Comments

1. #1 Michael

   January 28, 2009

   Oh great, go and ruin a perfectly good conspiracy theory with your damn ‘facts’ and ‘reality’.

2. #2 P. Lewis

   January 28, 2009

   As journos sometimes say (if not out loud):

   Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

3. #3 bi -- IJI

   January 28, 2009

   I smell a short story coming up…

   Dr. Jenkins and the secret history of Bond University.

4. #4 IanP

   January 28, 2009

   Did you think to ask Dr Jenkins about Jennifer Marohasy’s claim? It may differ from the Registrar’s account.

5. #5 bi -- IJI

   January 28, 2009

   Ian Plimer, is that you? I thought you were being “censored”!

   Forget the “he said, she said” part; let’s get straight to some nice chunky facts.

   * * *

   Dr. Jenkins and the secret history of Bond University. Coming up this summer.

6. #6 Chris Noble

   January 28, 2009

   Did you think to ask Dr Jenkins about Jennifer Marohasy’s claim? It may differ from the Registrar’s account.

   On the 22nd July 2008, somebody referring to Jon Jenkins’ wikipedia page as “my page” added His present state of health has seen him resign from the University…

   This matches the version of events given by the Registrar.

7. #7 Bernard J.

   January 29, 2009

   Did you think to ask Dr Jenkins about Jennifer Marohasy’s claim? It may differ from the Registrar’s account.

   Posted by: IanP | January 28, 2009 10:48 PM

   IanP.

   I and a number of others have repeatedly asked Jenkins for clarification of his employment and academic status, as there has been much confusion in the last several weeks as to the exact nature of his bona fides. However, after an inital appearance here to defend his article in the Australian, Jenkins has been conspicuous by his absence.

   Whether this has anything to do with the sustained and very pertinent criticism of his clumsy analytical techniques is open to question, but I rather suspect that the educated folk reading Deltoid know the answer…

8. #8 sod

   January 29, 2009

   hm. another false claim to add to the denialist scorecard…

9. #9 Dano

   January 29, 2009

   So what do you think we’ll see from Marohasy?

   1. a correction?
   2. silence? or
   3. a claim that the registrar is covering up the real reason?

   Pffffft. It’s obvious for all to see that the Registrar is on the dole for Algore’s dirty green research money to alarm the public about nonexistent “global warming”. There is probably a temperature measuring station at the Uni that is reading high on purpose to score more research dollars.

   Nonetheless, I prefer 4.: never underestimate the cravenness of professional denialists.

   Best,

   D

10. #10 dhogaza

    January 29, 2009

    3. a claim that the registrar is covering up the real reason?

    IanP has chosen door #3, why wouldn’t Jennifer. The persecution claim is bread-and-butter to all flavors of science denialism (for instance Gonzales not getting tenure “due to his ID beliefs” here in the US), and bread-and-butter’s quite tasty, so …

11. #11 Jon Jenkins

    January 29, 2009

    Here we go again Tim! The real reason was that I received a rather terse letter from the Registra about my opinion piece in the Oz without even ringing me.

    I suppose I got a little bit upset and “jumped the gun”. It turns out that because I told them I was not well enough to be involved in a clinical monitoring trial last year they had taken me off the adjunct list. So if you want to blame anybody blame me.

    Why is it you are so intent on personal stuff and when can we get back to the real issue of climate science, after all this is a science blog isn’t it?

    What do you think of Hansen’s boss at NASA and his comments about climate models:

    “climate models are useless.”

    “My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit,”

    “Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy,”

12. #12 bigcitylib

    January 29, 2009

    Dear Mr. Jenkins, I think he was blaming you. And Theon was not Hansen’s Boss

    http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com/2009/01/john-s-theon-new-elderly-denier-on.html#links

    They weren’t really in the same department but, if anything, Theon might be described as an “underling”

    http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/28/19755/5879/380/690181

13. #13 sod

    January 29, 2009

    I suppose I got a little bit upset and “jumped the gun”. It turns out that because I told them I was not well enough to be involved in a clinical monitoring trial last year they had taken me off the adjunct list. So if you want to blame anybody blame me.

    what is this, another attempt to confuse?

    were you the source of Marohasy or not? will you urge her to correct her misleading post?

