Some readers may recall a sophomoric comment from an “Ethan” at this post. He persists, but I doubt if anyone is following it any more other than him. So I thought I’d start a newer thread to continue the discussion, and hopefully educate him. He last wrote:
“Mass economic dislocation, poverty, disease and death,” though, are all consequences of climate change. Sea level rise will send billions of people scrambling for higher ground, competing with the existing population for dwindling resources. The deserts will spread, and indeed are already spreading, destroying millions of acres of arable land in the southwestern United States and northern Africa.
Now, I am not suggesting solutions to this problem. Massive government intervention leaves a bad taste in my mouth, too. But it makes me sick to think that there is still so much doubt about climate change and its consequences among the general population, when the science is solid. My statement that 1 percent of scientists think climate change might not be human caused may be “argumentum ad verecundiam,” but it is nearly accurate…the number varies slightly from survey to survey, but in all the reports I could find it has never been above 4%. So we’re looking at, at worst, 97% consensus that climate change is a reality, and that human activity is the driving force behind it.
I have read the “climategate” emails, and frankly, there is nothing in them that suggests a vast conspiracy of scientists. They contained unprofessional language concerning doubters of climate change, but all of the quotes which seem to point to such a conspiracy were obviously removed from their proper context when reprinted by the media. In fact, I blame the media for the fact that so many people in the United States are not sure if climate change is a reality. That 1 – 4% of scientists is given equal time with the 97 – 99% who are positive climate change is happening, which creates widespread doubt when it should be minimal.
Now, again, I don’t know exactly what should be done about climate change. Action on a large scale is needed, and frankly I don’t know if people are ready for that. But the consequences of inaction will be very high, and will be seen in my lifetime. The consensus is that our emissions of greenhouse gases (e.g., our consumption of fossil fuels) must peak by 2015 for the temperature to stabilize at no more than 2 degrees Celsius above temperatures at the end of the last century. So I don’t know about you, but I’m probably going to buy an electric car when they hit the streets, and I think I’ll be doing my shopping at local farmers’ markets whenever possible. Even those little things (buying potatoes grown in your state instead of ones that were flown or trucked across country) make a difference. I just hope those little things are enough.
I’m kind of swamped today, but I trust other readers will set him on the road to wisdom. I would suggest though (because it’s not obvious that he did) that he start (as I suggested at the time) by reading the piece I wrote at PJM that the post was partially about.
Well for starters assuming that the sea level rise is actually going to occur (there is considerable doubt about the amount if any) we might ask the Dutch if they have any ideas about living in areas below sea level or maybe those tedious diamond mining companies in Southwest Africa which push huge dikes out into the South Atlantic to expose the sea floor for diamond mining, instead of having billions of people start heading for the Alps.
“My statement that 1 percent of scientists think climate change might not be human caused may be “argumentum ad verecundiam,” but it is nearly accurate…the number varies slightly from survey to survey, but in all the reports I could find it has never been above 4%. So we’re looking at, at worst, 97% consensus that climate change is a reality, and that human activity is the driving force behind it.”
…..and yet you fail to provide any sort of link to make your claims available for examination.
Perhaps we should start with the fact that science is not about haggling over what percentage of “scientists” agree about any particular hypothesis. Might as well start with the basics.
“I’m kind of swamped today”
What exactly are you swamped with today, Rand? Spreading more propaganda at PJM, which is laughingly called a news site?
Everything you write either here or there is nothing more than self-masturbatory.
You wouldn’t know truth if it came up and fucked you in the ass.
“Perhaps we should start with the fact that science is not about haggling over what percentage of “scientists” agree about any particular hypothesis. Might as well start with the basics.”
Well, it is, actually. Of course you weigh the opinions of scientists whose test were conducted properly, and who used the best data to draw their conclusions, more heavily than the opinions of less professional or informed scientists. And climate science is a real field, with real models based on real data, so you can dispense with the quotation marks.
What exactly are you swamped with today, Rand? Spreading more propaganda at PJM, which is laughingly called a news site?
Mark, this is his personal blog, not a news site. He’s free to express his opinion here as he chooses. That you come here spouting drivel and deride him for propaganda is comical, to say the least.
I’m not a scientist, climate or otherwise. However, I’m a software engineer with over 20 years of experience. That makes me qualified to comment on the code included in those releases last month, more qualified in fact than most scientists. I’d flunk any first year computer science student for writing such shoddy code. It’s an abomination.
First, they admit they don’t have the original data any more, just their “value added” data. They can’t document any of the changes they made to the original data, which immediately makes it unverifiable. In essense, garbage data. Garbage data fed to immaculate code will still produce garbage output. Garbage in, garbage out. Next, their computer code is junk. Garbage in plus garbage processing leads to garbage out squared.
You can talk about the emails all you want, but it’s the computer code that’s the most damning evidence against them.
But Ethan, he even used quotation marks around your name. Maybe you should go by “Ethan” from now on.
For future reference, anything that The Great Rand or his Echo-Chamber Commenters disagree with automatically implies that you are sophomoric, moronic, uneducated, and in need of wisdom.
Any cursory reading of this blog will clearly show that wisdom is one quality in VERY short supply. So I suppose if you were to go on the “road to wisdom”, you’d have to take the road that leads as far away from here as possible.
Hey Mark, what does your obviously Syphallus-diseased mind think is real news then?
If someone does an experiment or makes a conclusion without bulletproof data that they share freely with all others, I really don’t give them any weight at all.
And that includes purposely trying to shoot holes *in their own theory*. If you aren’t even trying to do that (and documenting it!), you are fooling yourself.
See: Feynman and Cargo Cult Science.
“Any cursory reading of this blog will clearly show that wisdom is one quality in VERY short supply. So I suppose if you were to go on the “road to wisdom”, you’d have to take the road that leads as far away from here as possible.”
Mark, if you get that Syphallus treated, you might find you can relate to rational people like the majority on this board instead of lashing out in your diseased, irrational delerium.
Anitbiotics are now available. There is no reason to suffer stupidly any longer.
“If someone does an experiment or makes a conclusion without bulletproof data that they share freely with all others, I really don’t give them any weight at all.” Even without that data, the models still stand up. This blog is a good starting point:
http://www.realclimate.org/
It’s not the emails, which are soap opera tabloid fodder but don’t invalidate the science. But judging from the code and the techniques, it all boils down to this: the scientists used linear techniques on a highly nonlinear system. Here is a more in-depth treatment of the matter.
I can accept that there is ample evidence for the claim that temperatures rose steadily in the last 30 years of the 20th century. I can even accept, with much more reservation and doubt, that humans were a significant contributor to that rise. This is all within the bounds of linearization.
What I absolutely cannot accept is the claims that science can therefore predict with any certainty what will happen outside the observed ranges. You can’t simply draw a line to infinity and pick a point with a nonlinear system, and that is essentially what they have done.
Mike,
Well, I’m 100% sure I do not have Syphilis. I’m also 100% unsure of what “Syphallus” is.
“…you might find you can relate to rational people like the majority on this board…
Thank you for that bit of humor. Today’s been rough and you just lightened it.
Ethan,
http://www.realclimate.org/ is left-wing propaganda. It has no place here among such educated and highly-rational people.
No, that is a heuristic used by laity who know nothing about an issue. It is a total non-starter for debate on content. Reality, nature, the universe has and will blow-away the best theories of great men, so if you wish to start an actual conversation about science you need to be able to punch down into the details of whatever argument you’re trying to make.
If you’re only here to proclaim, “the debate is over!” Well, you’ve already done that.
There was a time when only one percent of scientists believed in the Big Bang too. But further investigation shot down Steady State.
But there is NO further investigation if the scientists themselves are calling the new look researchers Philistines and anti-humanists, and calling the shut down of journals that print anti-global warming articles.
I don’t care what the topic is, everyone should question ‘scientists, who want to stop research into anything. What kind of scientist decides ALL his conclusions are right? Then dares anyone to disagree?
Isn’t that they same tack the church took with Galileo? And how many times have I heard that called a travesty?
I agree with you on that much, Der Schtumpty. Valid concerns should have their place in the discussion. But too many of the talking heads I see debating these things on the news are not qualified to discuss them. Their concerns are based on a misunderstanding of science and the scientific method, not on legitimate gripes about data or methods.
Well, it is, actually.
But not in the alternate reality of Wingnutland. In that rarefied space, AGW isn’t happening (despite what the majority of climatologists say), creationism is on a par with evolution (despite the professional opinion of nearly all biologists), and Nazism was a left-wing movement (because a lone crank wrote a book). Revisionism is the name of the game. If the rest of the world doesn’t see the same reality, it’s due to a vast conspiracy engineered by a liberal media and “elites” who inexplicably don’t want to maintain the status quo.
Even without that data, the models still stand up.
Excuse me, Ethan, but that’s absurd. If the data going into the models is suspect then any output from those models is also suspect. Garbage in, garbage out.
