climate change.

[Ishmael]

On the surface I don't find fault with those weary of sources. I am not going to click on a Salon or Slate link to see which article that I probably previously scanned and dismissed they are referencing.

In this case, you acknowledged the bias of the site, and not only let them know that the reporting was based on a scientific study and provided the link to that study so they needn't sully their eyeballs at all.

Still- a derisive sniff.

Why is it that the "we love science" crowd is never interested in reading scientific extracts, just the summaries on Salon?

"Science" is code for "I'm smarter than you because I am a liberal and some conservative types do not believe in evolutionary change...so THERE!"

Either they are so remarkably disinterested and unread on the subjects they spout about, or they DO know that none of these projected catastrophes can possibly occur in their lifetimes and just want the "science" angle to make themselves feel smart and cudgel their "enemies."

My theory is a little different, it's a theory derived from a mental illness I suffered from when I was young and liberal. It's called the "I Want to Rule the World" syndrome. The world would be a veritable utopia if only humans would eat the foods liberals want them to eat, drive the cars liberals want them to drive,............., well, you get the picture. They want to control every facet of the individuals life. And if we won't do it because they say so, they'll pass a law banning all the alternatives. There are no ends they won't go to to remove as much liberty and freedom form individuals lives as possible. That being the case they're going to be opposed to, or ignore, anyone or any science that would thwart their plans for the rest of us.

Ishmael

 

[suckonsimon]

Just a comparison across the Pond:

Here's the UK [North East anyway] basking in warm sunshine again, and my honey bees still out foraging on the last of autumn flowers, and we're seeing pics of deep snow in the US, all of which bar Alaska is so much further south than we are. I'm at latitude 55N which cuts the Alaska Panhandle and the Aleutian Islands and today going out with just a shirt is fine .... Just sayin!

 

[Saint Peter]

NOAA is a huge organization with some actual scientists and some political appointees. To suggest that everything stamped with their good science seal of approval has some remarkable imprimatur of verity is not the case.

NOAA has been caught manipulating data sets. Someone there is agenda driven..

That said, I wouldn't dismiss their findings out of hand. I will read them and anyone else with a critical eye. Does this stand up to reason or not? If it does not stand up to reason do their authors acknowledge the issues that a reasonable person would raise, or do they gloss over it?

Is it a paper on what they have measured (assuming they haven't fudged it) or is it a paper filled with conjecture, hypothesis, and projections based on variables that are assigned static rather than dynamic indicators?

I have a friend with multiple science degrees. He buys the crap that conservatives are anti-science and "don't believe in 'climate change'" I then point out specific things that liberals say like today in a thread "Co2 is toxic" I haven't run that one by him but I am certain he will say what I said which is, that is in no way the cause for alarm here. No one is predicting co2 levels that would make human habitation of the planet even remotely problematic.

It isn't climate change that is the the thing being argued about. It is the hyperbole and hysteria on the left about stuff that is not at all supported by even the papers they cite.

NOAA is the real deal. They have been doing science through administration after administration. The right likes to discredit NOAA because the right wants to privatize everything and slash programs. The right also likes to discredit NOAA because on the topic of climate change the science is not lining up with the right's politics.

Google "NOAA has been caught manipulating data sets" and check out the first 14 pages of results. Conspiracy sites. One after the other. More right wing spins. More bullshit.

 

[MrBates2]

kbitch wants to fist my arse

She needs to get in line, behind me, like the rest of us.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I gave you NOAA. Respectable science.

Your meat is limp.

"National"

That means they must answer to their benefactor. They are not independent.

"The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 [pdf] was signed into law by President Obama on February 17, 2009. It is an unprecedented effort to jumpstart our economy, create or save millions of jobs, and put a down payment on addressing long-neglected challenges so our country can thrive in the 21st century. "

http://www.noaa.gov/recovery/

What do you think is the big political challenge...?

 

[Saint Peter]

What do you think is the big political challenge...?

Google "NOAA has been caught manipulating data sets" and check out the first 14 pages of results. Conspiracy sites. One after the other. More right wing spins. More bullshit.

The challenge is you understanding how the science is actually done, not the Fox News Wet Dream of how it might be done.

 

[toubab]

On the subject of ice ages. There is an article in WND that is an interesting read.

