Well, now we know why McLean's Reply to the demolition of their paper was rejected. In a response being published by SPPI (was it rejected by even Energy and Environment?), they claim this was because of a vast conspiracy against them. But they make the mistake of including the rejected Reply, so anyone can see that they admit that their analysis was "based on differentials between 12 month averages", which removes any long term trend. That they don't find a long term trend after removing does not show that there is no long term trend. No doubt the referee's reports made this point as well, which is why, in their response, they just quote mine the reports, quoting the part that says that their Reply is rubbish without quoting the part that explained why their Reply was rubbish.
In the interest of transparency I call on McLean to post the referees' reports in full.
Normally rejection of bad paper would not be news, but it seems that if your chairman is a Global Warming denier, it is. What is notable about Sarah Clarke's story is that she gives McLean the last word and makes no attempt at all to work out who is right. How hard would it have been for Clarke to find an expert in statistics and ask whether taking differences removes any long term trend?
Stephan Lewandowsky has an article at The Drum on the refutation of McLean et al and what it says about the scientific consensus:
This analysis, based entirely on publicly available information, puts to rest the only peer reviewed article that was purportedly about climate change and claimed to challenge the scientific consensus, to have come out of Australia since the IPCC's last assessment report.
This single article is no more.
What is left standing instead are, for example, the 110 peer reviewed articles on climate change that were published by scientists at the University of New South Wales' Climate Change Research Center alone since 2007.
Yes, 110 peer reviewed articles since 2007 from just one Australian research center that add to the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change and its human causes.
110 peer reviewed articles which in the service of humanity seek ways to manage the problem.
110 to 0.
Lewandowsky is asking that scientists who agree that detrended data cannot be used to draw any conclusions about long term trends leave a comment at his article giving your name and qualifications. He writes:
One thing is certain: Journalists will take note if scientists step up to the plate and show visibility and determination in large numbers. Indeed, that in itself would be news that the ABC might pick up and report.
The link to his piece is here.
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More like this
Speaking of The Drum (since I need a vaguely plausible segue), one of the (ahem) less grounded prolific commenters there on climate change posts has made a bravura appearance at Pharyngula (starting at #74). That thread was so prolific that PZ shut it down and created a special Graeme Bird memorial thread...
Oh, my god! That Pharyngula comment marathon is a classic! It should be required reading under the following topic:
Insanity 102: A demonstration of how the clinically insane is blissfully unaware of his condition.
Sorry for the OT post :)
Heck, we're already OT (my fault) and I apologise for starting it and for continuing it. But for those who don't have time of their own to marvel at the astonishing performance, here are some selected quotes from the Pharyngula thread (from other commenters unless otherwise noted):
and
And you MUST read this comment in its entirety - well worth the clickthrough.
Nice recursive quote:
(The answer was yes.) And
and
and in response to Bird's claim that no evidence was provided:
and
Graeme Bird:
and of course the frequent refrain from Bird (also seen at The Drum):
And I'm still only just over half way through the thread. Astonishing.
At some point in the past GB admitted that he had stopped taking his medication for Attention Deficit Disorder (and other problems). After which, I just felt sorry for him rather than alternately amused and enraged.
Getting back to Cartergate, I offer an illustrative anecdote. An acquaintance of mine who last did maths in high school 35 years ago asked me about the Carter, de Freitas & McLean paper, having encountered it in the recent media brouhaha. I quickly made up a time series on a scrap of paper then showed her that it included a small, hard to see but unmistakeable trend. Then I created a new series by subtracting each value from the following.
Her response was "Really? They did that? Well, even if their reply to the rebuttal was just as bad, it still should have been published"
Hey, does anyone know what the [correction](http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD013006.shtml) to the original Mclean et al paper was about?
RE: 6 Gaz,
The correction was to the captions of Figures 3 and 7 in the original paper.
The new Figure 3 caption is "Correlation coefficients for derivatives of SOI and GTTA with different time lags". The original was "Correlation coefficients for 12-month running means of SOI and GTTA with different time lags."
I can't see any difference in the captions for Figure 7.
Just for fun, I used a time series package in R to assess the same data as the McClean paper.
The auto.arima() function gives the "best fit" ARIMA model, and for these data, it decomposed it inti autocorrelations at lag 1 and lag 2 applied to the differenced data. No seasonal factors were suggested.
However I was able to obtain a better fit with an ARIMA of autocorrelation lag1 & a seasonal autocorrelation at lag 7, applied to the differenced data.
So the seasonal component is important, but not 70% as the paper asserted.
Personally, I find it a gratifying result. How will it impact public perception? Given that the denial movement and it's trusting foot soldiers reject pretty much all science, how do we work on convincing them?
Hard to cut through their claims of conspiracy.
Sorry where was the reply to McLean, de Freitas, and Carter published?
Was it an Open Mind exclusive?
I jus' dunno why MFC bothered with a paper about all this. It is obvious that the raw data is fraudulent (since sciency people collected it), ergo garbage in, garbage out. Anyhow, I thought Carter despised models, and statistical models are models and MFC uses statistical models, so what is this dude on about? Does he hate models or just everyone else's models? Oh, and according to zillions of climate coalitionists - not consensus builders - there has been no warming since 19XX, so why did MFC bother with detrending? And they had grapes in England and carbon dioxide is plant food. So there.
We also noticed that shocking crap from the so often competent Mark Colvin's "PM" and wondered when/if someone would address it.
http://stopmurdoch.blogspot.com/2010/03/abcs-pm-gears-up-for-earth-hour…
Well done.
Mike and others might consider joining us in banging our heads against the ABC (and Murdoch) walls!
Apologies for more OT from the Pharyngula thread, but these are hard to go past [Tim: delete if it's too much]. Not by Graeme Bird unless otherwise noted:
A Graeme comment from Graeme's blog on the Movement of Continents (due to "new matter creation"):
Bird:
and
I've left out heaps...
After seeing Bird's prognostications on that thread I'm convinced that sadly he needs the services of mental health professionals. But no doubt they're all in on the conspiracy, so that will never happen...
[papertiger wrote](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/well_now_we_know_why.php#commen…):
> Sorry where was the reply to McLean, de Freitas, and Carter published?
It's in press at the _Journal of Geophysical Research_. Here's a [preprint](http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/Foster_et%20alJG…).
That thread is amazing.
Our species consists simultaneously of the most intelligent and the most stupid living creatures on the planet.
Rabett Run has posted more extensive quotes from the reviewers, which were attached to climategate emails apparently.
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/03/its-always-f-third-referee.html
The third reviewer selectively quoted by McLean et al, also said:
"The real mystery here, of course, is how the McLean et al. paper ever made it into JGR. How that happened, I have no idea. I can't see it ever getting published through J Climate. The analyses in McLean et al. are among the worst I have seen in the climate literature. The paper is also a poorly guised attack on the integrity of the climate community, and I guess that is why Foster et al. have taken the energy to contradict its findings."
It's in press at the Journal of Geophysical Research. Here's a preprint.
by: bluegrue | March 29, 2010 9:21 AM
Trenberth one of the co-authors? Co-conspirator. Starred in the UEA emails. Couldn't explain the cooling.
I'd rate that no higher then Open Mind - the Rocky Mountains division.
So the response to McLean, de Frietas, and Carter, has been published exactly nowhere.
The normal venue for refuting a Tamino rant is a WUWT or Lucia Blackboard post. Have you checked the archives?
ADHD isn't a psychotic disorder. It's not like he stopped taking his meds for schizophrenia or bipolar -- stopping ADHD meds just means being a bit more distractable.
--
dcs, with two adult ADHD kids
(one on, one off meds) both quite sane and rational.
"The normal venue for refuting a Tamino rant is a WUWT"
ROTFLMAOMCOMN
I am sorry paper tiger. You make one little typo and I make fun of you instead of fixing it for you.
The statement :
"The normal venue for refuting a Tamino rant is a WUWT or Lucia Blackboard post. "
is of course a typo and not surprisingly, always false.
Of course what you meant to write was:
"The normal venue for refuting a WUWT or Lucia rant is Tamino."
Which is a law of nature.
Fixing the intertubes, one typo at a time.
>Trenberth one of the co-authors? Co-conspirator. Starred in the UEA emails. Couldn't explain the cooling.
What? Passing right over Jones, Mann and Schmidt?
I'm so disappointed in you, papertiger.
Also starring in the purloined e-mails; [reviewer #3](http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/03/its-always-f-third-referee.html)
This is what is known as being hoist with one's own petar.
O 'tis most sweet...
Couldn't explain the cooling.
Liar; [Trenberth did not refer to cooling](http://www.skepticalscience.com/Understanding-Trenberths-travesty.html)
So the response to McLean, de Frietas, and Carter, has been published exactly nowhere.
Then McLean, de Frietas, and Carter have been published nowhere, because [it's the same journal](http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008JD011637.shtml), fool.
One wonders if papertiger is a POE - or has nominative determinism struck again?
'Tis the Climate Denier; I heard him declare
That everything's peachy for his 'laissez-faire';
He points to a paper which made peer review,
And says that it proves that his claims are all true...
The paper's refuted - he changes his song:
And suddenly, peer review has to be wrong!
The journal won't publish his authors' reply
Which 'proves' that the process is simply a lie!
I passed by the paper, and marked with one eye
'Analysis' falling apart on first try;
Removing the signal they don't want to see,
Then reporting its 'absence' quite triumphantly!
Just as you can transform a smile to a frown
By holding a photograph 'Right' (upside-down).
I asked the Denier to 'explain' it all,
But he'd stormed off in fury, and taken his ball...
papertigert: "Trenberth one of the co-authors? Co-conspirator. Starred in the UEA emails. Couldn't explain the cooling."
You appear not to have noticed that the 3rd & 4th authors of the comment are two people who must be near the peak of the denialists' demonology, Phil Jones and Michael Mann. The author list needs only James Hansen to make up a diabolical trinity. He wasn't available, obviously, so he sent his deputy Gavin Schmidt as 8th author. Clearly this means the comment is rubbish. Oh and by the way, Al Gore's fat.
Zibethicus FTW!
Zibethicus!!! What Lotharsson said. Take a bow!
An interesting [MP3 interview](http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock10/ES_100312_Show_LoFi.mp3) with Clive Hamilton on climate denialism, following on from his five part series on the Drum and recent article in Scientific American.
'If you make a model, after a while you get suckered into it. You begin to forget that it's a model and think of it as the real world. You really start to believe it.'
A fair and reasonable comment from James Lovelock in the Guardian, 29 March 2010.
James Lovelock also said:
"I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."
No wonder the 'skeptics' are starting to warm to him!
I have to admit I love it when el gordo expects everyone to keep a straight face when he writes, *A fair and reasonable comment from James Lovelock in the Guardian, 29 March 2010*
Q for el gordo: when have you ever been qualified enough to judge a comment as being 'fair and reasonable'? When it suits your anti-scientific agenda? Or when precisely?
Interestingly, the science haters in the denial camp have long used terms such as 'fair' and 'reasonable' to describe science, no matter how flawed or non-peer-reviewed, that supports their point of view. Other words that have crept into the denial lexicon are 'balanced', 'sensible', etc.; many of the most fervently anti-environmental lobbying groups have used these terms in their titles to mislead the public as to their real motives. It is called 'aggressive mimicry' and it covers a gamut of areas in which regulations may be involved, from defending the use of pesticides and clear-cut logging to downplaying the threats posed by various human activities to biodiversity and environmental quality.
el gordo must be a journalist after all; its these people and those ex-journalists working in PR firms who have honed this technique.
The goons will be [quote mining](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quote_mine) that James Lovelock interview for years to come.
Despite the danger that I will just be providing El Gordo with more material to [quote mine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quote_mine), some here might be genuinely interested in an [interview with Lovelock broadcast on UK radio this morning](http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/today/).
Jeff Harvey,
Typically you attack the messenger and do not address at all what Lovelock said in his article. You might disagree with him, but I guess he has spent a far longer time thinking about and researching these issues than you have.
So why not just address what he has to say?
Jeff Harvey,
Lovelock is spot on in at least three respects.
1)you must be sceptical of science that relies overtly on computer models (they are not the real world.)
2)environmentalists display a great amount of naive idealism and ideology.
3)adaptation makes more sense than mitigation.
@ Dave Andrews:
It a good thing, then that we have good corroborating estimates of climate sensitivity, from observational data that do not involve those models. I'm sure you agree.
"adaptation makes more sense than mitigation" - I guess if your house was on fire Mr Andrews you wouldn't try to put it out but just get ready to live in a tent?
JH: "adaptation makes more sense than mitigation"
As if they're mutually exclusive!
The Parliamentary Inquiry on Climategate is out, sort of. Here's a snippet from the Irish Times.
"The scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact," the report said. "We have found no reason in this unfortunate episode to challenge the scientific consensus."
The UK S&T Committe inquiry into climategate is in: good news.
http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2010/03/30/climategate-inquiry-…
Check out the report and their conclusions.
The science is solid
There was no fraud
Jones is cleared
Calls for more transperency - not a bad thing at all!
[Justagreenie](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/well_now_we_know_why.php#commen…).
Actually, a better analogy for the adaptation-is-better-than-mitigation canard is to ask whether, when one's house is on fire, should one simply keep opening the windows to cool it down until it's comfy again, and just ignore the extinguisher in the corner...
Adaptation fails where the change occurs as a sharp pulse greater than a particular magnitude, or where it occurs at a press with a rate greater than the capacity of the genetic capacities of biological systems, or of the cultural capacities of societal systems, to adapt.
Of course, if one is a Denier such as is Dave Andrews, neither possibility is permissible in one's ponderings, ergo adaptation becomes a valid first strategy.
It's a logically trivial thing to indulge in - but it ignores the pressing weight of reality.
[Hy-Brazil](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/the_australians_war_on_science_…), anyone?
And here's another trivial thing to indulge in. According to NASA the clouds swirling around Paul 'run counter-clockwise across the Gulf of Carpentaria'.
http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2010-03-30
Lovelock might say that, but I doubt he will be proved right over time. Unless I'm mistaken (always possible):
(a) we really don't know how bad the impact to the biosphere will be, and
(b) there are large portions of it that we have no plausible "adaptation" strategy for other than to let it take its chances in a warmer world, and in the worst case live without - which seems like an especially risky and uncertain strategy (see (a)), and hence difficult to claim is "better than mitigation".
Hopefully some of the bio-scientists who comment here can provide a much better answer.
Typically you attack the messenger
BWAHAHAHAHA! Attacking science, or scientists, or Al Gore is all the denialati have.
They are already adapting to a worse case scenario - the Holocene Climate Optimum - where the waters of Botany Bay are lapping at the Cricket Ground.
The Local Council notifies the people of this impending disaster, but it fails to dampen property speculation in the areas most at risk.
Watchingthe deniers said:
In theory you're right but in practice in this setting -- which is not about the integrity of the science but a culture war in which the other side is aiming to whiteant policy and delay action, calls for "more transparency" when transparency is entirely adequate serve their interest. One can always appeal for more transparency, but the real question should be, Is there enough already?.
The claims here are entirely disingenuous. Just as the "we need more evidence" is an all-purpose tactic of pushing for delay and to discredit the imposing body of existing science, so too the call for transparency aims to taint scientists with a foul and self-serving slander.
I am glad that Phil Jones has been cleared of malfeasance as it shows that the claim for transparency was bogus, but if you suppose that this will be the end of the matter you are being naive. Soon it will be claimed that this inquiry was a whitewash as they are all in on the scam and that more transparency is needed in transparency processes, and that these things can only be conducted by people who have no opinions and are completely clueless (well they won't say that but it will amount to that).
It's hilarious that you think anyone is going to buy that your argument in #44 has any substance, el gordo. Perhaps you'd care to present some statistical data correlating investor planning with other hundred-year timescale events? For example, surely you've got some hard data showing oil investors in the 20s nervous about peak oil happening sometime in the 2000+s?
Fran Barlow @45 was on the money.
The first response to the [New Scientist](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18715-climategate-inquiry-points-…) article on this subject is condemning the inquiry as a 'bloody disgrace', presumably because the outcome did not suit the bloggers preferred version of reality.
Nils
The winner of last year's Eureka Award for 'Innovative solutions to climate change' stated that overall the inner city councils of Botany Bay, Leichhardt, North Sydney, Randwick, Rockdale and Sydney, had the highest levels of climate change vulnerability.