    Why is it you are so intent on personal stuff and when can we get back to the real issue of climate science, after all this is a science blog isn’t it?

    the last time we were discussing science (your absurd use of 6th degree polynomials for a trend lie…), you decided to disappear. the next thing we heard about you, was the claim that you were punished for your believes..

    What do you think of Hansen’s boss at NASA and his comments about climate models:

    the guy is NOT Hansen s boss. actually it looks like he never was. he left NASA in the early 90s.

    for someone who wants to discuss the science and not “personal stuff”, this looks like a pretty “person-centric” approach…

14. #14 dhogaza

    January 29, 2009

    And Theon retired FIFTEEN YEARS ago, so even if he HAD been Hansen’s boss (which he wasn’t), he would’ve been out of there for about TWELVE YEARS before the confirmed muzzling attempt happened. Therefore really in no position to comment. We have confirmation from the feds – working, non-retired, feds – that the muzzling actually took place.

    So, Jenkins, what does it say if a man LIES about being being Hansen’s boss in order to attempt to discredit him?

    Is it worse than your statistical lies regarding the temperature record, or not?

    Or, in your mind, are all such lies OK because they’re for “a good cause”?

15. #15 Dan G.

    January 29, 2009

    In case anyone missed it, here is Gavin’s response to Thoen which was seen in the RealClimate comments:

    “[Response: Dr. Theon appears to have retired from NASA in 1994, some 15 years ago. Until yesterday I had never heard of him (despite working with and for NASA for the last 13 years). His insights into both modelling and publicity appear to date from then, rather than any recent events. He was not Hansen’s ‘boss’ (the director of GISS reports to the director of GSFC, who reports to the NASA Administrator). His “some scientists” quote is simply a smear - which scientists? where? what did they do? what data? what manipulation? This kind of thing plays well with Inhofe et al because it appears to add something to the ‘debate’, but in actual fact there is nothing here. Just vague, unsubstantiated accusations. - gavin]

16. #16 John Mashey

    January 29, 2009

    Theon is quoted, by Morano,

    “Program Scientist, NASA Global Weather Research Program, NASA Hq. (1978-82); Chief, Atmospheric Dynamics & Radiation Branch NASA Hq., (1982-91); Ph.D., Engr. Science & Mech.: course of study and dissertation in atmos. science (1983-85); Chief, Atmospheric Dynamics, Radiation, & Hydrology Branch, NASA Hq. (1991-93); Chief, Climate Processes Research Program, NASA Hq. (1993-94); Senior Scientist, Mission to Planet Earth Office, NASA Hq. (1994-95)”

    “As Chief of several of NASA Headquarters’ programs (1982-94), an SES position, I was responsible for all weather and climate research in the entire agency, including the research work by James Hansen, Roy Spencer, Joanne Simpson, and several hundred other scientists at NASA field centers, in academia, and in the private sector who worked on climate research,”

    That is a pretty sweeping claim…. responsible for all weather and climate research in NASA? Really? What does “responsible” mean?

    ====
    In my list of reasons in reasonhs for anti-science, Theon looks like:

    PSYCH-5, ECON-3, PSYCH-1, given that he seems to have done reasonable work long ago, has now gone anti-science well after retirement, has been doing the lecture circuit in a minor way, and certainly would get more attention by being contrarian. He’s now famous!

    However, over-stating qualifications can get you in trouble…

17. #17 Jennifer Marohasy

    January 29, 2009

    Tim,

    Thanks for clarifying that Dr Jenkins was an adjunct professor at Bond University and that UNTIL he wrote the controversial piece for The Australian newspaper was unaware that he had been dismissed from this position.

    Given you have previously very publicly accused Dr Jenkins of deceit on this issue I suggest you now issue him with a very public apology.

