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Time for a new open thread.
this is a preview, of what will happen soon on the topic of climate science:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/tea-partiers-call-lewis-nr-f…
sod:
No doubt our response will be to spend several months writing a carefully-researched monograph which the right people aren't going to read.
sod, it's even worse than that report - spitting on lawmakers and threatening murder.
There was also a recent survey of Tea Partiers - you know, the guys who are deeply concerned about tax levels - revealing (on the whole) their pig ignorance of tax levels and changes thereof.
Teh Stupid is dangerous, especially in a mob setting, which is why anyone who seeks to incite it in order to gain power is despicable.
The latest Economist magazine weighs in on climate change action...tepid acceptance. Comments more interesting...and depressing.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15720419
I've spent 3 out of the last 6 months in the USA (with 3 more to go this year), as my wife is working there for a year as a surgeon. The healthcare debate is driving us nuts, but where I start to get quite angry is when they start saying absurd stuff about other countries' (like ours in Australia) health systems which is just complete crap. She's pretty much had enough too, and the end of her term can't come soon enough!
These people are from the exact same demographic as the hard-core AGW denialists. I've meandered around some politics blogs, and lo and behold, some of the exact same names crop up when talking garbage about public healthcare, and garbage about climate science.
What's really worrying though, is the extreme stuff they are saying and whether they'll act on it. About the worst abuse the AGW denialists cop is being called moronic or incredibly stupid (which unfortunately when you analyse some of their arguments, is just stating an obvious fact). Scientists get the full barrage however. Death threats both here and overseas. I'm gonna come after you. I'm gonna rape your children, etc, etc. All tough-talk from clueless, but frighteningly angry people.
Of all the articles that I have read denying climate change, I reserve special contempt for the article "[Lysenkoism and James Hansen](http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/03/hansenist-climat…)" from Bob Carter that appeared in the right-wing magazine Quadrant. This bulletin of bile was originally rejected by the ABC's The Drum for obvious reasons. Of course Carter, [the master of cut and paste](http://hot-topic.co.nz/carterist-science-bobs-self-plagiarism-misrepres…) has been travelling the world spewing this particular brand of hate for quite a while.
To link James Hansen with Trofim Lysenko, agronomist, denier of genetics and director of Soviet biology under Stalin, Carter must stand history on its head. This quote on [Lysenkoism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism) is from Wikipedia. I apologise for its length but it illustrates a striking parallel to the techniques of the climate change deniers.
Contrary to Carter's argument, Soviet scientists did not embrace Lysenkoism. From 1934 to 1940, under Lysenko's admonitions and with Stalin's approval, many geneticists were executed (including Isaak Agol, Solomon Levit, Grigorii Levitskii, Georgii Karpechenko and Georgii Nadson) or sent to labor camps. The famous Soviet geneticist Nikolai Vavilov was arrested in 1940 and died in prison in 1943.
Carter does not name any climate change deniers currently in labor camps - like him they are more likely to be on denier speaking tours courtesy of right wing think tanks.
On the other hand we do have climate scientists who have had their personal emails hacked, forced to front Mccarthyite public hearings, [sent hate mail](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/the_hate_mail_campaign_against…), [threatened with public flogging](http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/16/marc-morano-flogging-climate-scie…) and if reigning US McCarthyite Senator James Inhofe has his [way](http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/25/sen-inhofe-inquisition-seeking-wa…) prosecuted and presumably sent to the US equivalent of labor camps.
Some have been saying James Hansen should be charged with crimes against humanity. That's crazy, he's only done a little fudging.
http://wallstreetpit.com/20710-climategate-goes-back-to-1980
el gordo accuses Hansen of fudging. On what evidence? What process is enough to convince el gordo of fabricated data? Surely only rigorous evidence would convince el gordo of such a charge. He would not slander someone on anything less.
From [el gullibo's source](http://wallstreetpit.com/20710-climategate-goes-back-to-1980):
>*James Hansen of GISS appears to have systematically adjusted the historical temperature record to remove a cold patch in the â70s in order to exaggerate the rise since.*
Can't you see why this claim is self contradictory el gullibo?
Your source is a joke. The charts have different scales and different base reference periods for the zero anomaly. El gullibo seek help, you need to find someone with skepticism to aide you. Your self serving gullibility tumor that has evidently overwhelmed you.
Draft of Hansens latest "Current GISS Global Surface Temperature Analysis"
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/paper/gistemp2010_draft0319.pdf
Haven't finished reading it yet.
Above @5 I wrote:
@7 (El Gordo): Nothing further, Your Honour.
Re: El Gordos link.
Erm. El Gordo, if you really like reading junk science and comparisons. Look carefully before posting a comment.
The first graph is incorrect, the authors have marked a lower point in that graph for the 1970s. eg. the authors of the blog have themselves exaggerated the difference between 1965 and the 70s in the first graph.
Of course it would be nice if they published the graphs on a scale that could be viewed clearly, but I guess they aren't interested in anyone checking their findings.
We also can't tell from the graphs what the period of the running means are. The first one says 5 year running means, but the other graphs don't show anything.
Unless the graphs are available at a higher resolution, then the article is extremely dubious.
Sun spot is playing [the same game](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/the_empirical_evidence_for_man…).
Its more of the meme that 'adjusted data is illegitimate'. Comments in el gordo's Wall Street pit link are even linked to [Willis Eschenbach's lies](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/willis_eschenbach_caught_lying…).
Sunspot also resorts to tinyurl links to try and stop people filtering out the known propagandists and deniosaurs...
Yeah, and Spotties linking ratio of bullshit vs.interesting is close to 1:0 So, I'm getting to the stage of not wasting my time click on his links, and just reminding reader of the lies he pushes.
Either that, or crimes against Sean Hannity.
Gordo's link is repetition of stuff that's been doing the rounds at WUWT and Joanne Nova's.
Part of the original "analysis" was a *visual* comparison of a smoothed plot of NH temperatures from CRU in 2006, and a *graphic* showing an unsmoothed plot of NH temperatures from a 1976 copy of National Geographic.
By comparing the two graphs by eye it was determined that the 70's were cooler in the 1976 graph, which must be the more accurate because it was a) closer in time to the period in question and therefore more accurate, and b) before any underhand data manipulation took place to lessen the 70's cool period to serve the evil warmist conspiracy.
Its quite the largest pile of crap I've seen in a while - just try pointing out that we retrespectively have more station data about the 70's now than we did in the 70's...
Major palm-slaps-forehead...
Anthony Watts has determined that "[the 'scientific method' of testing hypotheses by statistical analysis stands on a flimsy foundation](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/20/science%e2%80%99s-dirtiest-secret…)".
Seriously.
And this is from a guy who has no qualification in science or in statistics, and who doesn't know the difference between a temperature and an anomaly.
LuboÅ¡ Motl, to his credit, quite robustly refutes Watts' nonsense â I only wish that Motl would also as robustly refute [his own statistical flim-flam concerning the degree of statistical significance associated with the warming trend since 1995](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/the_economist_calls_a_lie_a_li…). He could start by answering [this question](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/the_economist_calls_a_lie_a_li…), and working forward on the implications...
But back to WTFUWT.
Amongst the many goose gagglings in the comments section, Willis Eschenbach (at 02:41:51, 20 Mar 2010) seems to be ignorant of methods for multiple comparison testing that compensate for spurious positives. Ironically, after Motl's fisking of the thread, Eschenbach back-pedals in a subsequent comment with "Thatâs the main problem I see, that statistics are applied improperly". Louis Hissink makes a bemusing appearance, but more bemusing is the fact that from completely ignorant lay people through to numerate professionals who should know better, there is almost universal misunderstanding of what statistics offer â harking back to Eschenbach's unintended irony...
In fact, I don't this I've ever seen as many unintended ironic comments in one thread as I have read in this one of Watts'.
I think that the short interpretation of Watt's post is "I can't handle the statistics, therefore statistics are a millstone to (blog) scientific progress, and a conspiracy foisted by the Scientati, and thus I will eschew any employment of such ridiculous complication. My best guesses will serve as well."
It seems that most of the Denialati fervently agree.
Alas for any hope of a genuinely knowledged society, when so many confuse the utility of a tool with the misuse of said tool.
They never tire of that.
If you look at Ms Nova's "missing hotspot" post you'll see the same trick. On a recent The Drum thread she told me to go see the graphs from some reference and eyeball them for comparison.
Turns out she cherry-picked one graph out of a figure with (IIRC) 6, because the other five weren't as eyeball-striking. And then she asked readers to compare to another set of graphs from a different figure. Both figures used the same colour scheme but with different scales, which I don't believe she alerted her readers to. And neither one indicated uncertainty ranges which were reported in her reference, and which did not come to the same conclusion she did.
And all this is disregarding that her figure showed the AGW signature stratospheric cooling, which she ignored completely.
Bernard J - I wonder what the denialati will throw out with the bathwater next?
My money is the concept of ordinal numbers, it would help to untangle the 'up is just less down' confusion they've been having.
FWIW and IIRC, Ms Nova appeared to espouse almost the identical attitude (although perhaps that wasn't precisely about stats) on another The Drum thread recently after I pushed back on some of her poor logic.
This does seem to me to be a core underpinning thought process in denialism.
[Neil](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/open_thread_45.php#comment-2366…).
It's bizarre that you should mention ordinal numbering when you did. I was about to mention this very beast in a [comment that I've just made](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/abc_chairman_smears_journalist…): you must have submitted your post as I was typing.
My almost-comment was about a fiddling with GISS data that I did last November in response to Andrew Bolt's persistent "cooling since 1998" meme, where I simply looked at cooling versus warming events over the last century, without (much) recourse to those highfalutin' sadistics that are so unecessary to Blog Science. The results show (unsurprisingly) that even with an ordinal approach rather than a parametric one, it is rash to claim cooling over the period spanned by the data.
If I can find the graphs, I might yet post them.
Well, they've tried to discard the concept of "averages" as applied to temperatures and trends therein, so ordinals seems to be the next step.
(I'll accept all donations of financial instruments that are tainted by said ordinals - only to happy to provide a service ;-)
My head is spinning trying to figure out what's after ordinals though!
The Harper government in Canada appears to be muzzling climate scientists and its not a good look. The Guardian has the story and there's also a critique over at Desmog blog.
The government is focussed on carbon capture, like the Rudd government, which is a recipe to do nothing for ten years until this climate debate blows over.
