature record (ie, the ENSO record, etc) shows the underlying trend to be about 0.212 +/- 0.097 C per decade.
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CTG at 11:51 AM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
Still haven't bothered to learn any statistics, eh Andy? Leaving aside the issue of cherrypicked time periods, it is not true to say that if the slope of a linear trend is not significantly different from zero then the slope is equal to zero. It is simply that zero is included in the range of the possible values of the true slope of the trend.
Also, confidence limits on a regression are two-tailed, so it would be equally justified to claim that the rate of warming has increased over the last 15 years, as the high end of the confidence limits includes values greater than the warming trend over the last 40 years. This highlights the importance of choosing the correct null, as keithpickering pointed out earlier. The question is not whether or not there has been warming in the last 15 years, but is the trend of the last 15 years consistent with the earlier warming trend. Until such time as you can demonstrate that the current trend has deviated from the previous trend in a statistically significant way, you cannot claim that there has been "no warming".
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Philippe Chantreau at 11:43 AM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
Signs are accumulating that point to an increasing likelihood of any exchange with Andy S to be a waste of time.
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dana1981 at 11:31 AM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
AndyS @46 - "does SkS accept that there has been no warming of land temps for the last 15 years or so?"
Nope, that's not accurate. The surface temp trend over the past 15 years is small, but still positive, even if starting in 1997/8 (which is a cherrypick due to the massive El Niño that year).
"there is a difference between the statement "global warming has stopped" and "there has been no significant change in surface temperature anomaly".
That's certainly true.
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AndyS at 11:04 AM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
Leaving aside the ocean warming issue, does SkS accept that there has been no warming of land temps for the last 15 years or so?
i.e there is a difference between the statement "global warming has stopped" and "there has been no significant change in surface temperature anomaly". -
Philippe Chantreau at 10:28 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
There is a sizeable portion the conservative population that calls liberal media any outlet that publishes anything that is found threatening to an ideology with which there is an overwhelming emotional involvement. George Will demonstrates how that emotional involvement gets the better of one's judgement. A very clear example of this was given by the latest election.
As results started to come in and forecast could be made more and more accurate, any source projecting a result that was emotionally unacceptable was subjected to some sort of attack, often personal and removed from the subject matter. Eventually an more emotionally pleasing reality was substituted to the threatening one, and it was kept up by all possible means until denial became competely impossible to keep up.
The same behavior is observed toward AGW or anything that threatens the ideology. In the case of AGW, denial is rendered easier and deeper by the slow pace, the relatively subtle changes and the solid scientific litteracy necessary to understand the subject, litteracy that lacks in a large portion of the general population. I predict that, even when summer Arctic sea ice will have become a thing of the past, there will still be plenty of denial to go around.
George Will or Kevin's behaviors are predictable and understandable: they are defense mechanisms.
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Tom Curtis at 09:05 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
pelewis @17, unless Will's point that you should not base policy on minority views in science; but only on a solid concensus, your claim is simply false. Of course, if that was his point, as a firm concensus is in favour of sequestration, Will's article is self refuting.
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Rob Honeycutt at 09:02 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
pelewis... Your statement makes no sense without anything to back up your conclusion.
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pelewis at 08:18 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
I'd say this article does a pretty good, although unintentional, job of supporting Will's statements. But then it is normal for Global Warming enthusiasts to intrepret contrary evidence as supporting evidence.
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Daniel Bailey at 07:55 AM on 28 February 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
If you are suggesting that this is a tit-fot-tat hacking exercise, you are posting on the correct thread for you.
It's conspiracies, like turtles, all the way down.
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George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
Kevin - I'm afraid you're just reinforcing Tom Curtis's observations. Will is portraying 'mainstream' climate science in the 1970's as having been in error, as a necessary antecedent for his assertion that mainstream science is wrong now.
You are the one who referred to the 'liberal media' and to liberals, not Will. That assertion of a biased media would in fact undermine Wills argument - it's entirely opposite to his claim.
As it stands:
- Wills argument was wrong the first time he made it (as his quotes are not science papers, represented minority views, and include previous/current climate denialists)
- It's wrong now (nothing has changed in his references, and he's been shown repeatedly to be incorrect)
- You have with your introduction of the phrase "liberal media" indicated your position and outlook (an outlook not commonly open to persuasion or to facts).
