The East Anglia email hacking affair has reached a new low. A Guardian report tells us that two of the scientists involved have received death threats, which are being investigated by the FBI and the British police. Unfortunately it doesn’t stop there.
Many other CRU scientists and their colleagues have received torrents of abusive and threatening e-mails since the leaks first began in mid-November 2009. Tom Wigley, previous Director of CRU and now at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, US, has been horrified by the e-mails he and other colleagues have received. “They are truly stomach-turning and show what sort of venomous monsters we are up against,” he told environmentalresearchweb.
On The World Today Eleanor Hall spoke to Tom Wigley an Australian-born scientist who still works with the University of East Anglia and now also does research at National Center for Atmospheric Research in the United States and the University of Adelaide.
Wigley says a lower level intimidation has been going on for almost 20 years, but these latest threats are quite specific and genuinely frightening.
Hall then asked him about his own role in the emails. Andrew Bolt had suggested that Wigley should have blown the whistle:
“when did Tom Wigley finally choke on all that deceit and if he didn’t why the hell not”?
Wigley’s response:
Well you know, I didn’t choke on the deceit because there was no deceit. All I did was ask a number of pointy questions and I received perfectly adequate answers. It would be really nice if someone like Andrew Bolt used the same approach and tried to get both sides of the picture and then he might learn to understand some of these issues better.
It turns out that Wigley was asking questions because he had read criticisms by Steve McIntyre in Canada who is lionised by the anti-AGW mob for his role in the famous Hockey Stick affair.
And in this particular case I was basically hoodwinked by one of the well known climate sceptics, a guy called Steve McIntyre in Canada and I’d read his blog on this issue and then I asked questions on the basis of what I read.
It turns out that he was actually distorting the data and misrepresenting the data. (Emphasis added)
Wigley asked some questions and “received perfectly adequate answers.”
Unfortunately the fudging and misrepresentation of data is distressingly common among anti-AGW critics. Sites like Deltoid routinely point out the scams that take place, the latest being a guy called Willis Eschenbach who has distorted Darwin’s temperature record to make the warming go away.
As Tim Lambert says, he’s a serial offender.
Margot O’Neill reports on the death threats and then reveals the pressure David Karoly is under.
He has recently also had a formal complaint of academic misconduct laid against him for stating there is no serious peer reviewed science overturning the theory of global warming and for fraudulently promoting his views to get money.
The details of these claims were emailed to every federal MP.
The aim is to silence him. It will be more than a little interesting to see whether it does.
Professor Karoly believes there is “an organised campaign to discredit individual climate scientists” to try to derail attempts to mitigate global warming.
Professor Karoly says some scientists now avoid joining online discussions, because their arguments attract such virulent onslaughts from climate sceptics.
“It’s just not worth it,” he said.
In another example, Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate going to be sued for how he implements their moderation policy. Not to win, rather to “to harass and distract Schmidt because he is being effective.”
It seems that Andrew Bolt has been the target of some unpleasantness also, including someone who wanted to punch him.
I have no expertise on personal security, and personal threats are clearly beyond the pale. Legal harrassment is now clearly being used as a tool. Clearly Mark is right in pointing out that rationality has little to do with what’s happening now.
Meanwhile Joe Romm at Climate Progress keeps plugging away in debunking misinformation and reporting that 1700 UK scientists plus numerous scientific bodies have come forward to reaffirm climate science.
Unbelievable! Lots of talk on the US web sites I go to about the Will Eschenbach(rubbish) and the Darwin figures. This is getting very weird.
Thanks Brian for all the info you provide on this very important subject.
Denialists are liars, stupid, and very brave and threatening from the shelter of their anonymous keyboard. This is not news.
As for Andrew Bolt, people have wanted to punch him for a long time. Like Kyle Sandilands and Alan Jones, he thrives on it, it’s his whole schtick: “oh my god I am so SHOCKING and RADICAL!!!1!”
Truly disgusting behaviour.
What is also concerning is the US extreme right seems to have an increasing distortional hold on Australian political debate. Its acolytes in Australia, like Andrew Bolt and his window lickers, are damaging our society.
Yeah, they’re up against thugs, running a criminal protection racket for polluters – these are the intellectual equivalents of hired goons.
I salute the scientists’ courage – let us never forget the deniers are all surrender monkeys with their heads in the sand. When the call went out – they immediately surrendered, some of them who know better collaborate for money.
They will be defeated easily, and history will condemn them.
Lefty E, not sure about the ‘easily’, but I hope you are right. Money seems to do far too much of the talking and action these days, rather than what needs to be done. Sorry about the pessimism.
And for years I’ve been compared unfavourably to Holocaust deniers and Nazis by Greens … so what? Yeah its bad behaviour, but it shouldn’t distract from the crumbling edifice of AGW theory ….
Max @3, I agree entirely. The extreme right is out of control and its wild, irrational, fear-driven rhetoric increasingly is feeding into mainstream politics in Australia. I don’t think it’s an exagerration to say that fascism is a greater threat now than it has been in 70 years. I’m frightened for my children’s sake.
David Karoly works on the floor above me. Maybe I should ask him to come to the library for a cup of tea once in a while.
Don’t forget the most egregious threat against Andrew Bolt.
Given all of the talk about sceptics being deniers etc. and the happiness in the hacked emails about the death of a critic and what seems to be deliberate intimidatory attempts to keep sceptical articles out of the peer reviewed journals, it seems a bit rich for those on the AGW gravy train to now be getting all precious.
Shabadoo and Gustaf, rather than simply insulting denialists, which is all good fun but rather pointless in the end, my preference is to ignore them. Since their “questions” have all been answered dozens or hundreds of times, answering them yet again gives them a legitimacy they don’t deserve.
So keep babbling your nonsense, sensible people like me will just ignore you.
While I’d never threaten Bolt with violence or (more importantly) carry it out, I can completely understand why someone might want to belt him about the head with a cluestick or sodomise him with a calculator. He’s smug and insufferable, and I’m sure he knows he’s lying.
Anyone making death threats or threats of violence should suffer the full weight of the law.
“sensible people like me will just ignore you”
I can understand why you don’t want to be bothered arguing with people but don’t you get bored reading and writing on blogs where everyone agrees on everything?
Everyone agrees with everyone on Tim Blair’s blog and Andrew Bolt’s blog and Poison Pen and here. It makes me wonder what the purpose is of blogs. Is it to have your prejudices affirmed?
Maybe it is to look at the very slight nuances of different meanings within a very prescriptive and known position on an issue.
If that is it, then I guess that has some value???
As an Australian I am interested to know how the temperatures for Darwin, NT, have been adjusted/homogenised/valued added to show the apparent warming when the raw data doesn’t show the same remarable trend.
As a human I am intersted in the same questions for other places around the world that are having questions asked about them like New Zealand, Alaska and Scandinavia.
I am also very interested to understand how the proxy record of tree-rings can be taken as accurate up to 1960 and before 1850 because it agrees with instrument records, but when it shows a decline it suddenly is seen as unreliable. How can we trust the pre-instrument proxy records.
It shouldn’t be that difficult for the scientists to explain.
Ad Hominem and physical attacks don’t achieve much. Answers to the questions will.
Anyone seen a hockey stick or a medieval warm period lying around?
Remarable is the NT way of saying remarkable – keeps the flys out.
Gustav – if yowant to see disagreemnt you should duck over to the Barry Brook’s thread and watch the lefties tieing themselves into ethical kama sutra positions over Nuclear.
If only I was allowed to drink at work.
Hold on – I’m the Boss – I can! But then the minions would want to, also. Bugger.
Thanks for the tip Razor. I’ll go and have a look.
Gustav
I think it itemnds to be the case that blogs are like any social gathering. Some people feel a lot more welcome than others and so a kind of cultural consensus emerges within the group, possibly with some variance for eccentricity at the fringes.
In this place, I’d be one of the eccentric fringe dwellers.
Let’s face it though. If you stumbled across a group of people who spent almost the entire time talking what, to you mind, was utter drivel, would you hang about?
I wouldn’t.
Know your enemy.
Razor, I think the changes in the Darwin record that necessitated the adjustments occured because the original instruments got bombed in about 1940, and had to be replaced at a different spot, thus requiring recalibration and normalisation.
“it seems a bit rich for those on the AGW gravy train to now be getting all precious.”.
Oh fuck right off with this nonsense. Academic misconduct, vexatious lawsuits, death threats – DEATH THREATS! This not hardly tit for tat, by either internet or more importantly real-life standards. It’s no surprising, but still horrible and outrageous.
David – having had the pleasure of living in Darwin (hated the job, loved the lifestyle) I can’t see that there is such a huge difference between the Old PO site and RAAF Darwin. And given that the PO is closer to the water than the airport is i would have thought the instrument record for the airport would need adjusting down or the PO record ajusting up.
Razor, I had a look at the Brooks thread. It seemed like good stuff. Most of it was over my head but they were giving as good as they were getting.
Fran@ 19, yeah I think you’re right; a consensus develops and if you think it’s drivel you’ll move on. I guess I just get a little disheartened that we all seem to talk across each other, in that we all stick to the blogs where we are more likely to be agreed with.
I already know my enemy. A bunch of lazy, opportunistic liars with serious relevance deprivation issues and a born to rule mentality derived from an innate sense of privilege.
As for the other fringec dwellers, I follow Kaishu’s advice.
Did you read the bit where I said “different instruments” Razor? The thermometers, etc, aren’t the kind you get for $5 at Coles. They have to be calibrated.
Just because you didn’t notice a difference between the PO and the airport doesn’t mean there wasn’t one, either. Humans can really only detect a temperature difference of about 5 degrees, and not all that reliably.
Gotta agree about Darwin, though. I was there (briefly) in 1984 and again in 2000, and I loved it both times. Fortunately I liked the jobs as well.
Brian, do you know if the threats to punch Bolt were over his AGW denial or something else. Threats of violence to commentators are never acceptable, but they’d be pretty understandable if they came, for example, from a member of the Stolen Generation who Bolt accused of lying about their abuse.
Death threats over something like this that is less personal are more extraordinary, but its worth remembering that the denialists have pretty strong roots in the US religious fundamentalist community, including the people who cheer on those who assassinate doctors who perform abortions.
DEATH THREATS!
Capital letters patrickg, that’s real outrage.
In the Guardian article it refers to the death threats in the initial paragraph:
“Two of the scientists involved in “Climategate” – the e-mail hacking incident at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, UK – have been emailed death threats since the contents of their private e-mails were leaked to the world. No further information can be revealed about these particular threats at present because they are currently under investigation with the FBI in the United States.”
Who are the scientists? Are the threats from sceptics or from true believers angry that ‘tricks’ are giving the sceptics ammunition?
Please tone down the outrage until we know more because if Bolt was threatened many here would make light of it and ask why no further details were being released and whether it was all a beat up.
Name them, and if you can’t please desist from traducing persons who are entirely unknown to you.
I suppose also Gustaf, it becomes tiresome to engage in the cyber equivalent of a progressive barndance, where the same predictable and tired old steps are repeated.
Debunking the tired old MWP/LIA, cooling since 1998, they predicted an ice age in the 1970s memes for the umpteenth time just gets a bit much. If there is nothing novel to address, what’s the interest?
Hanging out at a blog where people get how absurd these are avoids wasting a lot of emotional energy and allows you to focus on stuff that is debatable. Every time I mention nuclear, I set off ripples in the pond.
Oh and Razor, when you ask “As an Australian I am interested to know how the temperatures for Darwin, NT, have been adjusted/homogenised/valued added to show the apparent warming when the raw data doesn’t show the same remarable [sic] trend.”
If the location of the temperature station is moved, what do you want the BoM to do – pretend the move never happened, or take careful tracking measurements to assess the influence of the change and use those to adjust the data? I’m sure when the move is to a warmer location you want things adjusted, so why when it is to a cooler location do you want the original data left in place, even where there is a step change? Or is is just because you didn’t notice the difference so it doesn’t exist.
Ditto for where there is a change in equipment used that produces an equivalent step change.
Katz@29 “Name them, and if you can’t please desist from traducing persons who are entirely unknown to you.”
That’s a fair enough call. Maybe many people here wouldn’t make light of it, I do however think the outrage would be far more subdued if the target of the threats wasn’t someone who is on the side of 99% of the people who comment here.
Fran@30 “Hanging out at a blog where people get how absurd these are avoids wasting a lot of emotional energy and allows you to focus on stuff that is debatable. Every time I mention nuclear, I set off ripples in the pond.”
Are there other topics where LP splits down the middle or at least 70/30? I noticed that there was a lot of blueing over import restrictions on books.
I would like any climate “sceptic”, probably Shabadoo, Gustaf and/or Razor since they’re all here, to explain to me exactly what motive(s) they think the climate scientists have for, in their view, making this stuff up.
It’s easy to understand what the motives of denialists might be, but I have never seen even one denialist explain adequately why it is that they think these terrible ‘lies’ are being deliberately foisted on an unsuspecting populace.
We have stoushes about lots of things, Gustaf. The Left isn’t in lockstep, you know.
Razor, if you had clicked on Brian’s link you would have found a lengthy BOM explanation of their methodology and a conclusion that the Darwin temperatures, properly calibrated, demonstrate an undeniable uptrend over the last century or so.
If you have evidence that the BOM is systematically applying their thumb to the climate scales nationwide to achieve the desired results, please supply it.
Otherwise, it may seem a little intemperate to accuse a respected national institution like the BOM of collusion in a vast conspiracy to mislead the world.
