Deltoid

this is a preview, of what will happen soon on the topic of climate science:

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/tea-partiers-call-lewis-nr-frank-ft-at-capitol-hill-protest.php?ref=fpb

Posted by: sod | March 20, 2010 11:04 PM

sod, it's even worse than that report - spitting on lawmakers and threatening murder.

There was also a recent survey of Tea Partiers - you know, the guys who are deeply concerned about tax levels - revealing (on the whole) their pig ignorance of tax levels and changes thereof.

Teh Stupid is dangerous, especially in a mob setting, which is why anyone who seeks to incite it in order to gain power is despicable.

Posted by: Lotharsson | March 21, 2010 12:18 AM

I've spent 3 out of the last 6 months in the USA (with 3 more to go this year), as my wife is working there for a year as a surgeon. The healthcare debate is driving us nuts, but where I start to get quite angry is when they start saying absurd stuff about other countries' (like ours in Australia) health systems which is just complete crap. She's pretty much had enough too, and the end of her term can't come soon enough!

These people are from the exact same demographic as the hard-core AGW denialists. I've meandered around some politics blogs, and lo and behold, some of the exact same names crop up when talking garbage about public healthcare, and garbage about climate science.

What's really worrying though, is the extreme stuff they are saying and whether they'll act on it. About the worst abuse the AGW denialists cop is being called moronic or incredibly stupid (which unfortunately when you analyse some of their arguments, is just stating an obvious fact). Scientists get the full barrage however. Death threats both here and overseas. I'm gonna come after you. I'm gonna rape your children, etc, etc. All tough-talk from clueless, but frighteningly angry people.

Posted by: The other Mike | March 21, 2010 2:29 AM

Some have been saying James Hansen should be charged with crimes against humanity. That's crazy, he's only done a little fudging.

http://wallstreetpit.com/20710-climategate-goes-back-to-1980

Posted by: el gordo | March 21, 2010 5:39 AM

Draft of Hansens latest "Current GISS Global Surface Temperature Analysis"

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/paper/gistemp2010_draft0319.pdf

Haven't finished reading it yet.

Posted by: Paul UK | March 21, 2010 7:02 AM

Re: El Gordos link.

Erm. El Gordo, if you really like reading junk science and comparisons. Look carefully before posting a comment. The first graph is incorrect, the authors have marked a lower point in that graph for the 1970s. eg. the authors of the blog have themselves exaggerated the difference between 1965 and the 70s in the first graph.

Of course it would be nice if they published the graphs on a scale that could be viewed clearly, but I guess they aren't interested in anyone checking their findings.

We also can't tell from the graphs what the period of the running means are. The first one says 5 year running means, but the other graphs don't show anything.

Unless the graphs are available at a higher resolution, then the article is extremely dubious.

Posted by: Paul UK | March 21, 2010 7:23 AM

Sunspot also resorts to tinyurl links to try and stop people filtering out the known propagandists and deniosaurs...

Posted by: Lotharsson | March 21, 2010 8:32 AM

James Hansen should be charged with crimes against humanity.

Either that, or crimes against Sean Hannity.

Posted by: Ezzthetic | March 21, 2010 9:11 AM

Major palm-slaps-forehead...

Anthony Watts has determined that "the 'scientific method' of testing hypotheses by statistical analysis stands on a flimsy foundation".

Seriously.

And this is from a guy who has no qualification in science or in statistics, and who doesn't know the difference between a temperature and an anomaly.

Luboš Motl, to his credit, quite robustly refutes Watts' nonsense – I only wish that Motl would also as robustly refute his own statistical flim-flam concerning the degree of statistical significance associated with the warming trend since 1995. He could start by answering this question, and working forward on the implications...

But back to WTFUWT.

Amongst the many goose gagglings in the comments section, Willis Eschenbach (at 02:41:51, 20 Mar 2010) seems to be ignorant of methods for multiple comparison testing that compensate for spurious positives. Ironically, after Motl's fisking of the thread, Eschenbach back-pedals in a subsequent comment with "That’s the main problem I see, that statistics are applied improperly". Louis Hissink makes a bemusing appearance, but more bemusing is the fact that from completely ignorant lay people through to numerate professionals who should know better, there is almost universal misunderstanding of what statistics offer – harking back to Eschenbach's unintended irony...

In fact, I don't this I've ever seen as many unintended ironic comments in one thread as I have read in this one of Watts'.

I think that the short interpretation of Watt's post is "I can't handle the statistics, therefore statistics are a millstone to (blog) scientific progress, and a conspiracy foisted by the Scientati, and thus I will eschew any employment of such ridiculous complication. My best guesses will serve as well."

It seems that most of the Denialati fervently agree.

Alas for any hope of a genuinely knowledged society, when so many confuse the utility of a tool with the misuse of said tool.

Posted by: Bernard J. | March 21, 2010 9:24 AM

Bernard J - I wonder what the denialati will throw out with the bathwater next?

My money is the concept of ordinal numbers, it would help to untangle the 'up is just less down' confusion they've been having.

Posted by: Neil | March 21, 2010 9:45 AM

Neil.

It's bizarre that you should mention ordinal numbering when you did. I was about to mention this very beast in a comment that I've just made: you must have submitted your post as I was typing.

My almost-comment was about a fiddling with GISS data that I did last November in response to Andrew Bolt's persistent "cooling since 1998" meme, where I simply looked at cooling versus warming events over the last century, without (much) recourse to those highfalutin' sadistics that are so unecessary to Blog Science. The results show (unsurprisingly) that even with an ordinal approach rather than a parametric one, it is rash to claim cooling over the period spanned by the data.

If I can find the graphs, I might yet post them.

Posted by: Bernard J. | March 21, 2010 10:11 AM

The Harper government in Canada appears to be muzzling climate scientists and its not a good look. The Guardian has the story and there's also a critique over at Desmog blog.

The government is focussed on carbon capture, like the Rudd government, which is a recipe to do nothing for ten years until this climate debate blows over.

Posted by: el gordo | March 21, 2010 5:51 PM

Yes MikeH (#6) there are no 'deniers' in 'labour camps' - yet. You don't have to dig too far however in the popular mainstream press before you will find public comments like 'we have to do something about the billions of polluting people'. I really wonder what their idea for a 'solution' might be ? For your benefit, my assessment of the Carter article is that it is pretty close to the mark. Changing 'the science' to fit the computer models is certainly a symptom of of the miasma that has emanated in this area, in this the new 'Post Science' era.

Posted by: Billy Bob Hall | March 21, 2010 10:30 PM

Posted by: Hamilton | March 21, 2010 11:11 PM

For your benefit, my assessment of the Carter article is that it is pretty close to the mark. Changing 'the science' to fit the computer models is certainly a symptom of of the miasma that has emanated in this area, in this the new 'Post Science' era.

Carter, you say? Accusations of changing the science to fit something else? Well, he would know.

Posted by: Lotharsson | March 21, 2010 11:29 PM

It looks as if WUWT has got caught out again with a photo of a weather station at Cunderdin WA, which came from Andrew Bolt. Does WUWT ever post anything original? (I won't post a link to either site, but the comments are coming thick and fast on WUWT!)

The current weather station is at Cunderdin airfield. According to those who know it, is one of the better sited stations around. Also, from the BoM site, it's an Almos automatic weather station.

They can probably be forgiven, because the BoM site still lists station 10035 as the RCS station and has a photo as posted on WUWT (if it's for real). But a quick look at the observations shows no temp data past 2007 and the latest available data at Dec 2009. Whereas the airfield station is current.

(BoM site details for the airfield weather station are -31.6219, 117.2217 for anyone who wants to check it on Google Earth.)

Posted by: Sou | March 22, 2010 1:40 AM

el gordo:

It's madness to stifle anyone in this debate, particularly the scientists.

Incorrect.

1. the debate isn't science, it is politics. The article you posted earlier highlighted the fact that it is politics.
2. discussion and arguments between scientists are fine, but they decide which science is correct, not politicians or the media (such as monckton, journos etc).

Posted by: Paul UK | March 22, 2010 4:32 AM

The CC&S will be a white elephant, while the CEC is politically irrelevant and best ignored.