Sea-level rise was a key driver of risk for the Botany Bay, Leichhardt, Manly, Rockdale and Sydney councils, all of which were considerably more vulnerable than the average.
Still, house prices continue to soar in those areas. This is how we adapt.
Posted by: truth machine | March 29, 2010 4:42 PM
Then McLean, de Frietas, and Carter have been published nowhere, because it's the same journal, fool.
I've seen two different links to Foster et al, but neither of them with an AGU dot org address.
And both of them with big red lettered clues that said they weren't worth a piss.
And fuck you you five dollar whore cocksucker, for calling me a fool.
Hey papertiger, here's something else to really upset you and elicit another foul mouth response:
Phil Jones exonerated by UK House of Commons Parliamentary Committee:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/30/house-of-commons-exonerates-clima…
What part of "in press" don't you understand fool?
Deep.
>*And fuck you you five dollar whore cocksucker, for calling me a fool*
Paper tiger, did you think this statement would show you to be anything other than a fool?
Well, well, well..........global warmin deniers turn out to be a bunch of Koch suckers:
http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/usa/press-center/reports4/koch-in…
Gee, there are not yet many AGW denialist responses to the British Parliamentary Inquiry into the CRU stating what most people have known for a while now: no-one fudged any data, the evidence for AGW is compelling, and there is no evidence of a conspiracy.
So now we prepare for denialist Phase 2: howls about the conspiracy to cover-up the conspiracy, and a demand for an Inquiry into the Inquiry. Not too long now before they'll need to be checked into institutionalised care.
>What part of "in press" don't you understand fool?
Haha, nice.
Papertiger is yet another "unsceptic" who will only apply scepticism (or in this case, misplaced ridicule) to whatever doesn't fit their confirmation bias. However, will Papertiger acknowledge that there is something wrong with McLean et al? Don't count on it.
There is no evidence of a conspiracy, but I would still like to know who did the hack.
Dave Andrews,
Who says that humans have the capacity to adapt when there is a systemic collapse in the functioning of ecosystems across the biosphere? It is not whether we can adapt; its whether we damage natural systems to such an extent that they are unable to generate critical services that permit our existence and upon which our civilization rests.
Its hardly surprising that people like you, el gordo et al. who have never studied ecology or environmental biology routinely dredge up the 'adaptation' canard without having much of a clue how we will 'adapt' or what this entails. It is taken as a 'given', which is easy for ignorant layman to assume (I hear the refrain of 'Dunning-Kruger' ringing in my ears!). The bottom line is that there are few technological substitutes for a vital array of ecological services such as pollination, nutrient cycling, generation and maintenance of soil fertility, breakdown of wastes etc., which is captured in full cost pricing would be worth literally trillions of dollars. And even whewre there are, they are prohibitively expensive. Because climate change, along with other human assaults across the biosphere that I have mentioned previously, threatens to unravel ecological network webs, there is little doubt that the resilience of these systems will be greatly weakened (we already have lots of evidence showing that this is the case). The consequences for ecological services are likely to be dire.
So, Mr. Andrews, the next time you wade in here with your ususal vacuous arguments, be aware that I will demolish them every time. You appear to revel in the role of a harpy who attempts to hound me when I write in here. Your problem is that you clearly do not understand basic environmental science, which is patently obvious to me. May I suggest that you read up on some of the topics I discuss and learn a little before making yourself look like an ignoramus again and again.
Ditto for el gordo.
The UK parliamentary Commons Science and Technology Committee came to roughly the conclusion I came to a few weeks or maybe days after the CRU event happened.
eg. The problem was a university management issue. They should have set up a small management team to deal with the FOI issues (spam attack) so that the small team of scientists could get on with science.
There are more investigations yet which are probably more important. But I don't expect any big revelations.
And fuck you you five dollar whore cocksucker, for calling me a fool.
Your #17 establishes that you're dumber than dirt.
Parliamentary Report:
â[T]his was not an inquiry into the science produced by CRU and it will be for the Scientific Appraisal Panel, announced by the University on 22 March, to determine whether the work of CRU has been soundly built.â
We await with great anticipation, but I'm still wondering if MI5 did the hack.
"I'm still wondering if MI5 did the hack"
Why? Because that would get the 'skeptic' movement off the hook?
Dave Andrews, what is your response to Jeff's [points about adaptation](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/well_now_we_know_why.php#commen…)?
What data are you basing your counter assessment to Jeff's? What is your competence to assess the evidence? You do have evidence don't you Dave? Please share it.
Dave Andrews.
Here's a simple question for you - what exactly is it in the AGW context that we should adapt to?
El Gordo, that was really silly, even by your own standards.
Oh OK.
Because originally it was a whistleblower.
No, a concerned scpetic.
No, a hack because no-one would release the data.
No, now it's MI5.
If there is one fantasy-wish I could hope for, it would be for all sceptics to produce consistent allegations and stories.
Because then least scientists would have a single target to aim for.
"Sea-level rise was a key driver of risk for the Botany Bay, Leichhardt, Manly, Rockdale and Sydney councils, all of which were considerably more vulnerable than the average.
Still, house prices continue to soar in those areas. This is how we adapt."
El Gordo,
A couple of years ago my mother was buying a unit in Narrabeen (Sydney). I suggested she find out how high the building was above sea level. She was suprised at the suggestion but asked the real seate agent who replied that they had never been asked such a question. That was less than five years ago and now its becoming a routine question......yes but still, as you said el gordo, house prices soar. Well, I've always thought that my fellow Australians have never needed prescriptions for Viagra, just waving a five dollar note under their noses will do the trick as the current house price boom shows. Its no wonder Australians continue to cling to denialism in the face of reason and evidence.
"MI5"
El Gordo,
Can I have your permission to quote that or should I ask Christopher Monckton first?
el gordo, like GB is also off his meds. He post here to gain attention in order to sooth his relevance deficit disorder.
El Gordo,
Why MI5? Why not Mossad, the FSB, our own dear SIS, the NSA. Perhaps given the depth of this lying conspiriacy over global warming perhaps the worlds spy agencies had to pool resources in order to hack because SCIENTISTS had constructed such a devious cone of science (eh, Laraby) and data firewall to stop the TRUTH BECOMING FREE.
It would go like this.
MI5, in its innocence, had one or more deep cover agents 'disappeared' by those evil SCIENTISTS at the CRU once their deep cover was blown by Wally the office cleaner. MI5 tried for 40 years to uncover this global conspiracy but the attrition of their best agents was too much (cue much zapping camera shots with wooshing on the sound track outside the entrance to the London Masonic centre which stands in for the entrance to MI5 on Spooks). So in desperation at this threat to western civilisation as we know it they called in their 'cousins' at the CIA who decided it was too big so they called in the NSA who spent several Manhattan budgets repositioning 10 Keyhole satellites directly over the mid point of the 33A bus route that goes right outside the gates of East Anglia Uni while Mossad and the FSB were called in for a midnight raid over CRU's fence where Mrs Fitzpatrick's garden runs (they had to feed Mrs Fitzpatrick's Labrador some nice biscuits to keep it quiet while avoiding Mrs Fitzpatrick's prize pumpkins along the fence wall). Still the defences devised by those sinsiter CRU SCIENTISTS managed to kill several hundred Mossad and Spazntez agents in a scene reminiscent of the volcano battle scene in You Only Live Twice before they were able to make off with a waste paper basket that Wally the office cleaner had forgotten to empty.
Yes, El Gordo, MI5's involvement is a pretty reasonable conclusion.
@El Gordo's #48. I can see I was too subtle. Your statement was pointless, with the obvious intent to have misleading implications. Maybe you should polish it a little more, someone with an IQ under 75 might buy it.
El Gordo,
Back on 10th December you suggested it was the Russian Secret Service. Do tell us what new info came to light to change your mind.
[Marc Roberts](http://www.marcrobertscartoons.com/index.php?globalid=2017) has the skinny on on Lovelock. It's the [Triumph of the Stupid](http://plognark.com/?q=node/1129).
Gordito and Ducky should be justifiably proud of their [accomplishment](http://blog.timesunion.com/comics/files/2008/07/ithinkiwonweb.jpg).
>sea levels...Still, house prices continue to soar in those areas. This is how we adapt."
We have a long history of properties being taken by the sea in the UK.
Prices tend to fall a lot quicker than they go up when the inevitable subsidence starts and houses fall into the sea.
