I am all powerful (part 2)

Posted by William M. Connolley on December 19, 2009
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Actually it turns out that this is part 3! But I’m not going to revise the title now. Part 1 and Part 2 refer, as does some digging.

[Update: this made the [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-12-28/In the news]] ]

So, Lawrence “beany” Solomon does me the honour of a full-out assault. I’m a bit puzzled as to why, perhaps more study will reveal this. It looks like he is trying to get some kind of linkage between the [[Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident]] and my on-wiki activities. But although Solomon states directly The Climategate Emails reveal something else, too: the enlistment of the most widely read source of information in the world — Wikipedia — in the wholesale rewriting of this history I don’t see any actual support for this anywhere. I find two refs to wiki in the emails, one of which miss-spells my name, thereby convincingly demonstrating a clear intent to hide their tracks, ha ha, and the other is an apparently uninteresting whinge.

So that all looks like twaddle – presumably, just the peg for Beany to hang his story on. He then continues with some confused stuff that is reasonably well explained in [[Description of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age in IPCC reports]] (and you can find traces of that in the emails if you look hard, I won’t spoil your fun by telling you how to search, but if you find it feel free to put it into the comments).

Then there is some bizarre ahistorical stuff about wiki and RC. I started editing wiki in 2003. It isn’t hard to discover that RC started in late 2004 [1]. Beany says He rewrote Wikipedia’s articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling and all of that is true enough. The bit about erasing the LIA and MWP is twaddle though.

For those who aren’t wiki-wonks and may be wondering where his stats come from, the answer is http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/count/ or similar tools. You can view my actual deletion log here. It really isn’t very exciting. For those who can’t be bothered to follow the link, here are the first few:

[nb: lightly mangled to make them more readable]

# 2006-06-17T11:39:17 deleted "South Atlantic oscillation" ‎ (non-existent concept; straight copy of NAO page)
# 2006-05-24T08:44:33 deleted "Discjockey" ‎ (spam)
# 2006-05-05T21:46:19 deleted "Alan Chartock" ‎ (copyvio (again))
# 2006-05-05T20:48:01 deleted "Alan Chartock" ‎ (copyvio (as before) plus suspicious edit warring (if thats any kind of grounds))
# 2006-04-11T13:47:06 deleted "El Nino-Southern Oscillation" ