Werner Krauss is a tosser

#4 in the series. Normally reserved for non-scientists, but WK wins a dishonourable mention. He is part of the stable of kooks that von S gathers round him at klimazwiebel, though as far as I can tell von S has carefully avoided becoming kooky himself.

You'd better go and read what Krauss has to say for himself before you come back to my rantings.

The strongest impression I get is that, as an anthropologist, he really has little interest in the science of climate change. Its all meat to the grinder as far as he is concerned, and reality is of no real importance. Hear him slavering:

For me as an anthropologist, it was a great opportunity to get introduced to different tribes and subcultures in climate science and beyond... Who is allowed to speak and to represent climate science? Who is included and excluded? Those were some underlying discussion threads during this really exciting workshop...

Then there was the bizarre:

current hegemonic climate science appears as a system organized along exclusively academic criteria

which appears to be a tacit argument in favour of blog science, in which case I'm sure he'll be delighted to be, in his turn, the subject of blog science. Organising science along academic lines is a good idea; you have to have got your post-normal head badly twisted to think otherwise.

But I think for sheer lack of thinking, context or reflection it is hard to beat:

it is hard to imagine how there will be ever done justice to those hurt and overrun by those who are in charge of the IPCC process

which quote earns him the Tosser award. I'll ask Simon Hughes to hand it over.

[Update: but for real utter bilge, WK can't compete with Mark Imisides ... an industrial chemist working in the private sector.]

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I like the clever way WK starts to realise that deniers are kooky, but saves it all with an em dash and a bit of victimisation-baiting.

In my view, in its most dense moments, the atmosphere became almost one of conspiracy theory and made me wonder whether there will really be a possibility of reconciliation -- the hockey stick and climategate are open wounds and it is hard to imagine how there will be ever done justice to those hurt and overrun by those who are in charge of the IPCC process.

My favourite inanity in the linked article must be this one, though:

it is highly necessary to open up the climate debate in order to represent a greater diversity of results

Because, you know, the real goal of science is always arriving at the largest possible number of contradictory results. I think that takes the idea of diversity as a value in itself one step too far, honestly.

By Phillip IV (not verified) on 30 Jan 2011 #permalink

Jebus!
I hope Mr Imisides doesn't work on anything important/dangerous.

> No one is a better blogger than her

Well .... I had to choose between reading only her blog and no one, I'd certainly pick no one.

[Ah yes I forgot that little gem -W]

William, do note that Werner just spent a few days with a wide range of mostly 'skeptics'. As far as I could deduce from the participation list (I think I managed to get about 16 names or so, with a total of 28 participants), there were rather few actual climate scientists (I only found Hans von Storch (*); oh, and Judith Curry/Peter Webster ;-) ). But those were astutely balanced by downright idiots (Steve Goddard, Tallbloke). Of course, I know I just did something really, really horrible, calling some people idiots and such. So I guess that tosses me out of the discussion (while tallbloke goes happily back to his blog and approvingly cites someone who calls the IPCC report a propaganda piece...).

* No offence meant to Nick Stokes, notably. He was there, too, but I think he himself already noted he did not consider himself a climate scientist.

Better tossee than tosser, Marco.

By Steve Bloom (not verified) on 31 Jan 2011 #permalink

The last link says that 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of energy are required to heat the ocean by one degree C. The line of reasoning that therefore the atmosphere has to be 4000 degrees C is balls, but as far as I calculate it at a 3.7wm-2 radiative imbalance (eg from doubled CO2) it would take 100 years to accumulate that much energy.

So why does the Earth appear to warm faster than that? If I had to guess I would guess that the upper ocean warms a lot faster, but is that the answer or have I messed up the maths?

[It certainly is true that the upper ocean warms faster than the lower - and having searched for a while, http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-10-7.html will have to do. Also, the oceanic changes to date will (at the sfc) average rather less than 1 oC -W]

Where did you find the grinder meat guy? I still have trouble getting any credit for what I've stolen though.

[Search on the U2 lyrics, of course -W]

By thomas hine (not verified) on 31 Jan 2011 #permalink

I don't understand how the skeptics are getting away with running such an intellectually bankrupt outfit, and a deeply hypocritical one at that.

I would like to draw attention to three strong corrupt themes in skeptic-ville:

1) Shoddy "Research". They pump absolute toss out, like this graph:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=6577

Note the names attached to it. This station dropoff "argument" was being used by Corbyn too. WE know why this argument is pure bunk, how come they don't? Or rather how come they have remained so suspiciously immune to the facts of it? It's been a long time now, I could have maybe excused the error when it was first made, but it's STILL being made.

By all rights if the seasoned skeptics are such the sleuths they claim they are. they shouldn't be using this argument anymore. If they are honest as they claim they are, they shouldn't be letting their noob friends use it either.

And if they are so concerned about "billions of dollars" and the "integrity of the science" they should definitely have fixed this mistake of theirs by now. Their "team" should have taken them aside and pointed out that it's a bad argument and not to use it.

Look at other skeptic posts on WUWT and climaterealists and the like and it's a pattern. Shoddy incomplete and biased research and none of them call each other on it.

2) The second theme is a double standard in light of the above. They attack climate scientists for the tiniest transgression or error (even in some cases when no error has happened, see #1 above) and accuse them of faking stuff, being incompetent. For hypocrisy see point 1 above because you don't see them attacking each other like that even though they make far worse errors.

They claim the science needs to be perfect (you know with stationary audits) because important decisions involving x zillion dollars are going to be made on it. You've heard it. But if that was true then their role, which they boast as being important to the issue, should also logically be held up to standards. They don't even have standards at the moment in my opinion.