Insurance usually heads in the opposite direction, quite often towards infinity.
An example of a house by the sea in the UK:
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/video/Watch-online-Our-dream-home.342603…
Work of art house falling into sea:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/01/01/the-sinker-by-e-rod…
Lee,
You know that the IPCC projections are all based on the models and that there is no untainted observational evidence to back them up.
Jeff Harvey,
OK, instead of your usual dismissive of everything and everyone who might disagree with you approach, why don't you actually cite some evidence in support of your assertions?
Lotharsson,
"here are large portions of it that we have no plausible "adaptation" strategy for other than to let it take its chances in a warmer world, and in the worst case live without"
But isn't this what has happened repeatedly over the course of the Earth's history as temperature has fluctuated between considerably hotter and very much colder than is now the case.
Why do you assume that the 'status quo' as we know it now should continue. Life is still abundant on Earth despite all that has happened in the past.
Bernard J,
I don't deny that temperatures appear to have increased, in stages, since the 1850s and that this may have some consequences to which we will have to adapt - just like people had to adapt to the cold of the 300 years of the little ice age.
They managed that ,amazingly, without the help of the internet and computer generated climate models. Incredible don't you think?
# 77 Poor Dave,
Large, rapid fluctuations in the climate are usually accompanied by mass extinction events, which, although we have no direct evidence for it, would make shopping more difficult, what with no food to eat.
Erm... that would be you assuming the 'status quo' to continue, in that you assume that humans will be just fine with a little fiddling of... I don't know what. Large scale changes to climate over a short time span does not give ecological systems time to adapt and for life forms to evolve in a way that could be described as the 'status quo' The 'status' would not be 'quo'. That is why they are called "mass extinction" events.
As for #75: I note that you put the word "untainted" in your sentence followed by "observational data" Please tell us how the data (any data? all data?) were "tainted." It would be good to know so we get the observations right.
Dave Andrew's special selective science:
>*repeatedly over the course of the Earth's history as temperature has fluctuated between considerably hotter and very much colder than is now the case.
Why do you assume that the 'status quo' as we know it now should continue. Life is still abundant on Earth despite all that has happened in the past.*
Shorter Dave Andrews: The earth has been hotter before therefore warming is not a problem.
[Dave you should plot the times when the Earth was hotter than now and markup where human population and civilization was at those times.]
And:
>*I don't deny that temperatures appear to have increased, in stages, since the 1850s and that this may have some consequences to which we will have to adapt - just like people had to adapt to the cold of the 300 years of the little ice age*
The earth as warmed 0.7 degrees therefe 2+ degrees will not be a problem even if 2+ brings 3+ degrees rise.
Wow Dave, maybe you should write a paper!
Dave if our mega-fires and mega-droughts get a little worse were not going to keep exporting food, and Africa and Asia will be going backward as well. What is your assessemnt on this impact?
How much temperature rise do you say we can adapt to Dave, before things get very nasty? How much should we allow versus mitigate?
Dave Andrews said @ 75: "there is no untainted observational evidence to back them up."
You know that thing about ostriches burying their heads is a myth, don't you Dave?
Except in your case, of course where they could learn something about avoidance.
If not, now would be the time to tell us all about the Big Scam, please Dave. In detail.
I suppose it would eventually come to this - what happens when a once-credible broadcaster is stacked with right-wing ideologues and conservative political hacks.
Everyone's favourite climate science denialist Andrew Bolt [has been given his own current affairs](http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/) show on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's digital TV station ABC2.
What is the world coming to?
Dave Andrews @ 75 "You know that the IPCC projections are all based on the models and that there is no untainted observational evidence to back them up."
Davieee boy. Hmmm. Your juxtaposition of; "projections" and "observational evidence to back them up" makes it seem like you have been travelling a wee too much in the TARDIS.
But seriously, what are you like on hindcast runs with climate models? (Weeell, not too serious really...)
Gaz,
You bastard! You got me completely!
For those interested, McLean is attempting a defence of himself by attacking Lewandowski at The Drum: A response to Lewandowsky, on the basis that the latter was doing a hatchet job.
He does try to defend his methodology, so Deltoidians ... off you go ...
GWB Nemesis
Originally I believed Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, the vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who said he believed the theft of the emails was not the work of amateur climate sceptics.
âItâs very common for hackers in Russia to be paid for their services,â he told The Times.
âIf you look at that mass of emails a lot of work was done, not only to download the data but itâs a carefully made selection of emails and documents thatâs not random at all. This is 13 years of data and itâs not a job of amateurs.â
And of course David King (Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser) who muttered that it was the work of a secret service.
If the hack was too complex for amateurs, then it was done by professionals. If it was the FSB then MI5 and the CIA are also in the loop. A conspiracy of silence will remain in place well into the foreseeable future.
More "taking the piss" Gordo?
One of the interesting subsets of the concern troll John is the tone troll. The tone troll need not profess agreement with the consensus but pleads for more civility in language and more respect for other points of view.
We may all disagree, the concern troll maunders, but surely we can all agree to be polite and show each other respect.
Now who could possibly object to that? Of course, this merely opens the door to allowing other invading spammers and trolls simply posting and reposting their talking points as if they have not yet been civilly dealt with. It can't possibly reatrin those trolls who come to the group with outlandish and utterly unfounded slanders -- which those of us who see them for what they are are supposed to dignify with counter-argument.
People who post with a reckless disregard for the truth, who lack the seriousness and discipline to anticipate and address likely objections and yet hold themselves out as experts have not earned respect or the right to be dealt with civilly, IMO.
The Golden Rule applies. If you are constructively rude to others, then others are perfectly entitled to respond in quite the same way. It may or may not be wise in practice to do so. Some trolls take pleasure in nuking discussion by making the thread all about them. Not uncommonly, they declare thinly disguised stupidities as bait for those willing to wander off at a tangent. This is all part of the culture war that the trolls for the filth merchant position do.
Nevertheless accepting lectures from concern and tone trolls ought not to be something those of us who take ideas seriously ought to endure.
Fran barlow says: "He [McClean] does try to defend his methodology, so Deltoidians ... off you go ..."
McClean "defends" his methodology by simply claiming that
'Our use of derivative data ended when the time lag was established.'
In other words, he is claiming that the derivative data was not used for the correlation calculations.
but that claim directly contradicts the claim made by McClean et al in their reply to Foster et al (quoted by James Annan)
If they don't use derivatives, the correlation between (shifted) SOI and global temperature comes out much lower than they claim. The only way that they can get such a high correlation is to remove most of the variation in temperature before doing the correlation calculation (ie, by removing the upward "ramp" in temperature due to increasing GHG's).
By all appearances, McClean and his co-authors wish to have it both ways, but unfortunately, which is obviously not possible.
It is actually rather bizarre that they have made these two completely opposite claims. McClean makes a point of how his IT background has involved training in logic, but this is just completely illogical.
Anyone can see that, which makes it all the more foolish.
John McLean has started replying to Eli And Lothersson's critiques of his work on [the Drum](http://www.internationalbenchmarking.org/unleashed/stories/s2861936.htm).
Having read the piece in question I'm convinced it's a rather elaborate April Fool's Day joke.
Re: #7
Prof. Ashley - would the correction to the McLean et al Figure 7 have been to the labels *within* the graph - ie "SOI derivative" in the 2nd and 3rd panels of the graph look like they should have just said "SOI" as in the first panel?
That would make the labels within the graph consistent with the caption below it.
Thanks.
Re: #92
Gaz, yes, well-spotted, the correction was to the labels of Fig 7, not the caption! And yes, the word "derivative" has disappeared. So this is a significant change.
Also, the right-hand vertical axis of Fig 7a now says "RATPAC-A GTTA" rather than "GTTA".
Dave Andrews, you want evidence, why not go to a library, log into the Web of Science, and enter keywords such as : ecocystem functioning, biodiversity, ecocystem services, functional redundancy, and other related terms. You will get thousands of hits. The journal Ecological economics is filled with papers placing the value and importance of ecological services in an economic framework.
Or may I suggest: Fragile Dominion, Complexity and the Commons (Simon Levin), Nature's Services (ed. by Gretchen Daily, 1997), The Work of Nature (Yvonne Baskin, 1999) or Nature and the Marketplace (Geoffrey Heal, 2000). The Milennium Ecosystem Assessment (2006) would also be an excellent source of information.