Well Katz, the advisability of an ETS comes straight to mind — there being a current who go for a more state-directed approach, or for a carbon tax … approaches to rural emissions … what people think about nuclear weapons as exemplified in the thread on Hiroshima …
I’m not sure how many had the same view here on the Polanski matter.
“I am also very interested to understand how the proxy record of tree-rings can be taken as accurate up to 1960 and before 1850 because it agrees with instrument records, but when it shows a decline it suddenly is seen as unreliable. How can we trust the pre-instrument proxy records.”
That’s easy, you’ve probably misunderstood the method, perhaps through lack of training?
I can only speak for myself about people’s motivations. I think the earth is warming but I don’t know if its because of human activities. So already I may not be a representative sample of a sceptic.
Reasons why I think many scientists argue that warming is due to carbon would, I imagine, be the same reasons believers think scientists who are deniers deny.
Those reasons include, the desire for dollars (Government vs Big Carbon); ego (other scientists regard/awards vs being a lone wolf crying the truth in the dark); an ideological belief (conservation vs the idea of progress over nature).
So, in my opinion the motivations on both sides are all to human.
“I can’t see that ”
“i would have thought”
LOL, sounding like Dagget on the 911 thread.
Intemperate indeed. Good choice of word there Katz.
And if any of the above-named sceptics wishes to answer Pavlov’s Cat’s pertinent question, please do not include any of the following words: conspiracy, wing, left, government, world, grants.
PC @ 33
I will start out by saying that I don’t believe that the AGW supporting Academics and Scientists are deliberate liars. There are three very powerfull forces at work within the Climate Science community that apply to all areas of academic and scientific endeavour.
Firstly, there is the orthodoxy – very hard to fight against and very courageous to take a stand against. The Climategate emails are an illuminating glimpse inside the world of Academics. Anyone (inidividual or organisation) going against the orthodoxy is subject to intense overt and covert pressure to conform or be denounced and excluded.
Secondly, there is the fight for funding – the Global Warming funding gravy train is immense. Any scientist or academic who wants to secure funding can see which side their bread is buttered on when comes to applying for grants. You can’t blame them. I’ve been involved in applying for funding and you have to play the politics whatever game you are in.
Thirdly, there is “confirmation bias” – academics and scientists who already believe in AGW, want the results to match their opinion and biases. The beauty of Climate Science for the AGW suppporters is that it a fairly young science and relies on statistics and computer models. These are both areas where manipulation of data is both necessary and open to manipulation. There are few who have the knowledge, skills, motivation and resources to effectively question them. Those that do take on the negative risks in the two paragraphs above.
That covers the Academic/Scientific part of the debate. I haven’t even started on the Economics or Politics of the debate, which are even more open to bias and manipulation.
Razor,
the adjustment of temperature records to get homogenous trends if there is a station shift, instrument change, exposure change or similar is a common practise in meteorology and the World Meteorological Organisation has been producing tech notes on what to adjust and methods for at least 30 years.
The reason why it is better to do so for local and regional climate analysis is because of the principle of regional homogeneity. This says because the weather comes in the form of large air masses, the climate fluctuations across a region will be fairly uniform, modified by local effects. If the local forms (cities, buildings, mountains) stay the same, then their influence will also remain similar over time. Statistical analysis shows this to be the case. It’s noisy, but similar changes can be analysed statistically.
Regional uniformity is different for different climate variables. Sunshine/radiation records show uniform variation over wide distances (e.g., Hobart, Melbourne, Adelaide). Temperature over a slightly smaller region. Rainfall shows about ten relatively uniform clusters over Australia.
So when you get a shift in one variable, you have a record of a station change and other stations across that region do not change, it is not climatic. Statistically significant step changes in temperature are rare and will not happen at one station. They will be regional.
I’m not sure of the exact details for Darwin, but PO to airport changes usually cool because of the increased exposure. Min will cool more than max. Based on my experience, the unadjusted change at Darwin will be statistically significant and cannot be natural in origin.
I have done quite a bit of adjusting climate records and am convinced that, done properly, it is the right thing to do. Apart from the climatic evidence, it can be indepedendently compared with climate-driven phenomena such as water yield. If an adjusted set (due to observation arefacts being removed) better matches an environmental time series observed independently, then there has been an improvement.
In the 90s I did a major study in Western Victoria linking historical climate to palaeoclimatic lake levels to get a continuous record of lake level changes linking historical observations to past climate changes. The first version of the historical model was done with raw climate data. It was ok, but there were major changes in temperature obs shelters in 1900/01, problems with Melbourne’s sunshine record and I also had to splice different station data together to get a record of climate from the late 1850s to 1990. The improvement was noticeable and I was able to use that improvement to tease out some local groundwater changes over the historical period.
Some of the data I constructed was used in a global study improving estimates of marine temperature records, all of which have to be adjusted to match with land-based records to get a global average time series.
Fifteen years later in the Melbourne Water Study, we improved water yield model performance by adjusting local rainfall records for inhomogeneities and splicing together a homogenous time series. The improvement in simulating Melbourne’s historical water storage was substantial.
I did the same for patchy sea surface temperature records to model bleaching events of the Great Barrier Reef. Each time, the climate record was constructed independently, then the environmental model was run. There was no back and forth to get a better fit other than measuring before and after.
It is a valid technique for improving the quality of climate data, so whatever human foibles the CRU emails may have exposed, a data fitting conspiracy is not one of them. This is because there have been sufficient independent studies using different adjustment methods (and one lab using minimal adjustment), that show similar temp changes at the global scale.
An old paper on the first go at an Australian High Quality Temp set is here. Techniques have been much improved since then and Blair, one of the scientists involved, posted a couple of weeks ago on this blog explaining why and how local adjustments are made.
Adrian@40 “And if any of the above-named sceptics wishes to answer Pavlov’s Cat’s pertinent question, please do not include any of the following words: conspiracy, wing, left, government, world, grants.”
I used government but I substituted dollars for grants. Sorry.
Does that mean you aren’t allowed to use: denier, polluters, extreme, distort, fringe or misrepresent?
‘So, in my opinion the motivations on both sides are all to human.’
As is the inability to spell.
Roger, thank you for the explanation. I am interested to know the answer to two questiosn.
Firstly – why don’t they set up a thermometer at the old PO site and then measure the actual differences over a statistically releant time period, rather than making an educated guess?
Secondly – the urban heat island effect. I have had the priveledge of sitting beside the tarmac at RAAF Darwin, sweating my gunter off, waiting for Hercs and Caribous and it is a lot bloody hotter out their than in the tree line. I have also flown up and down the WA coastline a fair bit and often you can observe the edge of the Wheatbelt by the line of clouds that form along it. This indicates that land clearing has some effect on humidity, cloud formtion, temps etc. At the same time Mr Watts of the Watts Up With That website has documented hundreds of examples of poorly sited weather stations in the US. How is this effect adjusted for, if at all?