>The government is focussed on carbon capture, like the Rudd government, which is a recipe to do nothing for ten years until this climate debate blows over.
Erm, need I ask, but do you approve?
Yes MikeH (#6) there are no 'deniers' in 'labour camps' - yet. You don't have to dig too far however in the popular mainstream press before you will find public comments like 'we have to do something about the billions of polluting people'. I really wonder what their idea for a 'solution' might be ?
For your benefit, my assessment of the Carter article is that it is pretty close to the mark. Changing 'the science' to fit the computer models is certainly a symptom of of the miasma that has emanated in this area, in this the new 'Post Science' era.
Stu
It's madness to stifle anyone in this debate, particularly the scientists. The dream of carbon capture is a panacea for politicians looking for an expedient way to move on, avoid discussion on CC and get re-elected.
#23 Who are you, and what have you done with elgordo?
Guys, Gordo is a troll. He's saying this to get you onside so you think he's reasonable before he goes off on another LaRouchite rant.
Carter, you say? Accusations of changing the science to fit something else? Well, he would know.
And of course, he sneaks in the implication that people are being stifled and there is a debate when neither is the case. Stu's post to which El Gordo responded was about CC&S rather than whether people were being stifled.
It looks as if WUWT has got caught out again with a photo of a weather station at Cunderdin WA, which came from Andrew Bolt. Does WUWT ever post anything original? (I won't post a link to either site, but the comments are coming thick and fast on WUWT!)
The current weather station is at Cunderdin airfield. According to those who know it, is one of the better sited stations around. Also, from the BoM site, it's an Almos automatic weather station.
They can probably be forgiven, because the BoM site still lists station 10035 as the RCS station and has a photo as posted on WUWT (if it's for real). But a quick look at the observations shows no temp data past 2007 and the latest available data at Dec 2009. Whereas the airfield station is current.
(BoM site details for the airfield weather station are -31.6219, 117.2217 for anyone who wants to check it on Google Earth.)
And [Sou](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/open_thread_45.php#comment-2367…) Bolt's post also claims
>So far, not one of these stations meets the criteria of being âaway from large urban centresâ.
But I couldn't find one [Reference Climate Station](http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/reference.shtml#rcsmap) that was in a large urban centre.
el gordo:
>It's madness to stifle anyone in this debate, particularly the scientists.
Incorrect.
1. the debate isn't science, it is politics. The article you posted earlier highlighted the fact that it is politics.
2. discussion and arguments between scientists are fine, but they decide which science is correct, not politicians or the media (such as monckton, journos etc).
Lotharsson:
>My head is spinning trying to figure out what's after ordinals though!
Numberwang.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/thatmitchellandwebbsite/numberwang/game.sht…
The CC&S will be a white elephant, while the CEC is politically irrelevant and best ignored.
Over the last 20 years the AGW viewpoint has become well established through a compliant msm, information regulated and truth reconstructed. The average citizen has become a passive bystander in all of this because the 'science is settled', move right along.
It's not settled and you all know it. Anybody want to talk about the MWA.
CC&S, CEC, AGW, MSM, MWA - That's Numberwang!
So why do you vote for them?
And forget the MWA. Let's talk VPL!
I'm a real softie at heart and I am distressed at the sight of all you people thrashing about as your 'end-of-the-world-is-nigh' scenario fades away under an onslaught of sneers and sniggers and complete indifference. I am eager to help you replace this important psychological crutch in your lives and to that end I did offer you the threat of incoming exploding meteorites but our distinguished host failed to print it. However, I read (but for the life of me I can't remember where) that the very latest threat to the planet is - the internet - 'shlock-horror'! Apparently the internet is making it much easier for dealers in rare animals to market their, er, produce and thus the danger of extinction is raised immeasurably. Needless, to say, if the Natter-Jack Toad, or whatever, dies off the implications for humans are dire indeed.
Personally, I prefer the exploding meteorites theory but, hey, I'm just trying to help.
Actually my question to El Gordo @24 was asking both does he agree with CC&S, and does he agree with 'doing nothing for ten years until this climate debate blows over'?
@38
Shorter David Duff:
.
El fatso muses: *Over the last 20 years the AGW viewpoint has become well established through a compliant msm*.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. What a load of crap.
Then, it gets worse: *It's not settled and you all know it. Anybody want to talk about the MWA*
Beyond a reasonable doubt the science IS settled and has been for the past 15 years. Get over it, el gordo. And NO, given its irrelevance, I do not want to talk about the MWP.
As for the Duffer: more innane stupidity. Provide a non-sequiter (the extinction of the natterjack toad) and use that as a proxy for what we do know about human impacts on the biosphere. This is the kind of intellectual vacuity I am used to dealing with from contrarians and denialists. They are mostly a sad bunch of scientific illiterates that use their ignorance as a shield against empirical facts. This is why it is a waste of time engaign with them in any kind of discourse. They know nothing, and in doing so think that nothing is wrong.
OK, Mr. Harvey, no more Mr. 'Nice Guy'!
Tim, [Bolt is quoting](http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comme…) David Rose now. Hilarious.
Stu
CC&S is a wank and will never come into operation because over the next decade temperatures will be easing off and AGW will slide into oblivion.
Being a big supporter of 'natural variability', my side's going to beat the crap out of your side within a few more years.
Desal plants around Australia are expensive an unnecessary, I told them not to go ahead and build them as floods were coming. They didn't listen.
In the same vain, global cooling is approaching and we should be prepared to accommodate a lot more refugees than the Bolter could ever imagine.
>*my side's going to beat the crap out of your side within a few more years.*
Given el gordo's ability to "beat the crap out of" himself, continuously on deltoid, one might fear the day he turns his power onto others.
El Gordo posts according to form, his usual drivel as follows:
cf: below "global cooling is coming"; the other day "I'll have to drop my global cooling mantra"
Any variability, including the 'natural' kind, underpins the argument for desal since you can't predict when water is going to be available or where floods will take place. A flood in central Queensland doesn't obviate the need tfor desal plants anywhere else, especvially when the lead time is in years and flood conditions appear in days.
Imagine that. "They" didn't listen to a dribbling moron who told them that "floods were coming" and this would nix the need for desal.
In a broader sense, it underlines the whole cherrypicking methodology of the delusional deniers -- anecdote is data and no two phenomena in the real world need be reconciled to grasp what is happening.
Again, it's tempting to adopt the view that El Gordo is simply doing an extended Poe as surely nobody could be that stupid that consistently.
El Gordo says
>In the same vain, global cooling is approaching and we should be prepared to accommodate a lot more refugees than the Bolter could ever imagine.
That's a bit alarmist isn't it! Well, at least you seem to be making a testable hypothesis. How long will we have to wait before global cooling starts displacing all these people? When will we begin to see droves of climate refugees?
Stu
It will be an orderly affair, nothing to get alarmed about, they will be flying in. What's the timeline for global warming refugees?
Joseph Banks found Botany Bay to be well watered and with abundant grasses for livestock, but when Phillip arrived some years later it was a desert. It's the difference between La Nina and El Nino.
Nobody understood the Australian climate until William Stanley Jevons recognized a 20 year cycle of drought followed by flood, which continues today. Do your own calculations, but it looks like the next 20 years will be predominantly wet.
You answer my question with another question? How frustrating.
I can't tell when or where the first AGW refugees will show up. Maybe the lowest parts of Bangladesh will give a clear indication... perhaps large numbers of people will be forced to abandon their homes within a couple of decades. If the refugees are due to drought and famine that's obviously a lot harder to pin on global warming, but sea level rise is pretty much only due to thermal expansion + ice melting. I think that a warming of 1.5-2.0C over pre-industrial temps will produce refugees in sensitive areas like Bangladesh.
So, to ask you more questions, where and why will there be climate refugees under a cooling climate? How much cooling do we need to see before these refugees become evident? How will it be an 'orderly affair', and who's going to be 'flying them in'?
Look at el gullibo's [20 year cycles here](http://www.csiro.au/files/files/pvfo.pdf).
el gordo piles it higher and deeper in terms of self-humiliation when he/she writes": *Being a big supporter of 'natural variability', my side's going to beat the crap out of your side within a few more years*.
Where do I begin dismantling this latest gibberish? "Beat the crap out of 'our side'?". What utter nonsense. el gordo writes as if we are seeing two sides, somehow differentially equipped with intellectual arguments ("his/her side" with more), waging some kind of personal war as to explain the current warming. I hate to reiterate the applicability of the Dunning-Kruger effect here, but el gordo also writes as if he/she has some innate wisdom on the subject, wisdom that somehow has eluded the vast majority of climate scientists who are in broad agreement as to the major forcings underpinning the current warming. As several of us have said before, it takes remarkable hubris for an unemployed journalist to claim to understand an exceedingly complex field of research and to draw meaningful conclusions on the basis of that. Since el gordo relies heavily on a suite of contrarian blogs in generating his/her worldview, this makes their contribution to this debate even more absurd.
If the truth may be told, "your side" is not waging an empirical debate but a political one. "Your side" has little in the way of science behind them, but mostly consists of a motley army of ostensibly right wing/libertarian hacks who loathe government and see regulations implemented to deal with climate warming as a denial of liberty (and, for the commercial elites, a threat to profit maximization). The one area in which "your side" has profound influence is in public relations, because many of those waging the war against science have bottomless pockets and are waging a very effective PR campaign using exceedingly mendacious forms of propaganda. Of course "your side" will never win the scientific debate but that has been acknowledged by many on "your side" since the very beginning; the aim has been to sow doubt amongst the public and policy makers in such a way as to render meaningful action mute. Procrastination. And on this side of it there is little doubt that "your side" is winning. I grant you that. But on the science? Never.
Ultimately, the short-term anti-scientific propaganda battle being waged by "your side" will be victory, but the longer term consequences of this procrastination will have costs for everone on Earth. The fact is that complex adaptive natural systems are unforgiving. They do not recognize political boundries or disputes. Once they are simplified beyond some critical thresholds, the debt will have to be paid and it will be in terms of collapsing ecosystems and ecological services, more extreme forms of weather, an acceleration of the mass extinction event already underway and an increasing number of other nasty surprises. And what will be more galling is that the likes of useful idiots like el gordo will be the ones looking to scientists and technology to bail humanity of the pit we have dug for ourselves. By then it may well be too late. Many eminent scientists were saying 20 years ago that we were reaching the critical tipping points in terms of our effects on nature's ecological life-support systems, and since then little has changed. If anything, we have gone into reverse. We have ploughed ahead with a business-as-usual form of laissez faire capitalist and free market ideology that is driving both social injustice and environmental destruction.
I have had it up to here with the 'our side' mentality of el gordo and others like him/her.
What Jeff Harvey said.
Stu, there's an interesting article in Science about the Nile delta in Egypt. The population is increasing by a million a year, a large portion of the delta is sinking fairly rapidly because no more silt is flowing after they built Aswan High Dam in the 60s; and the Meditteranean is probably going to rise. The liveable area is already densely populated with 50 million people in a relatively small area.
That area is another one from where the world will likely see 'climate change' refugees. The IPCC cited it as one of the three places most vulnerable to climate change, according to the Science article.
Stu
They will be economic refugees, preferring to live in a warmer clime. There will be no mass starvation, we are too clever to let that happen on our watch.
Paleo evidence shows the Murray/Darling system was awash between 1760-80 and as deep as the Rhine. ENSO Rules!
What [Jeff said](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/open_thread_45.php#comment-2370…).
What jakerman and Lotharsson said.
What [Jeff said](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/open_thread_45.php#comment-2370…) - here and so many times previously.
And as have I and many others as well, so many times previously.
Fatso (and others), you need to understand that our prosperity has been bought with [leprecaun gold of a sort akin to the way Arther Smith describes it](http://arthur.shumwaysmith.com/life/content/leprechauns_and_climate) - the fossil energy that has so whetted our thirst for stuff has not slaked it, and it will leave a bitter aftertaste.
"Malthus!", "Club of Rome!", "Ehrlich!" I hear you howl. Fine, clear your larynx if you must, but in the end Malthus' train was late, not cancelled, and on ecological/evolutionary timescales the train will be late only by seconds. Malthus, CoR, Ehrlich and many others have the basic slope nailed; it's simply the intercept that remains to be pinned down.
If you disagree, produce the science to refute the thermodynamics underpinning ecology and society.
It's that simple.
Shorter el gordo:
Except there already is mass starvation. We let it happen on our watch. You fail again.
MSNBC has a [short article on SpaceShipTwo](http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/03/22/2237244.aspx) this morning. It doesn't go into much detail, but since Burt Rutan now knows that [CO2 is not a pollutant](http://www.airventure.org/news/2009/090731_rutan.html), I'm guessing that they'll no longer be bothering with [the CO2 scrubbers that they used in their earlier designs](http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=awst&i…). I mean, it's not like too much CO2 could have any negative effects, right?
John,
Exactly. There is mass starvation. One person in eight today is severely malnourished. This is more people than those sho were alive in 1930. Some progress.
Half of the world lives on less than 2 dollars a day. Extreme poverty is increasing after a brief period of decline. There is little chance that poverty-reduction targets will ever be reached in dealing with such profound social injustice and profound greed on the part of many commerical elites. If anything, we are going in the opposite direction. Capital flows from the underdeveloped south to the developed north are increasing in scale. They were terrible enough to begin with; now they are even worse.
All the while we are continuing to simplify the natural systems which permit us to exist and persist. Bernard summed it up elegantly as he always does above. Malthus was not wrong; neither are the Ehrlichs, Diamond, Lovejoy, Myers, Pimm and others. They may have been late in their predictions, but there is every sign that we are headed for a mighty cliff. It is just a shame that those with power and privilidge are too short-sighted and selfish to see it or to want to deal with it. And they are content to take their ideologically like-minded troops along for the ride. Those like el gordo are quite content apparently to lend vocal support to the cause of those whose actions are pushing natural systems beyond a point where they will not be able to sustain themselves and Homo sapiens in a manner that we all take for granted. This is what makes it so ironic. So many people out there gain nothing from clinging to the vain hope that everything is going to be OK. Those pushing political agendas have only selfish, short-term profits in mind. But where do the likes of Sunspot, el gordo, Brent, David Duff and others like them fit in? Why do they support a radical libertarian ideology when it does little for them, even in the short term?
It boggles the mind....
Being a big supporter of 'natural variability', my side's going to beat the crap out of your side within a few more years.
nice statement. especially in the context of recent events:
["Vandals Attack Dem Offices Nationwide"](http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/vandal_attacks_on_dem…)
take a look at the [blog](http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2010/03/to-all-modern-sons-o…) who claims to have started a campaign of throwing in windows:
"To all modern Sons of Liberty: THIS is your time. Break their windows. Break them NOW."
pretty insane comments:
"All I have to say is that if you can't bring yourself to hurl a brick now, how are you going to have the stones to actually kill a man when the time comes? "
just another preview of what will happen about AGW science and politics soon..
>Stu
They will be economic refugees, preferring to live in a warmer clime. There will be no mass starvation, we are too clever to let that happen on our watch.
Paleo evidence shows the Murray/Darling system was awash between 1760-80 and as deep as the Rhine. ENSO Rules!
Yes, but you are yet to answer three of my questions; where exactly will the refugees come from, when will this happen, and how much cooling will there be before this happens? You're being extremely vague, nay, vacuous.
Well that didn't format right. Anyway, everything up to 'ENSO Rules!' is Flash Gordo's doing.
