Jun 13 2011
Global Warming and Statistical Artifacts
The 1936 Literary Digest poll was a telephone survey attempting to predict the outcome of the 1936 presidential race between Roosevelt and Alf Landon. The poll is infamous for predicting a huge victory for Landon, when in fact Roosevelt won by a landslide. Conventional wisdom is that the phone survey (a relatively new technology) was biased toward the affluent, who disproportionately supported Landon – therefore it was a problem with the representativeness of the sample. However, later analysis shows that the low response rate was also a contributing factor.
This episode is now the textbook example of the broader concept that data may contain spurious patterns or results, depending on the methods used to gather that data. Humans are great at detecting patterns, and researchers will often mine large pools of data looking for connections. We also do this automatically in our everyday lives – mining the massive amounts of data of our daily experiences for patterns and then often responding as if these patterns are real and meaningful.
There are many kinds of false patterns in data other than sampling bias, and it often takes an expert to know how to interpret a complex data set. Meanwhile complex data can be presented to the public in a partial or deception way in order to create a false impression. The global warming controversy is now the poster child for this phenomenon. The notion that the planet is slowly warming and that human activity is playing a significant role is based upon large sets of data that has to be analyzed in very complex and subtle statistical ways. Both sides of the controversy point to biases or errors in the data that falsely make it look as if the Earth is or is not warming.
I am not suggesting equivalency here – just that the fight is largely taking place in the arena of horrifically complex sets of massive amounts of data. For the record, I find the argument for anthropogenic global warming to be compelling. I would not say that it is certain, but it is probable enough that it is reasonable to think about how we can mitigate such effects from continuing unrestrained into the future. This is one of those areas of research where scientific certainty will likely not be achieved until long after it is too late to do anything about it, so we have to act based upon probability.
One of the many challenges of looking at the data of planetary temperatures is that we need to look at trends over a long period of time. By definition, this takes a long time. (It is similar to asking what the long term effects are of some medical intervention – if you want to know what the risks vs benefits are over 20 years, that will take at least 20 years to research.) What this means practically is that recent trends are difficult to analyze statistically. By definition recent trends are short term.
This has led to the fact that, looking at warming trends since 1995, there has been no statistically significant warming. Global warming dissidents have used this fact to argue that global warming is not happening – whatever warming was happening in the latter half of the 20th century is now over, and this is all part of the natural cycle of temperature fluctuation.
But as I stated – it is always going to be true that when we look at the trend in the last 10 years we have only 10 years of data, and that may not be enough to be statistically significant. So dissidents will always be able to argue that there has been no warming in the most recent decade.
Professor Phil Jones (yes, the same Jones who was caught up in the “ClimateGate” scandal – which, btw, never turned up any evidence of scientific misconduct), was often quoted as saying that the data from 1995-2009 did not show significant warming. It did show warming, which was statistically significant at the 90% confidence level – but not the 95% that is the accepted cutoff. Well, after adding in the data for 2010, the warming trend for this period is now, according to Jones, significant at the 95% level. He is quoted by the BBC:
“Basically what’s changed is one more year [of data]. That period 1995-2009 was just 15 years – and because of the uncertainty in estimating trends over short periods, an extra year has made that trend significant at the 95% level which is the traditional threshold that statisticians have used for many years.
Jones argues that 20-30 years is the time period we really should be looking at. But of course, as I stated, this means we will always be 20-30 years behind the times in our knowledge of recent climate change.
Conclusion
There are many sources of potential artifact in the climate data. Where are the temperature stations located? Have cities built up near them over the years, leading to false warming? There are also artifacts in the time it takes for stations to report their data to central repositories, which then have to crunch the data. There are changing methods of temperature measurement of the years.
In addition to artifact in the gathering and reporting of the data, there are numerous trends in the data itself. There are multiple natural climate cycles, as well as short term anomalies (like volcanic eruptions) that need to be taken into account.
This is why sorting through all of this noise in the climate data is not for the amateur. Of course, now that climate change is a politically-charged issue, the internet if full of exactly that – amateur analysis of the data. This is definitely an area where substituting one’s own analysis for the consensus of scientific opinion is probably not a good idea.
150 Responses to “Global Warming and Statistical Artifacts”
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Steven Novella,
Let me amplify and clarify the following:
“Professor Phil Jones, was often quoted as saying that the data from 1995-2009 did not show significant warming. It did show warming, which was statistically significant at the 90% confidence level – but not the 95% that is the accepted cutoff. ”
To put this in perspective. Phil Jones was actually responding to a question put to him by the BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin who quite possibly was putting a question submitted by a climate sceptic/denier. Phil Jones, himself, would not have picked such a small time period to deliver the consensus view on warming
Here is the source:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm#
BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Phil Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
He is saying that there is warming but that it just fails to reach statistical significance. He is also saying that the time period of 15 years is too short to detect statistically significant warming. This is because there is too much noise in the signal from natural weather cycles, solar flare cycles etc. etc. As a result it actually takes about twice as long to detect a trend
Here is a follow up question that makes clear his view that there warming is definitely occuring:
BBC: How confident are you that warming has taken place…
Phil Jones: I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed….
Climate Deniers have quote-mined as well as misquoted him when they say that Phil Jones says there has been “no global warming since 1995″
And, of course, we’re only talking about surface temperatures here. Surface temperature is only a small fraction of the total warming. 95% of warming goes into the oceans.
Steven Novella,
“Both sides of the controversy point to biases or errors in the data that falsely make it look as if the Earth is or is not warming….I am not suggesting equivalency here”
Quite right too.
The data presented by climate deniers are always cherry picked outliers.
Climate scientist look at ALL the data and reach a consensus view based on analysis of ALL the data.
“I find the argument for anthropogenic global warming to be compelling. I would not say that it is certain…”
I’m not sure why you feel the need to add the second sentence. Science is never “certain” about its conclusions. Climate scientists say that they are about 95% certain about their conclusions about climate change
“There are many sources of potential artifact in the climate data. Where are the temperature stations located? Have cities built up near them over the years, leading to false warming?”
This question has been settled. It is known as the urban heat island effect and it has been shown to make very little difference.
(They did this by comparing data from remote sites with data from urban sites. They also looked at sites across rural and urban China, which has experienced rapid growth over the past 30 years)
BillyJoe – I am just trying to convey a reasonable sense of the error bars with climate change. 95% (actually I thought the figure quoted by the IPCC was 90%) confidence that AGW is real is pretty good, but it’s not even close to the certainty about evolution, for example.
The probability that we could be wrong about the origin of life on earth being organic evolution approaches zero. The probability that we could be wrong about AGW is 5-10%.
I also agree that the urban center effect has been taken into consideration already – I did not mean to suggest otherwise. My very point at the end is that climate scientists have taken into account a myriad of complex and subtle artifacts and trends to tease our the extra long term trend of AGW. I agree with that consensus. I am advising people not to take a casual look at that data and think they can make sense of it.
The implication of this post is that amateurs on the Internet should be blamed for apathy on climate change. I’m going to go out on a limb and say the situation would be pretty much the same regardless.
Trust Your Doctor.
“Trust Your Doctor.”
I’ve heard that 50% of physicians graduated in the bottom half of their class.
“The implication of this post is that amateurs on the Internet should be blamed for apathy on climate change.”
I don’t know where you get this implication from this post. The internet certainly makes it easier for people to cherry-pick their sources of information, therefore facilitating confirmation bias, but it also allows people who want good information to find it quickly. It is a double-edged sword.
“I am just trying to convey a reasonable sense of the error bars with climate change.”
I certainly agree with what you say, but I do notice that you go out of your way to convey the “error bars” with climate change. I notice this in contrast to most of medicine, for which the error bars are at least as great or even greater, and only on occasion to you seem to go out of your way to convey the uncertainty. Perhaps it is because you view the uncertainty in medicine more as a given, but I’m not so sure.
“sorting through all of this noise in the climate data is not for the amateur”
I couldn’t disagree more with this statement. Climate change certainly involves reasonably complex calculations but, in the final analysis, the data is just lists of numbers representing temperatures. To understand how the data is gridded and averaged, for example, does not take years of specialised training.
The interesting thing about the climate change debate is that it is perhaps the first time that an area of science has been dragged into the public arena down to the lowest details of the calculations. The “amateurs” you refer to may have degrees in maths or related subjects and are frequently more skilled in statistical analysis than the “professional” climate scientists.
It is vital that the public is not prevented from seeing the details of all the calculations of the climate scientists. The fact that they fight so hard to stop this just feed suspicions about how certain they are about their results.
To give one example, you quote Phil Jones now saying that warming is statistically significant. It is no longer sufficient for us to bow to the great man and accept what he says without question. We want to know what temperature series he has used and how he has performed his calculations. There are many “amateurs” who know has much as Professor Jones about statistical significance and who can verify his results. The days when the press meekly accepted the pronouncements of the scientists are over. If they won’t back up their statements with explanations and data, we won’t be inclined to believe them. And why should we?
What gives ideologue’s more wiggle room is the question of what should be done about global warming. This is (at least) an equally problematic discussion, filled with political and economic agendas. None of which has anything to do with the science. What we have is a logarithmic increase in half truth’s and poor science being constantly fed to the general populace.
Presented to a population that has trouble determining that “Power Bands” do not provide them with anything other than a lightening of their wallets.
Add in the fact that you are giving them bad news, and Voila Climate Gate is accepted as fact, and buying a Toyota Prius has absolved you of any guilt.
cc – I disagree. I often refer to our level of certainty in medicine. I, in fact, write entire articles dedicated to that question – such as about the correlation between cell phones and cancer. It is all about our level of certainty with existing data.
I mention it with climate change because it is a specific issue that comes up – are we certain enough to make decisions based upon the science.
I say yes. But let’s be clear about what that level of certainty is.
juga – I never said that the climate raw data should not be transparent and shown to the public. I advocate full transparency.
What I said was that amatuers should not assume that they can analyze the data themselves. It takes very specialized knowledge.
And that knowledge is not just math. This is not about understanding significance. It’s about being intimately aware of all the many things that can bias the data one way or the other – including natural phenomena as well as data-gathering artifacts.
This seems to be where most people get tripped up – including climate scientists. This is also why I don’t trust any individuals take on the data. It has to be worked over by many scientists, and then if a general consensus emerges, that consensus is probably reliable.
Especially with a charged ideological issue such as this. You can understand a lot of the issue, but still not quite enough to get to a reliable final conclusion – but it can create the impression that your ideological view is science-based.
@juga
“The days when the press meekly accepted the pronouncements of the scientists are over. If they won’t back up their statements with explanations and data, we won’t be inclined to believe them. And why should we?”
What the hell? Are you implying the overall quality of scientific reporting in the MSM is improving? And “rightly so”, at the expense of those cocky scientists? That’s preposterous.
This is a disappointing post. I understand where it is coming from, and don’t disagree with its premises, but it is worded in such a way that it is easily misinterpreted (as juga has done).
The “statistical significance” of a specific data set is a mathematical operation performed on a certain set of data, which set of data was acquired using certain procedures with certain pieces of equipment. The “statistical significance” of a specific data set has very little to do with the likelihood that AGW is happening.
Using the statistical significance of a specific data set as a surrogate for the likelihood of AGW is like using the frequentist statistics of the p value of the outcome of a clinical trial as a surrogate for determining the likelihood that an intervention is helpful or not. It is a wrong application of statistics and one that can easily be misinterpreted.
There is a gigantic amount of data supporting AGW. From the fundamental physics of radiative heat transfer we know that as CO2 levels in the atmosphere go up, radiation cooling of the Earth will be inhibited and the temperature of the Earth’s surface will go up until the radiation cooling matches the heat load from the Sun and from geothermal heat. There is no credible argument that this is not correct.
CO2 levels have gone up ~100 ppm from when measurements were started. There is no credible argument or data that this is not correct.
When you tie all the data available into a Bayesian analysis of the likelihood of AGW, the likelihood becomes very close to 100%. I think it is at least 99.999999%. That is not as high as the likelihood of evolution, or of common descent (probably hundreds or thousands of 9′s), but it is still way high enough to take immediate and serious action to mitigate it.
The only way that AGW could be not happening is if there were some very strange things wrong with our fundamental understanding of radiative heat exchange, which would mean strange things wrong with our fundamental understanding of quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, electromagnetic radiation and a few other things. There may be things wrong with all of those theories, but for them to be wrong in such a way that the data surrounding AGW is correct but that the interpretation that AGW is happening is wrong has no conceivable basis, other than that AGW deniers want the interpretation of AGW to be wrong.
Dr Novella, I think that your idea of a 90-95% certainty that AGW is your opinion as a reasonably well informed skeptic, but as an amateur, not as an expert in the field. The IPCC report was a political document, not a scientific consensus as to whether AGW was happening or not. The data used in the IPCC report was truncated at a specific time. No data after that truncation has been utilized. The data truncation and the politics that the IPCC group had to go through have greatly compromised their ability to report appropriate likelihoods.
An analogy would be what likelihood could evolution get if the various stakeholders in the evolution-creation debate had to get together and form a political consensus as to the best data and likelihood of evolution and common descent? Could that group come to a consensus close to the values that we know the data supports? I don’t think so.
daedalus – The 90-95% figure is not my opinion. It is also not based on statistical significance. It is what I read is the scientific consensus (specifically the IPCC report). I will happily revise that figure if there are good sources to indicate otherwise. I am going with whatever the scientific consensus is here.
I agree with taking the Bayesian approach, but I am not convinced by your analysis. While I agree with some of your points – the fact is that climate is a very complex system and there may be compensatory mechanisms that we have yet to identify, or we do not yet have a handle on the magnitude of their net effect. Even if we accept the physics (which I think we can accept is the case) the problem is there may be other factors at work.
So yes – AGW is highly plausible given what we know. Climate scientists are actively investigating and debating the relevant mechanisms, and so far everything seems to fit. Direct measurements of the Earth’s temperature also seem to indicate a warming trend, on a background of a lot of noise. Climate scientists tell me they are 90-95% sure AGW is happening, which seems like a reasonable figure given my amateur understanding of the science.
If, in fact, they are more certain than that, just give me the reference.
My point before really being that big pharm oil has infinitely more weight with decision makers than some dudes in their underwear.
There was supposed to be a strikethrough tag around “pharm”
“The “statistical significance” of a specific data set has very little to do with the likelihood that AGW is happening. ”
“Using the statistical significance of a specific data set as a surrogate for the likelihood of AGW is like using the frequentist statistics of the p value of the outcome of a clinical trial as a surrogate for determining the likelihood that an intervention is helpful or not. It is a wrong application of statistics and one that can easily be misinterpreted. ”
So the likelihood that your observations are due to sampling error has very little to do with your conclusions? I agree that many people think p values reflect the probability that your hypothesis is correct, or that a real difference exists, etc. – which is dead wrong.
But to say that they have little to do with conclusions is also wrong. It’s quite important.
As a scientist form a different field (cog neuro), I feel agree with Steve: I feel ill-equipped to adjudicate the question of APW on my own. There’s a lot of specialized training I that I simply do not have, so I will try to learn what I can, but in the end defer to the consensus of the field.
If I’m to accept the consensus of the field that AGW is real with a certain probability, and I accept that oil reserves are starting to run low while demand increases, and we may run out of oil in the next 50-100 years with a certain probability (I’ve read many numbers, form 50-95, – not sure what the best estimate is), what’s all the debate about? Basically, the probability that one or both of these is going to trigger dire consequences within the next century is unacceptable with even low-ball estimates.
I am a physicist and I am unconvinced of AGW. Is the earth warming? Sure. Is it due to human activity? I dont know.
Why am i unconvinced? Carbon dioxide is not the major greenhouse gas contribution. Water vapor is the first order greenhouse gas, and we don’t have good historical water vapor records. We don’t know the first order in the historical model, which drives our current model design. What happens to the water as a result of CO2 increase is an open question historically and I think an important one. If I were provided this historical data I would change my opinion. So, I am only able to argue trends where there is adequate data on CO2 and water vapor which then means I’m constrained to last 100 years or so. Thats not long enough.