Adrian@44 ‘So, in my opinion the motivations on both sides are all to human.’
“As is the inability to spell.”
Adrian@25 “As for the other fringec dwellers, I follow Kaishu’s advice.”
As is proofreading.
Razor,
if you think the climate science community is motivated by funding, you are obviously critiquing from a remove. For example:
- Those with mathematical skills can get more money working in finance
- There is more money in working in opposition to AGW, I kid you not.
- For most of the 1990s and this decade funds spent on lobbying have dwarfed the science budget
- Climate impacts funding in Australia was withdrawn by the Howard govenment, and there was only a trickle until the last couple of years
As to confirmatory bias, you’ve never tried submitting any research to one of the serious refereed journals. Lack of belief in AGW is not evidence of correct scientific method as many seem to think. The use of statistics by the denialist community is appalling – this is why it doesn’t get into the major scientific journals. Anything can be manipulated, but the scrutiny on the climate science community and stakes in terms of the politics, not to mention the IPCC process as an added international review means that the bar for climate science is as high or higher than in any other branch of science.
I’m not saying it’s perfect but the level of self-scrutiny is very high. One way to gauge this is the amount of work put into understanding and managing the considerable uncertainties involved. That happens to be the area I work in.
Gustaf @14 asks,
“I can understand why you don’t want to be bothered arguing with people but don’t you get bored reading and writing on blogs where everyone agrees on everything?”
I think you’re confusing debate with discussion. Even when the broad fundamentals are agreed upon, there’s still heaps to discuss. Just look at Catholic theologians or evolutionary biologists, or any scientific journal.
For example, we could agree that humans cause global warming, but not be sure about exactly what to do about it – tax or trade, solar or nuclear, are we screwed at 400ppm or 450ppm, etc.
Or we could deny that humans cause global warming, but still think we should burn less fossil fuels, because we have to buy fossil fuels from murderous and dictatorial regimes who sponsor terrorists who want to kill us, and because fossil fuels are finite and one day we’ll have to burn less anyway, and we could discuss how best to do this.
So we can agree on the broad fundamentals, while disagreeing about the details. Asking why have a blog if we all agree that humans cause global warming is sort of like asking why have elections if we all agree that we should have democracy. It’s a category mistake.
The purpose of blogs isn’t endless debate, it’s discussion. In a discussion, we agree on a few broad fundamentals, not to avoid discussion but so we have something to work with, a base to build on. And in the ensuing discussion we all learn something.
And that’s the difference here. As a denialist, you have a predetermined set of ideas you wish to persuade others of. As a discusser, I have some ideas that I want to build on, and to learn what others think of. Your aim is to persuade, mine is to learn. That’s the difference between a debate and a discussion.
Razor,
cross posted on your questions. Historically there has been very little parallel measurement. It has happened more over the past couple of decades and usually lasts 12-18 months. Funding is an issue and globally many networks are shrinking.
Yes, the heat island effect is a problem. The best way to test this is with urban/rural split sets. The work internationally suggests that properly selected high quality networks can manage this problem.
Here is a landmark study
Thomas C. Peterson and Timothy W. Owen 2005 Urban Heat Island Assessment: Metadata Are Important. Journal of Climate, 18, 2637–2646
And land-use change does affect temperature. Forest is considerably cooler than grassland for instance, and your aerial surveys are evidence of that. However, the global warming observed so far cannot be explained by all that (e.g., the southern hemisphere is only 30% land and only soe of that is cleared). The other thing is cleared land is cooler at night, so diurnal range is increased by more than the shift in mean temp.
The Watt’s Up With That stations have been compared with the wider network and there is not a case for this affect distorting the large scale averages. If Watt was honest, he would post these comparisions.
Some of the work I did in the western district led me to discard local temps that were obviously affected by nearby buildings, so exposure is important at the local scale. One key finding from problems in rural networks is that random errors in individual records tend to cancel each other out.
Nice posts Roger Jones.
Pretty well closes the gate on that range of complaints.
Well, should close the gate.
Rachel Carson copped this kind of treatment. In the intervening 50 years her scientific critics have achieved well-deserved scientific obscurity, though their bullying tactics, arrogance and mendacity deserve more ridicule than they have received.
My guess is that the climate denialists will join Carson’s tormentors in the rogues’ gallery of pseudo-scientific miscreants.
As Ive said before – Id say the majority level of popular support for action on climate change is not because of the overwhleming scientific evidence. Its beacuse it resonates with people’s own lived expereinces that the climate is getting hotter, that ‘freak’ weather eventrs are more and more commonplace globally, and the gut feeling that something is very wrong. Farmers all over the world are noting that the weather doesnt do what it used to: from Timor to South America..
Thats why deniers have lost the debate – and govts are now debating over *how* to tackle the probem, not whether to.
So – denialists – you’re not only up against science (the same science that allows you to live long enough to even enter the “denialist and prostate” age bracket); you’re up against popular common sense.
Kiashu@48, I found your first four paragraphs helpful in understanding the purpose of the blog and the broad fundamentals.
However you lost me with:
” And that’s the difference here. As a denialist, you have a predetermined set of ideas you wish to persuade others of. As a discusser, I have some ideas that I want to build on, and to learn what others think of. Your aim is to persuade, mine is to learn. That’s the difference between a debate and a discussion.”
You really come across as too self-righteous.
“And in the ensuing discussion we all learn something.” Funny, I don’t see many comments from people on different threads changing their initial positions one bit.
But I will take you at your word and depart and leave you to your agreement on the broad fundamentals.
I’m not a scientist, so I’ll leave it those who are to go into the whys and hows of the difficulty of getting through the peer review process simply on the grounds that one agrees with the orthodoxy.
What I would like to have explained is why it is not a circular argument that AGW is the orthodox opinion in scientific circles because it is the orthodox opinion in scientific circles. It doesn’t actually explain how it became the orthodox opinion in scientific circles, does it?
Razor, there was a slight problem with leaving a thermometer at Darwin PO: the Japanese bombed the shit out of the building, killing 9 people. And whiile the township may now have encroached on the airport, when it became operational in 1940 it was 10 or more kilometres away from the town (as feral sparrowhawk has pointed out, a cooler location).
As for UHI, do you really think that the BOM is not aware of that? Or do practising meteorologists get their quals from a Corn Flakes packet? It is also one of the reasons that the data is regionally homogenised, to average out those sorts of variations.
After all these years of so called skepticism, when are any of the explanations going to sink in?
Getting back on topic.
Can we agree on the following double think please?
Scientists talking about death threats are of course over egging things at best or at worst not understanding light hearted jibes. Besides being civilization hating hippies they probably deserve a good slapping. People shouldn’t have their freedom of speech curtailed and besides what the hell have white coats done for us? Besides help us live longer. And cure diseases. And give us lots of shiny toys to play with. And make us more comfortable. A pox on all of them in their ivory towers.