Regarding ENSO, is that in relation to what I said or part of a different discussion? Regardless, the usual effect of ENSO on Australia's rainfall is well known. But La Nina doesn't always garauntee wet conditions and El Nino doesn't always garauntee dry conditions. The 18 (La Nina) dominated months to June 2009 were dry in central and southeastern Aus. But the nine El Nino dominated months to Feb 2010 show wet conditions in almost all of eastern Aus. WUWT?
It appears that [environmental changes that may be linked to global warming are already producing refugees and are expected to produce more](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100317000027.htm):
>The team explains that in the four countries studied, environmental changes like soil degradation and erosion are especially prevalent in rural areas where poverty is pronounced. In Ghana, these slowly occurring environmental changes, coupled with severe and frequent droughts have been partly responsible for internal migration from the north to the south. Similarly, in Mozambique, droughts triggered internal migration from rural areas in the south to coastal and urban centres. In Niger, these environmental changes related to the expansion of the Sahel desert have resulted not only in internal but also border-crossing regional migration flows. Also, in Senegal, internal and international migration resulted from the environmental changes with respect to the peanut basin where job and farming opportunities decreased with increasing environmental degradation.
Refugees from global cooling seem harder to spot. While people from other parts of Canada may still retire to the west coast for the mild climate, I have yet to hear anyone claim that this is because the winters in the rest of Canada have been getting colder. According to an Environment Canada report quoted in the [_Montreal Gazette_](http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Wacky+winter+signal+years+com…):
>[T]he long-term record shows Canada's climate has changed, most markedly in the winter, which has warmed 2.5 C over the last 63 years
this would be because the winters in the rest of Canada _aren't_ getting any colder.
Its a [sad day for AGW deniers](http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2010/03/24/2855169.htm).
Crikey Jakers, is he reading from a giant board right behind the camera!?
Meanwhile the coral reef at Lord Howe is showing signs of extensive bleaching.
Calm conditions contributed to the bleaching, so therefore despite ocean temperatures that have been warmer even than 1998, it's unrelated to AGW.
(Did I get the denialism logic right?)
Stu, I missed that, quite funny to watch now.
Poll (currently a dead heat, so to speak)
http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2010/03/23/did-climategate-expos…
http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/fundies_dont_really_believe_this_stu…
----excerpt follows-----
"... I bet the people who claim that Obama is the Antichrist are a group that neatly overlaps with the people who believe in the Rapture. And most of the people who believe in the Rapture believe they and the people they know will totally be raptured. And yet they know that hasnât happened yet, and itâs supposed to happen before the Antichrist ascends to power, right? ...
... And since you arenât raptured, Iâd imagine if you really believed your own bullshit, youâd be having a major personal crisis right now due to the realization that your god has cast you out.
In general, Iâm impressed by the uptick in conservatives saying things they know are bullshit. That link has a whole bunch of examples, from calling Obama a socialist to calling him a racist. They know and we know itâs all bullshit. They donât even know what half those words mean.
Personally, I think conservatives are cracking under the strain of not being able to call people âmotherfuckersâ, because thatâs a naughty word. I get this a lot from conservatives---anger about naughty language, suggestions that as long as we scrub the words âfuckâ and âshitâ from our vocabulary, thatâs a proper substitute for being the kind of people who can think critically and reason. But being unable to just say âmotherfuckerâ and âassholeâ when thatâs what you mean puts conservatives in this bind, and they try to resolve the tension by inventing whole new meaningless curse words to call people, like âbaby killerâ, âAntichristâ, and âsocialistâ.
-----end excerpt -----
Click the link at the top for more
Meanwhile, on the other site of the world, there is an interesting debate about temperature trend being a random walk and therefore just only natural. Sod is doing a brave job now as he seems to get somewhere near to the Achilles heel of the main commenter VS.
For me it is just an educated guess how many people really understand what VS is telling. My stats over way over time (univ. degr. in cognitive sciences).
@71: You may have missed [these](http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/not-a-random-walk/) [posts](http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/still-not/) by Tamino (who appears to be an actual statistician) explaining why the temperature trend can _not_ be accurately characterized as a random walk.
There is a good piece in the Oz from Dr Ken Henry:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/treasury-bosss-plea-on-climate/com…
That is going to upset a few people...
GGS
Order masquerading as randomness.