    Now we have official word from the university on this issue I have updated my blog. You can read the update here:
    http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/01/bond-university-dismisses-climate-change-sceptic/

18. #18 gustov_deleft

    January 29, 2009

    Good god, how many sock puppets is Joe Cambria using over at Marahasy’s? What a turd.

19. #19 Bernard J.

    January 29, 2009

    One down, many to go…

    OK Jon Jenkins, so we have established that you were not in fact an adjunct professor when you wrote the Australian piece. And even though the university admits to an ‘administration error’ in not confirming your dissociation earlier, why on earth did you use the title in the first place if you had previous and formally resigned your post, especially after having published in your on-line bios that you had done so? Should you not have confirmed the dissociation before supplying your bio to the Australian?

    And exactly when were you an Adjunct Professor of Virology?

    Also, we’re still wondering when you intend to respond substantively to the issue of the use of a high-order polynomial, and of the truncation of the latest data in the set, the inclusion of which would have produced a very different (but still inappropriate) polynomial, which would in turn have perhaps altered the ‘interpretation’ presented in your piece…

20. #20 gustov_deleft

    January 29, 2009

    Given you have previously very publicly accused Dr Jenkins of deceit on this issue I suggest you now issue him with a very public apology.

    He did no such thing, but you already knew that. He merely pointed out that YOUR claims were a lie, and was subsequently proven correct.

    And whilst were on the subject of apologies, when are you going to apologise for being a fraudulent right-wing hack?

21. #21 P. Lewis

    January 29, 2009

    I also note that Jon Jenkins’s Wikipedia page still states “and he is still an adjunct Professor”.

    An oversight surely?

22. #22 Michael

    January 29, 2009

    “Given you have previously very publicly accused Dr Jenkins of deceit on this issue I suggest you now issue him with a very public apology.” – Jen

    Naturally, Jen will be extedning a very pulic apology to Bond U.

    Oh I forgot, the conspriacy is still up and running in Jen-Land,
    “Perhaps if the piece had been more politically correct his name could have just been added back onto the list? ” – JM

    Yep, for publising a piece of ant-science nonsense, he should be re-appointed an Adjunct Prof.

23. #23 Bernard J.

    January 29, 2009

    Jennifer Marohasy.

    The fact that Jenkins was at one time an adjunct professor at Bond is not in dispute. There have been multiple documentations of it on these threads.

    Pertinently, Jenkins has not disputed either the fact that he has previously announced in public his retirement from the adjunct post; in which case he had no business using the title in his article’s bio, irrespective of whether or not he had received from Bond formal acknowledgement of the dissociation.

    The fact too that he has, at the least, not clarified the exact title he held, and at worst misrepresented it, remains to be addressed, as do the several substantive issues about the manner in which the graphic he used was constructed.

    As far as I can determine there still remains a cloud of deceit, or at the least several issues of professional incompetence, hanging over Jenkins’ behaviour in the tale of the sorry Australian article.

    So how is it, exactly, that Tim owes Jenkins a “very public apology”?

24. #24 P. Lewis

    January 29, 2009

    I too, Michael, noted the update at JM’s which says:

    Perhaps if the piece had been more politically correct his name could have just been added back onto the list?
    

    I just wondered (admittedly facetiously), I know we’ve had Socratic irony before, but did Socrates found a school in disingenuity as well?

25. #25 frankis

    January 29, 2009

    Marohasy knows how to get ahead with her payrollers:

    don’t tell the truth
    don’t own up when caught out
    never apologise

    She’s shameless.

26. #26 bi -- IJI

    January 29, 2009

    Jon Jenkins:

    > I suppose I got a little bit upset and “jumped the gun”. It turns out that because I told them I was not well enough to be involved in a clinical monitoring trial last year they had taken me off the adjunct list. So if you want to blame anybody blame me.

    So we can expect Jenkins to ask Marohasy to retract her claims of Jenkins-martyrdom with a big blaring headline.

    Um, nope.

27. #27 gustov_deleft

    January 29, 2009

    Is that really you, joe cambria, or just one of your many suckpuppets?