On the other side, anyone even joking about punching a conservative commentator is of course a terrorist. A dangerous leftist trying to curtail freedom of speech. They should shut up. Or be shut up. And of course since we all know that everyone on the left indulges in groupthink we can extrapolate out the threat of a slap as a call to jihad by the left. Disagree? All you need do to prove you are against leftist violence is to argue against the left. Or shut the hell up. Hippies.
See double think is easy. I’m almost prepared for the age of Prime Minister Abbott.
Anna, I think what the “sceptics” are saying is that it became orthodoxy because grant-grubbing scientists, desperate to hold onto their $40K a year jobs, all decided to agree with each other, and all at once. It was either that or hire themselves out to mining companies as “consultants” for $200K a year. Clearly greedy people motivated by dollars.
Shorter Razor: The straws, I clutch at them.
Anna,
Long answer: scientific method, reproducibility, falsifiability, deduction/induction and verification.
You may ask “Why do we keep building bridges that don’t fall down?” Because a body of knowledge on bridge building has been developed over time. AGW is built on the best available knowledge of how the climate works. Its roots go back the first half of the 19th century. If a better explanation came along the theory would be overturned (not likely because we would have explain why GHGs humans generate don’t warm the climate when natural ones do). Instead we get ‘zombie science’, where discredited assertions are continually resurrected.
Doonesbury said it best
“there is the orthodoxy”
I always wonder about this. I suppose one could make an argument that within a certain branch of science a particular theory represents an orthodoxy although this may stretch the meaning of the word too far. Generally theories that don’t have much in the way of supporting evidence don’t become the “orthodoxy” whereas in other branches of human activity it really only takes a clever argument or the use of force for an idea or interpretation to become the orthodoxy. The history of early christianity is a case study. I believe there is a fundamental category error in applying the term orthodoxy to a scientific theory. Even if AGW science did represent the current orthodoxy what came before it?
Anyway I would argue that it is the AGW opponents who are supporting the orthodoxy, that being rational economics. The sceptics position is one that, if successfully implemented, would maintain the status quo. In fact the AGW science position is often associated by sceptics (Sen. Minchin stand up please) with revolutionary ideas. What’s going on here?
Possibly closer to the point is that AGW deniers adhere to a Lockean view of nature that assumes that nature is infinite and inexhaustible. If nature is infinite and inexhaustible, then there is nothing that any being, including humans, can effect it. Accrding to this view, bits of nature may be alienated and may even be worked to the point where they become uneconomic. But because nature is infinite, that doesn’t matter.
One of Rachel Carson’s scientific detractors called her a “fanatical member of the cult of the balance of nature”. This chap was a fundamentalist Lockean. In his universe the “balance of nature” was a meaningless concept because how could an infinite thing be balanced? There is nothing to balance it against.
It is worthwhile everyone, especially GW deniers, to think about the concept “cult of the balance of nature”.
I imagine that there is not an intelligent person alive today who thinks that nature is infinite. We’re all cultists now.
If that is the case, then GW deniers need to think of non-Lockean reasons for their denialism.
Anna, that’s not how science works at all. Scientific journals’ editors are always on the lookout for papers going against some commonly-held idea. That’s because in the end they’re magazines like any other, and controversy boosts readership. Everyone responds to new ideas, even if they don’t actually like them.
Science is a big conversation, a conversation in which people go off and study something for a few years, write it up and bring it back to the conversation. You or I would look at something and say, “that makes no sense,” the scientist says, “that’s interesting, I wonder why that happens…” and tries to find out.
Sometimes what they have to report is not that exciting. For example, a guy I know wrote his thesis on hormonal response to resistance training (weightlifting). He found that there are a range of hormonal responses, but that… in the end they don’t really make any difference to how the person loses fat or gains muscle. They’re little blips, interesting blips but blips nonetheless.
“Someone finds so-and-so has no real effect” is a very common scientific paper – but it’ll never make the news, nor gain zillions of readers for a journal. So I assure you, the editors really welcome anything challenging the “orthodox” viewpoint.
But really, asking why there aren’t more scientific papers talking about how global warming isn’t happening and isn’t caused by humans is like asking why there aren’t more scientific papers saying evolution isn’t happening, cold fusion works, tobacco is harmless and the Earth is flat.
Scientific journal editors generally avoid publishing outright nonsense, they leave that to The Australian.
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2.
Roger posted a link to my post from a couple of weeks ago so I won’t repeat the information there. As it happens, we’re currently reworking the Australian historical temperature data set, using the more complex adjustment scheme outlined in that post rather than the single annual adjustment used at present, and also incorporating a fair bit of pre-1960 data that was effectively unavailable for use last time round because it was only available on paper and hadn’t been entered into the computer database. Hopefully that will be done earlyish next year.
In the specific case of Darwin, while we haven’t done the updated analysis yet, I am expecting to find that the required adjustment between the PO and the airport is greater in the dry season than the wet season, and greater on cool nights than on warm ones. The reason for this is fairly simple – in the dry season Darwin is in more or less permanent southeasterlies, and because the old PO was on the end of a peninsula southeasterlies pass over water (which on dry-season nights is warmer than land) before reaching the site. This is fairly obvious from even a cursory glance at the data – the record low at the airport is 10.4, at the PO 13.4.
Darwin is quite a difficult record to work with. There were 12 months of overlap between the PO and the airport, but the observing site at the PO deteriorated quite badly in what turned out to be its last few years because of tree growth overhanging the instruments. Fortunately, we recently uncovered some previously undiscovered data from 1935-42 from the old Darwin Airport (at Parap) and should be able to use this to bypass the promblematic last few years at the PO.
The post-1941 adjustments (all small) at Darwin Airport relate to a number of site moves within the airport boundary. These days it’s on the opposite side to the terminal, not too far from the Stuart Highway.
As an aside, while the ‘urban heat island’ is a real issue, the biggest influence on temperature records within urban areas is the land surface in the immediate vicinity of the observation site. The current Perth site is on a golf course and on cold winter nights is often one of the colder sites in the region; on the other hand, even the tiniest hamlet can have a large ‘urban’ signal if the instruments are too close to a building or a bitumen car park. Also, a stable urban area will have little effect on a long-term trend; there’s been some work done which shows that, while London and Vienna are both significantly warmer than their surrounding countryside, there is no evidence that the differential has increased over the last 100 years.
Knowing as much as you can about the sites you’re working with is definitely important. The historic documentation is obviously critical for that but knowing them at close hand is useful too. I have a long-term ambition of visiting all 112 locations in the data set we use for long-term monitoring and have 24 to go. Perhaps I was a bit too enthusiastic about this because I managed to drown my last car in a washout in the process of trying to get out of a remote weather station in the north Kimberley
“Highly trained scientists wrong about science, claims unqualified bloke in street”
Can you see how this is going nowhere?