As a skeptic, I worry that if it is incorrect it could have negative consequences on the skeptical community. In my field, the consensus is far less than that of other sciences.
As a scientist I worry that softer sciences tend to be more prone to world view bias by researchers reading the data, creating the models, hell more importantly constructing the questions to be asked.
As a voter I want to stop talking about AGW. I dont care. I think its much more important to talk about pollution, environmental damage, fossil fuels as a finite resource, and more importantly energy independence. All of those things are creating death and damage now, and it’s measurable. They have done a political “gish gallop”. Lets stop killing our planet the obvious way.
As a liberal, I get annoyed that people immediately think I’m pushing a right wing agenda when I don’t agree with them on AGW. Provide me the historical water vapor data and correlation to CO2 and temperatures and I’ll change my opinion. It might even happen on this blog!
Wow, that generated a lot of comments.
I just want to recomend a link of a series of blosposts which explains how the temperature record is made and how climate scientists try to minimize biases and errors in the data. Since you talked about the urban heat island I think I might interest you:
It starts here: Of Averages and Anomalies – Part 1A. A Primer on how to measure surface temperature change, then here: Of Averages and Anomalies – Part 1B. How the Surface Temperature records are built, then here: Of Averages and Anomalies – Part 1B. How the Surface Temperature records are built and finally: Of Averages & Anomalies – Part 2B. More on why Surface Temperature records are more robust than we think
Steven Novella,
Sorry, you are definitely putting a wrong slant on this.
“Climate scientists tell me they are 90-95% sure AGW is happening, which seems like a reasonable figure given my amateur understanding of the science. If, in fact, they are more certain than that, just give me the reference.”
Here is a reference I’ve already given:
BBC: How confident are you that warming has taken place…
Phil Jones: I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed…
The 90-95% figure is a consensus figure. Climate scientists who agree that climate change is happening are close to 100% certain that it is happening. The 90-95% figure is quoted to take account of the deniers in their midst.
The 3% ofclimate scientists who deny climate change have become climate deniers in the sense that when confronted with their (often quite obvious) errors, they simply ignore the refutations and continue to deny climate change. As a result they should be ignored.
That climate change is happening is about as certain as that evolution is true. The only question that remains is by how much and how soon. That is a statement that 97% of climate scientists would agree with.
“I disagree. I often refer to our level of certainty in medicine.”
I never said you didn’t mention it with medicine, but you seem to emphasize it more with climate change in a way that seems to imply a bias (if slight) against it. It is almost as if you are acknowledging the consensus, but always need to add a “but…” You do this occasionally in medicine (when appropriate), but you do it much more consistently with climate change.
You may disagree with my comment or take, but I’m just bring it up as a skeptical outside observer (apparently I’m not the only one). You may not realize it: whether its just the misperception of others or whether it is due to your own biases of which you are unaware or if it is just the presentation
“I mention it with climate change because it is a specific issue that comes up”
Well in your blog you are the one bringing it up, and thats what people are responding to. Keep in mind I do not disagree with anything substantial in your posts on climate change. In fact one of my very first comments ever on your blog was my understanding of global warming, and without prompting you stated that you agreed with my assessment. So this is not necessarily a question of the facts, but the style or method of presentation.
Do we really need a scientific and a statistical analysis to tell us that we are a part of the natural world and that what we do affects the rest of it? Surely it was science and technology that has brought us to this parlous situation. Yes we can “improve” infant mortality figures; yes we can “improve” the living conditions of humans through technology; yes we can extend our life span. Scientific thinking has provided all of this this. But, to use the vernacular, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that all of this has a cost – and the cost may well be a habitable planet. Is it reasonable to ask why our scientists did not foresee this before they allowed their spirit of ‘technicity’ (to use a Heidiggerean term) to take such a hold on us all.
What we may need to do is to change the calculative thinking that treats the earth as mere ‘stuff’ or material to be described statistically and manipulated in an attempt to construct some idealised scientific or technological heaven.
neilgraham
yes we do need scientific and statistical analysis to tell us that the earth is warming, it is hard for humans to discern a pattern from the variability of daily or seasonal weather. And no it’s not immediately evident from a basic principle that our actions have consequences what those consequences will be. Industrialization happened decades before science discovered the basic idea that CO2 traps heat was known to science and over a century before they had the tools to understand global warming so it is unreasonable to ask them to foresee that specific consequence of any number of possible consequences.
The idea that the betterment of humans must have a downside for the environment is so nebulous that it could be considered validated if the only downside of modern technology to nature were roadkill.
Steve, I had a similar feeling to many of the other commenters when reading your post.
Honestly I can’t find much wrong with what you wrote. I think it may be a matter of style rather than content; there is just something about the language used that makes me feel like you are being particularly cautious about supporting AGW.
Like some others, I also felt that you were being fairly simplistic in equating the confidence level as the likelihood that AGW is real. Given the complexities involved it may not be pheasable for a layperson to make a baynesian style analysis, but I don’t feel you addressed the matter of this possibility as explicitly as you could have.
As you have explained, there are reasons why we can’t yet accept AGW with the same level of certainty as other scientific theory’s. But this does not mean we can’t be bullish about supporting it. In fact, given the scale of consequences involved and the difficulty in obtaining high confidence levels, I think even a 90% confidence level justifies explicit support for the theory. We are still free to maintain the caveat that our ongoing support is subject to future evidence supporting the theory.
If I was told by several independent endocrinologists that I had a 90% chance of dying if a possible tumour wasn’t treated I’m not going to hang around waiting for a better consensus before I give them my full support to act.
I’m quite sure we agree closely about AGW. However I feel as though the thrust of your post really concentrated on the reason’s to hold back in fully supporting AGW without expending as much effort on explaining why strong support may still be warranted. I’m clearly not the only one who felt this way.
Yes, we are being quite nitpicky, but that’s why you love us
It’s very rare I see the need to add anything to your posts, but we hold you to a very high standard we’re always ready to pounce at the slightest opportunity 
robm
Exactly, industrialisation, which I take to be a consequence of the particular calculative way of thinking that ‘science’ is imbued with, did take place before its consequences were realised (although I believe some poets and essayists did recognise some of the implications of headlong technological ‘progress’). It would seem to me that extreme caution is necessary before undertaking actions the full consequences of which are unknown – all of our actions have effects and the larger the action the greater the effect, with global actions having global effects.
My point is that we need to be cautious in assuming that the mode of thinking that brought us to the present global position will solve it. Science and technology have been remarkably successful (perhaps the most ‘successful’ of all human endeavours) but they have limitations we ignore at our peril.
I think Martin Heidegger (a confidant of Werner Heisenberg) was the foremost 20th century thinker who despaired of the primacy given in our culture to seeing the earth as material to be dominated and used rather than as a dwelling place to be cared for.
One could quarrel with your phrase ‘… the betterment of humans …” – that might be churlish, for I know what you mean. I suppose the argument might rest with a definition of ‘betterment’ and an identification of which ‘humans’ (I am not sure our grandchildren will be among them).
Steve,
Please let my analyse how you have actually understated the position of climate change throughout your article.
(I’ve also added in some clarifications)
“Both sides of the controversy point to biases or errors in the data that falsely make it look as if the Earth is or is not warming. I am not suggesting equivalency here”
To say I am not suggesting equivalency here is still a gross understatement. The climate scientists do make errors but they are a tiny fraction of the total data they present. And no errors survive more than a day once discovered and confirmed. Climate denialist make errors every time they open their mouths and never correct their errors no matter how many times they are pointed out. In fact they just keep repeating them over and over again.
“For the record, I find the argument for anthropogenic global warming to be compelling.”
It’s not compelling, it’s established. The argument is about how much and the likely consequences.
“I would not say that it is certain”
Actually it is a fact in much the same way as evolution is a fact.
Multiple lines of evidence all pointing to the one inevitable conclusion that climate change is happening.
“but it is probable enough that it is reasonable to think about how we can mitigate such effects”
It’s no longer just reasonable to think about it, its imperative that we do something urgently.
“This is one of those areas of research where scientific certainty will likely not be achieved until long after it is too late to do anything about it, so we have to act based upon probability.”
If you were talking about the degree of global warming and its likely effects, that statement would be correct. It is not correct for the question is global warming happening?
“This has led to the fact that, looking at warming trends since 1995, there has been no statistically significant warming.”
This is also not correct, but probably an inadvertant omission. It is not statistically significant at the 95% confidence level. (And it is statistically significant at the 93% confidence level).
“Professor Phil Jones…was often quoted as saying that the data from 1995-2009 did not show significant warming.”
In fact, most quote him as saying that there has been no warming since 1995
“after adding in the data for 2010, the warming trend for this period is now, according to Jones, significant at the 95% level. ”
It’s also significant at the 95% level if you add the year 1994 to the 1995-2009 data.
“There are multiple natural climate cycles, as well as short term anomalies (like volcanic eruptions) that need to be taken into account.”
Interestingly, if these short term trends are taken into acount and subtracted from the data, we actually get statistically significant warming at the 95% confidence level from the year 2000.
regards,
BillyJoe
neilgraham: “Science and technology have been remarkably successful (perhaps the most ‘successful’ of all human endeavours) but they have limitations we ignore at our peril.”
Perhaps you could point out one of these ‘limitations’.
BillyJoe – It seems that you are referring to the confidence level that global warming is happening, while I am referring to the confidence level that it is anthropogenic – a big difference. I agree that the certainty that the globe is warming is much higher than the combined certainty that it is warming and human activity is playing a major role. I believe the 90-95% confidence refers to the latter.
You have also not convinced me that the 90% figure quoted by the IPCC was watered down for political reasons. This is a reasonable possibility – but it sounds like you are just making assumptions. But again – I am willing to adjust my understanding – just give me a good reference (your reference was not relevant for the reasons stated above).
What I find interesting, and fully expected, is that the AGW issue is so emotional and political that no matter what tone I took I would likely get it from both sides.
My goal was simply to accurately reflect the consensus of scientific opinion on a controversial topic. Yes, I take more care to dial in things like certainty when it comes to controversial topics, or issues that are matters of applied science – where important decisions hang in the balance.
Certainty in science is not black or white. It’s OK to acknowledge that our certainty about evolution is orders of magnitude greater than AGW (and if you don’t think it is, you need to learn more about the evidence for evolution).
And, at the same time, say that our certainty is sufficient to base major decisions on that. We do need to take AGW seriously and take rational steps to mitigate it.
But I do not think we should over-call our scientific certainty in order to grease the political path – that will backfire.
SteveA
I thought I had.
There are numerous ways of being in the world – the ‘scientific’ being but one. Some of us may be hubristic enough to assume that our Western scientific way is THE way and that we have wisdom and knowledge beyond that possessed by those of other cultures.
I am not American so I cannot comment with any authority about the subsuming (to put it as gently as I can) of the many traditions within your country by the dominant technological culture. This is a culture that seems to me to be hellbent on fulfilling the biblical injunctions that require us to dominate the world into which we are thrown. Other peoples might find the arrogating of the world to the service of science and technology less than appealing, even dangerous.
Perhaps, then, a limitation may be an adherence to the myopic view that the scientific method will provide the answers to god, the universe, climate change and everything.
I was a bit surprised (and pleased) by Dr. Novella’s post. Many of the other commentors here noticed the same thing that I did- Dr. Novella made a clear effort to be skeptical, which is to be commended. There’s a ton of reason to be skeptical of homeopathy, vaccine avoidance, etc., and there’s quite a bit of reason to be skeptical of the claims of AGW alarmists as well.
The truth is that few of us are professionally qualified to individually assess the details of the science. That is true of any science, including medicine. Yet we have to make decisions- which treatment to choose, which candidate vote for (to AGW issues), etc. Lack of deep technical knowledge does not require or excuse the need for us to exercise good judgement.
But we are qualified to do several things: to assess the history of scientific mistakes/hoaxes, to assess the credibility of many of the advocates of AGW, and to assess the costs/benefits of the radical measures that are proposed to deal with AGW.
To wit:
1) the history of scientific mistakes/hoaxes: practically everything claimed for AGW today was claimed by eugenecists a century ago. The was ‘consensus’ science; eugenics was supported by anearly ll of the science mandarins (the NAS, universities, leading biologists, very prominent lay people, etc). A similar argument can be made regarding the overpopulation hysteria of the 1960-70′s. There was much agnst about the ‘dangers’ of DDT, and about heterosexual AIDS in the US. Any aquaintance with the history of science apocalypticism would lead to considerable skepticism about claims by scientists that ‘the world will end if you don’t do everything we say’.
2) The crediblity of AGW alarmists is in tatters, and rightfully so. The UEA emails were a scandal- exortations to break the law by evading freedom of information laws, exortations to destroy data rather than comply with the law, rigging of peer review, ‘hide the decline’, etc. Several of these people should have been criminally prosecuted, and I should note that not a single scientist objected to the content of these discussions. Other AGW alarmists, like Al Gore, are transparent crooks (Gore is enriching himself with this fraud), and several AGW alarmists have called for censorship, Nureberg-like trials of ‘deniers’, etc. This is not science; this is on a level with Bernie Madoff.
3) Most people certainly aren’t willing to give up political soverignty and future economic prosperity for these crazy claims. The assertion “we’re scientists and you have to give us billions of dollars and do exactly as we say or the world will end” never had much traction.
There are many reasons to be skeptical of AGW claims. I commend Dr. Novella for his (mild) skepticism, although I believe that much harsher criticism of this ‘science’ is warranted.
Steve,
“It seems that you are referring to the confidence level that global warming is happening, while I am referring to the confidence level that it is anthropogenic ”
Goddamn!
Your heading is Global Warming and Statistical Artifacts.
I see you did introduce the word ‘anthropogenic’ in paragraph three and spoke about it in paragraph four, but then reverted back to Global Warming for the rest of the article. In particular the paragraphs about Phil Jones are entirely about global warming, not anthropogenic global warming. And Phil Jones was responding to a question about global warming, not anthropogenic global warming, when he used the 90-95% confidence level.
So, if you remove my comments about paragrpah four, I think my criticisms still stand.
(I said ‘goddamn’ above because I was assuming, as your article heading implies, that your topic was ‘global warming’ and therefore I didn’t even see ‘anthropogenic’ even when I quoted it)
——————–
Phil Jones did answer a question about AGW in the short transcript that follows. The first question is entirely about global warming. The second question is about both global warming and anthropogenic global warming:
Roger Harrabin: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Phil Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
Roger Harrabin: How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?
Phil Jones: I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 – there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.
So you can clearly see from the transcript that he talking about global warming – not anthropogenic global warming – when he said that that, in the period from 1995-2009, the warming trend is quite close to the 95% confidence level. But, in answering the second question, he says that he is 100% certain that global warming has occured.
I find it odd that AGW strikes at the cores of ideologies. Perhaps it is because I have neither a naturalistic bias (on one side) nor a libertiarian ideological commitment (on the other). Now that I think about it, that is why this is such a controversial topic. There is a real question about the correct level of concern, with alarmism on one side, and denialism on the other. The truth may not be in the middle. Even if we can agree with the “facts” in this case as soceities in this world, there will still be strong disagreement on what to do, since other ideologies/values come into play.
BillyJoe – sorry for the confusion. We are also mixing part of what I wrote in the article and where the discussion went to in the comments.
The article is about both AGW and just global warming – I did mix the issues, and tried to be clear when I was referring to one or the other, but probably was not clear throughout.
My primary point of the article (which was not an overview of AGW) was that – this shit is complex, it’s not for amateurs to second guess the experts, there are lots of artifacts in the data and you have to be intimate with the field to have any chance of knowing what’s going on. So – listen to the consensus of experts.
In the comment discussion, to be clear, what I am saying is that – the certainty that the earth is warming is very high. I would never use 100% to describe a scientific consensus, and I think researchers tend to overstate their own research. But I accept that the probability is >99%. (but still not near the certainty of evolution)
When I quoted the IPCC I was specifically referring to AGW. It seems that Jones also accepts the IPCC figure of 90% with regard to AGW.
Regarding statistical significance – 95% is a fine level for the cutoff – but as science goes, this really is a minimal threshold for significance. What this reflects, in my opinion, is the difficulty in picking out a long term trend from a lot of noise. You need a lot of data over a long period of time. Still – I accept that we have gotten to a high level of confidence in warming, from multiple lines of evidence.
The basic science also supports AGW.
Bottom line – we are way over the threshold of taking action based upon the consensus that AGW is real and is a problem.
As is often the case, the initial scientific reports on global warming were, to say the least, less than spectacular. However, time and experience have shown us that the educated guesses made back in the late 70s were more right than wrong. Early, poor studies have been replaced by later works with much better confidence.
The global average temperatures have been increasing — this much is certain. I think the evidence currently available indicates that the man-made pollutants are indeed a factor in the warming trend. But the question remains, can this trend be reversed, or are we just going to have to live with the result of our pollution? I think the jury’s still out on that question.
Mike,
You have absolutely no idea.
Steven Novella article does not support your view at all. The fact that you think so is just further evidence that he has inadvertently understated the case for global warming as well as evidence of your willingness to grab hold of any twig to support your views.
That there have been hoaxes in the past gives you no leverage at all in the debate about global warming.
The UEA emails were not a scandal. They were a beat up based on a a double misunderstanding. If you don’t understand that you haven’t bothered to acquaint yourself with the facts. If you still don’t understand what was meant by ‘hide the decline’ after all that has been written about it, then you’re just displaying your ignorance on the subject.
And what were the “exortations to destroy data”? This was actually “an e-mail sent out of frustration at one FOI request that was asking for the e-mail correspondence between the lead authors on chapter six of the Working Group One Report of the IPCC”. E-mail correspondence!
Steve,
Thanks for the clarification.
We’re probably on the same page – sort of.
@Steven Novella:
“My primary point of the article … was that – this shit is complex, it’s not for amateurs to second guess the experts, there are lots of artifacts in the data and you have to be intimate with the field to have any chance of knowing what’s going on.”
Would this have been your reply to the claims of eugenicists in the early 20th century, who represented just as much of a consensus in 1920 as AGW alarmism claims to represent now? Eugenics had the endorsement of the NAS and of most leading biologists. Its assertion was that the human race would degenerate rapidly unless we took radical measures to rid humanity of ‘pollution’. State laws were passed mandating sterilization of whole classes of people– 50,000 Americans were involuntarily sterilized based on ‘complex consensus science’. The Nazi’s learned eugenics from us, for goodness sakes.
“So – listen to the consensus of experts.”
And you call yourself a skeptic?
@BillyJoe7
“The UEA emails were not a scandal.”
They were an enormous scandal, and they were the final nail in the coffin of the AGW hoax.
“If you still don’t understand what was meant by ‘hide the decline’ after all that has been written about it, then you’re just displaying your ignorance on the subject.
“Hide the decline” was Jones’ reference to the use of instrumental data beginning in the mid-20th century, to replace the proxy (tree ring) data beginning in the mid-20th century that didn’t make the hockey stick go ‘up’.
It was the switching of the source of the data in the middle of a graph in order to make the graph coincide with the presuppositions of the researchers.
it is gross scientific misconduct, and when done to mislead, it is fraud.
“Would this have been your reply to the claims of eugenicists in the early 20th century, who represented just as much of a consensus in 1920 as AGW alarmism claims to represent now?”
Mike- Eugenics is an extremely poor example. The “consensus” you refer to back in 1920 was not based upon any good science (and I am granting for the sake of argument only that such a consensus existed in the science), so it was truly an argument from authority orginating from racial biases. Climate scientists are actually doing science, and the consensus is a conclusion that stems from data from multiple lines of evidence.
Your implication that a skeptic is someone who refuses to listen to a consensus of experts is just wrong. That person is more likely to be a denialist.
@BillyJoe7
“That there have been hoaxes in the past gives you no leverage at all in the debate about global warming.”
Of course it does. There is a long history of apocalyptic science errors/frauds. AGW alarmism must be evaluated in the light of actual history.
Not to do so is deliberate ignorance.
They were an enormous scandal, and they were the final nail in the coffin of the AGW hoax.
We are supposed to believe that this is the mindset of someone who is evaluating things critically?
Skeptic fail. Hypocrisy win.
- pD
Mike – that is a massive false analogy. Eugenics was a short-lived, racially biased misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. It was not a mature science based upon a body of data.
It is not my position to blindly follow any consensus. I have written about this previously. Rather – we should respect a consensus of scientific opinion that is based upon robust evidence in a reasonably mature field. They can still be wrong – but chances are the consensus is closer to the truth than the musings of a lone non-expert, or the posturing of an ideological group.
I have also read what I can on climate change, and the arguments for AGW consistently seem more compelling to me than the arguments against – which always seem to fall apart on close inspection. From what I can tell, there is a large and consistent asymmetry in this debate in favor of AGW. I find that compelling.
@Steven Novella
Mike – that is a massive false analogy. Eugenics was a short-lived, racially biased misunderstanding of evolutionary theory.
Eugenics as an explicit scientific program lasted a century. Galton coined the term in the 1860′s, the American Eugenics Society disbanded in the 1960′s. From 1900-1940, it was consensus science and endorsed at the highest levels of American science and government.
It had some racial implications, for sure, but most of the people sterilized were white. Most of the families whose records were kept at the Eugenic Records Office were white families.
Itwas not a “misunderstanding of evolutionary theory”. It was based explicitly on evolutionary theory. Eugenecists pointed iout that if man became man be a process of natural selection, the protection of the weak and genetically inferior by civilized society degraded the human gene pool. Eugenics was construed as a more humane way to prevent human genomic “pollution” than merely killing the genetically inferior. Leting them live, but sterilizing them, was preferable.
Genetics was merely the application of the principles of animal breeding to humans. It was the best science of its day.
The primary scientific error of eugenics was that many eugenicists ascribed human traits (propensity to crime, promiscuity,etc) to heritable traits when the heritability was not at all clear or even real.
It was not a mature science based upon a body of data.
It was quite mature for its time, at least as mature as climate science is now. Many of it’s countless practitioners (e.g. Charles Davenport of the ERO, William East of Harvard) were at the first rank of biologists.
From what I can tell, there is a large and consistent asymmetry in this debate in favor of AGW. I find that compelling.
I find the scientific claims highly questionable and the conduct of the scientists excreable. The parallels with eugenics and with overpopulation and pesticide hysteria are striking.
RichardFineMan. Can you tell us what literature you have examined that addresses the contributions of different greenhouse gasses to atmospheric temperatures?
“Genetics was merely the application of the principles of animal breeding to humans. It was the best science of its day.” should read “Eugenics was merely…”
Eugenics wasn’t just a problem of confusing heritable and environmental traits (although that was a core fallacy), it was also a misreading of evolution. Yes, they claimed it was based on evolutionary theory, but it was based more on breeding principles.
I completely disagree that it was mature science. Evolution was not mature science at the time – the great synthesis had not yet even occurred. It was a demonstrably ideological program with a thin veneer of science.
Also – you just cannot compare a modern science to anything from a century ago. The culture and infrastructure of science is very different today.
It is a false analogy – you simply cannot conclude that eugenics was as solid back then as AGW is today. This is just another version of the “they were wrong before” denialist strategy.
juga:
The “amateurs” you refer to may have degrees in maths or related subjects and are frequently more skilled in statistical analysis than the “professional” climate scientists.
and
It is vital that the public is not prevented from seeing the details of all the calculations of the climate scientists. The fact that they fight so hard to stop this just feed suspicions about how certain they are about their results.
and
There are many “amateurs” who know has much as Professor Jones about statistical significance and who can verify his results. The days when the press meekly accepted the pronouncements of the scientists are over. If they won’t back up their statements with explanations and data, we won’t be inclined to believe them. And why should we?
I agree wholeheartedly. The internet has radically changed the way the public understands science. The old notion that only a self-appointed clique of “experts” can judge the reliability of scientific assertions is nonsense. As Steve McIntyre, and many others, have shown, there are many people who are not climate scientists but who have superb skills at data analysis and who seriously question the “consensus” conclusions.
The monopoly is over, guys. You’re going to have to show your data, show how you reached the conclusions that you did, and defend those conclusions. We (the public) paid for that data, and we will bear the cost of the massive economic disruptions that your ‘solutions’ require.
No wonder AGW alarmists are so unwilling to engage the real quesions, and resort to slander (“denialists”) rather than reasoned scientific discourse.
@ Mike: All your arguments could just as easily be used to prove evolution, atoms, germ theory, or any other scientific idea is a hoax.
As for your characterization of “hide the decline:, it isn’t even close. What it actually refers to is a small subset of the data of one proxy in a limited geographic area that showed behavior different than that proxy everywhere else and every other proxy. It was a well-known anomoloy analyzed extensively in the literature.
“The “amateurs” you refer to may have degrees in maths or related subjects and are frequently more skilled in statistical analysis than the “professional” climate scientists.”
It doesn’t matter how good at statistics you are, without understanding the details of the data and the analyses it is impossible to know what statistical tools you should use and in what way. Anyone who knows anything about statistics knows that different statistical tools apply in different situations, and in fact AGW denialists have a long history of using grossly incorrect statistical tests.
“It is vital that the public is not prevented from seeing the details of all the calculations of the climate scientists. The fact that they fight so hard to stop this just feed suspicions about how certain they are about their results.”
Which is why climatologists have set up databases of all the data and models they have the legal right to release. Of course that doesn’t stop the denialists from demanding data that is distributed by third parties and that would be illegal for the scientists to release, and then crying “conspiracy” when the scientists refuse to break the law.
“If they won’t back up their statements with explanations and data, we won’t be inclined to believe them. And why should we?”
Specifically which explanations and data has Jones not released?
“As Steve McIntyre, and many others, have shown, there are many people who are not climate scientists but who have superb skills at data analysis and who seriously question the “consensus” conclusions.”
Hahah. Steve McIntyre is one of the most notorious for carrying out totally misguided and utterly incorrect statistical analyses on the data because he either doesn’t understand the data or doesn’t understand the statistics. Not to mention the whole Wegman Report scandal that he was tied up in. Now that was a case of blatant wrongdoing and illegal behavior that should have been prosecuted.
“No wonder AGW alarmists are so unwilling to engage the real quesions, and resort to slander (“denialists”) rather than reasoned scientific discourse.”
And what, exactly, are these “real questions” that climatologists have refused to engage?
Ironically, Mike12 is committing a ‘Genetic Fallacy’.
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/genefall.html
@Steven Novella
“Eugenics wasn’t just a problem of confusing heritable and environmental traits (although that was a core fallacy), it was also a misreading of evolution. Yes, they claimed it was based on evolutionary theory, but it was based more on breeding principles.
“
Eugenicists noted that by evolutionary theory, human traits arose by a process of natural selection- a struggle for survival. They noted that civilization protected genetically weak individuals, and permitted them to breed. They feared that the human gene pool would ‘degenerate’ because of the retention of disadvantageous genes. This is all perfectly consistent with past and present evolutionary theory.
Eugenecists advocated human breeding, akin to animal and plant breeding, to correct this ‘imbalance’ that compassionate civilization had caused in the human species. Eugenics was based on breeding principles, but eugenicists asserted it based on a perfectly rational scientific understanding of evolutionary theory. Eugenics was a moral crime, but it was not inconsistent with evolutionary theory. In fact, it was based on a Darwinian understanding of human origins.
I completely disagree that it was mature science. Evolution was not mature science at the time – the great synthesis had not yet even occurred.
The great synthesis does not alter basic eugenic principles: we must breed human beings because compassionate civilization allows undesirable genes to remain in the gene pool.
“It was a demonstrably ideological program with a thin veneer of science.’
It was substantial science (breeding does work for some traits). Its primary scientific weakness was that it ascribed heritability to many personality traits that are not heritable in a straight-forward way.
We AGW skeptics would characterize AGW alarmism as “a demonstrably ideological program with a thin veneer of science.”.
Also – you just cannot compare a modern science to anything from a century ago. The culture and infrastructure of science is very different today.
The modern culture and infrastructure of science may make scientific fraud even more dangerous today, because of the intimate connection between science funding and government policy.
It is a false analogy – you simply cannot conclude that eugenics was as solid back then as AGW is today. This is just another version of the “they were wrong before” denialist strategy.
Don’t deny the lessons of history. There have been many recurrences of this pattern:
1) There is a scientific consensus that the world is endangered by a process that only scientists understand.
2) Extraordinary and even draconian measures must be taken, and scientists will determine what those measures are.
3) People who question the wisdom/integrity of scientists in these matters are nuts, deniers, etc.
Mike,
“They [the CRU of the UEA emails] were an enormous scandal, and they were the final nail in the coffin of the AGW hoax.”
The CRU of the UEA has a staff of 16. Even if they were involved in a hoax, even if all the data coming out of that office was false, it would not make a scrap of difference to the reality of global warming.
But there was no hoax or coverup. Six separate enquiries have exonerated them of any wrongdoing. I suppose now you will be reduced to conspiracy mongering to explain away that fact.
“Hide the decline was Jones’ reference to the use of instrumental data beginning in the mid-20th century, to replace the proxy (tree ring) data beginning in the mid-20th century that didn’t make the hockey stick go ‘up’.”
So you do know what hide the decline is.
But you have no idea what it means.
The instumental data are accurate. The proxy data were not. Proxy means standing in for the real thing. Real temperature readings are always going to be more accurate than proxies, especially if the same result is obtained from multiple different sources.
The reason that the tree ring data was wrong is complicated but explainable. Try growing a plant while gradually increasing the temperature. It will grow better for a while but here comes a point where the plant will suffer. Lack of water for example. Also we are talking about one small set of data that was not even global and could not possibly accurately reflect global temperatures.
Finally it was not hidden. All the proxy data had been public for over two years before that graph was presented. The hockey stick is real.
And I see you have ignored Black Cats’ refutation of your nonsense. Let me just say that that is just typical of a climate denier – someone who spouts a mistruth, is shown that he is wrong, ignores the refutation, and continues to spout what has now become nothing short of a lie.
“It was the switching of the source of the data in the middle of a graph in order to make the graph coincide with the presuppositions of the researchers.”
They were attempting to present the graph in a way that reflected the reality of global warming. They were eliminating data that did not make sense. They were anxious to avoid ignorant fools like yourself from latching onto that small factor and discrediting the whole thing. If they’d had their time again they would have left it in, but it’s no big deal. And what they did was transparent to all who would simply look.
“it is gross scientific misconduct, and when done to mislead, it is fraud.”
You, and other grossly misinformed individuals like yourself are the ones quilty of gross misconduct.
Dr Novella made a statement that I want to comment on. He said
“In the comment discussion, to be clear, what I am saying is that – the certainty that the earth is warming is very high. I would never use 100% to describe a scientific consensus, and I think researchers tend to overstate their own research. But I accept that the probability is >99%. (but still not near the certainty of evolution).”
There is a very large difference between evolution and the warming of the Earth. The theory of evolution is a hypothesis which is used to explain and connect data. The warming of the Earth is not a scientific consensus about a hypothesis, it is data. We can measure the temperature of the Earth, record it, and if the temperature goes up we can say that the temperature has gone up. No consensus is needed, no hypothesis is needed, just records of temperature. Extrapolation into the future is a hypothesis, historical data is not.
One might have a hypothesis that the warming trend in the data will continue in the future, and that hypothesis of continued warming has some likelihood of being correct. One can also have the hypothesis that the warming trend in the data will reverse and a cooling trend will return the temperature to pre-warming levels.
