Quote from flymike91 :

more CO2 equals more warming

I think most people would agree with it. I've never actually heard a scientist disagree that more CO2 = more warming, but it's also uncontroversial that there is a limit on how much warming CO2 can cause by itself. The relationship between CO2 and warming is logarithmic - for every doubling of CO2 you will get the same increase in temperature each time (roughly about 1-1.2°C). Most of the warming from CO2 is already with us, but the great uncertainty in all this is the feedbacks. Greenhouse gases keep the Earth about 30° warmer than it would be without them. CO2 gives us about 3° of that warming. (unless someone can tell me otherwise).

I would stop agreeing with Revkin's equation at '= less ice', at least as far as the present indicates. Arctic ice is decreasing while Antarctic ice is increasing (Judith Curry has a new paper out on this which seeks to offer an explanation for the 'paradox' of Antarctic ice). Overall, global sea ice is hovering at around average atm.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Sun, 29 Aug 2010 01:06.

Quote from J@tko :

Am I the only person who has a tendency to think that people lived in black and white pre-1960s?

It's a funny thought... ...and before the photographic age everyone lived in books.

Amazing

Interesting opinion piece from Andy Revkin of the New York Times on 'Trust' in Climate Science

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes. ... imate-research-and-trust/


edit: my comment for Andy

Quote :

"Referring people over to Real Climate for reviews of the 'Hockey Stick Illusion' is like asking Steve Ballmer his opinion on what he thinks of the iPhone. We should be striving for a bit more impartiality here...

Cmon Andy, you're a journalist! If you're at all interested in the topic of trust in climate science you need to set aside the time to read this book for yourself- that way you will not have to rely solely on the opinions of the very people implicated in all this. You will have your own opinion. Surely that's of some value?"

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Sun, 29 Aug 2010 08:18.

Quote :

climate science/scepticism juxtaposed with religious knowledge/agnosticism

Heh. Relates to another thing I've been mulling over which is this connection between science, post normal science and ethics. Now, I don't know anything about comparative ethics, but there is a type of ethics I'm aware of called 'situational ethics'. It's a christian idea which basically says that certain things, such as laws and moral judgements, can and should be temporarily suspended if they interfere in the service of love - in other words, love is the ultimate law, or similarly- the ends justify the means.

To demonstrate what this means, examples are sometimes given on certain situations by which people are then called on to think about in terms of best outcomes and how they relate back to situational ethics. So for example,

Quote :

Special Bombing Mission No. 13

When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the plane crew were silent. Captain Lewis uttered six words, "My God, what have we done?" Three days later another one fell on Nagasaki. About 152,000 were killed, many times more were wounded and burned, to die later. The next day Japan sued for peace. When deciding whether to use "the most terrible weapon ever known" the US President appointed an Interim Committee made up of distinguished and responsible people in the government. Most but not all of its military advisors favoured using it. Top-level scientists said they could find no acceptable alternative to using it, but they were opposed by equally able scientists. After lengthy discussions, the committee decided that the lives saved by ending the war swiftly by using this weapon outweighed the lives destroyed by using it and thought that the best course of action.

When you look at a situation like that, you can see how closely it matches up with a typical post normal science scenario as defined by Ravetz. In Ravetz' words, post normal science should be applied in a situation of

Quote :

facts uncertain,values in dispute, stakes high, and decisions urgent.

Obviously, that describes the current global warming scenario too. Situational ethics and post normal science seem to be ideological cousins of sorts.

The problem of situational ethics rested on the fact that no matter what option you chose in a given situation, there's was no real telling what might come out of that decision (your ontic uncertainty). If the bomb were never dropped on Hiroshima, other things would have happened instead but there would always be a true uncertainty about which outcome would have been the preferable one, since one of the outcomes failed to occur, so therefore we can't say anything about it.

The other problem with situational ethics is that it basically gave people an excuse to flaunt the rules whenever it suited them, because you were 'doing it for love'. It was too individualistic. 'Love' was too vaguely defined. The Anglican Bishop John Robinson saw this and gave a critique on situational ethics, saying that 'it will all descend into moral chaos'. Similarly, in the recent history of climate science, you have evidence of scientists flaunting the rules of science in the service of 'saving the world'. But are they really saving the world, or just bending the rules to suit themselves?