You can find more via Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem_services
http://earthtrends.wri.org/images/ecosystem_services.jpg
As others have said earlier, dramatic changes in abiotic characteristics in the past have coincided with mass extinction events. Humans are no more exempt from nature's laws than all of the other 5 to 15 billion species with which we share the planet. Given our utter dependence on regulating services, it is likely that in fact we are more dependent than most of the others because we utilize far more of net primary production and freshwater flows than other organisms do.
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.
>If the SOI accounts for short-term variation then logically it also accounts for long-term variation.
Oh dear, Lotharsson... that's actually a bit depressing, he even then defends that statement.
A few days ago I made the comment (on a different website) that
> Anyway, the main problem, apart from the statistical mangling, is that one of the authors made the claim (repeated in their unpublishable reply!) that "Our analysis supported earlier research that demonstrates a close link between these factors, and indicated that a large portion of the variability in global temperature is explained by ENSO variation, thus leaving little room for a substantial human influence on temperature."...
>...The fact that they persist with this notion in reply to Foster el al's comment shows that they are unwilling to take on this simplest of corrections and are completely disinterested in the science...
And all that has happened since then has strengthened the notion. McLean simply will not take a correction and will just keep making dopey mis-statements, whilst whining about being censored. Supporters of this work (who, in a twist worthy of an olympic diver, both love and hate the peer-review process as revealed by this saga) will carry on obfuscating by not addressing any of the "science" in McLean et al. or the science in Foster et al. and only addressing the perceived censorship (read: quality control!), c.f. Ravensclaw @ The Drum.
So I really think there's no point arguing. McLean is wrong, as the majority of the commenters at The Drum can clearly see. He wont be changing his mind though, as he thinks he still has some credibility. His supporters are just entrenched in their opinions. So I don't think I'll pay much more attention to this issue. As entertaining as it has been to watch proper scientists deliver this righteous smackdown, it's reached its conclusion and nothing more can be said...
I really believe this contradiction needs to be relentlessly hammered. It's a fairly simple form of disingenuousness that most people can understand.
I tried to post this on The Drum, but encountered a repeated error:
Knowing that McLean is a fan of Deltoid, I am hoping that he might reply here...
I'd also be interested to know exactly where and in what discipline he is undertaking a PhD.
Fran, mind if Eli puts #88 up for honors on Rabett Run
Re #88: I'm not a Christian, so maybe I'm not the best person to comment, but I think you're kinda missing the essence of the Golden Rule. It's not, "If I'm rude to you, you get to be rude to me." It's "Treat other people the way you'd like to be treated." Are there times when you want to be treated rudely?
If trolls take pleasure in derailing the discussion, getting angry isn't a particularly effective strategy. I'd hope that it's possible to point that out without making those who disagree feel as if they've been subject to a "lecture" that they had to "endure."
Regards,
Bruce
Jeff Harvey,
Yes I can do that no problem, but I'm specifically asking you to post some links to papers that back up your assertions. You have assumed a certain aura of status over your scientific knowledge here, but I can't recall you ever posting a link to a scientific paper.
Generally your approach has been that of a political environmentalist.
Jeremy C,
Ok you can tweak the models a lot and they can begin to hindcast. But they are'nt that good going forward which is why the IPCC has to use an ensemble approach. Even then the models do not begin to fully understand the effects of clouds and water vapour. And they are pretty useless at things like the effect of ENSO and describing regional climate variations.
As all of these have a major impact on climate why should we place any confidence in the models?
Dave, the IPCC uses an ensemble approach because the internal variability in the models produces a wide range of possible outcomes over short time periods. This is only useful in certain scenarios, eg for pointing out to denialists that individual climate model runs can and do produce decadal flatlining/cooling under an AGW scenario.
This is interesting because it's also what we'd expect the real world to do occasionally. Who'd have thunk it?
Crtainly Eli ... be my guest
100 Bruce,
A variant:-
Do unto others *before* they do unto you.
TS, I think I saw that on a hat at a truck stop. Or maybe it was, "Do unto others... then run!"
Truck Stop Religion always makes me think of my all-time favorite bumper sticker: "God was my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains, and I had to eat him."
cheers,
Bruce
Bruce Sharp@100 said:
The corpus of concepts which inform the Golden Rule (the nature of reciprocity and mutual obligation)predate Christianity by a long time and likewise developed independently of it. Iterations of it are nearly ubiquitous.
For the record, I'm an atheist, but Hobbes expresses it not merely in the positive version you offer, but in a negative one as well, in that one should not impose upon others save in ways that one would gladly suffer. As I infer from this, while one may well be unclear as to what another will gladly suffer, one may infer this from their conduct. A person who belches in public cannot complain if others do so, with out suffering a tu quoque objection.
I did suggest that might be so. It seems to me that trolls are like mosquitoes. One surely knows that when they inflict their harm, scratching can bring only episodic relief, and that at the cost of aggravation of medium term discomfort. Logically, one should not scratch, but most of us do because it feels just so damned good.
Really one should treat them with the contempt they deserve, or if one is to remain issue driven and one has the time, point them in the direction of one of the many adequate answers that exist out there and move on.
As I read you, this is not your practice. Your practice is precisely to imply that we should treat them as if they were not trolls, and to accord them (and thus by extension their claims) a respect they have not earned. Their chief claim is of course that "the debate" is not over, when plainly, as far as the basic science is concerned, it is. While you choose your words carefully, it seems to me that this informs and defines your proposals, which is why they seem to many of us as a lecture on treating nonsense as insight.
...maybe not so much.
Read the whole thing. It also discusses major sources of uncertainty in prediction, the difference between weather prediction and climate prediction, and how well the 1988 model has done.
Off topic (but fairly interesting), the Jewish version of the golden rule was basically 'do to other Israelites (and people of other races living among you) as you would have them do unto you.' The Christian version is the more familiar one that includes everyone, even extended to your enemies.
Which version should we adhere to here? There was much exposition regarding this in the 'Empirical evidence' thread regarding Brent. Truth Machine says 'F*** off Brent you evil troll', while Erasmussimo thinks we should be civil and that way we cannot be attacked on the basis of our style of argument. I wonder if Truth Machine is Jewish? (Doubt it somehow.)
I tend to agree with Erasmussimo, even though Brent was shown via postings on other blogs to be a troll, albeit one trapped in a goldfish bowl. Still, it's nice to be nice, and if you can do it in the face of outrageous abuse all the better because it's funny and often surprisingly effective.
See papertiger @49, none of us were particularly rude after that outburst, and what's the result? Papertiger hasn't been back, presumably because the trolling didn't elicit the strong response they were looking for. We got rid of the troll. Ace.
Fran, I think we're on the same page until your last paragraph, where you say: "Your practice is precisely to imply that we should treat them as if they were not trolls, and to accord them (and thus by extension their claims) a respect they have not earned."
I've said that we should be willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, because sometimes we're going to be wrong about who is or is not a troll. I have not, however, suggested that the benefit of the doubt extends infinitely. There are several trolls here who don't deserve any respect, and I've made it clear a number of times that I'm in the "do not feed" school.
And, contrary to your comment, I don't believe that respect is automatically extended to someone's ideas, just because we extend it to each other. If I were to say that a kilobyte is 1000 bytes, and Tim politely pointed out that it's actually 1024 bytes, his decision to not refer to me as "Dumbass" wouldn't imply that the matter really wasn't settled.
Stu, why don't you shut the fuck up? A few days ago, you began your response to a post by the criminally insane David M*bus that began "Crystal Night, Atheists!" with a statement of how he was "preaching to the choir," then told him to go to Pharyngula because PZ would "enjoy" his ranting. Your judgment is not exactly stellar, and your little self-righteous speculation about truth machine's religion is creepy as hell.*
I'm so tired of people who confuse their dumb conception of blog politeness for real morality. It isn't.
*Not to mention ignorant. If you knew anything, you'd know that truth machine pulls no punches with friends or allies.
I must remember not to use asterisks here.
Yeah, that's really interesting, because Christians have historically been ever so respectful of other people's rights, especially non-Christians'. Unlike those Jews, right?
Well, on the one side you have Hamurabi's golden rule, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and on the other, George Bernard Shaws, don't do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Their tastes may be different
Dave Andrews:
>[How much](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/well_now_we_know_why.php#commen…) temperature rise do you say we can adapt to Dave, before things get very nasty? How much should we allow versus mitigate?