3) The recent third parallel, which is a jaw droppingly brazen of them given the above 2 points, is this concern about "reconciling" things. But always under the impression that the "scientists" need to walk to a middle ground the skeptics are already at.

As if the problem is the scientists given points #1 and #2 above! So is this strategy #3 really just a feign of being reasonable because they are emboldened enough to think they can get away with it, or are they really so delusioned that they don't even recognize points 1 and 2 above?

Nothing will be "reconciled" while they permit crap like in the link I posted in point 1. I just wonder whether they know it. Until they start educating the idiots around them away from silly conspiracy theories they fail.

And here I had thought a tosser was someone who had tossed their hat in the ring...

By David B. Benson (not verified) on 31 Jan 2011 #permalink

I recommend reading this blog post. It gives all the standard skeptic arguments, and then presents a surprising, entirely science based method of mitigation.

[I didn't see anything of value in there. It looked rather ignorant -W]

By Paul Kelly (not verified) on 31 Jan 2011 #permalink

Paul Kelly:

"I recommend reading this blog post. It gives all the standard skeptic arguments, and then presents a surprising, entirely science based method of mitigation."

However, the reason that Iâm skeptical about the climate doom scenarios has nothing to do with the tendency of climate change prediction to lapse into unfalsifiable propositions where everything that happens or can happen is considered evidence that a hypothesis is true

Another Paul Kelly Fail.

Climate science, being based on physics, is falsifiable. You could, for instance, prove that CO2 doesn't absorb LW infrared, after which, all the world's CO2 lasers would magically fail to work.

Or you could make the claim, and when CO2 lasers around the world continue to work, reconsider your endorsement of this clueless claim.

I didn't bother to read the rest ...

So Paul Kelly is on record now that GHG emissions are almost entirely due to meat production, and all we need to do is mitigate that by lab-grown faux beef, and we can then ignore coal and tar sands?

Just want to make clear Paul's position before bothering to rip it up ...

To avoid any unnecessary contretemps with anyone who goes to the link in #13, I recommend it to illustrate that skepticism is not an impediment to coming up with mitigation solutions. It also contains a pretty good screed about ethanol.

By Paul Kelly (not verified) on 31 Jan 2011 #permalink

Actually, Paul, there's a good post in that thread:

If you review your American history and notice the estimates of the number of bison that ranged the Great Plains, and convert that into pounds of animal and then compare that to the size of the US cattle heard, again in pounds you will find they roughly compare.

In other words, if someone were to complain about CO2 emissions or environmental consequences from cattle, as if it were a bad thing, they are being ignorant that for as long as bison have ranged in large herds, the Earth has dealt with this without undue consequences.

Shorter version: the major problem is burning fossil fuels, not raising animals for meat.

To avoid any unnecessary contretemps with anyone who goes to the link in #13, I recommend it to illustrate that skepticism is not an impediment to coming up with mitigation solutions

Except, of course, for the minor fact that it's not a solution, it's bullshit.

Just like skepticism. Just like Paul Kelly.

Dhogaza,

Argue climate science with somebody who holds the views you erroneously ascribe to me. Read comment #16. If you'd like to discuss whether skepticism is an impediment to finding mitigation solutions or what to do about corn ethanol, step right up.

By Paul Kelly (not verified) on 31 Jan 2011 #permalink

Though a bit fanciful, lab produced meat would be a mitigation wedge.

(from the Food and Agricultural Organization)
Cattle-rearing generates more global warming greenhouse gases, as measured in CO2 equivalent, than transportation.

When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 per cent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 per cent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.

And it accounts for respectively 37 per cent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 per cent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.

With increased prosperity, people are consuming more meat and dairy products every year, the report notes. Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tonnes in 1999/2001 to 465 million tonnes in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tonnes.

By Paul Kelly (not verified) on 31 Jan 2011 #permalink

Wow, I havn't seen anything as stupid as that Imisides piece for years. He totally ignores how things actually work (Hint - it isnt just the air heating the ocean) and makes perfectly good numbers based on erroneous starting assumptions. He'd better not be in charge of any industrial processes, otherwise the place will explode due to him forgetting that something has to be stirred or suchlike.

If you want to look at climateaudit errors, here's a doozy I saw on another blog.

http://climateaudit.org/2005/04/23/moberg-satellite/


Here is an interesting splice of Moberg and satellite data. Blue is Moberg, grey is Moberg error bars, red is instrumental, all downloaded from the Nature SI; purple is satellite. At right is the post-1850 blow-up. You can see that the post-1980 satellite temperatures are high but not off the charts relative to Mobergâs reconstruction.

To even contemplate use of Moberg, the Hockey Team has to rely entirely on the splice of CRU records, rather than satellite records. Warwick Hughes and others have expressed concerns about how CRU have handled urban heat island effects and other issues. There are some very interesting issues in SST temperatures on how adjustments have been done for change-over from measuring temperatures in buckets to engine inlets, which Iâll post about some time.

How does this rate on the tosser scale? They actually used the CRU temperature record and not the wrong satellite records. The temperature is now 'off the scale' when you use the right record.

[Ah, that is just McI being clueless and unpleasant - nothing new there :-). To get into the tosser files there has to have been some prospect of the person being sane, which they've disappointed -W]

Here's a report of a study in the journal Climate Change that proposes a tax on meat and milk as a GHG mitigaton.

"By taxing all meats and milk, Europe's greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced by about 7 percent, according to the study."

"This means that we do not pay for the climate costs of our food," another author of the study, Fredrik Hedenus of Chalmers University, said in the press release."

By Paul Kelly (not verified) on 03 Feb 2011 #permalink