What we have is:
1. Records of temperature show Earth is warming. Data, virtually 100% certainty (I would put it at more than 5 nines when you include the corroborating data, Greenland ice loss, etc.).
2. Warming trend observed will continue in the future. Hypothesis, 95%+ (I would actually put this higher than the data because the physics behind radiative heat transfer is much more reliable than the accuracy of temperature measurements, probably 10 or more nines, it is much the same as the likelihood of the hypothesis of evolution being much higher than the likelihood of any particular data set. Put all the data sets together and the total reliability becomes very high).
3. Warming trend observed will stop and cooling trend will cool Earth to pre-warming temperatures. Hypothesis, ???% Has anyone predicted this and attached any sort of probability? Is there any global climate model that predicts this?
The AGW deniers are doing exactly what the creationists have done, they are attacking AGW the way the creationists attack evolution without putting forth their own interpretation of the data.
What Mike is asking for is equivalent to fossils to fill in the gaps between the fossils that have been found. Every fossil that is found just produces two more gaps.
There is no consensus on the timing of the melting of ice sheets with projected warming. Some say millennia, some say centuries some say it might be decades. The number in the IPCC was based on ice sheets melting like an ice cube, slowly and steadily from the top down. No ice sheet that has been observed to melt has ever melted like that. All known examples have melted catastrophically (and there a number that have been observed). There is no reason to suppose that any future melting ice sheets will not melt catastrophically.
“I am a physicist and I am unconvinced of AGW. Is the earth warming? Sure. Is it due to human activity? I dont know.
Why am i unconvinced? Carbon dioxide is not the major greenhouse gas contribution. Water vapor is the first order greenhouse gas, and we don’t have good historical water vapor records. We don’t know the first order in the historical model, which drives our current model design. What happens to the water as a result of CO2 increase is an open question historically and I think an important one. If I were provided this historical data I would change my opinion. So, I am only able to argue trends where there is adequate data on CO2 and water vapor which then means I’m constrained to last 100 years or so. Thats not long enough”. RichardFineMan
I’m intrigued. How would a physicist reckon we’d get historical water vapour records from before a 100 years? From ice core samples in the Antarctic or Greenland? No wait, the water vapour would have frozen to form part of the ice.
Richard, please tell me, how do you think we’re going to get the data. You’re the physicist.
The oft forgotten children of AGW is the rate and frequency of the more extreme local climatic events (wetter and drier, warmer and colder, the resulting increased horizontal speed and vertical velocity of air masses, and so on). If this is true, then we should have years that look more like outliers in resulting events, such as way more or way fewer forest fires, snow storms, droughts, heat waves, floods, tornadoes, and so on. This is exactly what we are finding. As these rates and frequencies continue to increase as they indisputably are, so too does our confidence in the climatic models. AGW is here. It is testable. It is found to be real. It is causal, although the feedback systems are indeed complex. Nevertheless, the natural systems are incapable of handling the overall output, meaning the atmosphere is more volatile. Pretending that our emissions have too little impact to be the driver of AGW as if it were still open to debate is denialism plain and simple, and reveals a stubbornness to face what’s real… equivalent to the delusions and denials of the anti-vaxers.
For those who respect what scientific evidence looks like, AGW is a major contributor to the unparalleled rate and frequency of measurable climate change. That is a fact.
All one really needs to do is to look at year to year CO2 levels steadily rising for confirmation that human activity is driving this increase and overwhelming any natural feedback systems. That we will someday reach an atmospheric tipping point is an inescapable conclusion regardless of what that level actually is in ppm and it is also inescapable that it will be a mass extinction event as climate undergoes radical and violent change for the new equilibrium to be established. What is inexcusable, then, is continuing to pretend that this issue of AGW driving climate change is somehow open to debate as if skepticism in the face of overwhelming evidence is a virtue. It’s not. It’s willful disbelief in the face of causal effect.
If these facts now well established through scientific rigor backed by scientific consensus won’t convince some people that we have a real and pressing environmental issue on our hands – one we must do something about – then these same people who claim skepticism bring nothing to the table but faith-based belief it ain’t so, and are thus disassociated from reality. Their opinions are thus not because, but in spite, of convincing rational evidence and what they bring to the table should be considered as meaningful and well informed as any other belief in woo.
@BillyJoe7
The instumental data are accurate. The proxy data were not. Proxy means standing in for the real thing. Real temperature readings are always going to be more accurate than proxies, especially if the same result is obtained from multiple different sources.
The proxy data is certainly unreliable, but you misrepresent the reliability of instrumental data. The earth doesn’t have ‘a’ temperature. Temperature is measured at some points on earth, and the ‘earth’s temperature’, which is merely an abstraction, is approximated by integrating the individual measurements from instrument sites. The reliability of this process depends on 1) the sites remain the same sites 2) there are no other influences on the temperature at those sites that change with time.
However, the number of measurement sites has changed in the past 60 years. It is fewer sites (I’ve read that is fewer by a third), and that the eliminated sites are more commonly the remote higher-altitude sites (they’re harder and more expensive to maintain). Furthermore, the heat island effect is a real problem. As cities grow, sites that were far from heat-generating human habitation 60 years ago are no longer so far away. This is an artifactual effect on temperature data. (Anthony Watts has written extensively on this).
To ‘correct’ these substantial changes in the number, location, and artifacts of these sites, climate scientists use fudge factors in their calculations. The fudge factors used are often much larger than the asserted ‘warming’ that is extrapolated from this massaged data.
Neither proxy data nor instrumental data are ‘accurate’ in any meaningful sense of the word. In fact, the proxy data may be more accurate for trends because the tree ring thickness for different epochs at least come from the same tree.
There is a lot of fudge in this data.
The reason that the tree ring data was wrong is complicated but explainable. Try growing a plant while gradually increasing the temperature. It will grow better for a while but here comes a point where the plant will suffer. Lack of water for example. Also we are talking about one small set of data that was not even global and could not possibly accurately reflect global temperatures.
No one doubts that there are problems with proxy data. But you can’t change the source of the data in the middle of a graph- just at the inflection point of a change that you claim is important enough to impose changes on the lives of billions of people.
All the proxy data had been public for over two years before that graph was presented. The hockey stick is real.
The hockey stick was the result of the deliberate insertion of different-source data at a point that would support the preconceptions of the scientists who created the graph. In addition, the code was massaged to eliminate the Medieval Warm Period, to make the ‘up stick’ look unprecedented. It is gross scientific misconduct.
They were attempting to present the graph in a way that reflected the reality of global warming.
The graph was sold to the public as evidence for the reality of AGW. Either it is unbiased evidence, or it is manipulated to coincide with the scientists’ bias. It cannot be both.
They were eliminating data that did not make sense.
That is fraud.
They were anxious to avoid ignorant fools like yourself from latching onto that small factor and discrediting the whole thing.
Liars always claim their lies were necessary for higher purposes- ‘the theory was true, but I had to adjust the data a little bit to show it…’. That is the consistent assertion made by scientists who are caught faking data.
The hockey stick graph was a transparent fraud, as you have essentially admitted. That you, and many AGW dupes, find that acceptable, is frightening.
Science depends critically on integrity in the analysis and presentation of data. The indictment of climate science is not merely that some of its most prominent practitioners have committed fraud, but that so many of its middle-level practitioners and their groupies accept fraud for “the cause”.
@tildeb
The oft forgotten children of AGW is the rate and frequency of the more extreme local climatic events (wetter and drier, warmer and colder, the resulting increased horizontal speed and vertical velocity of air masses, and so on). If this is true, then we should have years that look more like outliers in resulting events, such as way more or way fewer forest fires, snow storms, droughts, heat waves, floods, tornadoes, and so on. This is exactly what we are finding.
Hotter, colder, wetter, drier, more fires, fewer fires, more hurricaines, fewer hurricaines, more tornadoes, fewer tornadoes, it’s all evidence for AGW.
To make testable statements about modern trends, you will have to present historical data. What was the frequency and intensity of tornadoes in North America in the 18th century?
Your theory is mightly hard to disprove, and even harder to define (Global warming, climate change, global varying, …). Why not just call your theory ‘Global Whatever Happens’- GWH. All the evidence supports it!
Pretending that our emissions have too little impact to be the driver of AGW as if it were still open to debate is denialism plain and simple, and reveals a stubbornness to face what’s real… equivalent to the delusions and denials of the anti-vaxers. For those who respect what scientific evidence looks like…
I know hat scientific evidence looks like. Predicting that whatever happens validates your theory and equating people who disagree with you with Holocaust deniers isn’t science.
All one really needs to do is to look at year to year CO2 levels steadily rising for confirmation that human activity is driving this increase and overwhelming any natural feedback systems.
A large portion of the temperature rise in the 20th century was in the first half of the century, and most of the rise in CO2 was in the last half of the century. How did the CO2 cause the temperature rise that preceded it?
That we will someday reach an atmospheric tipping point is an inescapable conclusion regardless of what that level actually is in ppm and it is also inescapable that it will be a mass extinction event as climate undergoes radical and violent change for the new equilibrium to be established.
Just like the Medieval Warm Period, an unprecidented era of human flourishing.
You are an apocalyptic fanatic.
Steve is right on the money as usual. 2007 IPCC report is the current scientific consensus and quotes 90% certainty for human caused warming. The fact that some respectable scientists suggest a higher rate of accuracy does not affect the current consensus. Further, It is true that there has been no warming in the last 10-15 years which is consistent with the expected short term variability of climate temperature. (in other words the line has flattened out)
An important aspect to the IPCC report is that Human caused warming is predicted starting in the latter half of the 20th century only, not from 1900 onwards. In addition, the IPCC report shows that the main factor influencing uncertainty is ‘cloud cover ‘.
I suggest we hope that the concensus is wrong and the 10% wins out.
@tildeb:
Bt the way, in 2005 the UN predicted that by 2010 there would be “50 million climate refugees”. (http://blogs.forbes.com/patrickmichaels/2011/04/21/voodoo-economics-how-about-voodoo-climate-science/)
Where are they?
@BillyJoe7:
“The reason that the tree ring data was wrong is complicated but explainable. Try growing a plant while gradually increasing the temperature. It will grow better for a while but here comes a point where the plant will suffer. Lack of water for example. Also we are talking about one small set of data that was not even global and could not possibly accurately reflect global temperatures.”
But the tree ring data was used as a proxy to claim that the recent warming is unprecidented.
If the tree ring data “could not possibly accurately reflect global temperatures”, why was it included in the hockey stick graph to represent the pre-1960 global temperatures, and how can you assert that the warming that we have ‘measured’ with the instrumental data is unprecidented.
Mike’s source of unbiased analysis, Patrick Michaels, is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank founded by Charles Koch, of Koch Industries.
@TheBlackCat:
As for your characterization of “hide the decline:, it isn’t even close. What it actually refers to is a small subset of the data of one proxy in a limited geographic area that showed behavior different than that proxy everywhere else and every other proxy. It was a well-known anomoloy analyzed extensively in the literature.
No. All of the pre-1960 data was proxy. All of the post-1960 data was instrumental. Coincidently, the sharp ‘rise’ in temperature began at the exact point were Mann substituted the instrumental data for the proxy data.
If the proxy data is unreliable, then there is no evidence that the ‘instrumental’ warming is unprecidented. If the proxy data is reliable, then it should have been used for the whole graph, which would have shown cooling since 1960.
Including pre-1960 data when it fits the talking points, and excluding post-1960 data from the same source when it doesn’t fit the talking points, is scientific fraud.
@Jeremiah:
Mike’s source of unbiased analysis, Patrick Michaels, is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank founded by Charles Koch, of Koch Industries.
Care to elaborate on how that renders scientifically acceptable the switching of data sources in the middle of a graph at the inflection point of a data representation that coincides with the preconceptions of the scientists who published the graph?
Is the intentional misrepresentation of data ethical if someone employed by the Koch-funded Cato Institute has criticized you?
Mike12,
When you state that the UN predicted in 2005 that there would be 50 million climate refugees by 2010, you should have noted that it was a prediction by academics at the United Nations University, not the United Nations Organisation, and that climate refugees included even Inuits being forced to relocate their villages a few kilometres from the coast due to increased erosion from loss of Summer ice which had protected from storms.
It doesn’t just mean people being forced to shift country, or even to make long migrations within a country.
Agreed. It was a silly prediction and unverifiable even if true. How do you decide if a Bangladeshi farmer moving to the city is doing so because his land, owing to climate change, is no longer able to support his family or because he’s seeking a better standard of living.
@bachfiend
“When you state that the UN predicted in 2005 that there would be 50 million climate refugees by 2010,…It was a silly prediction and unverifiable even if true. How do you decide if a Bangladeshi farmer moving to the city is doing so because his land, owing to climate change, is no longer able to support his family or because he’s seeking a better standard of living.”
The prediction wasn’t the least bit “silly”. It is one of countless predictions made by generations of scientific apocalyptics who know full well that they will never be held accountable for what they say.
They make batshit predictions for mundane short-term gain: to draw funding, or to gain entrance into a scientific circle, to attract journalists, etc. That the predictions are ridiculous doesn’t matter. Paul Erlich is still a highly respected highly paid highly awarded tenured professor at Stanford decades after he advocated mass involuntary sterilization, predicted mass famine in the US by 1980 and the non-existence of England by 2000. One of his co-authors, John Holdren, advocated the use of sterilants in public drinking water, involuntary insertion of contraceptive devices in all women of child-bearing age and ‘reproduction licenses’ from the government to have a baby. Holdren held a high-level position at Harvard before he was tapped to be Obama’s top science advisor.
Batshit scientific apocalyptic predictions aren’t the least bit “silly”. They’re career enhancements.
>Is the intentional misrepresentation of data ethical if someone employed by the Koch-funded Cato Institute has criticized you?<
The Cato Institute has one purpose, which is to promote it's agenda.
Which coincidentally is the same as the Kochs. Which coincidentally is to prevent by any and all means the regulation of their vast empire by environmentalists.
If it is in the interest of that organization to lie about someone's motives, which it almost always is, then they almost always will.
Mike12,
When you quote me, please do the right thing and quote me in full. Taking the start of the first sentence of one paragraph and then finishing with the start of another paragraph is extremely dishonest.
This is something a creationist would do. Actually, making multiple postings is also something a creationist would also do. By definition, multiple is more than ’4′, to allow me one more comment, otherwise I’ve now finished on this thread …
And please address the points I was making. Most people would think the UN means the United Nations Organisation, a much more important body than the United Nations University, and most people would think that refugees means people make large movements, such as between countries, instead of, as the authors noted, moving just a few kilometres.
Three comments-
1) It seems the recognition that “I don’t know enough about this- I’ll go with the consensus,” would include the admission-”I am too ignorant of this issue to take umbrage or complain about anyone else’s skepticism (doubt).”
But I’m apparently wrong about that.
2) One big question for climate science today is, “What was the climate like?”
If the ‘hockey-stick graph is correct, then what we are experiencing needs explanation. If the more recent climate graphs
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/02/11/a-2000-year-global-temperature-record/
for example- are correct, then what we are experiencing is normal. I don’t think anybody knows this. Without this knowledge, any statistical analysis is GIGO.
3) The idea that it is too important not to act now is a form of Pascal’s wager–
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager
You know what has happened far more frequently throughout history?
1) Scientific consensus.
2) Deniers.
3) Science is right, deniers are wrong.
It’s possible that in this specific case you’re right. But if you’re going to use history to make your point, you lose. Science wins.
No, it is not. Just because something is a wager does not mean it’s Pascal’s wager.
Pascal’s wager was based on a complete lack of information. AGW is not.
dwayne-
Your comment implies you have the answer to the question I posed in comment 2.
I forgot something of utmost importance.
Let’s all agree that humanities reliance on fossil fuels for our existence is troubling and we need to figure out how to live without them.
Burning fossil fuels fouls the air. They are a limited resource and will eventually run out. Extracting them from the Earth makes big messes. To get the fuels we engage in questionable activities (fracking, off-shore drilling…). The problems in terms of economic chaos have been well known since the 1970′s gas shortages. If oil is needed to live as we run down those last few barrels will probably go to the last man standing. Why even mess with it?