28. #28 z

    January 29, 2009

    I was, in effect, Jenkin’s supervisor.

29. #29 Jennifer Marohasy

    January 30, 2009

    Just to recap:

    1. Dr Jon Jenkins was an adjunct Professor at Bond University.

    2. He wrote a piece on climate change for The Australian newspapers taking a sceptical perspective.

    3. The University then sent him a letter and told him he was nolonger an adjunct professor.

    Mr Lambert queries whether Dr Jenkins has a PhD and was ever an adjunct professor, and further suggests no link between the piece in The Australian and the university informing Dr Jenkins he is nolonger an adjunct professor.

30. #30 Jennifer Marohasy

    January 30, 2009

    Just to recap:

    1. Dr Jon Jenkins was an adjunct Professor at Bond University.

    2. He wrote a piece on climate change for The Australian newspapers taking a sceptical perspective.

    3. The University then sent him a letter and told him he was nolonger an adjunct professor.

    Mr Lambert queries whether Dr Jenkins has a PhD and was ever an adjunct professor, and further suggests no link between the piece in The Australian and the university informing Dr Jenkins he is nolonger an adjunct professor.

31. #31 bi -- IJI

    January 30, 2009

    Just to recap:

    SOCRATIC IRONY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

32. #32 Chris Noble

    January 30, 2009

    Just to recap.
    You wrote:

    
    Then last week he was disciplined, and then had his adjunct position revoked on the basis of his piece for The Australian.

    What is written in my original post still stands. Noone has been misprepresented.

    Poor Noone.

    You claimed that Jenkins was dismissed because he wrote an opinion piece. This is false.

33. #33 Dano

    January 30, 2009

    Just to recap.

    Some people have different facts than others. Their facts are better because their worldview depends on it.

    Best,

    D

34. #34 Lee

    January 30, 2009

    Marohasy, you left out step 1.5: Then Jenkins resigned his post.

    You also truncated your statement, which should include the following 3 … confirming his earlier resignation.

35. #35 Lee

    January 30, 2009

    Marohasy, you left out step 1.5: Then Jenkins resigned his post.

    You also truncated your statement 3, which should end with the following: … confirming his earlier resignation.

36. #36 Lee

    January 30, 2009

    and I somehow submitted both the pre editing and post editing versions – apologies.

37. #37 Jennifer Marohasy

    January 30, 2009

    My original blog piece included both fact and opinion. You may disagree with my opinion (based on the facts and my world view), but the facts stand. Mr Lambert queried the facts unsuccessfully. His opinion (based on his world view), though, has not changed.

38. #38 bi -- IJI

    January 30, 2009

    Us: There are numerous pieces of evidence that Jenkins resigned from his adjunct professorship due to health reasons. There are zero pieces of evidence that Jenkins was ‘reprimanded’ and then fired from his post for writing a climate ‘skeptic’ essay.

    Marohasy: IGNORE!!! IGNORE!!! IGNORE!!!

39. #39 Jon Jenkins

    January 30, 2009

    Yes I misread the letter from the Registra because I did not know I had been taken off the adjunct list and the letter seemed to indicate that I had been as a result of the Oz article, this was my error not Jennifer’s! If anyone owes any apologies it is me, consider them made to Jen and Bond and anyone who thinks they need one and then get over it!

    As to the original Oz article not a single poster has addressed the core issue surrounding the IPCC and it’s processes. The complete lack of independent review and any examination of the secret process of the IPCC reports i.e. the discarding of at least three models without giving reason and only incorporating the six most “extreme” scenarios! The unquestioned and unquestionable conclusions of what amounts to only a handful of scientists who all cross publish is a travesty of all scientific principles.

    As for the core science the only reasonable debate was about the line fitting polynomials of choice in a temperature graph but this is irrelevant to the future predictions because no simple polynomial is indicative of the underlying process and therefore cannot be used for future trends.