Unless, of course, the models were fudged from the beginning to produce the “correct” output.
Yeah, Dave, Rand is a real frothing creationist!
“Excuse me, Ethan, but that’s absurd. If the data going into the models is suspect then any output from those models is also suspect. Garbage in, garbage out.”
My point was that if you remove all ‘suspect’ data, you still get a model that proves global warming. Remove the garbage, in other words.
Unfortunately, since they no longer have the original data and can’t document the changes they made to create their “value added” data, all of the data are suspect. It’s back to square one to produce a clean data set.
http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2009/media/1021climate_letter.pdf
Look at all those left-wing, uneducated, anti-science, snake oil salesman.
“Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change
is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science.”
I’m sure glad we have you folks at Transterrestrial Musings on the case! Otherwise, I’d be compelled to believe these people!
Also, since none of the existing models have been validated against historical records, there’s no confidence in their outputs. Validation requires starting from a known point in time and running the model to check the output against what actually happened in the past. For example, none of the models predicted the actual measured cooling that’s happened for the past 10 years. Without validation, there’s no rational way to put any confidence in the model’s predictions for the future.
Yeah, Dave, Rand is a real frothing creationist!
Simpletons like Dave can’t imagine someone who is both a firm supporter of evolution (and a religious agnostic) and a skeptic on shoddy science like AGW. It doesn’t fit the template, and would make his head explode.
What’s interesting is that people challenging this are the ones actually defending true science, while the enablers and defenders of the frauds are continuing to damage its credibility.
Please excuse my lack of html skills, but here is some info, accompanied by links, to address ‘Ethan’.
1. EDMONTON — Only about one in three Alberta earth scientists and engineers believe the culprit behind climate change has been identified, a new poll reported today. (read more at: http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=1d688937-54b7-48f4-a4be-d6979dada5df&k=65311)
2. 41 percent disagree that the planet’s recent warmth “can be, in large part, attributed to human activity.” (read more at: http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/20512/Warming_Debate_Not_Over_Survey_of_Scientists_Shows.html)
Also, the 97% shown by ‘Ethan’ is the response of scientists who believe “global average temperatures have increased” during the past century.
You must be referring to the data referred to in this article:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece
That is a concern, in that now any papers published by that particular department are no longer able to be subjected to peer review. However, the UEA results were only one bit of evidence used to draw the conclusions of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Other models, and other data, exist, and those bits of data have been subjected to peer review, and are available for anyone qualified to understand them.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data.htm
Just the question of whether there is a significant anthropogenic component to any warming trend that is occurring is enough to derail any talk about a consensus. That there is a contribution by man isn’t really argued. Whether it’s significant or, more importantly, potentially catastrophic, isn’t settled by anything resembling science.
I’m generally agnostic on this issue, but the strong claims made on behalf of a relatively young and unproven science based on more assumptions than economics and psychology combined troubles me. It doesn’t help when you see misconduct and misguided attempts to spin the significance of that misconduct away.
I just had to respond to this, despite my general tendency to ignore such things. You can remove whatever data you like. In fact, you can add whatever data you like. A couple of years ago, a researcher (McKitrick, I think) showed that feeding random noise into Mann’s model produced a hockey stick.
A model that gives the same outputs, regardless of the inputs, is inherently flawed.
By the way, those of you who are proponents of AGW might try laying off the ad hominem and the horrible strawman arguments. Ethan I give great credit; though I believe he is wrong, he is at least trying to make a valid argument. Mark and Dave and their ilk just make me wish for USENET’s killfiles to be implemented in blog comment sections.
“By the way, those of you who are proponents of AGW might try laying off the ad hominem…”
As for the syphilis comments, however, they’re okay. And describing someone as ‘sophomoric’ and in need of wisdom when they disagree with what you say. That is also acceptable.
Nope. I didn’t say that. And if you’re trying to convince me that two wrongs make a right, especially when you started the poo flinging, I’ll note that you are unlikely to succeed.
But you are kind of sophomoric, for what that’s worth.
Mark Says:
December 29th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2009/media/1021climate_letter.pdf
Look at all those left-wing, uneducated, anti-science, snake oil salesman.
“Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science.”
I’m sure glad we have you folks at Transterrestrial Musings on the case! Otherwise, I’d be compelled to believe these people.
If you’re trying to win a debate, you might want to do better than using the Appeal to Authority Fallacy.
Actually, Rand accused Ethan of being sophomoric. He didn’t accuse ME of it. And if it had, I would have taken it as a compliment.