Slightly o/t but this el gordism (#48) caught my attention:
"Joseph Banks found Botany Bay to be well watered and with abundant grasses for livestock, but when Phillip arrived some years later it was a desert. It's the difference between La Nina and El Nino"
1) Banks found no such thing. His journals describe his and Solander's impressions of Botany Bay as consisting "of either swamps or light sandy soil on which grew very few species of trees... but every place was covered with vast quantities of grass". But since Banks & Solander were entirely new to Australia and its flora (and certainly new to the Sydney Basin, one of its biodiversity hotspots) they can be forgiven for using the word "grass" rather loosely. What they would have seen is likely to have included a light cover of a handful of true grass species (predominantly Entolasia, Microlaena, Poa, Paspalidium) in a sea of rush and sedge taxa from the Cyperaceae (Caustis, Cyperus, Schoenus, Lepidosperma), various Lomandraceae (Lomandra filiformis, L. glauca, L. longifolia), Xanthorrhoeaceae and Restionaceae (Lepyrodia, Restio), all of which are adapted to growing in very free-draining sandy soils of low nutrient status (and particularly poor in P). In swampy sites (which Banks refers to) would have been taxa from the Cyperaceae (Cyperus, Isolepis, Baumea juncea) and Juncaceae (mostly the salt-tolerant Juncus kraussii), all of which are adapted to saline, periodically inundated (tidal) sites with acid sulphate soils. Very little (if any) of this would have been "suitable for livestock" as you put it, certainly not on a long-term basis; Banks and Solander are very unlikely to have thought such rocky, poor lithic soils or the saline swamps they drained into to have been suitable for grazing. Come to that, if you had done some research you would have easily stumbled upon the records of early convict settlers bemoaning the poor productivity of the land that is now the eastern suburbs of Sydney. It wasn't until the first settlers ventured some distance westwards (into what is now known as the Cumberland Plain) that they discovered the relatively fertile shale-derived soils that enabled them to grow crops and graze livestock; the woodlands in this area much better fit the description of supporting "abundant grasses for livestock", the only problem being it's some 50km west of Botany Bay. In fact Capt. Watkin Tench's 1789 account of Botany Bay runs somewhat counter to Banks' initial impressions: "We had passed through the country which the discoverers of Botany Bay extol as 'some of the finest meadows in the world'. These meadows, instead of grass, are covered with high coarse rushes, growing in a rotten spongy bog,into which we were plunged knee-deep at every step". (As quoted in Benson & Howell (1991), see below).
2) Phillip's description of Botany Bay goes thus:
"Several runs of fresh water were found in different parts of the bay... In the northern part of it is a small creek, which runs a considerable way into the country, but it has water only for a boat,
the sides of it are frequently overflowed, and the low lands near it are a perfect swamp. The western branch of the bay is continued to a great extent, but the officers sent to examine it could not find there any supply of fresh water, except in very small drains. Point Sutherland offered the most eligible situation, having a run of good water, though not in very great abundance. But to this part of the harbour the ships could not approach, and the ground near it, even in the higher parts, was in general damp and spungy..."
From http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/15100
No mention of a desert there then, and there's nothing in Tench's entry that suggests anything other than swamp. Even without Phillip's diary, it ought to be evident that the low-lying, estuarine lands around Botany Bay, located on the east coast of Australia, are hardly ever likely to have been or have become "desert", and certainly not within 18 years - the coastal strip simply gets too much rainfall (~1200mm/yr), and the Georges River catchment which drains into Botany Bay is also far too close to the coast ever to dry up. Even after 220 years of white fella draining swamps, making dams, altering watercourses and flooding regimes and generally fscking the place up, and notwithstanding countless ENSO events, there is nothing about Botany Bay or the surrounding suburbs that even vaguely hints at an arid biome.
I know this is hardly climate science, but I think it important to point out the blatant errors in your statements, particularly for those readers of this blog who don't live near or know anything of the area and who may have been [temporarily] of the belief that you'd based the "argument" that followed on something resembling facts.
If you can be bothered (and for the benefit of anyone interested), a very well-written, accurate and informative book by Doug Benson and Jocelyn Howell (both renowned botanists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney) describes the flora of Sydney by local government area. It's available online, with the section relevant to Botany Bay at:
http://tinyurl.com/ycxtmcr
An interesting read and links SteveC - thanks for taking the trouble.
It's not like El G's credibility can sink any further.
In order to keep from pushing things too off-thread over at the "ABC on Cartergate: Opinions on the shape of the Earth differ" thread, I'll respond to [Lotharsson's linkie](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/well_now_we_know_why.php#commen…) here...
Egads, man! You should suffix comments such as that with a mental health warning! It's more of the typical Bird train-wreck stuff. I have a raging 'flu and chest infection, and I still felt dirty after reading some of the material there...
Seriously though - for a moment - reading that Bird has discontinued medication* use speaks volumes to me, and it cast the man in a slightly different light. A person's mental health is not really a laughing matter, and Bird obviously has issues in this department, beyond being an incompetent/ignorant/misinformed ideologue who is otherwise capable of 'rational' thought.
To my surprise I found myself feeling slightly sorry for the man, and less inclined to engage with him in future... knowing that he has a problem is a line in the sand that I really have no stomach to cross.
I am glad though that he is not a proponent for AGW - one does not need the 'help' of certain people.
Oo, and I second chek's comment, SteveC - your was an especially nice de-winding of Fatso's sails. He seems consistently vulnerable to such.
Oh gawd, I just had a thought - do I need to expand my list of folk to feel some sympathy for...?
(*I know that the medication mentioned was for ADD, but I suspect that there is a good chance that there is an underlying constellation of issues. I do not intend to speculate on what they might be; I simply hope that Bird considers accepting whatever help his medical professionals have suggested).
SteveC
Thanks for the in-depth report. From my understanding they decided to send the First Fleet to Botany Bay based on Bank's opinion. Good thing, too, otherwise we would all be speaking French.
I had suspicions that he has bigger mental health issues than ADHD towards the end of the first thread, and when I started reading the second they only grew stronger. I share your feelings about him - something is really wrong there and he needs help.
[Phil Jones Exonerated by British House of Commons](http://www.desmogblog.com/phil-jones-exonerated-british-house-commons)
Re #80
Good news Dave R and thanks for posting that link.