New data backs 'ice age' prediction

Needless to say there are going to be some folks that attack the source (WND) as opposed to doing any research of their own. But the WND article links to a paper published in Nature. A peer reviewed paper.

It's the Sun

That information coupled with other known facts, such as we are at a Milankovitch maximum deviation from solar proximity and we are at, or very near, the peak of the most recent inter-glacial maximum, suggest that there is some validity to the notion that we're going to be cooling off.

The article suggests that this cooling will occur regardless of the atmospheric CO2 concentration. It would do well to remember that "Snowball Earth" occurred when the atmospheric CO2 concentration was 10 - 25% (Paleo-climatologists are still arguing over the exact number but 10% is regarded as the minimum). Our current atmospheric CO2 concentration is approx. 390 parts per million, or .039%.

Ishmael

I've learned a couple of things in life. One is it's rarely a good idea to shoot the messenger. Another is the best way to predict the future is to study the past.

Ice ages come, and ice ages go. Then they come again.

 

[phrodeau]

It's hilarious to read that conservatives think a government agency is expected to be partisan.

 

[MrBates2]

It's hilarious to read that conservatives think a government agency is expected to be partisan.

Common sense says a chastened president would acknowledge the obvious, no?

 

[dolf]

I only returned to laugh at stupid people pretending to understand science.

carry on.

 

[trysail]

Possibly the single best set of slides on climate I've ever seen:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/8/25/kelly-on-the-engineering-challenge.html

Mike Kelly
Department of Engineering
Cambridge University

http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/8/25/kelly-on-the-engineering-challenge.html



​

 

[trysail]

The author of the comment below is Dr. Jonathan Jones, professor of physics at Brasenose College, Oxford University.

Richard, I can't answer for our host, but you have to remember why some of us got involved in the climate wars in the first place.

For me this has never really been about climate itself. I don't find climate partcularly interesting; it's one of those worthy but tedious branches of science which under normal circumstances I would happily leave to other people who like that sort of thing. My whole involvement has always been driven by concerns about the corruption of science.

Like many people I was dragged into this by the Hockey Stick. I was looking up some minor detail about the Medieval Warm Period and discovered this weird parallel universe of people who apparently didn't believe it had happened, and even more bizarrely appeared to believe that essentially nothing had happened in the world before the twentieth century. The Hockey Stick is an extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary evidence, so I started reading round the subject. And it soon became clear that the first extraordinary thing about the evidence for the Hockey Stick was how extraordinarily weak it was, and the second extraordinary thing was how desperate its defenders were to hide this fact. I'd always had an interest in pathological science, and it looked like I might have stumbled across a really good modern example.

You can't spend long digging around the Hockey Stick without stumbling across other areas of climate science pathology. The next one that really struck me was the famous Phil Jones quote: "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it". To any practising scientist that's a huge red flag. Sure we all feel a bit like that on occasion, but to actually say something like that in an email is practically equivalent to getting up on a public platform and saying "I'm a pathological scientist, and I'm proud."

Rather naively I initially believed that Phil Jones was just having a bad day and had said something really stupid. Surely he couldn't really think that was acceptable? And surely his colleagues would deal with him? But no, it turned out that this apalling quote was only the most quotable of several other remarks, and he really was trying to hide his data from people who might (horror of horrors) want to check his conclusions.

That's when I got involved in my FOI request. And consequently got exposed to the full horror of "big climate", as clear an example of politicised and pathological science as I have ever seen. And then came Climategate 2009, and "hide the decline". All downhill from there.

When will I be done with climate? Quite simply when it stops being a pathological science and starts acting according to the normal rules and conventions of scientific discourse. At that point I will, I'm afraid, simply lose interest in the whole business, and leave it to the experts to get on with their stuff, just as I leave most of the rest of science to the appropriate experts.

To put it another way, I will be done with climate once I can trust that Richard Betts can be left to do good work on his own. I absolutely trust you to get on with doing good stuff under normal circumstances. But I'm afraid I don't trust you to do good work under current pathological conditions, because you don't stand up against the all too obvious stench emanating from some of your colleagues.

For me the Hockey Stick was where it began, and probably where it will end (and I will daringly suggest that the same thing might be true for our host). The Hockey Stick is obviously wrong. Everybody knows it is obviously wrong. Climategate 2011 shows that even many of its most outspoken public defenders know it is obviously wrong. And yet it goes on being published and defended year after year.