So, Blair @ 64 unwittingly exposes the real purpose of this sciency conspiracy thingo – it’s entire purpose is to enable the scienticians to visit remote, picturesque localities, doubtless at public expense (or perhaps in their publicly funded holidays).
I used a similar ploy to visit lots of remote bits of the Northern Territory (and scenic Puckapunyal) when I was in the Army.
No public expense involved in this one (unless you count getting paid during long service leave), but the Kalumburu misadventure cost my insurance company a bit.
Roger Jones/Kiashu – my question is aimed at those who are arguing that AGW is wrong, but continues because scientists are too scared/money hungry/lazy to go outside the orthodox opinion.
That is, for the sake of argument I am accepting stupid premise 1 (that AGW consensus continues because scientists are too scared/money hungry/lazy to go outside the orthodox opinion) in order to demonstrate that it’s still a stupid argument because it doesn’t explain how the wrong opinion got to be the orthodox one to begin with.
If you want to insist that your opponents get more intellectual rigour in their arguments, perhaps you could return the favour and actually read what others are saying too.
In other words, the sceptics’ argument seems to be that scientists think like this:
1. Create bullshit orthodoxy
2. Create a culture in which everyone else is forced to agree with it
3. Profit
So while there’s plenty that can be said to dispute points two and three, even if they were true, point 1 involves some major conspiracy that needs to be adequately explained before the other points would even be worth debating.
I mean seriously? How did a bunch of lies become the orthodoxy before it could be used to pressure other scientists to agree with them, or governments to give them money?
It’s just so stupid.
Anna,
fair enough, but I restricted my comments to the words you posted, not the thoughts running through your mind. Apologies for falling short.
You asked “what I would like to have explained …”, not why. I did think it below your usual calibre … now if you had said “what I would like to have explained to help address …” I’m sure Kiashu and I could have leapt the mind/blog barrier.
We’ve had a debate in the science community about doing just that, and the consensus is that it’s complex enough to bypass that part of the community who has a vested interest in not wanting to know the answer. It would die in the arse in a daily newspaper, for instance. In the case of AGW, one of the best books on the subject is The discovery of Global Warming by Spencer Weart, but it’s best to actaully read the book, not a one-page executive summary.
As you’re well aware the debates over the philosophy of science that help answer that question are widely contested. The denialist community bastardises Popper to suggest AGW is not falsifiable, for instance (it is). It’s a recipe for dancing the Gish Gallop.
I’m actually for more interested in the psychology of denial, and the research community has recently started in on this.
I get the tiny snark in your last sentence but this is not the first time readers have not quite seen through your short-hand. Cut us a little slack.
Somewhere someone [you don't expect precision do you]wrote that when a sceptic whoever does a drive by often single line assertion against the science then the obvious necessary rebuttal can be long, complex, filled with detailed jargon and evidence, possibly lots of maths and equations and the like, maybe hundreds/thousands of words in length and difficult for the driver-by to understand and easy to ignore.
Wong’s response to Fielding would fit that bill.
I suspect we are seeing that here now.
But thank you Roger and Blair in explaing things in words that even I reckon I can understand.
…..”and while the voices of the Tower of Babel were raised in anger, the merchants continued with their business and increased their fortunes”
Er, just to pre empt if necessary, that [#71 wasn’t directed at you Anna.
That is a candid glimpse into the primitive mind of pre-Enlightenment Man.
Anthropologists will come flocking to this thread from the world over.
Yes, straws are being clutched and the bottom of barrels being scraped the world over, but I doubt it convinces anyone other than those desperate to be convinced.
@Razor@15:
It’s only one particular set of tree ring proxies that diverge from the warming trend in the Northern Hemisphere. So far the majority of Northern Hemisphere and all Southern Hemisphere tree ring proxies remain aligned/calibrated with the warming trend of current thermometer measurements. Should all that other data be ignored just because one regional subset of the data shows a divergence? It’s an interesting problem to be studied about regional variations affecting that particular tree species tree ring growth patterns, not a smoking gun against every bit of temperature data we have.
Also, other temperature proxy datasets (ice cores, boreholes, corals, and lake and ocean sediments etc) do not show the same divergence that this subset of tree ring proxy data does. Should all that other data be ignored just because one regional subset of just the tree ring proxy data shows a divergence?
It’s also important to remember that the calibration of tree ring (and other) temperature proxies was to find a way of judging the temperatures in the past i.e. before there were Meterology stations with thermometers taking regular measurements. So while the divergence problem does mean some reworkings for paleoclimate reconstruction models (and this has been widely acknowledged in the climate science journals) it doesn’t mean that everything has to be reworked (since the other temperature proxies are still calibrating with post-1960 temperature records), and it means absolutely bugger-all for current temperature trends, because Bureaus of Meteorology are measuring current temperatures using more direct means.
This is not that hard to find out with the merest smidgen of google-fu. Nobody has been keeping this stuff secret, it’s just that none of this detailed and rigorous information generates newspaper sales/news-site hits and the accompanying column inches of advertising for corporate news organs, whereas accusations that scientists are just lying lefties whose opinions can’t be trusted and yes you should buy that big new car and air-conditioner? That stuff generates lots of column inches of advertising space for corporate news organs.
Razor@15:
Hey Razor, Let me Google that for you.
Thanks for the learned views. This thread is an exceptional read.
you’re welcome, pi
Razor, in your unending search for knowledge, you may find some assistance at
Deltoid where Tim has posted on each of the subjects you have canvassed in your questions. (apologies for not linking directly to the posts in question – but what would life be without some challenges eh
).
To Pavlov’s cat (#33).
The “self-styled sceptics” have been quite explicit about explaining why climate scientists are faking:
1. They are a front for the nuclear industry (this was the line in John Daly’s book).
2. They want to introduce a communist world government (see Janet A in the Australian). The leftist angle was also pushed by Martin Durkin who went on the explain (in the Great Global Warming Swindle) that AGW was developed by Margaret Thatcher to break the power of the mining unions — these leftist conspiracies can show up in real surprising places.
3. Genocide. I first read of this one in a book by Peter Sawyer – since climate scientists know the world is cooling, having less developed nations expend their efforts preparing for warming will mean mass death. The genocide line is still actively pushed by the Citizens Electoral Council.
4. Re-introducing paganism (Ray Evans, Alan Moran, Cardinal Pell and many others).
5. Money. Not quite as ridiculous as the others, but see Roger Jones’ post above,
(or Michael Tobis’ blog Only in it for the gold.
I find it unsurprising that the researchers have been targeted in this way; I’m actually far more surprised that their opponents have been troubling them with vexatious data requests under FOI. That appears to me to require some thought and planning! But I suppose that’s courtesy of the energy company expertise.