This I think is why I can't get too excited about policy matters. We may choose to do this, or we may choose to do that, but outcomes will always be slippery; but by allowing the bending/breaking of the rules in order to satisfy some imagined policy outcome just sets you up for more corruption.

I think we're finding that the problems associated with PNS (Post Normal Science) are similar to the ones that the Arch Bishop was alluding to in his criticisms of situational ethics. It seems to be the same road. What you say, Sam?

PS, Ravetz on 'climategate' and PNS

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:29.

I've been also thinking about this stuff the last few days in relation to the prospect of a new surface temperature record. My hope is that if done well, it's bound to represent an improvement over the current one; but ultimately it will still surely leave us with this same problem of... just how much importance or certainty will we be able to attach to to any kind of number for global mean temperature that can be coaxed out of the data? Some of this data is very old, and was collected in a ton of different ways. How reliable is it? There are sure to be a lot of arguments about just how to treat it, and maybe there will be no right way, leaving any adjustments as a best guess kind of deal.

I also agree with Pielke Sr, that we now have Argo and therefore we already have this new system (the surface of the Earth is 70% water, you can't account for that with ground measurements), but that leaves a couple hundred years of measurements sitting on the shelf, and a lot of scientists/activists don't trust Argo because it shows the oceans as cooling! Here we have the most advanced and extensive surface temperature monitoring system in existence and you can't even find this data on the web!

I also agree with Judith btw. This has been my own kind of 'boilerplate belief' whenever I've engaged with the issue of AGW (not always, but the last few years). It's basically the reverse of DWB's position, that scientists should basically know what they're talking about. I've been reading lately, that climatology as a science really only got organised into coherence around the late 70's with the journal Climatic Change. Before that it was mostly just guys collecting statistics on things, it must have been horrendously tedious. It was basically a backwater science. No money coming in. Once you've figured out that global warming/climate change represents both the grand entrance and centre stage positioning of Climatology on to the scientific world stage, it's probably only natural to assume that there will be some people who are going to want to oversell themselves on the importance of their work and what they know.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Fri, 27 Aug 2010 20:11.

Sam, just a quick mention that Peter Thorne has posted at WUWT now on the surface temperatures project.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:41.

I'll just mention some related news for anyone interested- that recognition of the poor quality of Canada's climate data is finally in the open. They say acceptance is the first step to recovery. Let the healing begin

http://wattsupwiththat.com/201 ... ty-disturbing/#more-23813

From WUWT:

Quote :

From the “we told you so time and again department”, Canadian weather data is a mess. It took an FOIA to get the “fess up” out in the open.

From the Canadian Government's own report:

Quote :

“The common assumption among users is that the data has been observed accurately, checked for mistakes and stored properly,” said the report, printed in June 2008. “It is profoundly disturbing to discover the true state of our climate data network and the data we offer to ourselves and the real world.”

The stinging assessment, obtained through an access-to-information request, suggests that Canada’s climate network infrastructure is getting progressively worse and no longer meets international guidelines.
Key findings in the report:

• Automatic precipitation sensors are subject to significant and well-known errors, which have significantly compromised the integrity of Canada’s precipitation data;
• National coverage of certain climate elements, such as hours of bright sunshine, have been effectively terminated;
• Human quality control of climate data ceased as of April 1, 2008. Automated quality control is essentially non-existent. There is no program in place to prevent erroneous data from entering the national climate archive;
• Climate data, which could be gathered at minimal additional cost, is not being gathered due to lack of funds;
• Climate data, which could be gathered with minimal additional effort, is not being gathered due to lack of personnel;
• Some existing data, which needs to be interpreted and processed before being placed into the national archive, is being ignored due to lack of resources;
• A significant portion of the volunteer climate network will likely be lost due to a decision on the part of the Meteorological Service of Canada to discontinue processing paper forms and to emphasize electronic input;
• Clients of Environment Canada (both internal and external) cannot obtain the information they need. This has significant implications for programs carried out by all levels of government, the private sector and the international scientific community; and
• Lack of resources and delayed quality control of climate data have resulted in updates of Intensity/Duration/Frequency curves that proceed in fits and starts. Systematic and regular updates are desired by the engineering community in order to design public infrastructure (roads, buildings, sewers) that will be able to cope with severe storms and phenomena associated with changing climate.
• These issues are widely recognized by staff within the department, and are becoming increasingly obvious to outside partners and clients, damaging morale within and credibility outside the department.
Source: Degradation in Environment Canada’s Climate Network, Quality Control and Data Storage Practices: A Call to Repair the Damage. June 2008.

Here's a graphic showing the supposed 'warming' over Canada (from NASA GISS)




and some notable quotes from WUWT comments:

From Pamela Grey

Quote :

So the rub here is the report date: 2008. And it took this long, with a FOIR, to get a copy of it? What a stupendous surprise. Let me back-cast this scenario. Someone reports that climate information sources are bad. A commission was authorized to do a report on the condition of climate data. When the report was done, the commission was disbanded because it met the obligations of the process. Most governments are process oriented, not results oriented. Once reports are done, everyone goes home, confident and happy in the knowledge that reports were done.

and E.M. Smith

Quote :

Having looked closely at the Canada data, I’m not surprised. It’s pretty rough.
I would point out that two of the other red areas on the map up top are Turkey and Pakistan. Now in Pakistan we have bright red in areas that the government freely admits it doesn’t even have control. Just how good are THOSE readings going to be? And for Turkey, we have a peer reviewed paper by the Turkish Meteorologists saying that if you use ALL their stations instead of just the few cherry picked for GHCN you find Turkey is cooling, not warming….

The circled area in the anomaly map is Finland and relates back to a story posted at Climate Audit a few months ago on GISS data quality control, and also a very interesting but very detailed and long post at WUWT (called GISS & METAR - dial "M" for missing minus signs).


This stuff all needs to get sorted out.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Wed, 25 Aug 2010 23:15.

I'm positive. I think this can only be a good thing, both for the reputation of the MET Office and for a more accurate long term assessment of global climate/weather. It's an inevitable development, the former system was in no way up to the standard required for what we are now asking of it.

I take this partially as a bit of a 'sorry' from MET, without actually having to say sorry. A bit like NOAA's mission statement quietly morphing from the old 'NOAA understands and predicts changes...' to 'NOAA aims to understand and predict changes...' ie, less hubris, more science. The new system will of course need to be much more sophisticated in dealing with and adjusting for UHI than the old system, for one thing. I reckon it would be great for Anthony to get on board this, someone like E.M. Smith is another natural pick. I think they will do it the right way, I don't see that there is a choice really- there are just too many eyes on this. Alarm bells will start ringing the moment anything looks like it might be turning dodgy. Not good for MET at this stage.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:17.

MET Office planning a 'do over' of the surface temperature records. New website online - surfacetemperatures.org

Story at WUWT, here

Quote from Shotglass :

i think you can see where im comming from when i talk about noise

Yep.

...but atleast it's a debate. Al Gore said it was over. That's gotta be the 'noisiest' position to take of them all.


edit: trust me, you learn to filter a lot of the crap out. And general politeness goes a long long way.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:12.

Quote :

surely there must be something written by people with the appropriate scientific background
you know something like hawkings book except for climatology instead of cosmology

Books, books, books. Hmmm... To be honest I'm not sure what would pass here. Usually the books I have seen have usually been very weighted to one side, they tend to be pretty partisan. I guess the best place to find the consensus view in written format are the IPCC reports themselves. They are online but you can print them out and then you'll have a book

In blogland there are 'guides' in point form to various arguments over AGW. For example, JoNova had a guide called the 'Skeptics Handbook' which is probably a few years old now. It comes across as very trashy and fairly politicised, imo, but quite solid on the main points from a casual skim. Her handbook was recently rebutted by John Cook who runs the Skeptical Science blog, in a guide called 'A Scientific Guide to the Skeptics Handbook'. I notice Jo Nova has since answered John Cook in a post at her website called the 'Unskeptical Guide to the Skeptics Handook'.