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Magma at 07:42 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
Kevin @14, Science Magazine, which dates back to 1880, is one of the top two general science journals in the world.
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Kevin8233 at 07:29 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
The New York Times
Science Magazine
International Wildlife
Science Digest
Christian Science Monitor
Newsweek.
These are not you typical locations to see peer reviewed science papers. The article was written to demonstrate Will's belief that the President and liberals were/are participating in hysteria mongerring.
Those quotes about climotologists are agreed etc were the titles of the articles, not his opinions.
I did not misrepresent Will's argument.
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Tom Curtis at 07:14 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
Kevin's comment @5 is probably more revealing than he would like. What George will wrote was:
'Remember when “a major cooling of the climate” was “widely considered inevitable” (New York Times, May 21, 1975) with “extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation” (Science magazine, Dec. 10, 1976) which must “stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery” (International Wildlife, July 1975)? Remember reports that “the world’s climatologists are agreed” that we must “prepare for the next ice age” (Science Digest, February 1973)? Armadillos were leaving Nebraska, heading south, and heat-loving snails were scampering southward from European forests (Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 27, 1974). Newsweek (April 28, 1975) said meteorologists were “almost unanimous” that cooling would “reduce agricultural productivity.” '
Note the lack of mention of the term "liberal media". Therefore it is Kevin, not George Will who has classified Science as part of the "liberal media". Presumably Nature, PNAS, etc are also "liberal media" in his eyes.
While on the subject of Science Magazine, the discussion of "Future Climate" in the paper Will cites (all two paragraphs of it) indicates that in the absence of anthropogenic factors, "... the long term trend over the next 20,000 years is toward extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation and a cooler climate". (My emphasis) What scaremongering. Suggesting that in the absence of anthropogenic factors we may face future glaciation sometime in the next 20,000 years. (/sarc)
In fact, in defending Wills, Kevin completely misrepresents his argument. Wills is at pains to suggest that there was a concensus of scientists believing in global cooling in the 1970s, hence the quotation of comments such as "the world's climatologists are agreed" and 'meteorologists were “almost unanimous” ' . That suggestion is necessary to his argument because there is undoubtedly a concennsus now that human emissions are causing global warming. By restricting the claim to "liberal media" Kevin undermines its logical force (even if he makes it more accurate).
As a final note, the most breathless quote reported by Wills is from International Wildlife, saying that global cooling must "stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery". That quote is from Nigel Calder, co-author with Svenmark of "The Chilling Stars". So the irony is that while Will can ony suggest the scare mongering of scientists by misrepresentation, he provides evidence that one of the denier's own darlings is a poor analyst of climate data, and not to be trusted.
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70rn at 06:12 AM on 28 February 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
Not to add to the conspiracy theories, but incidentally it looked like Dr Spencer's blog just got hacked/taken down. These silly back and forth games on the internet aren't helping anyone.
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william5331 at 06:00 AM on 28 February 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
Granted that most conspiracy theories are nutty and the proponents nuttier still but that doesn't mean that there are no conspiracies. People in power are always trying to gain an advantage by whatever means they can and if sufficiently insullated by their position, get a strong feeling of entitlement. Madof and his ponsie scheme was an example and price fixing between two ostensibly competing super market chains another. If there were no conspiracies, we wouldn't need much of our law to make these activities illegal and wouldn't need fraud squads in the police to catch them. Best not to go to the other extreme and dismiss conspiracy theories out of hand. All we can do is consider each one based on the weight of evidence and be ready to change our minds if different evidence comes to light. The police criteria is not a bad start. Was there motivation and oportunity. Healthy scepticism is what differentiates a scientist from a priest.
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ubrew12 at 05:13 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
George Will is one pundit who, in service to his deeply-held conservative beliefs, will twist almost everything he says. Some part of his mind knows he's repeating a lie, but another part overrules it because it provides much-needed 'confirmation bias' for his readers. In the particular battle for ideas Will and others are engaged in, in America, the truthfulness of those ideas is no longer important. Their 'truthiness' IS.