Razor, I found this history of the greenhouse effect to be very helpful in understanding the broad sweep of the science. I found it via RealClimate. RealClimate probably will answer any particular questions you have, but I find it very hard to navigate (they need a librarian to do their information architecture, but I digress). It’s probably best to use the search box rather than surf the site.
zoot @ 77, that’s clever! And tigtog @ 76, thanks for the eloquent exposition. Thanks also to Roger, Blair and others.
As luck would have it I’d just tapped out a response to Gustaf @ 10 when my cable connection went AWOL. Turns out it wasn’t the revenge of the dark forces, nor were the evil ones responsible for difficulties some have experienced in accessing the site. There was a domain renewal hitch that also coincidentally came along at the same time.
People like Gustaf who wander in mouthing denialist lines and too lazy to look anything up for themselves or follow the links provided don’t seem to realise how typical they are. Then they wander off in a bit of a huff because no-one wants to play.
In this case if Gustaf had been concerned about “what seems to be deliberate intimidatory attempts to keep sceptical articles out of the peer reviewed journals” he could have followed the links and read one of the accounts of what actually happened and read the first hand experiences of Claire Goodess and Hans von Storch who were directly involved. The real story is that the paper was crap and should not have been published. It should not have warranted a mention in IPPC AR4 but I understand it did.
So am I, Roger, hence my question at #33. The psychology behind comment #81 is particularly mysterious. Thanks for the link — v interesting. (Though it doesn’t explain #81.)
Razor at #41, while I disagree with most of what you say (this bit for example — ‘I’ve been involved in applying for funding and you have to play the politics whatever game you are in’ — I have too, and also, extensively, in deciding who gets funding, and I can assure you that that is not always true), I appreciate you taking the question seriously and answering it in detail. I am now much less puzzled by the ‘sceptic’ position.
Also, your answer was a dream of rationality and moderation compared with #81.
Ian Enting at #81: thanks for the ROFL. I specially like the idea of Margaret Thatcher inventing AGW in order to smash unions … and that then being dubbed a ‘leftist conspiracy’. Best laugh I’ve had all night.
feral sparrowhawk @ 27 and Gustaf @ 28, I don’t know who got upset with Andrew Bolt or why, simply that Margot O’Neill mentioned it in her piece. Clearly though the threats that are concerning the police and the FBI are a level or three more serous than what Bolt is complaining about, or Wigley reports having experienced over the last 20 years.
Blair #64
Thanks for that excellent explanation. I was looking at the GHCN adjustments for Darwin 0, which Willis Eschenbach has been trumpeting. I plotted the adjustment difference on a monthly basis, and noticed that a seasonally varied adjustment had been made. This changed with each step adjustment, increasing in amplitude as you go back. My best guess is that it’s trying to correct for a direct sunlight error. Do you have any idea what could cause it?
What’s really been annoying me is that the anti-AGW mob who are accusing scientists of “manipulating” and “hiding” data routinely appear to do just that themselves while not being able to genuinely demonstrate that scientists are in fact doing it. The title “How low can you go?” was meant to cover this aspect as well as the threats and harrassment.
On another thread someone recommended this article to me. I read as far as this graph which was put forward as illustrating the Mediaeval Warm Period. The MWP was characterised as “warmist public enemy number one”, which “simply had to go.” The article referenced the graph to “1990 First Assessment Report used this schematic IPCC 1990 Figure 7c (courtesy of Climate Audit)”.
Presumably then they’d read the Climate Audit story which suggests (probably correctly) that the graph is a hand-smoothed version of one that was made by H.H.Lamb in 1965. But cop this. Lamb wasn’t graphing the Northern Hemisphere temperature, he was on about Central England!
Yet another sceptic distortion.
So I didn’t bother reading the rest of the article.
People on this forum who feel like they want to punch Bolt or can sympathize with those that do please do the following: find a time machine and go back to Stalinist USSR. Your urges of violence against those who hold different political views can then be carried out in an effective and legal manner.
Brian @ 83, your domain-related problem still exists (a bit). I’ve emailed your adminstrator account with more details.
Back on topic, I’m amused that the denialists are getting so upset about the temperature adjustments in the Darwin record. I’ve been thinking about it, and the adjustments would be totally uncontroversial in most other, non-politicised, disciplines.
I have a surveying background, and I was thinking about how you’d deal with a change of theodolite half-way through a set of astronomical observations to determine latitude and longitude. (Changing location doesn’t actually come into this, of course, but the principles are the same.) What you’d do, of course, is treat the observations from two different instruments as two seperate sets of observations, abd adjust them both to remove systematic errors, then do an adjustment to eliminate (and give estimates of) the random errors that occur in any set of measurements. (This is pretty much what happened to all the measurements that went into the various adjustments of the Australian geodetic network.)
So, by the denialists’ logic, geodetic surveyors have been participating in this massive conspiratorial swindle for some dark, unacknowledged purpose involving the destruction of our way of life (or something).
Not interested in punching out Bolt. But I do hope he lives to a ripe old age.
He’ll never admit he was wrong, Paul.
It’s hard enough for rational people, after all.
Yes I hope Bolta lives to a ripe old age and develops a taste for humble pie, he will have many large serves to deal with. Actually I would really prefer that there was no awful climatic stuff happening and that human induced carbon pollution had nothing to do with it, but if I was a betting man I’d know which way the odds lie. The chances of >99% of climatic science being part of a global fraud to institute a one world socialist government are rather slim I feel. Oh does it not fit in with the ideologically deluded ‘new world order’ as prescribed by neocon-neolib puppetmasters? Funny that. Cui Bono? Oh yeah and follow the money – denialism is funded by whom?
You know, if I was going to find a time machine to let me beat up on my political opponents I’d rather travel to Pinochet’s Chile, or Hearst and Carnegie’s USA. Much more colourful than Stalin’s USSR.
Just sayin’.
I hope Bolta lives long enough to see one of his offspring run for Parliament – as a Green
The idea that climate scientists are faking it for the money is even more ridiculous when you consider that, at least occasionally, they actually get paid on immediately testable results.
Jack Katzfey of CSIRO Air and Atmosphere (or whatever its called this week) was twice seconded to work for the Alinghi America’s Cup team. As I understand it he used a spin-off of CSIRO’s climate modeling system to predict wind shifts which he alerted the crew to, giving them a crucial advantage over their opponents.
I don’t know how much of it Katzfey saw, but presumably Alinghi paid CSIRO pretty well for this, and if Katzfey didn’t deliver he wouldn’t get rehired. So there was a very powerful incentive to get it right. If he had any doubts about the modeling program he was using I’m pretty sure they would have surfaced then. Not only did he stick with the program but he helped a Swiss team win the world’s most expensive ocean racing contest. Yet somehow the program he used to do it supposedly can’t do the job it was designed for. The whole idea actually isn’t a lot more credible than the Margaret Thatcher driving a leftist conspiracy theory, although its not so obviously ROLFsome.