    As far as the all important models go no one even attempted to discuss sub grid issues, the approximations for cloud cover, the effect of the reversal of stratospheric temperature and cloud formation/rainfall, failure to address turbulence and mixing on both sub and super grid scales, the absorption anomalies which dwarf the whole CO2 contribution, the abject failure to predict the most powerful and fundamental planetary heat engines: El Nino and thermo-haline. On these crucial issues not a single comment!

    And as for the reliability of the predictions of the GCM models not a single poster here (or in the other thread) has made a comment on the failure to even approximately track decadal scale variations on global, hemisphere or SST variations since AR3 and AR4 were published: the models have so far proven they are incapable of predicting climate whenever they have been tested and yet so many continue to believe them slavishly.

    As far as most of the posters are concerned it is all about vicious personal attacks and ideology and name calling and who has what qualifications and other irrelevant rubbish. As I understand it there is no such degree as climatology, it is just a branch of geophysics/physics and as any academic knows you basically teach yourself everything after UG level. Anyone who has the intellect in maths and physics can understand the known individual parts of climate models, they actually are not that challenging on a mathematical level! The complexity of integrating the individual known systems and the non linear/chaotic systems into whole planet systems however is mind boggling.

    But IMHO the final killer in these threads is that somehow wikipedia has become the authority on both people and science. Wikipedia is a popular anonymous blog site, on many pages dedicated “hackers” immediately reverse/delete any edits which contravene their personal dogma. I think there could be no better example of the lack of real scientific debate on this issue than this blog site which is long on vitriol and very short on science.

    As far as I am concerned any further contribution is pointless.

40. #40 bi -- IJI

    January 30, 2009

    Shorter Jenkins:

    My bad. Now, back to our regularly scheduled inactivist talking points…

41. #41 Chris O'Neill

    January 30, 2009

    So what do you think we’ll see from Marohasy?

    a correction?

    silence?

    or a claim that the registrar is covering up the real reason?

    As we can see there was a fourth alternative: economy with the truth. i.e. why tell the whole truth (including that Jenkins was no longer an adjunct professor when Bond University became aware of his “Australian” article) when you could just tell part of the truth.

42. #42 Michael

    January 30, 2009

    “As far as I am concerned any further contribution is pointless.” – JJ

    Jon, you’re quite mistaken if you think you’ve made a contribution.

    Several posters here posed you serious questions about your article, most of which you’ve simply ignored.

43. #43 Michael

    January 30, 2009

    “My original blog piece included both fact and opinion. You may disagree with my opinion (based on the facts and my world view), but the facts stand – JM

    Hmmm, you’ll have to help me here Jen, which category does this fit into?,
    “had his adjunct position revoked on the basis of his piece for The Australian.”

    Opinion presented as fact perhaps? An opinact, or a fanion?

44. #44 Chris O'Neill

    January 30, 2009

    Jon Jenkins:

    the abject failure to predict the most powerful and fundamental planetary heat engines: El Nino and thermo-haline. On these crucial issues not a single comment!

    This is just not true. I wrote the following comment in this thread:

    Climate models are not intended to predict El Ninos any more than probability theorems predict rolls of a dice. Even though probability theorems can’t predict the next roll of a dice, they can predict statistics of dice rolls. In a similar way, climate models can’t predict individual El Ninos but they can predict statistics of weather.

    There have been numerous other scientific comments that you have completely ignored. You come across as being extremely arrogant. (Note: this is not a “name call”. It is the name for your behaviour.)

45. #45 frankis

    January 30, 2009

    There seems to be some confusion.
    Might I suggest to Jon Jenkins that for further feedback on his article he could consider submitting to peer review? Peers such as Ian Plimer, Bob Carter and Bill Kininmonth should likely prove sympathetic; there would then be only the matter of finding a journal (other than the Oz) in which to publish.

46. #46 sod

    January 30, 2009

    welcome to the internet!

    the false claim about Jenkins being dismissed will forever remain unchanged on Jennifer s blog.