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bjchip at 05:05 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
Dana, John - Check figure 1 caption against the year 1971 in that year. I think the caption wants some correction? as that ONE year of that decade when it isn't. Needn't leave this comment up but you really want to make the caption exactly match the graph. -
Roger D at 05:02 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
Kevin@5 - I suppose you can assume Will is not promoting the idea that the media's distortion of what scientists "really thought" as indicated in the survey of peer reviewed papers in Figure 1, and instead say he is simply saying the "liberal media" got it wrong about an imminent ice age and are wrong now about the impact of the sequester. But that was his point, it would have been easy for him to simply add a sentence clarifying that the "liberal media" was wrong in the 1970's because they were misinterpreting or misrepresenting the then-current state of the science. But he didn't - and the likely reason is because he doesn't respect the now-current state of scientific understanding. Which is why Will himself is acting just like the "liberal media" did regarding ice age stories in the 70's.
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Philippe Chantreau at 04:42 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
What Will cites is quite irrelevant. He's pushing the "scientists predicted cooling on the 70's" thing, which is a fat pile of BS. Anyone who actually has looked into it knows it's BS. Will knows it's BS.If he doesn't by now, he has likely gone somewhat senile. It is rather sad that the W.P. is compromising itself with such nonsense.
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DSL at 04:25 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
What Magma said, Hayduke. We now know with high confidence that orbital forcing is no match for anthro forcing. See Tzedakis et al. (2012).
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jsam at 03:59 AM on 28 February 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
Many of the comments to the HuffPost article demonstrate further recursion. It's turtles all the way down.
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dana1981 at 03:59 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
Kevin @5 - if you want to compare apples to apples, then Will should have listened to climate scientists in the 1970s, and he should be listenting to economists about the effects of the sequester today (which he is not doing, but that's off-topic).
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dana1981 at 03:57 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
Hayduke @2 - again, it sounds like you're referring to very long-term climate changes, not imminent ones.
Magma @3 - good point.
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Kevin8233 at 03:55 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
I believe we may have an apples and oranges thing here.
Will did not claim anything as far as peer reviewed papers goes. He just listed several stories in the media. To refute his anology with a chart of peer reviewed papers is not accurate. He doesn't even make the claim that these articles that he is citing are the majority of the articles written on the subject, or that they are even written by scientists - in fact, he is implying that they were written by the "liberal media".
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Dennis at 03:41 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
I'm surprised that Will would head back into this territory. Several of his recent climate-myth laced opinion pieces have resulted in the Post publishing rebuttals from scientists. I think one even generated an article by the paper's ombudsman. I guess he feels safer in the 1970's. He has become a laughingstock inside the DC area with recent opinion pieces on the evils of blue jeans and criticism of an elementary schools' student government elections. I think the single biggest reason he still gets published is because his peers have gotten even worse with the facts.
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Magma at 03:35 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
The final paragraph of the 1976 Hays, Imbrie and Shackleton Science paper seems clear enough (emphasis added):
7) A model of future climate based on the observed orbital-climate relationships, but ignoring anthropogenic effects, predicts that the long-term trend over the next several thousand years is toward extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.
But perhaps Will hasn't had a chance to read it yet.
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Hayduke2000 at 03:29 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
The 1970s global cooling concern was engendered by a 1972 conference at Brown University called "The present interglacial: how and when will it end?" (Quaternary Research, November 1972). George Kukla and Robert Matthews, who organized the meeting, wrote to President Nixon about the need to study climatic change that might signal the onset of renewed glaciation. Concern for global cooling was very real and well documented.
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dana1981 at 03:24 AM on 28 February 2013The BEST Kind of Skepticism
KR @111 - that analysis was most recently updated with Wigley and Santer (2012) here, and will be updated with another new attribution study in a post probably next week.
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John Hartz at 02:54 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
Dana: Kudos on an excellent post.
For those who may not be aware, George Will's columns are routinely re-published in numerous newspapers throughout the U.S. This is why it is so important for authors like Dana to rebute the poppycock about climate science and climate scientists that he frequently spreads.
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