To be frank, I'm not a fan of the point by point argumentative format. I have not really bothered to read any of these guides myself. I much prefer a conversational style where many people get to weigh in on a particular story or paper. It's much more interesting and you can pick up subtle but important information from people with a wide range of experience and perspective. I think the best place to do this is the Watts Up With That site, it is by far the most popular climate blog and there is definitely a reason for that. It tends very much to the skeptical side, but skepticism is always a good base for discussion and people are certainly free to defend the 'consensus' through any of the information at their disposal. People tend to learn a lot because the discussion's never dogmatic or stifling in fear of veering off into non-official territory. No stone is left unturned (due to it's popularity it is routinely bashed and name called by some of the other blogs ('what's up with crap', anti science blog etc), but from my experience the name callers can hardly match it in terms of good quality content and analysis. WUWT also has a great sense of humour once you're familiar enough to pick up on some of the in jokes).

As far as pro agw blogs go, I would probably say Skeptical Science. It sounds like this is a 'skeptics' site but it's not. It's a well run blog and people tend to stay polite. Real Climate, the granddaddy of the pro-agw blogs and the 'official last word' on matters agw (apart from IPCC), can however get pretty nasty. They also have a known history of deleting awkward skeptical posts. They let the dumb skeptics through to be torn apart by the agw wolves, as an example to the rest of skeptic kind I guess. Their censorial approach has alienated a lot of well meaning posters just looking for answers, and in fact several websites have been made over time with the sole purpose of archiving deleted RC posts, one of which I'm familiar with called RC Rejects. RC sprung up as a defense against Steve M's work on the hockeystick. It is in part run by Michael Mann, author of the original hockeystick. RC are protectors of the hockeystick.

There are other nasty personalities around. Mark Morano has a big mouth and is obnoxious, he runs the skeptical site Climate Depot. I won't link to it. On the agw (or cagw- for catastrophic) side, there's 'Tamino', who has venom in his blood and a very underdeveloped sense of humour. He runs the ironically titled blog 'Open Mind'.

There are other blogs but some of them tend to be quite specific in their content, ie- they are not generalist blogs. Bishop Hill blog fits in nicely with the work being done over at Climate Audit- this is the guy who wrote 'The Hockeystick Illusion' - he is intimately familiar with every detail of this history. Once again I haven't read it but if you're looking for accessible information about the hockeystick there will probably be no better starting point.

PS, I was maybe going to recommend a book that I haven't read called "Chill: A Global Reassessment of Global Warming Theory". It's from the skeptical viewpoint but is written by a former adviser to Greenpeace, a guy called Peter Taylor. Peter sometimes appears on the various blogs and I've always found him to be a reasonable and informed kind of guy. While I was reading through the reviews of 'Chill' just then I came across a mention of another book he'd written, called Shiva's Rainbow, about his time in Greenpeace. Looking through the review of that book, I might just have to reassess my opinion of Peter. It's one of the wackiest things I've ever read.

Since I've been poking a bit of fun at current and former Heads of IPCC recently, I think it's only fair I link to this book of Peter's. Let's just hope he's grown out of all that now...

http://www.amazon.com/Shivas-R ... ewpoints=0#R3GXVA2RY0SEP5

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:54.

Here's a new non-peer reviewed review of Rajendra Pachauri of the IPCC's new book- a smutty romance novel called 'Return to Almora'... Again, just for laughs.

http://blogs.the-american-inte ... -and-lone-ranger-of-love/

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:08.

Quote :

of course its great but when youre concerend about accountability and money surely you must see people who theorise over ideas that currently are either flat out or quite close to untestable as the worst example of that

I haven't looked into string theory. I've heard from people I generally trust that it's probably not all that it was stacked up to be. I don't claim to have any understanding on that. My concern isn't really about the money part, as I said it's great that people have room for creative and theoretical testing of new ideas in physics. As long as it's not getting out of control too much. O.K. Maybe the large hadron collider is getting a bit out of control But I can't say much at all about whether that's going to bear any kind of practical fruit or not. I know that the solar physicist Svensmark will be using it to test out his cosmic ray theory of climate change at some point.

Quote :

true but thats what peer reviewing and papers with opposing content are for not blogs

I think peer review has failed in this particular case. You should admit that a guy on a forum's apparent keenness for a certain paper to be correct and the basically uncritical acceptance by the whole scientific community over a single paper that was very radical in its conclusions compared to past papers and completely unverifiable, are two very different things. I'm not a scientist. Never pretended to be. But if you'd demand the behaviour of scientists that you are demanding of me then you should alteast agree with me that this whole hockeystick affair has been incredibly dodgy from the outset. It's been protected from criticism for years by such regarded journals as Nature- the failure of Mann to show his work has been protected by scientists and then somehow anyone critical of that kind of behaviour ends up getting lumped in with the creationist set? That's really illogical in my book, I can't see any kind of logic in that at all. It shows just how political this all is. People are not making sense.

For the record, Mann does now show his work. But it's been a long, long time coming. It's almost too late now really, the argument is moving on.

Here's a funny.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:40.

Quote from SamH :

Roger Helmer's withdrawn his apology to John Houghton, in a letter to the Telegraph.

He originally misquoted Houghton, but the actual quote isn't much different from the misquote. I think Houghton probably didn't mean to come across the way he did in the original comment, but he complained that he'd never said anything LIKE the misquote. It turned out that he did.

Funny that we're starting to get around to the original theme again, science or religion. DWB bought it up, and Shotglass reminded us of the thread title.

Sam's post above is actually pretty interesting in this context. There's some information and background on this story here, but i'll post the general gist...

Sir John Houghton, founder of the Hadley Centre, former Co-Chair of IPPC and former Chief Executive of the MET office, writes...

Quote :

“Dr Benny Peiser, director of the the Global Warming Policy Foundation, writing about my work as the chair of the first IPCC Scientific Assessment , quotes me as saying: ‘Unless we announce disasters no one will listen,’ thereby attributing to me and the IPCC an attitude of hype and exaggeration. That quote from me is without foundation. I have never said it or written it ...


... This quote is doing damage not only to me as a responsible scientist but also to the IPCC which in its main conclusions has always worked to avoid exaggeration. I demand from Dr Peiser an apology that he failed to check his sources and a public retraction of the use he made of the fabricated quotation.”

Turns out he didn't say that. Not directly quoting someone is pretty bad imo, along with quoting out of context. But what he did in fact say was something very similar. What he actually said was-

Quote :

“If we want a good environmental policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster.”

and we know this is correct through an interview with Sir John in the Sunday Telegraph uncovered only just recently. The quote also apparently appears in a Nature article titled 'Is God Green?'. As Sam points out he has routinely denied that he ever said anything like this. The context these words appear in is pretty eye opening!

For fun, here's the newspaper clipping of the interview (1995). It's dramatically entitled- Moral Outlook: Earthquake Wind and Fire.





Lol! IPCC got religion?


Here's a picture of Sir John giving some form of speech. Look- you can see the hockeystick in the background! It looks pretty scary.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Sun, 22 Aug 2010 22:04.

Quote :

strong oppinions?`the only strong oppinion i remember having voiced in here is to let scientists do their work without constant harrassment from people who dont have the necessary background to truely follow the ongoing discussion

Ok, but you do realise at some level science and the rest of society is a two way street. If scientists are going to bugger around and decide to simply stop playing by the rules of accepted science because "it is not standard practice in the field" then people do have the right to get onto that and tell them that's not good enough. They pay those scientists for starters. You call it harassment. I call it accountability. We have a difference of opinion on this but I feel it's fair for people to butt in when normal scientific rigour starts to slip. Same goes for accountability in media. For some reason this all morphed into the idea of normal people pretending to play scientists, which was getting off track as far as I'm concerned. Nowhere has anyone stated here that they were scientists. Normal people can follow current events in science and understand conclusions. Surely you won't argue against that?

Btw I have done some environmental science in my time. That's of course worth nothing (I didn't even finish the course) but I'll mention it all the same. It doesn't change the discussion one bit.

Quote :

wait what? where did i ever say that?

Ok, you didn't say that. But you make it harder for the average person to understand issues if you simply eschew all blogs and related media as noise. There are not many other places for the average person to go. The ideal of the internet in part was that it would be a place where scientists could communicate with other scientists and develop theories and solutions to problems with less much less hassle than they could in the past. You should accept at some level that blogs and other online channels play an important role in the communication and creation of scientific knowledge, if only at the incubatory level. I've seen this happen. It's wonderful when it does.

Of course, they do also generate a lot of noise. Life is noisy. You've gotta pick the right ones.

I agree with you about more popular established media such as the MSM, where there is very little possibility or space for a deeper enquiry into various scientific topics. Journalists make notoriously bad communicators of science, and I'm sure you'll agree. Also there is the trap of spinning findings in order to generate sensationalist headlines and sales. People need a little more than that.

Quote :

on a sort of related note you dont see people complaining about physicists "wasting" grant money on finding higgs bosons or fighting over whether string theory or loop quantum gravity is the correct model
why do you believe is that?

Yeah. I think it's great that people are paid to fight over this stuff. Wouldn't stop it for the world.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Sun, 22 Aug 2010 18:25.

American Psycho. Brilliant.

Quote :

what i took from his comment was that for one you are in a non scientific position (something ive pointed out all throughout this thread and finally got you to agree on) and that you jump on and dryhump any critical paper without waiting for the evaluation (by people who understand the science) of that paper to happen first

I understand DWB's mindset and attack pretty well I feel. It's disappointing coming from him. It's the same as calling sceptics flat earthers or thinking that all of climate science is a huge socialist conspiracy. It's pretty low level type stuff. It's political. It's designed to breed a perception of sceptics as conservatives. It usually happens when people don't have much else to say but they need to get a word in anyway, for the team as it were. And I'm shaking my head right now thinking where did I ever say I was a scientist and I've told you repeatedly that I will wait to see how this paper goes. I've requoted myself on that atleast twice already and I'm not going to do it again. You can either start listening to me (and yes I am listening to you) or we're not going to get anywhere. PS, I've talked specifically about one paper with a particularly ugly history. Where does the 'any critical paper' come into it? You're making stuff up again.

One thing I would like to know is- you've said you don't follow popular media on this issue, but you've also admitted you don't read or follow the literature (reading the conclusions should be enough for most people to understand what the paper's saying) and you have no interest in the blogs or any of the online resources. I wonder then where or how you have been able to develop such strong opinions and why you feel the need to keep brushing off everything I say? I read the MSM, I read the literature, and I follow a number of blogs. I listen to scientists from all points of view on GW everyday. I check all the datasets and I am relatively aware of the strengths and weakness of each. I understand the political games being played by either side. Isn't it just possible that I may just have a point, somewhere?

Ultimately I agree with you that the science will get done and we will all be able to simply trust scientists to tell us what we need to know. But you can't seem to accept the possibility that things have run off the rails a bit and that we need to get things back on track, and that requires a certain amount of pressure from ordinary people to help achieve. It requires a certain amount of awareness about what's going on. A tempered awareness should be a good thing, but you sound as though you want everyone kept in the dark of climate science kindergarten where the only received education is 'An Inconvenient Truth' run on an endless loop. That's not healthy or responsible imo. I believe that people should be a bit more media sophisticated on this issue, since it appears to be quite important. We don't need to go much further than that. But we need to go further than where we are now. That's what I'm talking about.

I have trouble trying to work out why that seems to scare intelligent people.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Sun, 22 Aug 2010 15:57.

Thanks DWB. You've really nailed it. Not.

Whether you like it or not, these issues are at the forefront of AGW. Appreciate the ad hom though. (a little well worn maybe)
For the record, Judith Curry is not 'anti agw'. If you'd read her take on the actual science you'd know that. I don't know of any scientist who is 'anti agw'. That's ridiculous. You're just regurgitating what the papers are telling you.

Quote :

alarmists vs denialists

Shot, in your mind I sort of see it's 'scientists vs idiots'. Again, this is far from actual reality. (I agree it's nasty out there with the 'isms, but I've never encouraged that, along with a lot of people who are just trying to understand. You can see that Sam and I have talked about the 'sceptics' and 'denialists' label. Also I am not fond of any of the pro AGW labels as well. Labels are convenient but the truth is messy. Maybe it's all crystal clear in DWB's head. I don't know).

For the record, this 'creationists' jab is a well known political tactic which is designed to encourage people to connect any kind of critique of the mainstream position with an anti-science position. Sad to see DWB using it here.

edit: if this is going to be the limit to the depth of this discussion then I can't see the point in going on much further. I'll just bow out now and leave you to your 'ideas'. Much better discussion elsewhere.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Sun, 22 Aug 2010 08:39.

Quote :

none of us here is educated enough in either climatology or statistics to properly evaluate the papers presented from either side of the debate

I said

Quote :

My eyes blurred over at the statistics

Quote :

I didn't get past high school math.

Quote :

anybody with the chops to do so can do this work. It's certainly not going to be done by me.

