Blog posts in jack boots

Jennifer Marohasy has posted a list of the “ten worst blog posts“. Tamino and Eli Rabett are crowing are crowing because they got number one and two and the best I could do was number six. Cohenite, the guy who compiled the list, had earlier compiled a list of the “ten best climate research papers” that, no fooling, included Chilingar. So you can imagine that his new list is of similar quality and it does not disappoint.

Cohenite says these posts are the ten worst because:

they reveal that at least part of this debate about anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is not about science, but its suppression.

In other words, these are blog posts in jack boots.

The closest Cohenite comes to writing anything in support of his claim that these blog posts are suppressors is when he gives Tamino the number one spot for charging Joe D’Aleo with perjury. Except that Tamino didn’t charge them with perjury. Look at what he wrote:

If Sheppard’s post or D’Aleo’s graph were sworn testimony in a court of law, I’d charge them with perjury.

Cohenite doesn’t seem to understand conditionals. Tamino is accusing them of dishonesty, not perjury. And this is typical — Cohenite doesn’t seem able to understand the posts that claims are suppressing the debate. For another example, his take on my post on Lomborg is

It seems Deltoid has a special loathing of Lomborg. His sins appear to be: he argues conditions are better than ever for more of us; interference with nature does not always produce bad results; and AGW preventative measures are a waste of time and resources; and he hates polar bears.

But what I actually said was wrong with Lomborg was this:

But what Lomborg really does is cherry pick and systematically misrepresent the science.

And I went on to give specific examples. But I shouldn’t complain KÃ¥re Fog’s website on Lomborg (which isn’t even a blog) made number five on the list, merely for listing hundreds of errors and flaws in Lomborg’s work. Cohenite doesn’t even try to dispute any of them.

And as usual, the comments to Cohenite’s post are full of the usual Marohasy-approved abuse.

Comments

#1 Mike Kaulbars
November 3, 2008

Actually he does us a favour with this guide to some of the best climate blog posts on the net. I am sure Deltoid deserved better … although you make the list twice – not too shabby.

My not so humble take on his 10 Best piece http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/climate-change-deniers-top-ten-list/
#2 duggiezx
November 3, 2008

The Cohenite list is unreadable.
#3 Boris
November 3, 2008

I like how he refers to Tilo Reber as a “well known blogger.”
#4 Ender
November 3, 2008

cohenite is the person that I argued at enormous length with numerous references about the radiative effects of greenhouse gases that he denies. An actual physicist, Chris, got into Cohenite with actual physics with no effect. What Chris could not understand is Cohenite, who uses technical terms and seems to understand something of physics, comes to completely the incorrect conclusion 180 deg opposite from anyone else.

How can you take anything from someone that denies basic physics and refuses to be corrected from authorities on the subject?
#5 Ender
November 3, 2008

The other thing is – is he saying that one of Jennifer Morohasy’s blog posts is also one of the worst? Isn’t that shooting yourself in the foot?

This one was posted by Jen:

:The BBC Changes News to Accommodate Activist

Posted by jennifer, at 08:35 PM:
#6 TrueSceptic
November 4, 2008

Cohenite is an arrogant ignoramus.

I was tempted to reply with a real 10 Worst, but then realised that getting the list down to just 10 would be a major job. There is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to climate denial. The Marohasy bog alone is a rich source.
#7 Tim Lambert
November 4, 2008

I think he is counting Abbess’ email in his #9, rather than counting Marohasy’s post as one of the ten worst. And he claims I ignored the issue, [even though I blogged on it](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/04/denialists_against_corrections.php).
#8 Dano
November 4, 2008

How can you take anything from someone that denies basic physics and refuses to be corrected from authorities on the subject?

Right. You can’t. Nor can decision-makers, making people like this harmless. Sure, their spam impact is huge, but the people with the same brain constructs can’t get access either – or if they do, they don’t keep it for long.