I would like to see all the moneys all the governments of Earth spend on military actions applied to the problem. Thus far the heads of state have shown little interest in this proposal.
Anyway—that should be comment 1.
sonic,
“1) It seems the recognition that “I don’t know enough about this- I’ll go with the consensus,” would include the admission-”I am too ignorant of this issue to take umbrage or complain about anyone else’s skepticism (doubt).”
But I’m apparently wrong about that.”
I’m glad your apparently see that you are wrong
Apparently we are unable to refute the rantings of creationists with repect to evolution. The point being, that you don’t need to be a evolutionary biologist to spot creationist nonsense. And you don’t need to be a climate scientist to spot climate denialists’ nonsense.
“2) One big question for climate science today is, “What was the climate like?”
If the ‘hockey-stick graph is correct, then what we are experiencing needs explanation.”
And the hockey stick is in no need of explanation
“If the more recent climate graphs
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/02/11/a-2000-year-global-temperature-record/
for example- are correct, then what we are experiencing is normal. ”
Great reference. Some un-named author’s one page blog against the worlds climate scientists. Well done.
“3) The idea that it is too important not to act now is a form of Pascal’s wager–
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager”
Well, if you have evidence for god perhaps.
Good luck with that.
BillyJoe, That graph is meant to be deceptive, not to explain. The “error bars” are independent of time. The proxies used for temperature 2000 years ago don’t have the same error bars as the instrumental temperature measurments, you know, with thermometers.
Pascal’s wager was for an infinite gain from a finite cost. If Pascal’s wager is appllicable, the near iinfinite gain is the preservation of the Earth’s climate at near what it has been for the last 10,000 years. The cost to do that is finite and not even very big.
mike,
“the tree ring data was used as a proxy to claim that the recent warming is unprecidented.”
It was one of many proxies used to demonstrate that the recent warming was unprecedented
“All of the pre-1960 data was proxy. All of the post-1960 data was instrumental.”
This because you can’t use instrumental data when the instruments are not available! Prior to 1960 you have no choice but to use proxies. But why use them after 1960 when you have direct instrumental data!
And many different proxies have been used including ice cores, coral, lake sediments, glaciers, boreholes, stalagmites, and tree rings. You don’t need the tree rings. When you combine all the other proxies, it is clear that recent tempertures are higher than for the past 1700 years. Including the error bars!
“Care to elaborate on how that renders scientifically acceptable the switching of data sources in the middle of a graph at the inflection point of a data representation ”
Only one of the proxies was truncated. And this was done because there was reason to believe that, as the temperature increased beyond a certain point, tree rings no longer traced the rise in temperature. Reasons included increasing lack of water and the proliferation of leaf eating insect species as temperatures rose.
“If the proxy data is unreliable, then there is no evidence that the ‘instrumental’ warming is unprecidented.”
Only one proxy was seen to be unreliable, and for good reason. The other proxies all agree.
“If the proxy data is reliable, then it should have been used for the whole graph, which would have shown cooling since 1960.”
So one proxy for which there are good reasons to think it becomes unreliable beyond a certain temperature – shows cooling and therefore you conclude there has been cooling since 1960!
“But the tree ring data was used as a proxy to claim that the recent warming is unprecidented.”
Tree rings were not the only proxies. There were also ice cores, coral, lake sediments, glaciers, boreholes, and stalagmites. Excluding tree rings they demonstrate that recent tempertures are higher than for the past 1700 years, including error bars!
But I repeat myself.
“Hotter, colder, wetter, drier, more fires, fewer fires, more hurricaines, fewer hurricaines, more tornadoes, fewer tornadoes, it’s all evidence for AGW. ”
Yes it will be. What you have left out is that this is a prediction. It is a prediction that we will see wetter and drier areas. That is no contradiction. There wil be some areas that will be wetter and other areas that will be drier.
“A large portion of the temperature rise in the 20th century was in the first half of the century, and most of the rise in CO2 was in the last half of the century. How did the CO2 cause the temperature rise that preceded it?”
A large portion of the temperature rise in the first half of the 20th century was due to solar activity and low the level of volcanic activity. The influence of both these factors decreased in the second half of the 20th century. In addition, the increasing levels of aerosols due to increasing industrialisation tended to decrease temperature. Despite these three negative factors, temperatures continued to rise and this was largely all caused by the increasing levels of CO2.
“Just like the Medieval Warm Period, an unprecidented era of human flourishing.”
The recent warming is far in excess of the MWP, even if you include the error bars.
@bachfiend
When you quote me, please do the right thing and quote me in full.
I’ll quote you any way I choose to quote you.
This is something a creationist would do.
You guys hate being quoted, because you say stupid things and you hate having that pointed out.
Actually, making multiple postings is also something a creationist would also do.
I’ll post as often or as seldom as I choose. May I suggest that you concern yourself more with your own postings? To wit:
And please address the points I was making. Most people would think the UN means the United Nations Organisation, a much more important body than the United Nations University, and most people would think that refugees means people make large movements, such as between countries, instead of, as the authors noted, moving just a few kilometres.
The folks who made the graphic that predicted the 50 million climate refugees by 2010 are GRID-Arendal, an official United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) collaborating centre. (http://www.grida.no/about/)
When this prediction was made publicly in 2005, how many climate scientists publicly disagreed with it? Did the UNIPCC disavow the prediction made by its ‘official collaborating centre.’ The UNIPCC describes itself:
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading international body for the assessment of climate change. It was established … to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of knowledge in climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts.
The IPCC is a scientific body. It reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change… It does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters.”
Your post was very deceptive. You insinuated that some of the climate science associated with the UN was in-house, and that this crazy prediction was from an outlier. But all of the UNIPCCclimate science is done by official collaborating centres. So this crazy prediction was as official as the UNIPCC gets.
From the UNIPCC website:
“Thousands of scientists from all over the world contribute to the work of the IPCC on a voluntary basis. Review is an essential part of the IPCC process, to ensure an objective and complete assessment of current information. IPCC aims to reflect a range of views and expertise.”
Please point me to the UNIPCC’s 2005 denunciation of its official collaborating centre’s public prediction of 50 million climate refugees.
When the (new) media noticed that the batshit prediction had failed to materialize, the “official United Nations Environmental Programme collaborating centre” scrubbed their website clean of the graph and the prediction. Their explanation:
“We have decided to withdraw the product and accompanying text. It follows some media reports suggesting the findings presented were those of UNEP and the UN which they are not.”
(http://www.grida.no/general/4700.aspx)
Nature tricks, hide the decline, evade FOIA law, rig peer-review, delete data, make fradulent graphs, delete your crazy-ass prediction.
Another normal day in climate science.
Mike,
“The earth doesn’t have ‘a’ temperature. Temperature is measured at some points on earth, and the ‘earth’s temperature’, which is merely an abstraction, is approximated by integrating the individual measurements from instrument sites. ”
Thanks for the lesson.
“The reliability of this process depends on 1) the sites remain the same sites 2) there are no other influences on the temperature at those sites that change with time.”
Not if it has been shown that this doesn’t matter.
The urban heat island effect is largely a myth.
Comparing the data from remote sites with more urban sites, and comparing sites across rural and urban China the differences have been very small.
Also, the UHI effect should match where most people live. However, the greatest difference in temperatures have been in Russia, Alaska, far north Canada and Greenland and not where major urbanisation has occurred.
“However, the number of measurement sites has changed in the past 60 years. It is fewer sites (I’ve read that is fewer by a third)”
I’ve not heard this. Do you have a reference?
” Furthermore, the heat island effect is a real problem. As cities grow, sites that were far from heat-generating human habitation 60 years ago are no longer so far away. This is an artifactual effect on temperature data. (Anthony Watts has written extensively on this).”
You would think so wouldn’t you. Unfortunately, the evidence says otherwise. Pity about that. And Anthony Watts is a well known climate denialist whio never corrects any errors he publishes on his site no matter how many times they are pointed out.
“The hockey stick was the result of the deliberate insertion of different-source data at a point that would support the preconceptions of the scientists who created the graph.”
The scientist who created the graph have followed the evidence. All the proxies – except tree rings after 1960 – together with all the instrumental record all support the hockey stick.
Also, the instrumental record is not restricted to ground sites. There are also weather balloons, satellite measurements, and sea and ocean temperature records and they all support the hockey stick.
“In addition, the code was massaged to eliminate the Medieval Warm Period, to make the ‘up stick’ look unprecedented. It is gross scientific misconduct.”
This is an extremely complicated area. I have tried to understand it without success. However, the climate scientists have successfully demonstrated the errors of climate denialists in areas that are obvious even to the ordinary layman. I see no reason to trust these same denialist on questions as complicated as this when they can’t even read a straight forward report properly, misquote sources, and cherry pick data.
“They were attempting to present the graph in a way that reflected the reality of global warming.”
They were trying to prevent rank amateurs from casting doubt on something they have spent life times studying by inflating the smallest anomaly in the graph out of all proportion. As with the tobacco lobbyists they win, at least for a while, by creating doubt.
And, remember, the actual data had been on the public record for over two years before the graph was produced. It was accessible to anyone who cared to look.
“The hockey stick graph was a transparent fraud, as you have essentially admitted. ”
D
@BillyJoe7:
“Mike12:“However, the number of measurement sites has changed in the past 60 years. It is fewer sites (I’ve read that is fewer by a third)”
BillyJoe7:I’ve not heard this. Do you have a reference?
Here:
http://climateaudit.org/2008/02/10/historical-station-distribution/
Here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/06/weather-stations-disappearing-worldwide/
Here:
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/classes/ese148a/lecture3.pdf (page 3, upper middle graph)
There has been a substantial reduction in the number of instrumental stations in the past decades, with substantial changes in location as well.
To ‘correct’ for this, warmists apply adjustments to the data. The basis for the adjustments is the judgement of the warmists.
The instrumental ‘warming’, in fractions of a degree C, is in actuality massaged data from instrumental stations that constantly changing in number and location. The massaging of the data is based on the judgement of the warmist massaging the data.
On the basis of this, and mixed-data-source graphs, warmists propose to radically alter the politics and economy of mankind.
You must think that we are very stupid.
@BillyJoe7:
We know that the instrumental temperature-measuring stations are constantly changing in number and location, and that fudge factors are inserted into the raw data by climate scientists to ‘correct’ this constant artifactual variation in data. It is on the basis of this manipulated data that fractions of a degree of warming is ‘detected’.
It gets worse. It seems that the scientists are selective about <em<which functioning stations to include in the data sets. From Anthony Watts:
…Steve McIntyre recently found that a number of stations that went missing from the NASA GISTEMP dataset are still actually in operation, and producing data, are not being updated into the GISTEMP dataset for some reason.
The pattern of excluding data is difficult to discerm:
What is strange though is that some obviously easy to locate data, (link to data) such as Bern, Switzerland, where the headquarters of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) are located, are missing from NASA GISTEMP. Nearby stations such as Zurich, Switzerland are included in the GISTEMP database.
Other stations, such as Crater Lake, OR, are removed from the GISS source code released last year, with a citation saying they are excluded (but exist online in GISTEMP), but no reason is given. yet other stations like this terrible rooftop station cum heat anomaly (and closed by NWS for that reason) in Baltimore, MD are included.
So ‘instrumental data’ is based on constantly changing locations and numbers of measuring stations, and only some of the functioning measuring stations are used are actual data analysis, without a transparent paradigm for the selection of stations to include or ignore.
In what way is this science?
The Watts link for the inexplicable selection of measuring stations is here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/06/weather-stations-disappearing-worldwide/
@BillyJoe7:
You seem opaque to all of this, so let me use an analogy from biomedical science (I do biomedical research):
Imagine that this is my experimental design:
I am testing a new drug. I take a group of experimental animals and give them the drug. I then assess the effects of the drug over time, while I am constantly changing the experimental population. I test some animals for a while, then I exclude them for a while, then I test others, and then I bring back some of the original animals for testing, etc., all without a defined paradigm.
At the conclusion of the study, I select, for no discernable reason, only some of the animals to include in the published data.
When I publish the data, I publish a graph that shows a critical effect of the drug, but the graph contains different-source data complied from different physiological parameters in different animals selected or excluded for undefined reasons.
My conclusion in the paper is that the data competely supports the scientific opinion that I began with, and I insist that use of the drug be made mandatory for all mankind.
I also have a personal financial interest in the drug.
Who knew that climate science methodology could be applied to pharmaceutical research?
@BillyJoe7:
re: my pharmaceutical research analogy to climate science.
Oh, one thing I forgot. If people disagreed with my scientific methods or conclusions, I would compare them to Holocaust deniers.
@ Mike (9:14, June 14th)
Your comments are disingenuous because you cast off good research and excellent science in favour of maintaining unreasonable scepticism. You assume the points raised by others must be less penetrating, less accurate, less informed because you don’t like the consensus conclusion: AGW is real and it’s a problem that exacerbates the rate and scope of climate change about which we can do something. But you pretend that we are somehow removed from having an effect on the problem, that our legitimate concerns for inaction it is motivated by some global conspiracy, that you are more clever than tens of thousands of scientists working for the most reputable scientific organizations in the world who, it just so happens, have been duped. You ignore the results of exhaustive investigations into East Anglia and refuse to deal with evidence that detracts from your conclusion. What you have is a belief unjustified by facts but the good news is that you can learn why your opinion is not only wrong but a hindrance to bringing about meaningful and necessary change.
@tildeb:
# tildebon 15 Jun 2011 at 12:41 pm
@ Mike (9:14, June 14th)
Your comments are disingenuous because you cast off good research and excellent science in favour of maintaining unreasonable scepticism.
The science isn’t good and the skepticism is very reasonable.
You assume the points raised by others must be less penetrating, less accurate, less informed because you don’t like the consensus conclusion:
The methodology used to reach the ‘consensus conclusion’ is horrendous and in several cases actually fradulent.
AGW is real and it’s a problem that exacerbates the rate and scope of climate change about which we can do something.
Our ability to change the climate intentionally is another matter entirely. I see no credible evidence that we have changed it unintentionally, and I see no evidence that we can change it intentionally. Given the law of unintended consequences, I would be very skeptical of deliberate efforts to change climate even if it were possible to do so (“Trust us, we’ll change the weather for the world and everything’s going to work out fine. We’re scientists.”
But you pretend that we are somehow removed from having an effect on the problem, that our legitimate concerns for inaction it is motivated by some global conspiracy
Wasn’t it the oil companies and the deniers who were conspirators?
that you are more clever than tens of thousands of scientists working for the most reputable scientific organizations in the world
I’m much less clever. Just more honest.
You ignore the results of exhaustive investigations into East Anglia…
The evidence on East Anglia is plain to see in the emails and data. Fraud, evasion of the law, directions to delete data, rigging of peer review. ‘Exoneration’ of the scientists by institutions who stand much to lose by indictment are meaningless.
The real investigations will involve prosecutors and grand juries, which the ‘scientists’ and their collaborators are feverishly trying to avoid (cf Mann and the Va attorney general)
the good news is that you can learn why your opinion is not only wrong but a hindrance to bringing about meaningful and necessary change.
The good news is that we can stop you.
We? What do you have that the Koch brothers need, or is it more like what do they have that you need? Or that you have nothing that they either need or want?
@Jeremiah:
“We? What do you have that the Koch brothers need, or is it more like what do they have that you need? Or that you have nothing that they either need or want?”
That’s right, Jeremiah. It’s all one big conspiracy. Climate science is great science, and the scientists are above reproach. Evil industrialists and capitalists are conspiring to thwart the historically inevitable will of the proletariat.
The Berlin Wall fell, but you’l find other ways to keep the revolution going. Good luck, comrade.
Mike12 said: On the basis of this, and mixed-data-source graphs, warmists propose to radically alter the politics and economy of mankind.