47. #47 dhogaza

    January 30, 2009

    You come across as being extremely arrogant ignorant.

    that sentence needed a little help …

48. #48 Jon Jenkins

    January 30, 2009

    I thought I would respond to this one comment because it is the only one with any real scientific bent.

    “Climate models are not intended to predict El Ninos any more than probability theorems predict rolls of a dice. Even though probability theorems can’t predict the next roll of a dice, they can predict statistics of dice rolls. ”

    Correct so far because their intent is to simulate how heat energy moves in and out of the system and how heat affects temperature, El Nino should just fall out of that process. But GCM climate models are NOT random statistical models they are deterministic and defined. The Russians do use statistical models and guess what….

    “In a similar way, climate models can’t predict individual El Ninos but they can predict statistics of weather.”

    If you were talking about Tera Watt scale of events (i.e. cyclones etc) I would be less strident but when you referring to Peta Watt events over decadal time scales you are simply wrong! If what you are saying is that the GCM models are incapable of tracking how half the of the total heat energy on earth moves across almost every grid cell on decadal time scales and then in the same breath contend that they are capable of predicting surface temperatures with any reasonable accuracy on the very same time/cell scales then this is non-sensical!

    The GCMs SHOULD be able to reasonably simulate how 50% of the energy in the system is moving (whether the process has a formal name or not). If they can’t do that with even approximate accuracy then IMHO they have very little use as predictive tools because that energy may no longer even be in the system at all, it could just as well have been transferred to the upper atmosphere and escaped back into space. You can’t have it both ways: either the GCMs can track the flow of energy on these scales or they can’t.

49. #49 sod

    January 30, 2009

    The GCMs SHOULD be able to reasonably simulate how 50% of the energy in the system is moving (whether the process has a formal name or not).

    no.

    i have not the slightest idea, how the energy is “moving” in a pot of soup. but i could still tell you, when its boiling.

    look Jenkins, perhaps there is a reason why people don t reply to you. you think that 6th degree polynomials are good indicators of trend. you don t know what a forcing is.

50. #50 Marion Delgado

    January 30, 2009

    A fairly odd bunch camped out on marohasy’s blog, no?

    But anyway, Jon Jenkins disses Wikipedia, right? It’s not a source.

    So does that mean he’s FORMALLY DENYING that he did his Wikipedia entry?

    My bet is, not so much.

51. #51 dhogaza

    January 30, 2009

    Jenkins is just making the old “if we don’t know everything, we don’t know anything” argument enveloped in a flurry of hand-waving and noise words.

52. #52 Dano

    January 30, 2009

    “if we don’t know everything, we don’t know anything” argument

    Closely related to right-wing policy formulation: “if it’s not perfect environmental/financial/social legislation, then it shouldn’t be enacted.

    Best,

    D

53. #53 Chris Noble

    January 30, 2009

    My original blog piece included both fact and opinion.

    If you took out the unsupported opinion then there is no story left.

    No matter how much you deny it your original blog attempted to show that Jon Jenkins was dismissed because of the opinion piece he wrote for the Australian. You got exactly the response you were after from your readers.

    When sceptics get the boot for a POV, who really are the deniers?

    Facsist is, as Facsist does…… to rejig a phrase from Forrest Gump….

    This professor was not sacked, he was excommunicated by members of the the new green puritan church or, as I prefer to call them, the crypto-fascist neo-puritan fundamentalists.

    Without the false claims about Jenkins being dismissed then you have no story.

    There was no expulsion, no dismissal and no excommunication – just somebody misstating their affiliation in a vain attempt to give credibility to an unscientific opinion piece.

54. #54 Lee

    January 30, 2009

    Jenkins: are you effing kidding?

    The models exhibit ENSO behavior. They have La Nina / El Nino events. The frequency, duration, and intensity of those events are a reasonable match to ENSO in the real world – not perfect, but pretty close. The average impact of them over time scales sufficient to constitute climate rather than weather, matches reasonably closely to those of the real world over those time scales.