Best,

D
#9 Oakden Wolf
November 4, 2008

I’m surprised nothing from RealClimate made the list; that either speaks to the quality of RealClimate or the author of the list just had axes to grind. But I figure someone taking potshots would have at least tried taking one at the big gorilla in the room.
#10 ChrisC
November 4, 2008

Is anyone sure that Cohenite is not really JC? They’re certainly as inarticulate as each other, and both seem to have a fascination with the nazi/commie references.
#11 Nick
November 4, 2008

What will happen to Cohenite’s ‘ten best’ list when he starts reading his eleventh research paper?
#12 David B. Benson
November 4, 2008

#6 ain’t bad.

At least you made the list.
#13 cohenite
November 4, 2008

Don’t worry lads; you may be only number 6 on the hit parade, but that’s no 6 with a bullet. Some corrections. I hadn’t seen Deltoid’s post on our Jo, but after reading it I think it falls into the sympathetic category which is the gist of my point about the reporting of this scandal. The Chilingar paper that is referred to here is not the one I referred to in my 10 Best; that is the Chilingar, Khilyuk and Sorokhtin piece; “Cooling of Atmosphere Due to CO2 Emission”. As to Real Climate missing out; in my 10 worst the definitive RC piece by Spencer Weart is at no 6 and Hansen’s 2 speechs from 1988 and 2008 are there, plus the Wahl and Amman effort and Sherwood and Allen and of course both Mann’s; so I thought RC had given all it had to give, since these papers and views are RC paradigms; There is a mistake with the second Mann; the Jolliffe fun and games of course happened with the first Mann, so a slip up there; and I’ll need to do a top-up about Mann’s inventive application of CPS and EIV, but that maybe surperflous with McIntyre and lucia’s efforts. New candidates for new lists are presenting all the time; Santer and Dessler are looking interesting already. I look forward to equivalent lists from your side of the divide. Keep up the good work.
#14 David B. Benson
November 4, 2008

cohenite | November 4, 2008 8:53 PM — Ha, ha, chortle, gasp!
#15 AGWheretic
November 5, 2008

The [physics and society forum of the] American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming…

In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,”There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.”
#16 Dr Dave
November 5, 2008

AGWheretic…congratulations on finding news from July! You won’t have seen the most recent editorial from Jeffrey Marque then:

“Our editorial comments in the July 2008 issue include the following statement: “There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.” In fact, we have not polled any scientific community (e.g., the climate research community, the physics community, or the general science community) as to the extent of its consensus regarding human-activity-caused global warming, and we apologize for making such a remark for which we do not have supporting data. We now do know that, in addition to the American Physical Society, the following scientific organizations have issued statements and/or reports in support of the IPCC’s main conclusion concerning the role of anthropogenic CO2 emissions in global warming: The National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.”

What’s your next scoop going to be – McCain is a shoe-in for the presidential election, perhaps?
#17 Tim Lambert
November 5, 2008

Cohenite, you don’t seem to have understood my post on Abbess. It is by no stretch of the imagination a scandal when the BBC corrects an error. I explained what is wrong with the Chilingar paper your referred to [in this post](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/07/chilinger_if_you_assume_that_c.php), but seeing how obviously wrong wrong his first paper was, you really should have had no confidence in the one you included in your list.

I note that you still have not managed to come up with any concrete disagreement with Fog. Maybe you could try some more distracting?

Oh, and what is your background in maths?
#18 Tim Lambert
November 5, 2008

ChrisC, Cohenite is not Joe Cambria. Cambria’s sock puppet over at Marohasy’s is called “Ra”.
#19 Ken
November 5, 2008

To use a courtroom analogy we have the expert testimony of the IPCC, every institute for studying climate and all the science associations and academies and we have … a bunch of people yelling from the back of the courtroom after the verdict’s been handed down.

Cohenite wants future energy policy to be based on the opinions of the losers of the scientific debate. Sore losers at that, who want to blame everyone and everything for their loss except their own pitiful arguments and lack of evidence.

I expect the gov’t of my country to take seriously the mainstream scientific views on this issue.
#20 cohenite
November 5, 2008

Chilingar cops flack as much for what he doesn’t do as what he does say; the paper accepts the GH (pp1-2) but says there are heat transfer mechanisms which cap any expansion of the GH; the pressure effect leading to cooling discussed by Chilingar is an aspect of this debate which has so-far been neglected; whether atmospheric pressure does contribute to the temperature profile from the surface has really only been dealt with by people like Heinz Thieme (The Thermodynamic Atmosphere Effect- explained stepwise); as a thought experiment would the temperature profile of Earth be more or less if the atmosphere had the same proportion of CO2 as Venus and Mars (95-96%)? Chilingar’s heat transfer mechanism of vertical adiabatic convection is similar to Miskolczi’s. For both C & M radiative transfer and heating is at the surface; for M there is no discontinuity at the surface; the atmospheric LTE is regionalised as shown by ED=SU[1-TA], where ED is the downward atmospheric radiation, SU the upward radiation and TA the LTE; at any LTE no net IR radiation heat flux reaches the atmosphere; it is either transmitted through the atmospheric window or matched by ED; with CO2 being absorbed around 650cm (as confirmed by HARTCODE and Rob van Dorland’s Cabauw profiles) large horizontal and vertical convective heat transfer process then distribute that heat; the vertical convection goes to the CEL (as noted in Douglass and Christy’s new paper) to become OLR. In Chilingar a similar process occurs; neither C or M incorporate layered radiative transfer which is the defining feature of the Weart/IPCC standard semi-infinite model. Both C and M have and are being criticised for not understanding the wet lapse rate. In C’s case the wet lapse rate is noted (p2 “Analogous situation is observed with heating of air due to condensation of water vapor; C allocates 25% of the heat transfer to this process) but since the paper is about convection the lapse rate is not discussed further; for M, of course, the wet lapse rate is essential with the optical density being maintained by variations of it; according to AGW theory the wet lapse rate is increasing due to the increase of SH and the, at least, constancy of RH; this really is a key point of the debate; Dessler and before, Soden, have found SH to be increasing; on the other hand Minschwaner, a co-author of the Dessler paper, has previously found RH to be declining; NOAA data has shown SH at all levels except the surface has been declining or flat since 1946; as well it is well documented that Pan evaporation has been declining for some time (see Gifford, Farquhar, Roderick and Nicholls), which begs the question; where is the water coming from to support the increase in SH? If SH is increasing (ie from ocean evaporation) it still maybe the case that it is not a +ve feedback as AGW supposes, but that Spencer and Braswell’s -ve feednacks occur; if SH is not increasing then both C and M are vindicated; M from the OD position; C because his convective process does not rely on an increasing temperature profile/gradient of the atmosphere.

In respect of Lomborg; most of Fog’s complaints are minor; one major one concerns L’s conclusion that heat being likely to cause fewer deaths than cold and that any AGW caused increase in temperature (which is not occuring; which is my main complaint about Fog) would involve fewer heat-related deaths. Fog concludes that L is wrong because an increase in temperature would mean that a graphical depiction of temperature deaths would have its optimum point (C = lowest death rate for a temperature) shifted to the right with a maintainence of the proportionate death rates from heat/cold on either side (see p2 of Fog). But this is incorrect because the new optimum would have a larger benevolent flat spot on either side; on the cooler side it would take in that prior optimum and low cooling portion, and on the warmer side, the graph would have a longer flat portion to reflect the lessor rate of heat deaths at the low end of slight increases in temperature.
#21 James Haughton
November 5, 2008

Cohenite,
Didn’t Eli and Chris demonstrate to you that you have no idea what a LTE is? At least you’ve stopped blithering about Planck units of time. I suppose that’s progress.
#22 AGWheretic
November 6, 2008

Hi Dr Dave,

Sounds like he was pressured into a retraction don’t you think?

What’s McCain got to do with it?
#23 Barton Paul Levenson
November 6, 2008

Why am I not surprised that Cohenite has latched onto Miskolczi’s crackpot theory? That thing is still going great guns in the blogosphere, long after the scientific community dismissed it as nonsense.
#24 Jeff Harvey
November 6, 2008

Cohenite, With respect to Lomborg, you don’t have a clue what you are talking about. Many of Lomborg’s errors are NOT minor – they very frequently exclude many peer-reviewed studies which either completely dispute his conclusions or else are explicit correctives of articles (often in books and not written by scientists but business economists and the like) that he cites. His biodiversity chapter is an abomination; suggesting it reaches junior high school level is being kind. In this 7 page chapter Lomborg completely shows that he does not understand the meaning of ecosystem services; he downplays global extinction rates by extrapolating from one of 12 models (based on British insects, for heaven’s sake) that produced the lowest predictor; he did not cite two studies in Nature and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that support, rather than refute, models of exponential decay (by Soule, Terborgh, Wilson et al) which accurately predict extinction rates in Brazilian coastal forests and avian extinction rates in eastern United States (he was apparently informed of these studies in 1998 but ignored them anyway in writing the English version of TSE), he totally misunderstands the situation with respect to avian extinctions in Puerto Rico and current avian diversity there, he hashes up the projection of extinctions versus speciation in formulating hsi poor model, he misquotes Paul Colinvaux in a 1989 Scientific American article, totally distorting the original meaning of what Colinvaux was saying, he attempts to dismiss the reputations of Edward O. Wilson and Paul Ehrlich by associating them with a project that does not exist in the way he descibes it, and so on. And this is just in a 7 page chapter on biodiversity! Other chapters of his book are full of similar gaffes. These are not trivial errors; thay are significant, because they lead to completely opposite conclusions than have been derived from the empirical literature.

The fact is that Lomborg is not an environmental scientist, and he openly admits in the preface that he is ‘not an expert as regards environmental problems’. This being glaringly obvious, why does he then so casually dismiss those (like me and many thousands of colleagues) who are? When I debated him in Holland six years ago, I raised all of these points and more. All he did was squirm about in his chair and say “I’ll look into it”. I told the audience that he’d had (by then) 5 years to “look into it” and the same errors that cropped up in the Danish edition of TSE are repeated in the English edition. Given that many of the errors I pointed out were also pointed out to him in 1998, why do they recur in the 2001 version? I’ll tell you why. Because in my opinion Lomborg knew that if he included all of the studies and correctives that had been pointed out to him between 1998 and 2001, he’d have to change his book. He’d have to alter the message he was promulgating with one that is much more ‘balanced’ if I may use the word, or even with much more concern. This would have been a blow to both its and his marketability because it would just have been ‘another book on the environment’. What stands out in TSE its its rank and unbalanced optimism. Pretty well everythingis getting better, according to Lomborg, which of copurse is pure and utter nonsense if one takes a closer look at the Natural economy. Pretty well every indicator of ecosystem health across the biosphere is in decline. There are only a very few exceptions. Lomborg pretty well dismisses the natural economy (its clear he doesn’t really understand it, to be fair) and instead relies on indicators of the material economy. In doing so, he unintentionally gives the impression that humans are exempt from the laws of nature. He relies on the three tenets of neoclassical economics to get us through: unlimited substitutability, efficiency, and human ingenuity. This inane line of argument postulates that as material limits to growth are aproached, human wisdom will save the day. It doesn’t matter if our ecological life support systems have been degraded to hell, don’t worry, because humans have risen above any constraints imposed by natural systems. Its both ridiculous and dangerous. No wonder that Lomborg pulled out of one subsequent venue after our debate in 2002 (in Denmark) and declined to come here to debate me on the other (both in 2002). He knew damned well I’d mince his shoddy arguments the next time around.

The thing that makes books like TSE very irresponsible, in my opinion, is that, to partially quote John Holdren, they veer well across the line that divides controversial but competent science into the realm of unrepentent incompetence. They mislead the population at large and policy makers into a false sense of security that we only need to make minor adjustments in ongoing programmes and all will be fine.
#25 Dano
November 6, 2008

IOW: Lomborg is a polemicist, arguing from ideology and not facts.

Best,

D
#26 Majorajam
November 6, 2008

AGWheretic, pressured or not his retraction is a statement of indisputable, unimpeachable fact. As such, it’s probably best you pull the rock back over your head. Bright light! Bright light!
#27 MarkG
November 6, 2008

Lomborg is a polemicist? Worse than that, he’s an economist! Have you checked the economy lately? If economists ever get a handle on their own supposed field of expertise I might grudgingly accept that they have something to add to arguments on the environment.
#28 Steve Bloom
November 6, 2008

FYI, and yet worse than that, Lomborg is a political scientist by training.
#29 z
November 6, 2008

“Lomborg is a polemicist, arguing from ideology and not facts”

I note that despite the Lomborg Litany that AGW-worriers, environmentalists, et al are diverting badly needed funds from the strenuous high priority efforts of the US and otgher governments to end world hunger, bring clean drinking water to the third world, etc., he has been oddly silent on the trillion dollar bailout of Wall St.
#30 MH
November 6, 2008

Rummaging around the Murohasy web site is like reading a fantasy novel, full of ogres, fairies, dwarfs and other frightening creatures. The same Murohasy who having had a trip to Japan (paid for by ???) was extolling the virtues of the Japanese or anyone else being able to eat Whales to country readers of ‘The Land’ recently, telling drought stricken farmers from SA to QLD that there has been no change in the climate it is merely a leftist scientific plot. As a rural land holder who understands the science I am fed up with suburban living Murohasy addled pontification on behalf of the gremlins to us flatlanders.
#31 Dano
November 7, 2008

Oooh! Good point, z.

Best,

D
#32 Marion Delgado
November 8, 2008

I can tell scientifically by comments #10 and #18 that ChrisC and Tim Lambert are both serial killers.

How do I know you 2 didn’t Putinize Michael Crichton? Answer: I don’t!
#33 Majorajam
November 9, 2008

Z, the real question is if Lomborg would ever take up Weitzman, or even that line of thought. This would detonate his pitiful analysis beyond all recognition. Kind of like what a lack of a bailout plan would’ve done to Wall Street and the real economy.
#34 Marion Delgado
November 10, 2008

Boris:

Tilo Reber is well-known, I think. So cohenite got one right. Well-known is also a very aptly, carefully chosen phrase.

John Davison is too.

http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Crank

Tilo is not on the list but he’s trying.
#35 Tilo Reber
November 13, 2008

Boris:
“I like how he refers to Tilo Reber as a “well known blogger.”"

Boris my old buddy, would you deny me my 15 minutes of fame? LOL.

Speaking of bets, let’s have a little side bet between you and I Boris. Just to keep life interesting.

When the University of Colorado finally gets all of it’s sea level data out for 2008, I bet that the level of all of the data points averaged together for 2008 is lower than the same for 2006 or 2007.

We can keep it friendly – say a hundred bucks?

LOL. You know, after Hansen came out with that initial Oct. temp reading I thought for sure that Lucia was going to be baking me some brownies.
#36 Bernard J.
November 16, 2008

Hmmm… I head off for a few weeks of fieldwork and Deltoid percolates with a lot of interesting posts whilst I’m gone!

There’s far too much for me to catch on for now, but I will make one small observation:

ChrisC, Cohenite is not Joe Cambria. Cambria’s sock puppet over at Marohasy’s is called “Ra”.

I think that ‘Ra’ is actually Graeme Bird’s sock puppet – they have the same manners (?!) of speech, the same potty-mouth vocabularies, the same odd notions of science, and they have overlapping times of contribution. And Ra has the handy habit of popping up when Bird is being pounded for whatever latest ranting blather he has vomited up, so that Bird appears to have the backing of others for his ideas.

If Ra is Joe Cambria and not Bird, then the bilge at Marohasy’s needs more disinfecting than I had guessed previously.