SC, I'm confused. What's your criticsm of my reply to that post?
My comment about TM's 'religion' (being Jewish is as often taken as a heritage as a religion, but no matter) was a joke. Geez.
PS I'm well aware of TM's posting style, applied mericlessly to friend and foe. I may not particularly like it (can you tell?) but it keeps us honest!
>Yeah, that's really interesting, because Christians have historically been ever so respectful of other people's rights, especially non-Christians'. Unlike those Jews, right?
Erm, does the fact that people haven't followed it particularly well invalidate the original sentiment?
So you can't put your IKEA furniture together because you didn't follow the instructions. Are the instructions now non-existant?
Do you know what "Crystal Night" is a reference to? He was preaching to you the choir in violently ranting at atheists? If you couldn't tell he was insane from that post, how good do you think you are at judging people's motives such that you can advise others on who warrants what type of response?
No kidding. And of what significance is that, exactly? That's supposed to make what you said less creepy?
Please explain the humor. I'm missing it. A joke at whose expense?
Yes, his brutal honesty is ethical, and needed when it comes to people like Brent, whose profound, active dishonesty does harm. And if you are aware of his style, then your "joke," in addition to its creepiness, made no sense.
It makes the contrast you're trying to draw meaningless if it's had no practical significance, and I have to wonder why you would be bringing it up other than to cheerlead for your tribe. Further, you haven't validated it with evidence. That's one reading, and many Jewish scholars would disagree with your self-serving interpretation. (Scholars of other religions and cultures, moreover, would point out that variants existed in other places as well. It's not exactly deep.)
Anyway, in this context it's ridiculous bumper-sticker "morality" that's of zero use, and "niceness" can even be immoral.
>Do you know what "Crystal Night" is a reference to? He was preaching to you the choir in violently ranting at atheists? If you couldn't tell he was insane from that post, how good do you think you are at judging people's motives such that you can advise others on who warrants what type of response?
No, I don't know what it's a reference to. But I could tell he's batshit insane. When I said he was 'preaching to the choir', it was a tongue-in-cheek comment, because I'm a theist but obviously disagreed with his comment. I don't rant at atheists, what would that achieve?
Look, I use an understated style, so perhaps you missed that I was ridiculing him. But since that exchange has been deleted I can't check exactly what I said. But maybe telling him to go to Pharyngula (where obviously he'd be ripped to shreds, turns out he was banned many moons ago) should have tipped you off though? I judged the motive just fine - please excuse me for not flying off the handle!
>Yes, his brutal honesty is ethical, and needed when it comes to people like Brent, whose profound, active dishonesty does harm. And if you are aware of his style, then your "joke," in addition to its creepiness, made no sense.
Yeah okay you win. How I wish blog comments had an edit option* ;-)
*Under SC's close scrutiny I must clarify that I don't wish blog comments had an edit option. That would clearly be stupid.
Furthermore, Erasmussimo acknowledged that he was wrong about several things on that thread and didn't argue with many substantive points that were made to him. For you to present it as you did is less than honest. People made some important points, and it's worthwhile to read the thread rather than accepting your summary.
Wow. Google it.
Yep people should read it for themselves. Why trust me? I'm just a blog commenter, you don't know who I am. You don't even know if all these posts are by the same 'Stu'.
Having taken your advice and googled 'Crystal Night', I now have a feeling I would not have been so restrained had I been better informed. Live and learn.
Bruce Sharp@110 said:
This is a strawman. While hurling an epithet salves the hurler it is not any kind of refutation, and I didn't claim that it was. Of course, if you responded well Ok Tim, that's how much you know ... go look up kilo in a list of suffixes and then tell me what it means I still wouldn't favour him calling the interlocutor a dumbass.
The objection would be so transparently absurd to anyone with a basic grasp of the matter that one should probably assume a troll and move on.
Yet if Tim followed up with a substantive response and then the interlocutor simply continued to perversely defend with more examples of the prefix "kilo" meaning one thousand, (s)he could then add, "well the debate isn't settled because if it was you wouldn't bother answering" and estoppel would then resolve that matter.
At that point, epithets would almost certainly follow from some quarter, as pointless as they would be.
It seems to me that in a place such as this, getting at motive is always going to be difficult. Those who seriously want to think and learn won't be bothered at the odd harsh word, ill-deserved though it might from time to time be. Such people see that as an overhead worth paying, since real learning is rarely free of the risk of appearing stupid. Those who take umbrage are not really that interested in learning or imparting their insight.
Again, this is not a rationale for rudeness as a strategy, but it is a rationale for dismissing claims of rudeness as germane in fora such as this, and for insisting that those who imply expertise bring arguments that seem to attest to it, if only to show the kind of respect for themselves and others that they hope to elicit in response.
Fran at 132: "Those who seriously want to think and learn won't be bothered at the odd harsh word, ill-deserved though it might from time to time be. Such people see that as an overhead worth paying, since real learning is rarely free of the risk of appearing stupid. Those who take umbrage are not really that interested in learning or imparting their insight."
Different people have different ideas of how much invective is acceptable. If Erasmussimo's tolerance is lower than yours, does that mean you're interested in learning and imparting your insight, but he isn't?
You go on to point out that "this is not a rationale for rudeness as a strategy." But if rudeness is a poor strategy, isn't that another reason why it's a worthy topic for discussion?
That said, I'll concede that it's not a worthy topic for discussion in this thread, as it's not germane to McLean's paper.
Regards,
Bruce
Stu.
Spoiler alert...
I think you'll find that SC = TM = MK.
Bruce Sharp @124 said:
No, it's not, because again, any such discussion is inevitably going to become entangled in the kinds of subjective assessment you suggested in relation to each person's sensitivity to invective. That in turn opens the door to the tone trolling one sees so often.
If people want to hurl epithets, then while I personally see little value in this for the group, I see greater potential systemic harm in attempts to restrain them. If the person moderating the blog doesn't like it, let that person act as he or she sees fit.
A person hurling epithets must reckon with the possibility that their substantive observations, worthy as they may be, will be deprecated accordingly by some whose respect they would have. That ought to be a sufficient restraint.
One hears persistent objections from the trolls that any robust rejection of the sub-intellectual nonsense some post here in the service of their delusions over the etiology of the climate anomaly amounts to a new iteration of Stalinist patronage of Lysenko or some equivalent. The implicit idea that one could debate tone with a violently repressive autocracy, or that what happens in the blogosphere is comparable is not merely absurd but offensive to anyone who has suffered coercion for dissent.
So FWIW, I don't favour substantial discussions over the tone in which we should answer apparent trolling, even though, paradoxically, I now seem to be in such a discussion.
Perhaps this can be my once around the goldfish tank ...
Public whining about peer review being desperately unfair seems to be the new denialist fashion.
Now Ross McKitrick is doing it, as reported over at Bishop Hill.
Aww you're ruining my fun Bernard. I thought I was holding my own very well, but when it turns out that my debating opponent needs sycophantic sock puppets to support themselves it's something of a hollow victory*.
*Yes, victory. Because it makes SC (& alter egos) look like a douchebag. Opening with 'Why don't you f*** off'. Honestly.
Oh, good grief. Yes, it's all an elaborate charade.
Look, I know who truth machine is in real life. We've argued at Pharyngula for two years, including very recently. We're different genders and ages and live on opposite coasts. He's met PZ, and I'm friends with others from Pharyngula.
My objection to the smug creepiness of Stu's "interesting" historical claim and question about truth machine was general.
Who's the douchebag now? Still you, Stu.
Honestly? What you quoted isn't even what I wrote. And yeah, you've totally held your own. I'm in awe of your rhetorical skills, and your self-declared victory is totally legitimate. Don't let anyone tell you differently, Stu, you internet warrior.