No argument Shot.

edit:

Just relating back to my 'vindication' comment, I admit that probably wasn't the best way to introduce the paper here. We don't know how it will hold up until proper replication and a full and frank discussion of methodology by all the relevant experts takes place, by both statisticians and climate scientists. I take a long term view but I'll also admit a bias here- I would like to see Steve M vindicated. His criticisms have been routinely fobbed off by the climate crowd and he's had one hell of a time in getting people to understand his case with any objectivity. He's been ignored to the point where certain climate scientists couldn't even come to mentioning his name. When not ignoring him, they (mostly Mann) would insinuate oil connections. It's all pretty sordid.

Mann did not provide the data and methods by which to replicate the original hockeystick but it was nevertheless embraced with such fanfare and approval that it seemed that any kind of critical analysis would not or could not matter. It immediately became the poster child for AGW and Mann it's darling scientist. This has naturally angered and frustrated a number of people as they've come to realise the ease at which the HS had slipped into the scientific mainstream without a fair and proper thrashing over of issues.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Sat, 21 Aug 2010 22:35.

Quote :

the difference between you and me

If I was to try to heal this little spat right now I might say that the difference between you and me lies in that it's possible I'm just slightly more aware of some of the 'uncertainty caveats' in this science, and the reason for that is probably because I actively seek them out. I want to know what we don't know. I'm interested in the temperature data problems. I'm interested in the Paleo reconstructions. I try to deconstruct alarmist or politically sceptical news stories with better information. These issues don't really turn up anywhere other than in blogs for the most part but every now and then a paper is written and I will usually have a go at reading it. Whatever your take on the science I think it's a positive thing that people really try to get a better handle on these issues and the only place the average person can do that for better or worse is on the internet. We need professionals to explain things to us which are difficult but we also want the full story. Not something which agrees with this or that ideology. The web is actually a good place to do that because there is experience and expertise on offer, from scientists both active and retired- and anyone with a modicum of common sense who's willing to put in the effort will over time be able to sift through the political smokescreens, the ad homs, mis-information, dis-information and what have you and arrive at a fairly servicable (but still crap) approximation of the general state of the science, with any luck. We have the IPCC reports. We have global media facilitating online debate amongst scientists, interviews, science driven blogs, satellite and land/sea thermometer databases, etc. It's all there. And it's an evolving thing. It's actually pretty cool.

The last thing people usually take away from all of this information is certainty, because there's always something new to learn, and the information can change almost day by day. That's fine by me and I'm happy in my current ignorance of things, although I'm always trying to work on it. I would never in a million years imagine I can do science better than a scientist, but I've also seen scientists act more like advocates and I then start to question their motives. Appeal to authority is dangerous and science has always insisted on not taking anything on word, but on data and observations. I feel comfortable in always keeping that in mind.

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Sat, 21 Aug 2010 21:36.

Quote :

apparently i am the only one comfortable enough to admit that to himself

So you imagine.


edit: don't you realise that this is what the 'sceptical' side has been trying to say all along? That we don't know enough. That we are uncertain and that we should acknowledge the weaknesses in data and methods. Perhaps you took my 'vindication of Steve M' comment the wrong way. What Steve has been saying all along is that things are more uncertain than we've previously been led to believe. Read Judith Curry's statement here again. (remember: Climate Scientist)

Quote :

With the IPCC, and the expectation that scientists hew to the party line, it was getting pretty evangelical. When I speak up about maybe there’s more uncertainty, some people regard that as heresy. That’s not a good thing for either science or policy. We’ve got to lose that.

Here's Gavin Schmidt (Climate Scientist)

Quote :

If you ask me as a person, do I think the Russian heat wave has to do with climate change, the answer is yes. If you ask me as a scientist whether I have proved it, the answer is no — at least not yet.

I said (not Climate Scientist)

Quote :

If anything it's an opportunity to offer up some humility and modesty over the limits of knowledge in the face of bewildering complexity. You know, the known unknowns and all that..

I freely admit my uncertainty. I'm basically revelling in it. What were you saying again?

Last edited by Electrik Kar, Sat, 21 Aug 2010 19:10.

Quote from Boris Lozac :

cause you think you're way smarter then everyone else..

I think this is what Shotglass takes for 'well established facts'.

I'd disagree, but I understand that's a little controversial.