And you’re a moron, for what it’s worth.
I ignored the “sophomoric” comment, because I admittedly did not back up anything I said in my first post. But I will take this opportunity to say that I think Rand Simberg is a self-congratulatory blowhard whose posts on this blog (the ones that don’t deal with space travel, which are the ones I like and come here for) add up to farts in an echo chamber. Gotcha lines and sarcasm do not add up to scathing political commentary.
Ethan, not “scathing political commentary” but instead, “Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!” 🙂
It’s biting.
So very biting.
Actually, Rand accused Ethan of being sophomoric. He didn’t accuse ME of it. And if it had, I would have taken it as a compliment.
Well, as a foul-mouthed abusive troll with a third-grade mentality, I can see why you would. I won’t do you the honor.
But I will take this opportunity to say that I think Rand Simberg is a self-congratulatory blowhard
Can you point out an example of such “self-congratulation”?
Aww a third-grade mentality! Mister Simberg, you bestow upon me MUCH too great an honor.
Well, calling me a moron certainly convinced me of the rightness of your position, whatever it is.
Good job. Now move along and convince some other site’s readers.
“What’s interesting is that people challenging this are the ones actually defending true science, while the enablers and defenders of the frauds are continuing to damage its credibility.”
This thread provided me with an example right away. That statement can be reduced to “I’m defending science by pretending the climategate emails discredit climatology in general.”
“What’s interesting is that people challenging this are the ones actually defending true science, while the enablers and defenders of the frauds are continuing to damage its credibility.”
There’s some self-congratulation there. Thought you don’t explicitly include yourself, we’re well aware that you consider yourself a defender of true science (as much as that strains credibility) in the area of AGW.
Well, calling me sophomoric certainly convinced me of the rightness of your position, whatever it is.
Ethan, I’m glad we posted that same quote simultaneously.
Hmmm…. In what way do the climategate emails not implicate climatology generally? I do not mean to say that all climatologists are necessarily corrupt, even those that are proponents of AGW. For all I know, they might even be correct about AGW, though I doubt it. (For one thing, the other documents that came with the emails pretty much demonstrate that the science promoted by the Team (Jones, Mann, Briffa, etc) is on shaky ground, even if it were not for other available evidence that provides a pretty convincing case against them, such as their utter inability to predict the future so far, or to predict the past from the conditions of a point further in the past.) But let’s assume that they are correct about AGW.
In that case, their experiments (in this case, computer models) should be able to be examined to ensure that the claimed results really do occur given their input data, and not when given dissimilar input data; their methods (both code and data manipulation) should be able to be examined to ensure that they are valid and reasonable; and their data should be able to be examined to ensure that it represents a correct instrumental record. To date, none of those have been completely possible, because key parts of each of those sequences have been deliberately withheld. The emails show that this withholding of information was deliberate.
Now, all that this shows so far is that the Team is corrupt, and has been promulgating bad science. (This is true even if their conclusions are correct.) But it goes further than that for two reasons. The first reason is that the Team’s data is the basis of essentially all other climatology: the Team collectively creates all but one of the four temperature data sets of record, either directly or by their data forming a major component of the data set. (The fourth set — the satellite data — is of very short duration, only a couple of decades.) The second reason is that the emails demonstrate that the Team has a very key role in what gets published on climatology.
In other words, the Team is corrupt. The Team produces the basic data on which other climatologists rely for temperature, as well as the data relied on by political bodies like the IPCC. And the Team controls to a large extent what can and cannot get published in the peer review literature.
So I ask again: in what way does this not implicate climatology generally?
My feelings on climategate are summed up nicely at this blog:
http://the-reaction.blogspot.com/2009/11/hacking-reality-climategate-denialist.html
Your claims that the data produced by that team is completely suspect are overblown at best. There should be an investigation to clear this up one way or the other, I’m sure we can agree on that.
AGW presupposes too much to be a useful hypothesis with regard to any “observed” variations in global temperature. It’s a conspiracy perpetrated upon the citizens of the world by liberal scientists and sympathetic voices in the upper echelon of society and government in a misguided effort to usher in a new world order of socialism through explicit transferal of wealth and power into the hands of unworthy politicians.