Which came first for you? The AGW denial or the fear of creeping Big Government?
In any case, this is a question to which an economist and policy wonk like Nobel laureate Paul Krugman can speak with some authority (or at least with more so than either of us can):
source
Of course, AGW denialism among politicians (e.g. the Republican Party and their conservative counterparts abroad) may render this intellectual debate moot, as well. But that’s probably got less to do with science-based risk assessment and more to do with ideology and short-term self-interest.
Mike, your true nature and the delusions that accompany it are so easy to smoke out it’s pitiful. Almost.
By the way, it was socialism that took down the wall, not your dystopian version of das kapital.
@Jeremiah:
By the way, it was socialism that took down the wall, not your dystopian version of das kapital.
If socialism had taken the Berlin Wall down, it would have taken 10 times as long, cost 10 times as much, and the EU/IMF would have had to bail them out.
@mufi:
In any case, this is a question to which an economist and policy wonk like Nobel laureate Paul Krugman can speak with some authority (or at least with more so than either of us can):
Oh. If Paul Krugman says it, that settles it for me.
Mike,
I hardly expect that Krugman quote to settle the matter for you (again, regarding climate-related economic policy – not the climate science, which he admits is outside his area of expertise). I would like to believe, however, that you’re earnest enough about this issue as to at least hear him out (e.g. read the article).
If not, and it’s all just about winning arguments, then carry on.
A libertarian who sees the EU/IMF as a capitalist artifact? The Kochs are getting out the drums.
Mike,
You answered just one of my refutations to about a dozen or so pieces of the misinformation contained in your various posts.
It took you about four posts to do so. Unfortunately, the information comes from Watts and McIntyre so it’s bound to be wrong. Both have a record of sticking with opinions that have been refuted time and again. I will look at your references when I have time.
However, it doesn’t actually matter!
This is why:
The ground sites are not the only source of the data. There are also weather balloons, satellite measurements, and sea and ocean temperature records.
They all support the hockey stick.
Multiple lines of evidence all pointing to the one inevitable conclusion.
Climate deniers pick one small fault – and almost always they’re fooling themselves – and pretend the whole edifice comes down. Piltdown Man therefore evolution is false.
Should one expect an honest answer from someone who claims to be always right because he’s always honest?
Regarding the temperatures of Earth over time–
For a better place to find the article I referenced earlier try here–
http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025
Perhaps this is a better reference than the one I supplied earlier—
http://www.springerlink.com/content/r6783q20q4u56t68/fulltext.pdf
To me this is the big question- what were the temperatures like. I don’t know how certain anyone could be on that- everyone knows the current methods of discerning the past temps are of questionable accuracy.
More studies are being done all the time. Perhaps I’m wrong here, but it seems that the more recent studies indicate the MWP and LIA were actual phenomena.
To the extent models make predictions, they can be tested overtime.
But I always want to know NOW!
Mike12,
On the one hand, you decry eugenics (rightly so, of course. It’s one of man’s most horrible practices, violating human rights and maiming or murdering the most vulnerable among us, the poor, the sick, the newcomers.)
Christians are supposed to represent those with no voice and show compassion to all.
But then you buy into a politically-motivated diatribe represented by the likes of the article from Forbes. These are wealthy global-corporate businessmen who make their money by cutting down and burning mountains (yes mountains) in the Appalachians and killing the Christians who live there by flooding their homes or poisoning their water. And exploiting desperate people the world over to capitalize on the “global economy”, killings thousands upon thousands through chemical spills and man-made ecological disasters.
you say:
“…we will bear the cost of the massive economic disruptions that your ‘solutions’ require.”
What are these solutions that you fear? What massive economic disruptions are you envisioning?
Then you say:
“I find the scientific claims highly questionable and the conduct of the scientists execrable”
Earnest, hard-working people have endured harsh conditions, dangerous travel and tedious collection and analysis of data about temperature and sea-level changes, simply to learn more about our beloved home: the Earth. They’ve learned that the permafrost in Alaska is melting (which is disastrous for the plants and animals there-not to mention the human residents) they’ve learned that sea level is rising. (NYC is spending many millions to try to keep Manhattan out of the ocean (Long island, Alaska, and low-lying countries have all lost shoreline: talk about your massive economic disruption!)
Again, what do you think would motivate those scientists to want to make up a theory about global warming? They’re just collecting data. Are you saying the government somehow has something to gain from this? Or is it possible that denying the truth of the data is supported by our Congress because our Congress is lobbied with many millions $ by the same industries who stand to gain by perpetuating there destructive practices?
If the warming they’ve detected isn’t caused by humans, again, isn’t it right and good to move away from activities that are so destructive to the planet and its people in many other ways?
In another vein, you say:
“The parallels with eugenics and with overpopulation and pesticide hysteria are striking.
Now, i admit, my blood went a little cold when i read Dr. Novella’s statement:
“Eugenics wasn’t just a problem of confusing heritable and environmental traits (although that was a core fallacy), it was also a misreading of evolution.”
I’m trusting he was just preoccupied when he wrote that, because he must realize that eugenics was much more than just a problem of confusing heritable and environmental traits! And it would be wrong whether it was a misreading of evolution or not! I think that sometimes when you’re a scientist, you really just can’t bear to hear science criticized. It’s hard to accept that science really has perpetrated some awful things in our society. But these have always been under some ideological guise. When we learn better, then scientists say: it was bad science. Just like Christians say: the Christians who committed atrocities (inquisitors, crusaders, pedophiles) were bad Christians.
So Mike12, what is the ideological guise that you think a scientific conspiracy about GW is hiding behind?
You’d best make sure that the men whose opinions you follow are good Christians, not bad Christians. How will you tell?
When you lump eugenics and global warming together because you see them both as scientific fraud, i feel offended that you would compare a type of ongoing holocaust to a theory that the earth is warming. You are disrespecting those who suffered or died by eugenics, by comparing the evil that killed them to a debate about temperature change. Is the potential loss really comparable?
And pesticide hysteria? What pesticide hysteria? It’s only hysteria til your own kid dies of a blood cancer. (and, again, are the people who tell you that it’s hysteria good God-fearing people? Or is that their guise, when they are in fact motivated by greed. Or, even if they’re simply motivated by the desire to earn a living – will they let that cause them to lie?)
The world is complicated. One way Christianity helps people navigate is by giving them focus on the God-given value of each and every individual. All people. That is why some people fight against teaching evolution. It takes away the “specialness” of God’s children. (fortunately, I think that specialness doesn’t depend on whether or not evolution is true)
But how is destroying the environment helping to spread Christ’s love?
What is your basic philosophy on this? Do you believe that God created the world and is controlling everything, so if we’re mucking up the ocean and burning up the land, it’s just the course of things?
We keep our bodies clean. We keep our houses clean. We keep our neighborhoods clean. Is it just that we can’t “see” the fouling “outside” that, so we just don’t wanna do the work?
What are your motivations in commenting on this site? Were you yourself brought to Christ through argumentation like this? Is that what you are even trying to do? Or do you just enjoy arguing? Hey, i will give you that. I sometimes enjoy arguing too.
Would it be more efficacious to separate the philosophical arguments from the historical and scientific?
Mike12:
is there a moral difference between scientists saying that the wealthy are superior in order to exterminate the most poor, and the wealthy saying that the scientists are inferior in order to propagate the most wealthy?
What are these solutions that you fear? What massive economic disruptions are you envisioning?
You need to read more. Many AGW nuts are talking about de-developing the developed world. At the very least, the regulatory schemes will consign billions of people who are living on the edge as it is to indefinite economic stagnation.
Earnest, hard-working people have endured harsh conditions, dangerous travel and tedious collection and analysis of data about temperature and sea-level changes, simply to learn more about our beloved home: the Earth.
There were plenty of earnest hard working people working at the Eugenics Record Office. Earnest hard-working people have contributed to all sorts of frauds and atrocities. Spare me.
They’ve learned that the permafrost in Alaska is melting (which is disastrous for the plants and animals there-not to mention the human residents) they’ve learned that sea level is rising. (NYC is spending many millions to try to keep Manhattan out of the ocean (Long island, Alaska, and low-lying countries have all lost shoreline: talk about your massive economic disruption!)
Show me the data, and show me how it was analyzed. I’ve seen how climate science works. Your gonna have to show me.
Again, what do you think would motivate those scientists to want to make up a theory about global warming?
Money. Career security. Status. Ideology. Power. All the usual stuff.
They’re just collecting data.
They are doing science, which is a lot more than collecting data. And the science that they are doing is objectively bad science, and in some situations overtly fraudulent.
Are you saying the government somehow has something to gain from this?
I presume that you’re kidding. Government gains money and power by regulating the lives of citizens. AGW legislation regulates the air we exhale. There has never been a scam that has offered government a greater chance for gain.
Or is it possible that denying the truth of the data is supported by our Congress because our Congress is lobbied with many millions $ by the same industries who stand to gain by perpetuating there destructive practices?
There’s a ton of lobbying on both sides. Congress is lobbied by business and special interests who have much to gain by AGW regulation and spending.
If the warming they’ve detected isn’t caused by humans, again, isn’t it right and good to move away from activities that are so destructive to the planet and its people in many other ways?
I like clean air as much as you do, and I support sane environmental legislation.
Your implication that AGW legislation is ok even if AGW is b.s. is horrendous. If AGW is b.s., it needs to be exposed as such and individuals who have committed fraud need to be criminally prosecuted.
That has no bearing on genuine honest environmental regulation, which I generally support.
In another vein, you say:
“The parallels with eugenics and with overpopulation and pesticide hysteria are striking.
Now, i admit, my blood went a little cold when i read Dr. Novella’s statement:
“Eugenics wasn’t just a problem of confusing heritable and environmental traits (although that was a core fallacy), it was also a misreading of evolution.”
I think that sometimes when you’re a scientist, you really just can’t bear to hear science criticized.
Good science is intrinsically a process of continuing criticism of science. When you stop criticizing, you’re doing advocacy and politics, not science.
It’s hard to accept that science really has perpetrated some awful things in our society. But these have always been under some ideological guise. When we learn better, then scientists say: it was bad science.
You’re right.
what is the ideological guise that you think a scientific conspiracy about GW is hiding behind?
The ideological guise of AGW is a paganized environmentalism combined with socialism and a totalitarian streak.
You’d best make sure that the men whose opinions you follow are good Christians, not bad Christians. How will you tell?
I’m talking about assessing scientific integrity, not about assessing religious faith.
When you lump eugenics and global warming together because you see them both as scientific fraud, i feel offended that you would compare a type of ongoing holocaust to a theory that the earth is warming. You are disrespecting those who suffered or died by eugenics, by comparing the evil that killed them to a debate about temperature change. Is the potential loss really comparable?
Science apocalyptics have left a long trail of corpses. Eugenics was (and is) an atrocity, but the overpopulation hoax of the 60′s and 70′s has been even more destructive. There have been millions of abortions, infanticides of girls, involuntary sterilizations in China, India, and Peru. In China alone, there’s a deficit of 40 million women because of China’s totalitarian one-child policy. The overpopulation bastards (Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren, among many others) bear a very direct and personal responsibilites for these atrocities. These are literally crimes against humanity (the UN defines genocide as including ‘restricting births in a population’). Thank you, apocalyptic scientists.
But that’s not the worst. The worst science fraud crime against humanity was the banning of DDT in the early 1970′s. Prior to the widespread use of DDT in the 1940′s and 1950′s , the annual worldwide death toll from malaria was about 1,000,000, mostly women and young children. DDT was as close to a miracle as it gets: it is highly effective in killing mosquitoes, dirt cheap, and long-lasting. Perfect for poor countries.
By the mid-1960′s, malaria in many parts of the world was nearly eradicated. The death toll plummeted. Then came Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. The book, which is pure fradulent science, led to the banning of DDT ‘to save the environment from apocalypse’. By the early 70′s, the malaria death toll was rising again, and soon returned to about 1,000,000 per year.
The death toll from DDT science apocalypticism is about 30,000,000 and counting.
Being a science apocalyptic means never having to say you’re sorry.
And pesticide hysteria? What pesticide hysteria? It’s only hysteria til your own kid dies of a blood cancer.
DDT’s carcinogenicity remains a matter of debate. If you want to protect your kid, forgoing one car ride with the kid reduces the kid’s risk of death orders of magnitude more than banning DDT. And forgoing a car ride doesn’t kill millions of kids in Africa, like banning DDT did.
But how is destroying the environment helping to spread Christ’s love?
I don’t support destroying the environment. I support making legislative decisions on the environment based on good science and on careful assessment of risks and benefits of the legislation.
What is your basic philosophy on this? Do you believe that God created the world and is controlling everything, so if we’re mucking up the ocean and burning up the land, it’s just the course of things
God created us to be stewards of the earth. I support sane environmental protection.
AGW hysteria is not environmental protection. It’s bad/fraudulent science and totalitarian politics.
We keep our bodies clean. We keep our houses clean. We keep our neighborhoods clean.
Let’s keep our science clean, too.
What are your motivations in commenting on this site?
Good question. I like arguing. But my primary reason is that so much of what is said here seems so stupid to me, and I wanted to confront it and see if I was missing something. So far, it still seems pretty stupid, mostly.
Were you yourself brought to Christ through argumentation like this?
Partly, yes. I did not beleive that Christianity could be rationally defended. I came to see, over time by reading various apologists, that it can be defended quite easily. That has helped me in my faith.
Is that what you are even trying to do?
I’m not trying to convert you or anyone. Your soul is your problem. I am trying to demonstrate that Christianity is a formidible intellectual perspective- a fact lost on too many New Atheists.
Would it be more efficacious to separate the philosophical arguments from the historical and scientific?
They’re entangled, because there in one truth.
@Mlema:
is there a moral difference between scientists saying that the wealthy are superior in order to exterminate the most poor, and the wealthy saying that the scientists are inferior in order to propagate the most wealthy?
I don’t buy this class-warfare stuff. Environmentalism has always been a hobby of the elites, including the wealthy. AGW hysteria is very popular with the elites/wealthy as well. This is not a matter of rich vs poor, except perhaps in the way opposite that you mean. The rich will do well no matter what. Draconian AGW regulation will hurt the poor badly.
The analogy between eugenics and AGW hysteria is a close one. I’ve studies eugenics and overpopulation hysteria quite a bit, and the parallels with AGW hysteria are striking.
Michael Crichton had a wonderful essay on the widespread corruption of science for political, financial and ideological ends.
(http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=2097)
Mike12,
This is my fourth comment, and therefore my last. I tend to avoid threads which have too many comments, this has reached 102 so far, as too many comments indicate emotion rather than illumination.
My comment originally was:
“When you state that the UN predicted in 2005 that there would be 50 million climate refugees by 2010, you should have noted that it was a prediction by academics at the United Nations University, not the United Nations Organisation, and that climate refugees included even Inuits being forced to relocate their villages a few kilometres from the coast due to increased erosion from loss of Summer ice which had protected from storms.
It doesn’t just mean people being forced to shift country, or even to make long migrations within a country.
Agreed. It was a silly prediction and unverifiable even if true. How do you decide if a Bangladeshi farmer moving to the city is doing so because his land, owing to climate change, is no longer able to support his family or because he’s seeking a better standard of living”.
Which you quoted as:
““When you state that the UN predicted in 2005 that there would be 50 million climate refugees by 2010,…It was a silly prediction and unverifiable even if true. How do you decide if a Bangladeshi farmer moving to the city is doing so because his land, owing to climate change, is no longer able to support his family or because he’s seeking a better standard of living.”
When I protested that you should quote me in full, you responded:
“When you quote me, please do the right thing and quote me in full.
I’ll quote you any way I choose to quote you.
This is something a creationist would do.
You guys hate being quoted, because you say stupid things and you hate having that pointed out.
Actually, making multiple postings is also something a creationist would also do.