Do I expect you to publicly denounce the Hockey Stick as obvious drivel? Well yes, that's what you should do. It is the job of scientists of integrity to expose pathological science, and it is especially the job of scientists in closely related fields. You should not be leaving this to random passing NMR spectroscopists who have better things to do. But I'm afraid I no longer expect you to do so. The opportune moment has, I think, passed. And that is why, even though we are all delighted to have you here, and all enjoy what you have to say, some of us get a trifle tetchy from time to time.

You ask us to judge you by AR5, and in many ways that is a reasonable request. Many of us will judge it by the handling of paleoclimate, not because this is all that important an aspect of the science, but rather because it is a litmus test of whether climate scientists are prepared to stand up against the bullying defenders of pathology in their midst. So, Richard, can I look forward to returning back to my proper work on the application of composite rotations to the performance of error-tolerant unitary transformations? Or will we all be let down again?

Dec 3, 2011 at 6:11 PM | Jonathan Jones

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/12/2/tim-barnett-on-the-hockey-stick.html

 

[Ishmael]

Possibly the single best set of slides on climate I've ever seen:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/8/25/kelly-on-the-engineering-challenge.html

Mike Kelly
Department of Engineering
Cambridge University

http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/8/25/kelly-on-the-engineering-challenge.html



​

Excellent presentation. I particularly enjoyed his destruction of the logic in 'investing' in immature and/or uneconomical technologies. As an aside re. the government expenditures, in the last half of the 70's I was working at Los Alamos designing biomedical instrumentation. This was during Jimmy Carter's "War on Cancer." Billions of dollars were made available through government grants and every crack pot researcher in the US applied to get their fists in that pile of cash. To be fair there were some legitimate efforts taking place that did yield positive results, but for the most part the greater bulk of those monies might as well have been flushed down the toilet. I see the same thing occurring today re. 'renewable' energy (Solar, Wind, etc.). The problem is the method of funding these research efforts. It matters not whether it's cancer research or renewable energy, or anything else you might imagine, the government makes a pile of cash available and the best grant writers or those with the best political connections get a chunk of the cash regardless of the merit of their endeavor.

And he truly drives the economics home.............."Who pays and at what cost?"

As lucid as his presentation is I don't see it having a great deal of impact. The entire issue has become far too political. The UN sees the issue as a means of generating it's own, independent, cash flow which they can hand out to various nations to purchase boons. Wealth transfer on an international scale as it were. Here in the US that pile of cash is still being renewed annually and those that have tapped into the piggy bank are not going to give it up without a fight.

We're getting zero return on investment and no one seems to care.

Ishmael

 

[Que Va]

I always want to smack anyone on the left that uses the word 'investment' because it never means taking capital and putting it to work in anticipation or a return on that investment.

Without a reasonable expectation of an actual ROI, it is not an investment; it is an expenditure. Calling an expense an investment does not justify an expenditure. If you have to call something an investment that clearly is not, you ought not spend the money.

My theory is a little different, it's a theory derived from a mental illness I suffered from when I was young and liberal. It's called the "I Want to Rule the World" syndrome. The world would be a veritable utopia if only humans would eat the foods liberals want them to eat, drive the cars liberals want them to drive,............., well, you get the picture. They want to control every facet of the individuals life. And if we won't do it because they say so, they'll pass a law banning all the alternatives. There are no ends they won't go to to remove as much liberty and freedom form individuals lives as possible. That being the case they're going to be opposed to, or ignore, anyone or any science that would thwart their plans for the rest of us.

Ishmael

I never suffered any such delusions. I conceived by Goldwater supporters. When he lost, they didn't jump on the Johnson bandwagon. I have watched the results of that wrong election result my entire life and the mess it has led us to now. I get it that everyone thinks they are smart. Studies consistently show the more average your intellect, the more you over estimate intelligence. To be a leftist you have to either be a dilettante unconcerned with the actual tracking of the success of your ideas, very much aware but intellectually dishonest about the success of your ideas.

No one on this board with the possible exception of Trisail is more consistently plodding along repeating climate themes than Phrodeau and he clearly is disinterested in anything more than posting the odd ridiculously skewed graph that he doesn't understand with a smug, self-satisfied air of someone "in the know." He is very much the face of the great body of people advancing this weird religion.