Dave Andrews,
All of the answers you seek are in the material that I advised you to read. It appears to me that you are just too lazy to do so and want me to spend hours online here linking peer-reviewed studies showing the cause-and-effect relationship between human actions and the functioning of ecosystems. The data exists, if you follow my instructions. Your strategy is to say that "I do not have to do anything and there is no problem; it is up to Jeff Harvey and other scientists to show me the data and if they fail to do so then they lose the argument". This is a typical strategy of the denialati. Sit on their backsides, refuse to read material unless it is stuck right in front of them, and then, once that is done, dismiss it because they cannot understand even the basics. Lomborg is a good example; apparently he recently told a questioner at a conference that marine ecosystems are "doing just fine" in spite of volumes of evidence to the contrary. Most appallingly he did not understand what a "marine food chain" means when questioned about the fact that 'humans are fishing down the food chain'. What this means in fact is that humans are selectively catching top level predators, and when these are extirpated, moving on to the next trophic level down (second level predators) and then on to meso-predators etc. This effect is totally undermining the structure and vitality of marine food webs. Lomborg's apparent response to the question was to think that by 'fishing down the food chain' humans are selectively catching fish by age and not by trophic status. So his response was effectively that humans are only taking out the older fish, leaving younger ones. This reflects an absolute inability to understand even basic ecology. The questioner was dumbfounded when Lomborg answered him in this way. But it shows how little some people who are feted as celebrities by the anti-environmental lobby do not have a clue what they are talking about.
Furthermore, unlike you, Mr. Andrews, I am a scientist with experiments to conduct, students to supervise and papers to write. Start learning some basic environmental science before demanding I come on here with peer-reviewed articles; I did this last week (see studies by Both, Visser et al. on the relationship between warming and phenological effects in insectivorous birds, their prey and food plants) as well as studies by Eric Post and many others. Also read some of those books I listed and the Milennium Ecocosystem Assessment which contains reams of data on the consequences of eroding ecosystems and ecosystem services.
Now that right there is funny.
[Dave Andrews](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/well_now_we_know_why.php#commen…) said:
Strawman.
What has happened in the past is a different kettle of fish to what will happen in the future, all the more so for the fact that the bulk of warming from human emissions to date, and into the future, has yet to materialise.
0 out of 10 for poor logic/thinking/'analysis'.
Then:
No, once again I think "strawman".
Europeans in the 'little ice age' were generally more self-sufficient than Western urban people are today, and thus inherently better-equipped to survive as communities.
They also had less complex societies, which brings with it a greater resilience to extreme events. And the nature of the temperature change experienced in the LIA is vastly different, and overall less malignant, than the changes that are likely with a business-as-usual warming resulting from unfettered human CO2 emissions.
Further, many people in the LIA did not do so well...
And then there's the fact that there is certain to be a large number of folk in the future - some of whom will likely be our decendents, by the way, in case it hasn't registered with you - who will not "manage", even though current generations do have the "help of the internet and computer generated climate models". I have a feeling that folk who might have had such resources ahead of the LIA would have done somewhat more with them than our self-indulgent societies are inclined to today.
No matter which way you look at it, your arguments are poor piss-poor completely without any substance - even piss...
>Honestly? What you quoted isn't even what I wrote. And yeah, you've totally held your own. I'm in awe of your rhetorical skills, and your self-declared victory is totally legitimate. Don't let anyone tell you differently, Stu, you internet warrior.
I was tired. So sue me.
One clarification.
I should have more accurately said:
To a degree complexity actually serves as a resilience buffer, especially in the natural world. However, in the development of human society this axiom fails beyond a certain point. This is hardly the place to engage in a treatise on complexity theory: suffice to imagine what might happen with a fuel- or an energy-crisis, and how such would have had an effect a century ago, and how such might have an effect a century hence...
I think I prefer to ignore you. I have to work anyway. And you have more hyperventilating to do, no doubt. Try not to wear yourself out again - Tone Trolls Local 287 needs you, Stu!
(Oh, and Brent has reappeared on the other thread. Why don't you head over there and politely explain to him the errors in his recent post. I'm sure he's just confused, and once you set him straight about weather vs. climate he'll never make that mistake again.)
McLean seems to be caught in a recurvsive loop that goes something like this*:
to which countless people reply:
to which McLean replies:
to which countless people reply:
to which McLean replies...
*See time-stamp 02 Apr 2010 10:28:05am at The Drum:
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2861936.htm
Waddaya know?! [My question](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/well_now_we_know_why.php#commen…) on The Drum was posted, and even answered by McLean:
I note that McLean admits that ENSO moves heat around, but he is more circumspect about where the heat that's warming the planet comes from. It's just not coming from greenhouse gas activity, apparently...
Of course, his 'analysis' cannot lead to that conclusion, but this does not stop McLean from saying that it can, or at least [from avoiding saying that it can't](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/well_now_we_know_why.php#commen…). He actually does explicitly make the claim once or twice on the thread at The Drum, although I'll be stuffed if I have the patience to wade through the horrid formatting there to find the post(s).
It's all over for further discussion there with Johnny though. Mike Ashley and several others were merciless in their hammering home of the deficiencies of MFC09, and McLean spat the dummy and left.
Aside from the last-post-first-replies-first-to-last bouncy reading method imposed on the reader by the format, it was actually an entertaining thread: a bit of a change for ABC blogs. I suspect that McLean thought that he was going to get a free ride, with a coterie of science-illiterate lapdogs woofing his praises and drowning out serious criticism, but in the end he was pretty well pasted.
Perhaps the Denialati vacated for Easter, leaving the hard-working (atheistic?) science types beavering away without pause...
He should have posted in early January - most science professionals are away then!
>I think I prefer to ignore you. I have to work anyway. And you have more hyperventilating to do, no doubt. Try not to wear yourself out again - Tone Trolls Local 287 needs you, Stu!
>(Oh, and Brent has reappeared on the other thread. Why don't you head over there and politely explain to him the errors in his recent post. I'm sure he's just confused, and once you set him straight about weather vs. climate he'll never make that mistake again.)
Ignore me if you will, but I'll be gracious enough to say that I've learned something from our exchanges. So thanks - really.
I'm going to take a 'don't feed' approach to Brent (and, yes, other trolls unless for amusement value) and not only because opening a 1200 comment thread slows down my computer...
Back on topic, McLean cut a sad figure at The Drum. Round and around he went. I started to think he hadn't actually read his own paper, and was just projecting.
Stu, Salty, et alia; I'm following this discussion with the fascination one feels witnessing a car wreck.
Call me anything you want, just don't call me late for dinner.
[Peace Out](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01iCyBaZnPU&feature=related)
Bernard J. 138:
Stu,
Here are a few random quotes from Nature published earlier this year.
" However such models cannot reproduce some important atmospheric phenomena such as circulation trapping and cannot be validated against real climate behaviour over decadal timescales"
(Editorial, vol483, issue 7283, 16Feb 2010)
" reseachers are wrestling with how to mimic the clouds and currents, trees and tundra and the myriad other aspects of the planet that can amplify or diminish global warming"
"Parameterizations are a necessary evil that can introduce error into models. Perhaps more bothersome, though, are the random errors"
"In fact every model has a weak spot."
" Although the new models are better from an academic perspective, they do notnecessarily produce results that are more useful for policy makers wrestling with how to plan for the future"
(All, News Feature, vol463, 25 Feb 2010)
Seems the models might not be all they a 'cracked-up' to be!
Once more around the goldfish bowl...
said Dave Andrews
Exactly what are they "cracked up to be" Dave and on what sources do you base this opinion?
>Stu,
>Here are a few random quotes from Nature published earlier this year.
>"However such models cannot reproduce some important atmospheric phenomena such as circulation trapping and cannot be validated against real climate behaviour over decadal timescales"
Hmmm, that sounds vaguely similar to what I actually said:
>Dave, the IPCC uses an ensemble approach because the internal variability in the models produces a wide range of possible outcomes over short time periods.
I only objected to a statement you made that I thought was misleading. There are many valid criticisms of climate models, indeed, consider this point: if there weren't valid criticisms of climate models, no one would be working on improving them any more.
Anyway, your point that the IPCC use ensembles because the models aren't good going forwards depends entirely on the timescale in question. They're not meant to have much predictive power over 5 or 10 years, over which timescales internal variability trumps external forcing. Using ensembles gives the models some value over these shorter timescales.
Has anyone else wondered how John Mclean came to be first author on this piece of rubbish (I mean the original paper, not the response to the comment). Why is an "independent climate analyst" and well-meaning, but bumbling, feeder of misinformation to the likes of Andrew Bolt the first author, while two "climate scientists" were second and third authors. Clearly Mclean has no idea.
Was this a setup - it was worth the gamble and if it worked, they got a paper into the peer-reviewed literature, complete with a few political points. If it went pear shaped (as it now has) then clueless McLean ("the patsy") cops all the agro.