Ethan – You profess a willingness to take some rather small steps (buy an electric car, which presumably is powered by that electricity that does not involve production of CO2, buy local potatoes) to lessen your hypothetical impact on climate change, well why do you assume that the appropriate response to climate change should not be for humanity to adjust to it. Assuming that climate change is not human caused, we better be prepared to adapt. Personally I adapt four times a year to climate change. Currently what is being proposed is to take a whole lot of money and give it to government (global or otherwise) without any assurance that the problem, if it exists, will actually be addressed. I’m all for buying local potatoes, hell I’ve grown my own potatoes, but the solutions being put forth all seem to be that I should buy my potatoes locally, but send my money to Washington or the UN or Brussels.
Wow, lot of stuff getting posted here. As to the climate models out there, it’s worth recalling that they are all calibrated by data partially controlled by the CRU. It’s definitely a problem of GIGO. Similarly, I don’t see a consensus that humans are causing a harmful degree of global warming.
The thing is, that proposed solutions to global warming will change the world in profound and harmful ways. As a result, a higher standard of evidence is required than the current. That includes the industries that depend on CO2 emissions such as the oil industry being allowed to contest the claims. We also need to understand the economics at play so we can make sound, rational decisions.
I want to make this clear. We aren’t talking about String Theory which even if it turns out to be ultimately correct in a physical sense is probably many decades or centuries away from a real world application. We’re speaking of things that will alter the very fabric of our society NOW. There is too much at stake to continue the sloppy political games that come up at the IPCC and major world governments.
For example, the alleged tribulations of human-induced global warming take place over the span of centuries. Yet the pain of precautionary measures such as CO2 emission reduction take place immediately. Why does a cost, even a great one far down the road justify a significant cost now? Doing nothing while we wait for more data and stronger evidence makes sense to me. We build up our wealth (at a good rate, I might add), so we will be more able to respond to trouble, if it exists, from global warming, down the road.
Doing nothing for a period of time may well be the start of the best method for dealing with global warming. I certainly don’t see evidence that there is a better approach out there.
Actually, Ethan, I really don’t care whether or not there’s an investigation. Since I’m not in any meaningful sense responsible for the employment of anyone on the Team, I really don’t care whether or not they are corrupt, and if so, whether they are punished. My interest is different.
My primary interest is that I and my family and friends are secure, prosperous and afforded the opportunity to seek happiness, in that order. My secondary interest is that, having assured such to myself and those I care about, that my fellow countrymen should have the same to the maximum extent possible. My tertiary interest is that the same be extended to humanity generally to the maximum extent possible.
If the AGW hypothesis is correct, and more specifically if the catastrophic AGW hypothesis (I believe you called it “Mass economic dislocation, poverty, disease and death”) is correct, that threatens the security of people I care about. However, if the hypothesis is not correct, then the proposed solution of sending gobs of money — mine, and those I care about, and my countrymen’s, and for that matter that of much of the more developed part of the world — to governments to deal with the problem threatens my prosperity and that of people I care about, with no benefit to my security in the process. Moreover, even if the catastrophic AGW hypothesis is true, it is unclear to me that sending gobs of money to governments, and reducing my prosperity in the process, is the best utilitarian solution to the supposed problem.
So what I want, given these interests, is to understand how the climate is changing, and will change in the future. Given that science has a far better record of predictive success than, say, reading entrails, consulting holy books, or astrology, science is probably the best shot we have of predicting future climate. And given that, I want to see good science done on the issue: I want all the raw data that is used to be available; I want all the manipulations to the raw data explained and documented; I want sufficient information available on the models to reproduce or falsify their results. With the information available and verifiable, we can determine whether we have enough information to predict anything at all, and if so with what confidence. To the extent that we would then be able to predict such things, we could determine whether the earth is warming over significant time periods, and more importantly whether that warming is unusual and, if so, what is causing the warming. And given that, we could potentially determine what the best ways are to deal with that, whether through adaptation (forced or unforced) or active prevention, should that be necessary.
In other words, I want the same standards applied to spending trillions of dollars on hypothetically dealing with the hypothetical causes of hypothetically unusual hypothetically anthropogenic climate change as are applied to, say, determining whether or not a given medicine is safe and effective.
Investigations are about personalities and punishment, and frankly, I don’t care about that at all.
The fact that the ground stations have never been calibrated to “gridcell temperature” fundamentally tells the entire story in one sentence.
The shift to pure anomalies does, indeed, facilitate some comparisons. But the record immediately bogs down in unreported station moves, duplicated records, UHI and microsite issues. The proposed fixes almost make sense from the perspective of monitoring anomalies. But the fact that there’s never been solid calibration studies rears up whenever the sequence of adjustments is examined in toto. The UHI adjustments in particular are odd.