Over the last 20 years the AGW viewpoint has become well established through a compliant msm, information regulated and truth reconstructed. The average citizen has become a passive bystander in all of this because the 'science is settled', move right along.

It's not settled and you all know it. Anybody want to talk about the MWA.

Posted by: el gordo | March 22, 2010 5:53 AM

CEC is politically irrelevant and best ignored.

So why do you vote for them?

And forget the MWA. Let's talk VPL!

Posted by: John | March 22, 2010 6:05 AM

Actually my question to El Gordo @24 was asking both does he agree with CC&S, and does he agree with 'doing nothing for ten years until this climate debate blows over'?

Posted by: Stu | March 22, 2010 10:24 AM

El fatso muses: Over the last 20 years the AGW viewpoint has become well established through a compliant msm.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. What a load of crap.

Then, it gets worse: It's not settled and you all know it. Anybody want to talk about the MWA

Beyond a reasonable doubt the science IS settled and has been for the past 15 years. Get over it, el gordo. And NO, given its irrelevance, I do not want to talk about the MWP.

As for the Duffer: more innane stupidity. Provide a non-sequiter (the extinction of the natterjack toad) and use that as a proxy for what we do know about human impacts on the biosphere. This is the kind of intellectual vacuity I am used to dealing with from contrarians and denialists. They are mostly a sad bunch of scientific illiterates that use their ignorance as a shield against empirical facts. This is why it is a waste of time engaign with them in any kind of discourse. They know nothing, and in doing so think that nothing is wrong.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | March 22, 2010 11:40 AM

Tim, Bolt is quoting David Rose now. Hilarious.

Posted by: Andrew | March 22, 2010 3:39 PM

my side's going to beat the crap out of your side within a few more years.

Given el gordo's ability to "beat the crap out of" himself, continuously on deltoid, one might fear the day he turns his power onto others.

Posted by: jakerman | March 22, 2010 5:42 PM

El Gordo says

In the same vain, global cooling is approaching and we should be prepared to accommodate a lot more refugees than the Bolter could ever imagine.

That's a bit alarmist isn't it! Well, at least you seem to be making a testable hypothesis. How long will we have to wait before global cooling starts displacing all these people? When will we begin to see droves of climate refugees?

Posted by: Stu | March 22, 2010 6:29 PM

You answer my question with another question? How frustrating.

I can't tell when or where the first AGW refugees will show up. Maybe the lowest parts of Bangladesh will give a clear indication... perhaps large numbers of people will be forced to abandon their homes within a couple of decades. If the refugees are due to drought and famine that's obviously a lot harder to pin on global warming, but sea level rise is pretty much only due to thermal expansion + ice melting. I think that a warming of 1.5-2.0C over pre-industrial temps will produce refugees in sensitive areas like Bangladesh.

So, to ask you more questions, where and why will there be climate refugees under a cooling climate? How much cooling do we need to see before these refugees become evident? How will it be an 'orderly affair', and who's going to be 'flying them in'?

Posted by: Stu | March 22, 2010 10:36 PM

el gordo piles it higher and deeper in terms of self-humiliation when he/she writes": Being a big supporter of 'natural variability', my side's going to beat the crap out of your side within a few more years.

Where do I begin dismantling this latest gibberish? "Beat the crap out of 'our side'?". What utter nonsense. el gordo writes as if we are seeing two sides, somehow differentially equipped with intellectual arguments ("his/her side" with more), waging some kind of personal war as to explain the current warming. I hate to reiterate the applicability of the Dunning-Kruger effect here, but el gordo also writes as if he/she has some innate wisdom on the subject, wisdom that somehow has eluded the vast majority of climate scientists who are in broad agreement as to the major forcings underpinning the current warming. As several of us have said before, it takes remarkable hubris for an unemployed journalist to claim to understand an exceedingly complex field of research and to draw meaningful conclusions on the basis of that. Since el gordo relies heavily on a suite of contrarian blogs in generating his/her worldview, this makes their contribution to this debate even more absurd.