Nice friends!
Neil White
PS I'm not normally into conspiracy theories. Honest.
PPS McLean should go back to feeding misinformation to Andrew Bolt. He was good at that.
Ah, Easter, and time on my hands to muse about what-ifs...
With Eli and Tamino having recently harpooned two of the Denialati's favoured groups of chums, I can't help but wistfully wonder what the world might have been like had Tim actually published a peer-reviewed refutation of [McKitrick's clanger](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2004/08/mckitrick6.php)...
I would have paid to see that.
Meandering to a point though - [Neil White](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/well_now_we_know_why.php#commen…), Chris de Freitas was the editor at the journal Climate Research who let through both the Soon and Baliunas paper that resulted in half of the editorial board resigning in protest, and the McKitrick and Michaels paper I mention above. In my view, de Freitas would hardly be a first option for a first author...
And Carter? Well, does one really need to say anything at all?
For any real scientist, it's extremely frustrating that such incompetent scratchings are dignified with the title 'peer-reviewed': all the more so for the fact that non-trained Denialati imagine that these 'papers' are actually in any way worthy. They're not, and they go flaccid the first time that the lights are turned upon them.
...I really wish that Tim had published...
re: #146
re: de Freitas, Soon, etc.
Actually, it's worse than that.
In PDF at DeSMogBlog, look up de Freitas (p. 117 in V1.0), and timeline on p.22, starting 2002.03.28.
Briefly, de Freitas submitted a climate paper to the BULLETIN OF CANADIAN PETROLEUM GEOLOGY, edited by his brother Tim, who (properly) recused himself. They did find two sterling reviewers in Willie Soon and Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, names familiar here. His article was
Are observed changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere really dangerous? Would anyone care to bet on the answer provided? He references 4 Soon & Baliunas papers,
A few weeks later, Soon & Baliunas submitted the infamous paper to de Freitas, so he was reviewing that paper while Soon was reviewing his...
Brother Tim later wrote here, p.27:
"Climate change and the role of CO2 were discussed in detail by C.R. de Freitas. Since he is the brother of the
present CSPG Editor, the paper was handled by one of our most capable Associate Editors, Dale Leckie, and
review by Willie Soon, an Astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Sonja
Boehmer-Christiansen, the scientific editor of Energy and Environment and a climate scientist at the University
of Hull, UK. These individuals are recognized globally for their contributions to climate research. They also
recommended publication of the paper with minor revision. However, their names were not included in the
acknowledgements at the end of the paper, which was an oversight."
H/T: Deep Climate
[John Mashey](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/well_now_we_know_why.php#commen…).
Thank you for the salient reminder of this under-acknowledged and very interesting part of the background to this saga.
Given the hue and cry about 'collusion' that the Denialati raised following the theft of the CRU emails and data, one wonders with complete bemusement about the logs blinkering their own sight whilst they pick at the specks in the eyes of others...
I think you'll find that SC = TM = MK.
Folks at Pharyngula, where SC and I have spent a lot of time (and earned our OM's) knows that we are not at all the same and that the suggestion is ludricrous and then some. But I doubt that being so grossly wrong will phase you.
The right side of that equation, OTOH, is valid, but I've dropped using the MK moniker here, and never used the two at the same time.
I wonder if Truth Machine is Jewish? (Doubt it somehow.)
That you think that is relevant shows poor inferential judgment, as does the fact that you happen to be wrong. (I was raised in a reform-conservative Jewish household but was an atheist by the time of my Bar Mitzvah.)
I tend to agree with Erasmussimo
Erasmussimo's arguments were ripped to shreds by many posters.
even though Brent was shown via postings on other blogs to be a troll, albeit one trapped in a goldfish bowl. Still, it's nice to be nice
That's either a tautology or irrelevant. It's also nice to be nasty.
and if you can do it in the face of outrageous abuse all the better because it's funny and often surprisingly effective.
Both strategies can be both funny and effective. None of which in the slightest supports any of Erasmussimo's blather.
No, I don't know what [Crystal Night] is a reference to.
You need an education, especially if you're going to go around erroneously characterizing Jewish principles and making negative comparisons between those and your own precious Christian ones. Don't forget this one -- Gott mit uns.
I posted the following on the Rabett Run blog âToo Bad to be Believedâ thread and it seems relevant here. If you find it of interest then I can post follow-up comments from the same thread. There are also comments here waxing enthusiastically over the UK Commons committee political enquiry which whitewashed âClimategateâ. One even suggests that little is being said about the UK, but thatâs a mistake. Take a look at my blog postings âPolitics, The Media & The UK's âClimategateâ Enquiries â and âCAN THERE BE AN INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION OF IPCC? â at http://globalpoliticalshenanigans.blogspot.com. Comments are welcome as long as they are not insulting like some posted here.
QUOTE:
Eli, I see that the refutation of the McLean, et al paper âInfluence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperatureâ (Note 1) by Foster et al. (published on 23rd July 2009) to which you linked (Note 2) was drafted on 27th October 2009 but corrections to the original paper were published on 16th Oct. Do you know if the corrections take into consideration any of the points challenged by Foster et al?
I get the impression that McLean et al. tried unsuccessfully to get the AGU to publish their response to the criticisms of Foster et al. In their article âCensorship at AGU: scientists denied the right of replyâ (Note 3) they conclude QUOTE: We are left with the unanswered question as to whether this situation has arisen from editorial ineptitude at the JGR, or whether the journal, in avoiding publishing our reply, was responding to coercive pressure from influential supporters of the speculative hypothesis of dangerous human-induced climate change. UNQUOTE.
Others, although agreeing that some of the statistical manipulations used by McLean et al. are inappropriate, do appear to support the view that natural global climate processes and drivers account for most of the claimed global temperature changes during the past 100+ years. One of these is Dr. David Stockwell (Note 4) in his article (Note 5) at âNiche Modelingâ. He also provides a link to a very interesting article (Note 6) âReproducing Global Temperature Anomalies With Natural Forcingsâ by Bob Tisdale
Please excuse me for shooting off at a tangent here but am I correct in thinking that Foster is known as Tamino? In his criticism (Note 7) of the original paper Tamino makes the point that QUOTE: In their figure 7, they represent GTTA by splicing together two different data sets. Up to the end of 1979 they use RATPAC-A dataâ¦. From 1980 to 2010, they use UAH TLT data instead. Not only is it problematic (not completely invalid, but problematic) to splice together different data sets, if youâre going to do so you need to account for the fact that they might have a different zero point. UNQUOTE. I donât see a similar criticism in his comments only a year earlier in âBrand New Hockey Sticksâ (Note 8) covering QUOTE: Mann et al. 2008, Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia UNQUOTE. I could find no mention of the splicing of proxies to dubious âglobalâ temperature measurements which have been subjected to dubious statistical manipulations. Maybe I read it too quickly ans=d missed it but being a sceptic I suspect that it was more to do with Mannâs paper providing support for The (signiciant human-made global climate change) Hypotjesis.
UNQUOTE
Notes follow
Pete Ridley:
>being a sceptic
[That word doesn't mean what you think it means](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/feb/22/climate-change-s…).
TM,
I was serious when I said I'd learned something from SC and thanked him; not knowing what Crystal Night was, I suppose, is forgiveable - I'd never heard of it. However, I now realise that my comments sound bigoted and frankly stupid in that light. For which I apologise. But did you really need four posts in a row detailing my stupidity?
Stu,
I'm a woman. [As previously implied.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSpfS2b6d4w)
Soz m'lady. Noted for the next time.
:)
But did you really need four posts in a row detailing my stupidity?
Do you really need to whine about it? The first one wasn't even directed to you.
Unless, of course, Bernard J. is your sockpuppet.
(See, sometimes I have afterthoughts.)
TM,
A hearty ×¢Ö´×Ö¸Ö¼× ×Ö¼×Öµ× unto thee. Also.
I wasn't whining, indeed I had hoped that you'd catch my self-depricating humour. These things do get lost along the intertubes though.
Sockpuppetry is best left to those who cannot defend themselves... or don't apologise and retract when shown to be in an indefensible position (as I certainly was).
And, as an afterthought of my own, the second half of the above post is not intended as an accusation directed at anyone here.
Ok, cool; sorry for misinterpreting your comment and jumping on it.