I’ll post as often or as seldom as I choose. May I suggest that you concern yourself more with your own postings? To wit:
And please address the points I was making. Most people would think the UN means the United Nations Organisation, a much more important body than the United Nations University, and most people would think that refugees means people make large movements, such as between countries, instead of, as the authors noted, moving just a few kilometres.
The folks who made the graphic that predicted the 50 million climate refugees by 2010 are GRID-Arendal, an official United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) collaborating centre. (http://www.grida.no/about/)
When this prediction was made publicly in 2005, how many climate scientists publicly disagreed with it? Did the UNIPCC disavow the prediction made by its ‘official collaborating centre.’ The UNIPCC describes itself:
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading international body for the assessment of climate change. It was established … to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of knowledge in climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts.
The IPCC is a scientific body. It reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change… It does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters.”
Your post was very deceptive. You insinuated that some of the climate science associated with the UN was in-house, and that this crazy prediction was from an outlier. But all of the UNIPCCclimate science is done by official collaborating centres. So this crazy prediction was as official as the UNIPCC gets.
From the UNIPCC website:
“Thousands of scientists from all over the world contribute to the work of the IPCC on a voluntary basis. Review is an essential part of the IPCC process, to ensure an objective and complete assessment of current information. IPCC aims to reflect a range of views and expertise.”
Please point me to the UNIPCC’s 2005 denunciation of its official collaborating centre’s public prediction of 50 million climate refugees.
When the (new) media noticed that the batshit prediction had failed to materialize, the “official United Nations Environmental Programme collaborating centre” scrubbed their website clean of the graph and the prediction. Their explanation:
“We have decided to withdraw the product and accompanying text. It follows some media reports suggesting the findings presented were those of UNEP and the UN which they are not.”
(http://www.grida.no/general/4700.aspx)
Nature tricks, hide the decline, evade FOIA law, rig peer-review, delete data, make fradulent graphs, delete your crazy-ass prediction.
Another normal day in climate science”.
Actually, the first time I came across the prediction was an article in “the Australian” newspaper earlier this year, which reported it as a prediction of the UNO, and asked, ‘where are the 50 million refugees?’ The Australian is a Murdoch newspaper, with about as much credibility as Fox News, so immediately I wondered about it, and with 5 minutes Internet search, I found an original newspaper article from 2005, which reported it as coming from the United Nations University and which gave the definition of climate refugees to include Inuits moving kilometres inland, so I discounted the article immediately.
Most websites, including the one you linked to, use the term UN, although UNU would have been more accurate, and less misleading.
The trouble is that AGW is becoming far too emotional, with many people appearing to get upset as shown by the multiple comments on any thread even remotely connected with climate change.
The Australian government is proposing a carbon tax starting next year, eventually converting into a cap and trade system in about 5 years. The tax is expected to be about $20 per tonne, which would yield around $10 billion per year (depending on what is taxed, petrol might be excluded), which is a small amount in view of the size of Australia’s economy.
Most of this is going to be returned as compensation, mainly to low income groups, with a fair proportion going to trade exposed industries and also the more dirty coal mines and power plants as compensation to shut down. None is to be kept to go into general government revenue.
Even without global warming, coal is a very dirty fuel, owing to its contamination with highly toxic trace metals such as mercury and uranium, and its use on that ground alone is sufficient for it to be phased out.
There is a very vociferous element in Australia who are very upset at the idea of a carbon tax, and they make their views loud and clear on the Internet, to talkback radio and in letters to newspapers.
The trouble is that the Murdoch press has taken a very anti- action of any kind, despite Rupert Murdoch being on record that he thinks AGW is happening, and his newspapers giving lip-service to the idea that it is happening . Every story is slanted in a negative way, and anyone making a public statement in favour of taking action can expect to be attacked quite viciously.
Recently, a representative of one of the power companies noted that electricity prices were expected to double in 6 years, the inference being drawn that it was due to the proposed carbon price. Actually, the predicted price increase was more due to chronic underinvestment in power generation, and with projected increases in power consumption (with the increasing popularity of widescreen plasma TVs and air-conditioning), brown- and blackouts are predicted unless consumption is reduced. A carbon tax is expected to add 1-2 cents per unit (I currently pay around 18 cents), so I’d need to reduce my consumption by 10% and I’ll avoid the increase due to the tax. I’ve already done it, by turning off an old 2nd fridge, which reduced my consumption from 5 kilowatt hours/day to 3 in the last billing period.
I think that we ought to ‘cool it’ when we think about AGW. What we should be considering is having energy security, on which we are so dependent. If we are lucky, the global population will increase to 8 perhaps 9 billion by 2050, so we have to provide energy for an extra 1-2 billion in addition to the 1.5 billion who already don’t have access to electricity. And that is with finite and increasingly expensive reserves of oil and gas.
So, consideration of getting other sources of energy, including renewables, and reducing usage now to conserve reserves, are sensible, even without AGW.
@bachfiend:
I think that we ought to ‘cool it’ when we think about AGW. What we should be considering is having energy security, on which we are so dependent…So, consideration of getting other sources of energy, including renewables, and reducing usage now to conserve reserves, are sensible, even without AGW.
This is how AGW hysteria will end, over the next decade or so. The abysmal ‘science’ and fraudulent claims are now obvious to people willing to examine the evidence. Climate science is a mess, and we don’t know if the earth is warming, cooling, not changing, or whatever, because the ‘scientists’ we have paid 70 billion dollars to tell us are incompetent and corrupt.
“Let’s just have clean air anyway” will be the final wimper of the greatest scientific fraud in human history. And apologists like you will learn nothing from it.
In a generation or so, the headlines will read: “OXYGEN DISAPPEARING FROM OCEANS-ALL LIFE IS THREATENED UNLESS WE ACT NOW, SCIENTISTS WARN”. There will be science fraud followed by science fraud, and it won’t stop until we demand integrity and transparency from science.
Mike 12: “There will be science fraud followed by science fraud, and it won’t stop until we demand integrity and transparency from science.”
You attack science because it doesn’t support your fantasies of an afterlife. Face up to it, Mike.
@# SteveA
You attack science because it doesn’t support your fantasies of an afterlife. Face up to it, Mike.
I love science. I’ve been doing biomedical research for 30 years (I’m a tenured professor), and I’ve never seen corruption like I’ve seen in climate science.
I hate fraud and incompetence in science- because of the respect I have for good science.
And how exactly does science address the afterlife? You must know of some new research that I missed.
Mike12,
I’m going to have to break my word and comment a 5th time. How is it possible that we’ve paid $70 billion dollars to corrupt and incompetent climate scientists? That sounds like extreme hyperbole. Where did you get your figures?
I think climatology is a respectable science; we have a pretty good idea as to what factors drive climate.
Whether we should regard AGW as a strongly supported hypothesis or an unverified theory is a matter of personal preference, as is the question as to whether we have enough evidence for action now, regardless of whether there are other reasons for action, such as finite reserves of oil and gas.
I read your link to the Michael Crichton lecture. I thought it was amusing (actually I enjoyed reading his ‘State of Fear’). I’m not certain that I agree with his assertion that there is no such thing as ‘consensus science’. His list of scientific theories that were originally strongly resisted by authorities until being accepted much later I didn’t find particularly convincing.
Consensus science being shown to be wrong can only be made in retrospect. There must be plenty of cases where scientists have attempted to overthrow strongly accepted theories and be shown to be WRONG.
One of examples he gave is Wegener’s Continental Drift theory, which actually wasn’t a new theory. It wasn’t accepted because geologists couldn’t imagine how the continents could plough through the crust. It wasn’t until the 1960s that the much larger theory of tectonic plates was proposed and accepted, so actually Wegener’s was only partly right.
Another example he gave is Jenner’s vaccination. Well, actually deliberate inoculation of smallpox had been used well before then. The preacher Cotten Mather was a keen proponent of this, because it had a much lower death rate of around 1% compared to naturally acquired smallpox in epidemics.
Yet another example he gives was of Semmelweis and puerperal fever. Well, at the time germ theory wasn’t known. He was right, but no one knew why he was right. The science wasn’t known.
To disprove the consensus of acceptance of AGW you have to disprove AGW not pour scorn on the consensus. I still haven’t seen any evidence to doubt the hypothesis that increasing CO2 won’t increase global warming. Without greenhouse gasses, the global temperature should be about -18C. I’d like to see some science disproving the hypothesis, not just cherry picking.
The current records do show that the Earth is warming, provided you consider long term trends, and don’t concentrate on year to year fluctuations (climate is messy and complex).
Mike,
You show all the hallmarks of a climate denier.
I have offered responses to all your claims (except the disappearing ground sites which I still can’t find referenced anywhere but on that discredited blog WUWT). But not a hint of a reply from you. No doubt you will just continue to ignore inconvenient facts and continue to peddle the same nonsense.
@bachfiend:
I’m going to have to break my word and comment a 5th time.
Good. Discussion is a good thing.
How is it possible that we’ve paid $70 billion dollars to corrupt and incompetent climate scientists? That sounds like extreme hyperbole. Where did you get your figures?
http://www.heartland.org/custom/semod_policybot/pdf/25717.pdf
And if you want “exteme hyperbole”, I remind you that us ‘deniers’ aren’t the ones who are saying that the world will end if you don’t do exactly what we say.
I think climatology is a respectable science; we have a pretty good idea as to what factors drive climate.
Climatology is a mixed bag. AGW alarmism is fradulent science. If financial professionals use data in the way AGW alarmists do, they go to prison.
Whether we should regard AGW as a strongly supported hypothesis or an unverified theory is a matter of personal preference, as is the question as to whether we have enough evidence for action now, regardless of whether there are other reasons for action, such as finite reserves of oil and gas.
Of course it is a matter of opinion. The issue is not at all settled, there is no informed ‘consensus’, and no one is a ‘denier’. There is a raging scientific debate. In my view, the anti-AGW folks have much the better case.
I read your link to the Michael Crichton lecture. I thought it was amusing (actually I enjoyed reading his ‘State of Fear’). I’m not certain that I agree with his assertion that there is no such thing as ‘consensus science’.
Science is always about skeptism and debate. Always. When one side claims ‘consensus’, they’ve stopped doing science and started doing politics. I’ve seen this very clearly in my own field of research. ‘Consensus’ is another term for ‘we can’t prove our theory, so we’re going to shut you up and get our theory accepted by default.’
Consensus science being shown to be wrong can only be made in retrospect. There must be plenty of cases where scientists have attempted to overthrow strongly accepted theories and be shown to be WRONG.
Most scientific theories, ‘consensus’ and non-consensus, have been wrong in substantial ways, and this will always be true. My argument is that one can not determine truth by ‘consensus’ or ‘skeptcism’. One can only determine truth by evidence and unfettered debate. When scientists censor debate, they cease to be scientists, and should be treated as the thugs they are.
To disprove the consensus of acceptance of AGW you have to disprove AGW not pour scorn on the consensus. I still haven’t seen any evidence to doubt the hypothesis that increasing CO2 won’t increase global warming. Without greenhouse gasses, the global temperature should be about -18C. I’d like to see some science disproving the hypothesis, not just cherry picking.
The methods of the ‘consensus’ scientists are so abysmal that little credence can be given to many of their claims. Mixed-source data in graphs, massaged data, data included or excluded with no transparent paradigm, colllusion to rig peer review, professional villification and destruction of people who question the prevailing theory, etc etc preclude any confidence in their scientific claims.
Bernie Madoff might be able to give me good financial advice, but I won’t give a dime for his opinion. Certain conduct precludes any further trust. Climate scientists are at that point. Call me a ‘denier’ and I will never again believe a word you say.
The current records do show that the Earth is warming, provided you consider long term trends, and don’t concentrate on year to year fluctuations (climate is messy and complex).
What current record, and how was the data obtained and analyzed. I don’t trust anything these bastards say.
From now on, for many millions of people who are sickened by this cruddy ‘science’, you’re gonna have to show us. All data, all analyses, transparency, and analyzed by many different people with different perspectives.
@BillyJoe7:
You show all the hallmarks of a climate denier.
Your use of a word that invites comparison to Holocaust denial is beneath reproach.
I have offered responses to all your claims (except the disappearing ground sites which I still can’t find referenced anywhere but on that discredited blog WUWT).
No you haven’t. The constant flux and disappearance of ground sites is abundantly documented (my third reference was from Hanson, for goodness sake).
Explain how the extraction of data from sites that are constantly changing location and diminishing in number, manipulation of that data in accordance with non-transparent algorythms to ‘correct’ the data, and then selection/rejection of sites to publish without publicly declared reasons, and then display of such data on mixed-source graphs where the critical result occurs at the exact site at which the new source data is introduced, amounts to good science.
And keep in mind that the instrumental data is the best data that AGW zealots have. From there on, stuff gets ‘iffy’.
What a fraud.
@BillyJoe7:
Your utter ignorance of the profound problems with the instrumental sites sort of takes you out of the group of people who can honestly say that they know enough about the AGW debate to competently discuss it.
And your comparison of people who do know about these issues to Holocaust deniers says a lot about you.
“And if you want “exteme hyperbole”, I remind you that us ‘deniers’ aren’t the ones who are saying that the world will end if you don’t do exactly what we say.”
No, but you are just on opposite ends of the same spectrum. The same in that you have an ideological commitment to a particular perspective, and view all “evidence” through that ideological filter.
Mike12:
just one last comment from me, for you. First, malaria wasn’t as big a problem in Africa until imperialists from the north tried to turn Africa into Europe. Second, Bhopal
And, you’re right, i do need to read more. Everybody does.
read about the Massey energy co in coal River Valley if you don’t think this is about class and wealth.
http://www.filmfestivaltoday.com/coming-attractions/an-appalachian-environmental-disaster
Read about the robber barons, who’ve been replaced by energy corporations.
Thanks for your thorough reply to my comment. You’ve allowed me to understand you more.
People see what they want to see.
go in peace
Well known anti-AGW gadfly Dr. Richard Muller with the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project,which set out to show that the poor measurement stations were producing biased results and exaggerating warming effects,has thus far concluded that in fact there is no bias when they corrected for what they saw as flaws.In a report to the House Committee on Science,Space and Technology on March 31st 2011,Muller had to concede that the previous data was essentially correct.
http://www.berkeleyearth.org/Resources/Muller_Testimony_31_March_2011
ccbowers said to Mike12: The same in that you have an ideological commitment to a particular perspective, and view all “evidence” through that ideological filter.
Given the scientific consensus and its wide acceptance, it helps to maintain this ideological commitment if one is also given to paranoia. It’s a psychological trait that I’ve witnessed all too often among conspiracy theorists on both extremes of the left-right political spectrum.
For example, knowing that I was no fan of the Bush Administration, left-leaning friends & relatives of mine had trouble understanding why I would not accept the “truth” about the 9/11 tragedy’s being an “inside job.” These are people whom I love, and the related arguments were very stressful on our relationships.
More to the point, whatever the differences were between us, they were not in regards to moral values or political alliances. Nor (as far as I can tell) were they in regards to intelligence or the ability and will to think critically.
Mike,
You have proclaimed that you are the ultimate honest broker here and that in effect your word is your bond. Yet after taking great umbrage at the suggestion you are a shill for anyone, here cometh you again with that heartland.org piece of pure Exxon funded propaganda.
Here’s the skinny about who and what’s behind the propaganda that you spew out:
The Monkeys and Their Organ Grinders
http://www.prwatch.org/node/8258
And you say you are a tenured professor somewhere, doing biomedical research for 30 years? But what you don’t say is that it’s a BobJones establishment and your “research” is creation science funded.
So give us a break with these “half-truths don’t make me a liar” protestations. They make you as big a fraud as those apes you do your monkey business for.
@Jeremiah:
And you say you are a tenured professor somewhere, doing biomedical research for 30 years? But what you don’t say is that it’s a BobJones establishment and your “research” is creation science funded.
My how the conspiratorial mind teems. Bob Jones wouldn’t have me (I’m Catholic), and the creation science folks aren’t crazy about me either (I accept most of evolutinary biology, except the ‘non-teleological’ part).