If the truth may be told, "your side" is not waging an empirical debate but a political one. "Your side" has little in the way of science behind them, but mostly consists of a motley army of ostensibly right wing/libertarian hacks who loathe government and see regulations implemented to deal with climate warming as a denial of liberty (and, for the commercial elites, a threat to profit maximization). The one area in which "your side" has profound influence is in public relations, because many of those waging the war against science have bottomless pockets and are waging a very effective PR campaign using exceedingly mendacious forms of propaganda. Of course "your side" will never win the scientific debate but that has been acknowledged by many on "your side" since the very beginning; the aim has been to sow doubt amongst the public and policy makers in such a way as to render meaningful action mute. Procrastination. And on this side of it there is little doubt that "your side" is winning. I grant you that. But on the science? Never.

Ultimately, the short-term anti-scientific propaganda battle being waged by "your side" will be victory, but the longer term consequences of this procrastination will have costs for everone on Earth. The fact is that complex adaptive natural systems are unforgiving. They do not recognize political boundries or disputes. Once they are simplified beyond some critical thresholds, the debt will have to be paid and it will be in terms of collapsing ecosystems and ecological services, more extreme forms of weather, an acceleration of the mass extinction event already underway and an increasing number of other nasty surprises. And what will be more galling is that the likes of useful idiots like el gordo will be the ones looking to scientists and technology to bail humanity of the pit we have dug for ourselves. By then it may well be too late. Many eminent scientists were saying 20 years ago that we were reaching the critical tipping points in terms of our effects on nature's ecological life-support systems, and since then little has changed. If anything, we have gone into reverse. We have ploughed ahead with a business-as-usual form of laissez faire capitalist and free market ideology that is driving both social injustice and environmental destruction.

I have had it up to here with the 'our side' mentality of el gordo and others like him/her.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | March 23, 2010 4:50 AM

Stu, there's an interesting article in Science about the Nile delta in Egypt. The population is increasing by a million a year, a large portion of the delta is sinking fairly rapidly because no more silt is flowing after they built Aswan High Dam in the 60s; and the Meditteranean is probably going to rise. The liveable area is already densely populated with 50 million people in a relatively small area.

That area is another one from where the world will likely see 'climate change' refugees. The IPCC cited it as one of the three places most vulnerable to climate change, according to the Science article.

Posted by: Sou | March 23, 2010 7:15 AM

What Jeff said.

Posted by: jakerman | March 23, 2010 8:21 AM

What Jeff said - here and so many times previously.

And as have I and many others as well, so many times previously.

Fatso (and others), you need to understand that our prosperity has been bought with leprecaun gold of a sort akin to the way Arther Smith describes it - the fossil energy that has so whetted our thirst for stuff has not slaked it, and it will leave a bitter aftertaste.

"Malthus!", "Club of Rome!", "Ehrlich!" I hear you howl. Fine, clear your larynx if you must, but in the end Malthus' train was late, not cancelled, and on ecological/evolutionary timescales the train will be late only by seconds. Malthus, CoR, Ehrlich and many others have the basic slope nailed; it's simply the intercept that remains to be pinned down.

If you disagree, produce the science to refute the thermodynamics underpinning ecology and society.

It's that simple.

Posted by: Bernard J. | March 23, 2010 9:03 AM

There will be no mass starvation, we are too clever to let that happen on our watch.

Except there already is mass starvation. We let it happen on our watch. You fail again.

Posted by: John | March 23, 2010 9:49 AM

John,

Exactly. There is mass starvation. One person in eight today is severely malnourished. This is more people than those sho were alive in 1930. Some progress.

Half of the world lives on less than 2 dollars a day. Extreme poverty is increasing after a brief period of decline. There is little chance that poverty-reduction targets will ever be reached in dealing with such profound social injustice and profound greed on the part of many commerical elites. If anything, we are going in the opposite direction. Capital flows from the underdeveloped south to the developed north are increasing in scale. They were terrible enough to begin with; now they are even worse.