Now we can wait with bated breath for the cries of conspiracy or cover up from the denialati. I see that Fox has already aired a pre-emptive strike with this piece:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/30/nasa-data-worse-than-climateg…
Sources of information are: CEI, Heartland, Watts. Where's the science?
Lotharsson
Something is wrong there and I suggested, when we had a run-in at Jen Marohasy's, that he should seek professional advise.
It was an odd feeling as all other chatter stopped at that point, it was just him and me. Obviously his reputation had preceded him.
80 Dave R,
Direct link to [full official report.](http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387…)
Of course, the denidiots will simply claim it's a cover-up, but then we know that they are beyond rational argument!
79 Lotharsson,
Surely GMB is not new to so many here? I'm pretty sure that Tim banned him from Deltoid some time ago.
I first read his, err, arguments in the Marohasy Bog and made a collection of them, generously made available [here](http://notahedgehog.wordpress.com/2008/12/25/the-christmas-spirit/) (usual warnings apply).
He is clearly delusional, especially in Dunning-Kruger terms. Is it right to attack someone who is at least borderline mentally ill? I think it is, if that person is apparently at liberty to make such outrageous claims and in such foul, insulting, language.
Actually, remove the foul language and he's not too different to some other anti-science types. I know we can all think of a few examples.
An independent panel has declared that East Anglia was not hiding data and that the denialists have been pwnt.
RE: #81
Check out the [full text of the emails](http://pajamasmedia.com/files/2010/03/GISS-says-CRU-Better0001.pdf). They tell an interestingly different story.
BTW, I am trying to parse the last quote in that Fox News story:
What does he mean? Is the "not" extra, or is the satellite record suspect as long as the non-satellite people are assumed to be naughty?
86 pough,
What is this? Do you imagine that we aren't familiar with the emails, or that we don't have access to them? Why the fuzzy PDF?
This is why Britain is having a backward spring.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index…
I'm prepared to wager that in a couple of months Britain will be experiencing a BBQ summer hotter than 1976. A small Welsh group, Positive Weather Solutions, came up with the forecast.
Apologies for a double post on two different threads, but this deserves to be widely seen:
This is freaking unbelievable. In comments at The Drum John McLean, who allegedly claimed something along the lines of "my IT training gave me logic skills", wrote this:
This is one of the single most illogical statements I've seen from someone claiming to be at postgraduate level in a field at least marginally related to climate change. You'd think John could imagine many examples of systems even from his IT experience where this does not make sense, let alone understand how the logic simply does not follow.
This statement deserves to be in the hall of fame (and widely disseminated), along with Ms Nova's "a vacuum stops energy loss well" and other classics of the genre.
CRU cyber-attacker confesses.
90 Lotharsson,
Being an (ex) IT person myself, I can see why he would make a claim about "logic skills". The problem is that McLean is a moron, and an arrogant one at that. "Skills" are merely tools. Tools in the hands of the incompetent are useless at best and dangerous at worst.
So McLean prides himself on his adeptness in logic?
Raw logic skills serve well in endeavours such as Sudoku, where the operational parameters can be contained within a field as small as a single sentence.
Those same skills, even though they might be gargantuanly impressive, would fail to provide much use, by themselves, in a discipline that is systemically complex, and that requires a great deal of background knowledge as well as scientific and mathematical understanding.
Or am I being illogical?
88 TrueSceptic
A sentence; interrogative.
Well, I know I wasn't familiar with them until someone posted a link to them elsewhere. I figured either you were and wouldn't need to follow the link or else you weren't and would like to. I'm strange that way. I'll admit that providing links to more information is a bit off, but I also like the musical stylings of Big Country. What can you do?
Fuzzy PDFs are the best!
Seriously, why the snark? I found it interesting, after reading the article and then the emails, just how efficiently the quotes got mined. YMMV.
94 pough,
Sorry, I misread your post and thought you were disagreeing with Jimmy's post.
95 TrueSceptic
;-) Poe knows, it happens all the time.
Bernard@93, I think you're identifying an "impedance mismatch" that leads to the Dunning-Kruger effect. It seems common in engineers as well. They think that because their field relies on a reasonable logical and scientific basis they are highly skilled in those areas, even when applying those "skills" outside their field. However I believe the necessary logic skills are only a subset of those required for scientific reasoning (especially by the time practitioners have spent a few post-exam years in the real world, where they will only apply a subset of what they learned and the remainder may atrophy.)
Another problem is that "IT" covers a very broad spectrum, from those who have learned to follow someone else's procedures to try and fix a reported problem but don't really understand the broader issues, to those who do interesting and novel intellectual work relying (amongst other things) on some logical skills.
I should know - I have two engineering degrees and I've worked in IT-related fields for quite some time ;-)
I see I didn't acknowledge Bernard's main point very well - that they don't realise that OTHER skills are necessary in science beyond raw logical ability. I think this is an oversight that leads to Dunning-Kruger.
The [ABC's Science Show](http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/default.htm) has just braodcast an interesting series of speeches, on climate change denialism, from some prominent folk brought together by the AAAS.
I'm sure a linky will be up soon.
The Science Show's [Climate change scepticism - its sources and strategies](http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2010/2859986.htm) episode, mentioned above.