I work at an utterly secular university doing utterly secular work.
They make you as big a fraud as those apes you do your monkey business for.
When you get a chance, roll over in bed and say ‘hi’ to George Soros for me.
Mike12,
This comment isn’t about AGW, so I don’t feel I’m breaking my word.
I thought your $70 billion dollars was coming from Joanne Nova, and apparently it does, although she’d claimed it was $79 billion and conceded it paid for a satellite or two.
From what I can see, a lot of the research would have been funded, AGW or no AGW. Climate is interesting. It’s extremely expensive sending scientists down to the Antarctic, and keeping them alive, to recover ice cores to work out what the climate had been for the past 800,000 years.
The only money that can be ascribed purely to AGW are the computer time developing and running climate models.
The Large Hadron Collider got funded, and that cost trillions. It’s certainly isn’t going to change most people’s lives, even if it adds a new particle or two …
If you want my opinion, the greatest waste of money was the manned space program after Apollo, including the International Space Station.
You mentioned earlier about Rachel Carson’s book ‘Silent Spring’ causing the death of 30 million people. That to me sounds implausible. Her book was published in the early ’60s. Governments in the developing world, such as Sri Lanka, stopped their anti-mosquito spraying in the mid ’60s, perhaps because it had succeeded too well and new malarial cases had disappeared or the local populations objected, but continued to use DDT in agriculture, allowing sufficient drift for mosquitos to slowly build up resistance, America banned it in the ’70s and Britain in the ’80s. When malaria made its resurgence, the Mosquitos were already resistant to DDT.
For your hypothesis to be plausible, it would have to be; ‘Silent Spring’ published, excites western environmentalists, DDT banned in the West, who put pressure on developing countries to ban it there too. Doesn’t work, sorry.
Mike12, I’m afraid you’re coming over as the ideologue. Everything I’ve written is completely balanced and reasonable.
I think that it’s a little rich for you to be using the word ‘apologetics’ to describe people worried about AGW. ‘Apologia’ has nothing to do apologies, it means ‘reasoned defense’, and that’s what most commentators addressing you have been doing.
Mike12,
You’re a secular biologist working at a secular university who accepts most of evolutionary biology, with the exception of the non-teleological part, and a Catholic who wouldn’t be accepted at a fundamentalist university.
You aren’t an ID proponent are you?
Could you possibly be Michael Behe? N’ah impossible.
@Mike:
>Bob Jones wouldn’t have me (I’m Catholic), and the creation science folks aren’t crazy about me either (I accept most of evolutinary biology, except the ‘non-teleological’ part).
I work at an utterly secular university doing utterly secular work.<
'Bobjones establishment' could just as will be nutty Catholic as nutcase fundamentalist. And the odds that an utterly secular university (if there are such) would hire the likes of a libertarian you to do utterly secular work are somewhere between slim and none.
Plus you keep posting propaganda straight from the creation science dominated crowd, yet supposedly would accept no funding from them in return? Honest?
You accept 'evolutinary' biology (even if you misspell the word) but don't accept, as an example, adaptive mutation as conceivably creative. How utterly secular is that.
Your proffered credentials as a competent and therefor credible scientist are clearly suspect, period.
And hey, George Soros, if you read this, thanks for everything.
@bachfiend:
Could you possibly be Michael Behe? N’ah impossible.
You flatter me. I don’t have his courage or his intelligence. And he’s much better looking than I am.
@Jeremiah:
And the odds that an utterly secular university (if there are such) would hire the likes of a libertarian you to do utterly secular work are somewhere between slim and none.
Luckily you weren’t on the search committee. Their ‘Marxist Loon’ position was already filled.
Your proffered credentials as a competent and therefor credible scientist are clearly suspect, period.
Shhhh…
And hey, George Soros, if you read this, thanks for everything.
You’re welcome. I do this occassionally just to keep my lefty minions on their toes. You need some remedial work.
Mike,
You need a remedial debriefing.
(I would have made a retort about you being in bed with Kochs, but that would have been unnecessarily sexist.
Mike12,
I’ve just had a look at a photo of Michael Behe. You have my sympathy.
If Michael Behe had courage, he would leave his university, where he’s not appreciated, and seek tenure elsewhere, on the basis of the strength of his research.
You do have a funny idea of science, thinking that evolutionary biology can be teleological. I assume that you have some science based evidence to support that viewpoint?
Having already discussed biology with Mike, I can attest that he has no “science based evidence” to support a teleological view of evolution.
But he does have a philosophical one, which is fine with me, so long as he keeps it (along with his purely ideological stance on AGW) out of the public school system.
Ohhhh! I think bachfiend may have just won ‘To Tell The Truth’!!!
Michael,you should change your pseudonym now,so we can restart the game.
>Your proffered credentials as a competent and therefor credible scientist are clearly suspect, period.
Shhhh… <
Too late, Mike, you've blown smoke and set your ass on fire.
@bachfiend:
If Michael Behe had courage, he would leave his university, where he’s not appreciated, and seek tenure elsewhere, on the basis of the strength of his research.
“If Michael Behe had courage…” and ‘if the ocean were wet…’ You guys can call Behe anything you want. But the man has courage. He’s also a real gentleman and a superb scientist.
You do have a funny idea of science, thinking that evolutionary biology can be teleological. I assume that you have some science based evidence to support that viewpoint?
Try describing the cell without reference to purpose.
@mufi:
But he does have a philosophical one, which is fine with me, so long as he keeps it (along with his purely ideological stance on AGW) out of the public school system.
So now philosophy is unconstitutional in schools, too? Or do you just oppose it, but don’t intend to call the police. Logic seems to be banned as well. Go ahead and teach the kids biology, without explaining what any of the principles mean.
And you’re a bit late to censor AGW skepticism. The kids are already laughing at you (you should see the Al Gore imitations they do!).
@tmac57:
Ohhhh! I think bachfiend may have just won ‘To Tell The Truth’!!!
Michael,you should change your pseudonym now,so we can restart the game
What makes you think that I’m not Richard Dawkins, cross-dressing in a fashion?
Ok, so Dawkins couldn’t put up this many comments when he’s running away from Bill Craig. So much for that feint.
Mike Behe, give it up. You left all those clues on purpose and you know it.
Catch me if you can, you said, and we could and did.
Better you should ask, “what took you all so long,” while you can still pretend you won the catch me game.
>Try describing the cell without reference to purpose.<
The catch is that nothing can be adequately described without reference to its raison d'être, including the mythological beings that you worship.
What would Behe have to say about that on the record?
Mike12,
Teleology has nothing to do with purpose. You can quite adequately describe a cell using purpose. Teleology has to do with the way the cell developed. So, I suppose you have scientifically verifiable evidence that the cell evolved using means other than non-directed evolutionary processes? If so, what are they?
And yes, of all the defense witnesses who testified in Dover, I had the most admiration for Michael Behe. He did have courage attempting to defend the indefensible, unlike William Dembski who wanted $200 per hour to testify (twice as much) and then chickened out.
I wondered why, when we were talking about Hoffman’s thesis, Mike, aka:Behe, had no comment to make at all. Now I know. Behe couldn’t chance having it on the record. So maybe he has some chicken in there also.
@bachfiend:
Teleology has nothing to do with purpose.
Not all teleology is purpose. All purpose is teleology.
Biology manifests purpose, and teleology.
@Michael Behe,
>Not all teleology is purpose.<
I want that on Google. It's the same as saying some purpose serves no purpose.
Mike,
You’ve used this definition of teleology before and I can’t find a single reference that supports your definition. Can you please cite a reference that defines teleology in this manner?
For Googlers who want to see more of Michael Behe’s uncensored views on purpose and its lack, go here:
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/creationist-politicians/
Mike12 is his moniker there, and he lays out his whole history, develops his faux philosophy to an outrageous extent, rants, raves and cavorts with gleeful abandon.
Oh no, new problems for the IPCC
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/16/a-blunder-of-staggering-proportions-by-the-ipcc/
Seems that at least some of Mike12′s suspicions about the process are warranted after all.
And I thought QM was strange…
So? Regardless of who said it, it is possible for 80% of the world’s energy to be supplied by renewables by the year 2050, given enough effort. There was a news item on SGU recently when I think Steve said all of America’s energy needs could be supplied by a combination of wind and solar in around 20 years, with a small contribution from hydro-, tidal and geothermal.
Mike,
“Your use of a word that invites comparison to Holocaust denial is beneath reproach. ‘
I have not even hinted at equating climate denialism to holocaust denialism. That analogy exists entirely in your twisted mind. Stop projecting.
——————————————————————
But onto the case of the disappearing ground stations:
Climate sceptics/deniers make the argument that stations which showed more warming were kept and ones that showed less warming were dropped.
This is refuted in the following studies:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/global-update/
(Two informative graphs)
the post-cutoff stations (the ones NOT omitted) show LESS warming than the pre-cutoff stations (the ones that dropped out)…the claims of D’Aleo and Watts, station dropout did NOT introduce a warming trend. If anything, it introduced a cooling trend.”
http://rhinohide.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/ghcn-high-alt-high-lat-rural/
In this link you will find six graphs that completely refute Watt’s and D’Aleo’s claim that There has been a severe bias towards removing higher-altitude, higher-latitude, and rural stations, leading to a further serious overstatement of warming. There is in fact no difference.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/a-simple-model-for-spatially-weighted-temp-analysis/
Another 13 graphs that refute that claim.
Study them and learn something, Mike.
http://residualanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/03/ghcn-processor-10.html
This takes another approach. Sorry, only one graph. But the conclusion is the same: the drop-out of stations in GHCN around 1990 did not introduce a false warming trend.
http://clearclimatecode.org/the-1990s-station-dropout-does-not-have-a-warming-effect/
It is certainly not the case that the warming trend is stronger in the data from the post-cutoff stations.
http://clearclimatecode.org/trendy/
The 1990s station dropout does not have a warming effect
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/02/new-work-on-the-recent-warming-of-northern-hemispheric-land-areas/
This compares the GCHN record to the author’s own temperature record that uses a much broader range of weather stations, combines it with the satellite record, and demonstrates that he warming trend is the same.
———————————————————————
Here are links that show that the temperature increase is not an artifact of declining numbers of stations.
http://moyhu.blogspot.com/2010/05/just-60-stations.html
The suggestion here is that you can create a good record using just 60 stations
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/are-the-cru-data-suspect-an-objective-assessment/
This uses the 60 stations also.
http://rhinohide.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/ghcn-high-alt-high-lat-rural/
One prominent claim (by Joe D’Aleo and Anthony Watts) was that the loss of “cool” stations (at high altitudes, high latitudes, and rural areas) created a warming bias in the temperature trends. But Ron Broberg conclusively disproved this, by comparing trends after removing the categories of stations in question. D’Aleo and Watts are simply wrong.
—————————————————–
Here is a link that shows that the temperature increase is not an artifact of stations being located at airports:
http://clearclimatecode.org/airport-warming/
——————————————————
Even the authors have removed the accusation!
Joseph D’Aleo in an online report Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception co-written with Anthony Watts, stated that:
There has been a severe bias towards removing higher-altitude, higher-latitude, and rural stations, leading to a further serious overstatement of warming.
This text has been removed from an updated edition of their report.
————————————————————-
Mike,
This is watt happens when you rely on climate deniers for your information. You become a climate denier yourself. These sites are easy to identify. They post articles on one side of the argument only. They never post any refutations by climate scientist. By contrast, reliable sites post links and quotes to sceptic and denier articles….and demolish them.
My last comment is in moderation.
It demolishes Mike’s argument regarding the closure of ground sites. They have been closed. It doesn’t matter. 60 sites are sufficient. There is now asatellite datas. And losts more.
I think moderation occurs when you have lots of links.
This exchange with Mike has had a surprising effect on me. It has lowered my already very low opinion of Michael (Astrology is science to!) Behe. Not content with trashing the well respected science of evolution, he now attempts to trash the science of AGW but with his same old shtick, lies, lies and more lies and then with disingenuous analysis falsely using those lies to “prove” something that is factually wrong. All he is doing is demonstrating that his knowledge of climate science is on par with his knowledge of biology, a hodgepodge of mostly wrong ideas that don’t coherently fit together and which he is prepared to lie about to “support” his belief.
Of course he can’t accept the science behind proxy measures of temperature before the modern instrumental era. That requires the default assumption that the laws of physics were much the same in the past as they are now. When there are ice cores with 600,000 + annual layers (by counting), it must cause at least a twinge of cognitive dissonance with the idea the Earth is only 6,000 years old.
What is curious is why is he posting so many comments here, on that cutting edge nexus of Climate Change Science, the blog of Dr Steven Novella? [/sarcasm]
Mike said: So now philosophy is unconstitutional in schools, too?
I think we’ve already been over this, Mike.
To sum up: Only science is an appropriate topic for a science course curriculum.
If a public school can find time in its curriculum for a philosophy course, which includes time devoted to religious apologetics, then I don’t necessarily object. After all, that’s a significant part of philosophy’s history (at least in the West).
But then I’m not a constitutional scholar. And, as a parent of public-schooled children, I’m aware of some of the hard choices that educators have to make (particularly in this era of teaching to the standardized tests, which emphasize some subjects over others).
And you’re a bit late to censor AGW skepticism.
Oh, I don’t mind if a science teacher briefly mentions in class that such skeptics (like yourself) exist, so long as s/he’s clear about what the dominant/consensus view is among the qualified experts (not like yourself).
PS: We don’t talk it about it much anymore, but I have little doubt that my conspiracy-theorist friends would love it if the public schools devoted some time to their topics of interest [e.g. in history, social studies, and even science (e.g. when discussing the fields commonly invoked by 9/11 "truthers")]. And I know how much they like to cry “censorship” whenever their interests are ignored by the mainstream.
To quote a song: “paranoia strikes deep…”
….sound of crickets chirping
Steve, are you aware of the work of Barry Brook over @ http://bravenewclimate.com/
He has come to the conclusion that nuclear (especially IFR) is our best answer to the climate and energy crisis. He is not against renewables, but instead advocates for the best integration of them all, which means increasing nuclear a lot. I tend to agree with his views, but was wondering why you haven’t mentioned IFR’s when talking about the possible solutions to AGW. Or maybe you have, but I just haven’t noticed. He would make a great guest on SGU as well.
Barry Brook:
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/directory/barry.brook
“Position: Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change”
Best,
Ufo
Ufo,
That’s probably a comment best sent directly to Steve, not left as a comment on a thread he may no longer be monitoring.
Jim Hensen agrees that the integral fast reactor was a very good idea that shouldn’t have been cancelled in development in 1994.
The problem with the current 3rd generation reactors is that they use only about 1% of the energy in the nuclear fuel leaving a lot of energy in the radioactive waste which then has to be stored safely for hundreds of thousands of years.
The IFR promised to be much more efficient, being able to take even the spent fuel of older reactors as fuel, and produce waste that only has to be stored safely for hundreds of years, which is almost feasible now.
Agreed, ensuring energy security is as much a problem as AGW, and solving one should solve the other. The denialists position that we can continue to burn fossil fuels ad infinitum risks disaster for two reasons.
I think that we’re going to have to adopt many strategies, including reducing our energy use. In Australia, large 3-D TVs and A-Cs are becoming very popular. I have a 22 inch LCE TV which is completely adequate and much more economical in power. Last Summer, I used a fan and didn’t need the air-conditioning. So I reduced my power consumption from around 7 kw.hr/day (the usual use for Summer for me) to 3, and I was just as well-off.
sonic,
“Oh no, new problems for the IPCC
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/16/a-blunder-of-staggering-proportions-by-the-ipcc/
Seems that at least some of Mike12′s suspicions about the process are warranted after all..”
Some other perspectives:
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/06/16/246665/ipcc-renewables-2/
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2011/06/the-ipcc-and-the-srren-report
http://shewonk.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/off-with-their-eads/