All the while we are continuing to simplify the natural systems which permit us to exist and persist. Bernard summed it up elegantly as he always does above. Malthus was not wrong; neither are the Ehrlichs, Diamond, Lovejoy, Myers, Pimm and others. They may have been late in their predictions, but there is every sign that we are headed for a mighty cliff. It is just a shame that those with power and privilidge are too short-sighted and selfish to see it or to want to deal with it. And they are content to take their ideologically like-minded troops along for the ride. Those like el gordo are quite content apparently to lend vocal support to the cause of those whose actions are pushing natural systems beyond a point where they will not be able to sustain themselves and Homo sapiens in a manner that we all take for granted. This is what makes it so ironic. So many people out there gain nothing from clinging to the vain hope that everything is going to be OK. Those pushing political agendas have only selfish, short-term profits in mind. But where do the likes of Sunspot, el gordo, Brent, David Duff and others like them fit in? Why do they support a radical libertarian ideology when it does little for them, even in the short term?

It boggles the mind....

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | March 23, 2010 10:42 AM

Stu

They will be economic refugees, preferring to live in a warmer clime. There will be no mass starvation, we are too clever to let that happen on our watch.

Paleo evidence shows the Murray/Darling system was awash between 1760-80 and as deep as the Rhine. ENSO Rules!

Yes, but you are yet to answer three of my questions; where exactly will the refugees come from, when will this happen, and how much cooling will there be before this happens? You're being extremely vague, nay, vacuous.

Posted by: Stu | March 23, 2010 6:01 PM

It appears that environmental changes that may be linked to global warming are already producing refugees and are expected to produce more:

The team explains that in the four countries studied, environmental changes like soil degradation and erosion are especially prevalent in rural areas where poverty is pronounced. In Ghana, these slowly occurring environmental changes, coupled with severe and frequent droughts have been partly responsible for internal migration from the north to the south. Similarly, in Mozambique, droughts triggered internal migration from rural areas in the south to coastal and urban centres. In Niger, these environmental changes related to the expansion of the Sahel desert have resulted not only in internal but also border-crossing regional migration flows. Also, in Senegal, internal and international migration resulted from the environmental changes with respect to the peanut basin where job and farming opportunities decreased with increasing environmental degradation.

Refugees from global cooling seem harder to spot. While people from other parts of Canada may still retire to the west coast for the mild climate, I have yet to hear anyone claim that this is because the winters in the rest of Canada have been getting colder. According to an Environment Canada report quoted in the Montreal Gazette:

[T]he long-term record shows Canada's climate has changed, most markedly in the winter, which has warmed 2.5 C over the last 63 years

this would be because the winters in the rest of Canada aren't getting any colder.

Posted by: GGS | March 23, 2010 7:24 PM

Crikey Jakers, is he reading from a giant board right behind the camera!?

Posted by: Stu | March 24, 2010 6:36 AM

Stu, I missed that, quite funny to watch now.

Posted by: jakerman | March 24, 2010 6:53 AM

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/fundiesdontreallybelievethis_stuff/

----excerpt follows-----

"... I bet the people who claim that Obama is the Antichrist are a group that neatly overlaps with the people who believe in the Rapture. And most of the people who believe in the Rapture believe they and the people they know will totally be raptured. And yet they know that hasn’t happened yet, and it’s supposed to happen before the Antichrist ascends to power, right? ... ... And since you aren’t raptured, I’d imagine if you really believed your own bullshit, you’d be having a major personal crisis right now due to the realization that your god has cast you out.

In general, I’m impressed by the uptick in conservatives saying things they know are bullshit. That link has a whole bunch of examples, from calling Obama a socialist to calling him a racist. They know and we know it’s all bullshit. They don’t even know what half those words mean.

Personally, I think conservatives are cracking under the strain of not being able to call people “motherfuckers”, because that’s a naughty word. I get this a lot from conservatives---anger about naughty language, suggestions that as long as we scrub the words “fuck” and “shit” from our vocabulary, that’s a proper substitute for being the kind of people who can think critically and reason. But being unable to just say “motherfucker” and “asshole” when that’s what you mean puts conservatives in this bind, and they try to resolve the tension by inventing whole new meaningless curse words to call people, like “baby killer”, “Antichrist”, and “socialist”.
-----end excerpt -----

Click the link at the top for more

Posted by: hankroberts | March 27, 2010 10:25 PM

@71: You may have missed these posts by Tamino (who appears to be an actual statistician) explaining why the temperature trend can not be accurately characterized as a random walk.