Chookie @ 82, thanks for that link. I had bookmarked it to read later, albeit under a heading where I would be most unlikely to look again.
If you click on home you’ll find that it is a website created by Spencer Weart, which
The book he refers to is The Discovery of Global Warming which Roger Jones recommended @ 70.
Seems as though Bolt has outed himself as a fringe character now. Even bunches of Liberal supporters accept global warming and man’s role in it.
Hard to fathom why Bolt has adopted this extremist denialist position or whatever he calls his position, does he think most of the countries of the world and their smart people and science advisors and so forth have been collectively deceived by some massive plot in order to make life difficult for the Australian Liberal Party?
Maybe it is Hypno-toad?
Speaking of psychology, I found that Wired article a very good example, particularly the comments. One poster went so far as to start a petition to fire the journalist!
An excellent background source for this type of reaction can be found at The Authoritarians, the PDF is a great read. Once you have a handle on the worldview of people whose experience has been essentially narrowed by authorities they depend upon, it’s not surprising that they react violently to unfamiliar ideas, can hold conflicting views and are such reliable repeaters of dogma. Some of Altermeyer’s simple experiments in cooperation are particularly damning. He does have a particular political view, but he’s been researching this mindset for a long time and the science is as solid as it gets.
It’s very disappointing to see those such as McIntyre, Bolt, Pilmer and Carter have success with such juvenile debating tactics, but you won’t change an authoritarian’s mind very easily even if you shove reality in their face.
Andrew Bolt’s diatribes invariably have in them an escape clause, often a phrase or two that can be referred to later when exposure of his ratbaggery requires facesaving.
So, Zorronsky, that would suggest that Bolt is more delusionist than delusional.
That should be “more illusionist than delusional.”
Like many `cultists` the illusion that appeals to ignorance.
Well, Bolta can also provide some high notes, if accidentally. Hat tip to Chris Fryer at Club Troppo who alerted me through nominating a post from Possum for the best blog.
It appears there has been a big spike in demand for Casio Calculators.
Concurrently there has been a big demand for University Of East Bumcrack t-shirts. Maybe Jacques Chester on another thread was onto something when he urged more faith in market forces.
Meanwhile Bolt has strongly denied a report that he reworked that old Mae West gag:
“Is that a Casio in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me.”
And also that the reply was,
“Yes and yes!”
Damn! My feeble attempt at a link didn’t work.
Just try the whole URL
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2009/11/18/the-definition-of-pathetic/
A much more forensic examination of the questions surrounding the Darwin adjustments than I could ever do.
For Razor @ 106
A much more realistic and factual examination of the lies surrounding the Darwin adjustments than you may be willing to contemplate.
@ 105 of course
Blair, Pterosaur and co – thanks for the many interesting posts describing the data collection and corrections done – I don’t work in this particular field of instrumentation and it’s nice to see how it’s done.
Part of the problem IMHO is that many “skeptics” have zero instrumentation experience and have a “black-box” view of how any measurement is made. I could probably show an FTIR spectrum of CO2 and get an argument over even that simple measurement!
I think also, steveh, they don’t appreciate that accuracy and precision have very little to do with each other, nor that there’s a difference between systematic and random error.
ewe2 wrote:
Go there and read that NOW. Great link ewe2, although it leads one to suspect that the ascendancy of fundamentalism may well be directly linked to the political and social disengagement of more moderate personalities and the increased insularity that busy people find themselves trapped in.
There’s no consensus, but here’s a 20,000-word essay on the subject.
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/12/climategate-historys-message.html
Pavlov’s cat asks the question:
“I’m actually far more interested in the psychology of denial”
Why would you want to lump every sceptic in the same pot. Sceptics are far more unlikely to be hit by group think than the other side.
My scepticism relies a lot on what Richard Lindzen has to say about it, as well as the economics.
Lindzen suggests arguing that carbon is the main driver of warming in simplistically silly, as there are over 100 variables (of those we know about) that cause climate changes. The current warming is also so infinitesimally small that we’re talking about decimals changes over the past 100 years (.7 degs). To suggest this is a cause for concern when most of experience 10 degs changes everyday of their lives is over egging the omelet.
Then there is the economics. At this stage it still looks as though the degree of warming is benign so the urgency of taking immediate action now rather than waiting for energy processes that will de-carbonize naturally is a decent argument to have.
Why not wait until nuclear reactors can be bought of the shelf instead of the bespoke method they are currently constructed? We will see this happen over the next 20 years anyway with 3rd generation and 4th generation reactors.
Lastly what we do in Australia has little consequence, no matter what Rudd and Penny Wong say. We can’t alter the amount of Co2 in the atmosphere to any great degree.
Since the advent of the industrial revolution the world has been de-carbonizing anyway as we move to more efficient energy sources and processes.
What’s the hurry and why saddle ourselves with an economically inefficient mitigation policy such as the ETS which is an abomination?
Technology alone will get make us emission free over the next 30 years. If we must, we could roll the entire mitigation plan behind the ETS and arrive at zero emissions by 2050 (instead of 80%) by waiting and adopting nuclear technology as it becomes cheaper by magnitudes and doesn’t damage our economic growth trajectory.
What’s my hunch? My hunch is that AGW may be only a long term problem however we don’t need to panic when a long-term mitigation plan could be put into effect that doesn’t damage living standards.
lurker just remember we are talking about the average surface land/sea temperature of the whole planet here.
When the planet was 6C colder we had the depths of the last ice age. The sea level was 120 metres lower. If we warm 5C there will be no permanent ice sheets and the sea will be about 75 metres higher. That’s 20 metres per degree in one direction and 15 in the other.
Get a grip!
Lurker uses:
1. Reductionism — because some temperature change is benign (diurnal) therefore all temperature change is benign (secular)
2. The continuum fallacy — an apparently small change in quantity (temperature rise) cannot bring about a large change in quality.
3. Fallacy of the single cause — because economic advance has accompanied global warming, therefore economic advance is caused by global warming.
4. The drug trafficker’s argument — huge quantities of street heroin are being sold. I sell only a small percentage. Even if I refuse to sell, my decision will have no impact on the overall market for street heroin.
This is an impressive list of logical fallacies in a short comment!
I don’t expect that pointing out these fallacies will change Lurker’s mind. After all, s/he deliberately employed them in mounting her/his arguments. S/he cares less about logicality than pursuing an agenda.
No, it is more efficient to draw the attention of fair-minded individuals to these tactics in order to warn them about how they can be tricked into believing poor arguments.
Fran Bailey on another thread points to this defence of of Phil Jones by Ben Santer.
One of the best summaries remains this one in the New Scientist. There’s nothing much in it apart from the issue of suggesting that emails be destroyed and the handling of FOI requests, where a reluctance to co-operate is understandable given their volume and nuisance value.