    You say:
    “The GCMs SHOULD be able to reasonably simulate how 50% of the energy in the system is moving (whether the process has a formal name or not). If they can’t do that with even approximate accuracy then IMHO they have very little use as predictive tools because that energy may no longer even be in the system at all, it could just as well have been transferred to the upper atmosphere and escaped back into space. You can’t have it both ways: either the GCMs can track the flow of energy on these scales or they can’t.”

    But, the GCMS DO THAT, Jenkins. The discrete timing of individual events is not the same as in the real world – duh – these events are weather, and dependent on initial conditions. But the handling of the energy flow is there, over climate-relevant time periods.

    Your entire argument there is simply a sophisticated – but no less wrong – version of the “we cant predict weather, so climate models are useless” argument.

55. #55 PSC

    January 30, 2009

    Jon,

    Imagine I have a deterministic simulation of a coin being tossed. The simulator models a mechanical hand using some kind of dynamics package, and a simulated coin can be punted up into the air from where a constant force is applied to it until it hits the ground.

    I run this simulation several hundred times. However I slightly change the initial conditions for each coin toss. I move the hand a couple of millimeters higher or lower. I move the coin slightly forward or back. If I have air resistance, I slightly change the density of air or maybe even slightly change the force of gravity.

    We can observe the following:
    - Despite the simulation being completely deterministic, there is a random quality as to whether heads or tails comes up based on the initial conditions.
    - The stochastic properties of the simulated coin will probably not be distinguishable from a real coin.

    Now consider similarly a simulation of turbulent flow. We have a body moving with a turbulent flow of some liquid passing over it in such a way that periodically big eddies peel off. The big eddies are massive, full of energy. In the simulation, the body stores up a bit of energy around it, and then lets it go in an eddy. Call this simulation a. Suppose we play the same game of slightly altering the initial conditions of our simulation; make the liquid very slightly more or less viscous, increase or decrease the speed by a very small number and so on. We construct a second simulation, simulation b. We will note the same pattern in the simulation of big eddies peeling off, but they will peel off at different times in the two simulations. Now calculate the total energy in eddies at any time. While many features are identical (big eddies of roughly the same energy periodically peel off), at any time instant there may be a massive energy differences between the eddies in simulation a and simulation b.

    This does not say that simulations a and b are useless, it just means that using them to calculate the energy in the eddies at a precise instant is an inappropriate use of the tool.

    Keep in mind that GCMs (as with any simulation) are tools, not oracles. You have to be keenly aware of the precise character of their limitations to understand and use them. If you treat them as magical perfect prediction tools (or more to the point criticize them from the point of view that they are magical perfect prediction tools) you’re going wrong at the beginning of your analysis.

56. #56 z

    January 30, 2009

    “You claimed that Jenkins was dismissed because he wrote an opinion piece”

    correlation does not imply causation!!!

57. #57 Bernard J.

    January 30, 2009

    Jon Jenkins.

    I am a biologist. Specifically, I worked professionally in immunology/oncology and in pharmacology for over 15 years before undertaking a Masters and a PhD to retrain in ecology/population biology.

    I have an idea how much effort is required to become proficient in a discipline, and especially so because I was able to observe how much work it took to regain a comparable competency in ecological understanding with respect to the competency in medical biology that I had smugly taken for granted for over a decade.

    Changing horses as I did was a humbling process, and one that gave me a subtle understanding of some of epistemological processes underlying the development of professional expertise that many other ‘experts’ seem to miss in their own development, simply because they are not ‘looking for’ this understanding as they move from student to professional.

    I also gained an intriguing perspective on how scientific skills can equip a non-practitioner in a particular discipline to discriminate between alternative propositions within this discipline – as long as said non-practitioner leaves ideology at the door. In the matter of AGW my ecological perspective was such that I desperately hoped (and still do hope) that the best consensus understanding was overplaying the matter, because there are many other pressing impacts upon the biosphere that require the attention of ecologists, and because if the consensus is correct then the implications for the biosphere are nasty indeed.