Posted by: GGS | March 28, 2010 1:24 PM

GGS

Order masquerading as randomness.

Posted by: el gordo | March 29, 2010 4:08 AM

An interesting read and links SteveC - thanks for taking the trouble.

It's not like El G's credibility can sink any further.

Posted by: chek | March 30, 2010 7:58 AM

SteveC

Thanks for the in-depth report. From my understanding they decided to send the First Fleet to Botany Bay based on Bank's opinion. Good thing, too, otherwise we would all be speaking French.

Posted by: el gordo | March 30, 2010 5:44 PM

Phil Jones Exonerated by British House of Commons

Posted by: Dave R | March 30, 2010 9:52 PM

Lotharsson

Something is wrong there and I suggested, when we had a run-in at Jen Marohasy's, that he should seek professional advise.

It was an odd feeling as all other chatter stopped at that point, it was just him and me. Obviously his reputation had preceded him.

Posted by: el gordo | March 30, 2010 11:43 PM

79 Lotharsson,

Surely GMB is not new to so many here? I'm pretty sure that Tim banned him from Deltoid some time ago.

I first read his, err, arguments in the Marohasy Bog and made a collection of them, generously made available here (usual warnings apply).

He is clearly delusional, especially in Dunning-Kruger terms. Is it right to attack someone who is at least borderline mentally ill? I think it is, if that person is apparently at liberty to make such outrageous claims and in such foul, insulting, language.

Actually, remove the foul language and he's not too different to some other anti-science types. I know we can all think of a few examples.

Posted by: TrueSceptic | March 31, 2010 1:36 PM

RE: #81

Check out the full text of the emails. They tell an interestingly different story.

Posted by: pough | March 31, 2010 3:13 PM

86 pough,

What is this? Do you imagine that we aren't familiar with the emails, or that we don't have access to them? Why the fuzzy PDF?

Posted by: TrueSceptic | March 31, 2010 7:22 PM

Apologies for a double post on two different threads, but this deserves to be widely seen:

This is freaking unbelievable. In comments at The Drum John McLean, who allegedly claimed something along the lines of "my IT training gave me logic skills", wrote this:

If the SOI accounts for short-term variation then logically it also accounts for long-term variation.

This is one of the single most illogical statements I've seen from someone claiming to be at postgraduate level in a field at least marginally related to climate change. You'd think John could imagine many examples of systems even from his IT experience where this does not make sense, let alone understand how the logic simply does not follow.

This statement deserves to be in the hall of fame (and widely disseminated), along with Ms Nova's "a vacuum stops energy loss well" and other classics of the genre.

Posted by: Lotharsson | April 1, 2010 7:34 AM

90 Lotharsson,

Being an (ex) IT person myself, I can see why he would make a claim about "logic skills". The problem is that McLean is a moron, and an arrogant one at that. "Skills" are merely tools. Tools in the hands of the incompetent are useless at best and dangerous at worst.

Posted by: TrueSceptic | April 1, 2010 9:34 AM

88 TrueSceptic

What is this?

A sentence; interrogative.

Do you imagine that we aren't familiar with the emails, or that we don't have access to them?

Well, I know I wasn't familiar with them until someone posted a link to them elsewhere. I figured either you were and wouldn't need to follow the link or else you weren't and would like to. I'm strange that way. I'll admit that providing links to more information is a bit off, but I also like the musical stylings of Big Country. What can you do?

Why the fuzzy PDF?

Fuzzy PDFs are the best!

Seriously, why the snark? I found it interesting, after reading the article and then the emails, just how efficiently the quotes got mined. YMMV.

Posted by: pough | April 1, 2010 11:25 AM

95 TrueSceptic

;-) Poe knows, it happens all the time.

Posted by: pough | April 1, 2010 2:16 PM

I see I didn't acknowledge Bernard's main point very well - that they don't realise that OTHER skills are necessary in science beyond raw logical ability. I think this is an oversight that leads to Dunning-Kruger.

Posted by: Lotharsson | April 1, 2010 8:06 PM

The Science Show's Climate change scepticism - its sources and strategies episode, mentioned above.

Posted by: Bernard J. | April 3, 2010 12:43 AM