    So I have approached my own personal assessment of AGW evidence with no desire to believe the ‘warmaholics’, as you unprofessionally term them, and tried to be as sceptical as possible. Somewhat in the manner of my reassessment, as a boy, of my fundamentalist Christian training in the light of my burgeoning interest in the natural sciences and in particular the evolution of life.

    My sceptical approach has nevertheless led me to conclude, to date, that the consensus of climatologists has a strong case, whilst the opposing thought is based more on denialist thinking than in solid evidence.

    I can simply see no comparable process of impartial weighing of evidence in you case. You are not an expert in climatology, and your use of polynomials in a completely inappropriate manner recalls to me the embarrassingly common incompetence many of my biomedical colleagues have in statistics. I hasten to add that this incompetence is not necessarily their ‘fault’ – much of biomedicine does not require advanced statistical analysis.

    And yet you claim to ‘know better’ than thousands of the world’s genuine experts in climatology. You (repudiated) comments above, about GCMs, are a fairly typical example. I am forced to conclude in my own mind that you are either being vexatious in your public proclamations, or that you are demonstrating a case of the Dunning-Kruger effect in a professional context.

    If you are truly open to dialog with a “scientific bent” you should address, as has been asked many times of you previously, the following points in detail:

    1) why did you use a high-order polynomial to describe a trend when no professional forum, nor indeed even any undergraduate context, would not (and should not) employ such

    2) why did you truncate from your ‘analysis’ the most recent monthly data-points that were available at the time that you published the Australian piece? It is especially important to explain this because including these points would have had a significant effect on your ‘trend’-line’s trajectory and interpretation

    3) why did you not include the available temperature data for the period of over a century before that covered by your graph? This is of particular interest because you are attempting to comment on climatological ‘trends’, on the basis of movement of temperature over the most recent decade or so, when you are taking into account neither the climatological trend over the last century and a half, nor the decadal ‘noise’ that has occurred at several points over this time.

    Supplementary questions might include queries as to why you should be considered a credible voice when you have shown no capacity to be regarded as such by publication and review in the scientific climatology literature, and when you have been as sloppy as you admit that you were in using inappropriate bona fides with which to lend credibility to your op ed.

    In a nutshell, I would suggest that your case has not been at all advanced since the whole debacle started, and indeed that it has continued to slide backward. Having Jennifer Marohasy on your side doesn’t seem to have helped.

58. #58 Dano

    January 30, 2009

    Having Jennifer Marohasy on your side doesn’t seem to have helped.

    Yes.

    My daddy told me a good way to judge a person was by the company they keep. I don’t go over to places like Marohasy’s because I’d have to take extra showers, and I live in a semiarid place.

    Best,

    D

59. #59 Chris O'Neill

    January 31, 2009

    Jon Jenkins:

    I thought I would respond to this one comment because it is the only one with any real scientific bent.

    That’s good but it doesn’t compensate for previously declaring that “On these crucial issues not a single comment” when there actually had been.

    “Climate models are not intended to predict El Ninos any more than probability theorems predict rolls of a dice. Even though probability theorems can’t predict the next roll of a dice, they can predict statistics of dice rolls. ”

    Correct so far because their intent is to simulate how heat energy moves in and out of the system and how heat affects temperature, El Nino should just fall out of that process. But GCM climate models are NOT random statistical models they are deterministic and defined.

    Deterministic models produce chaotic results so even though GCMs produce El Ninos, the timing and intensity are not deterministic.

    The GCMs SHOULD be able to reasonably simulate how 50% of the energy in the system is moving (whether the process has a formal name or not).

    They can simulate the system reasonably but without accurately forecasting the timing and intensity of events.

    If they can’t do that with even approximate accuracy then IMHO they have very little use as predictive tools because that energy may no longer even be in the system at all, it could just as well have been transferred to the upper atmosphere and escaped back into space.

    The exact timing of events that move heat around on the surface doesn’t necessarily affect long term climate sensitivity. As long as the average structure of the atmosphere doesn’t change much, the climate sensitivity won’t change much. What you should do is try to ask climate scientists about these issues rather than making ad hom attacks on them.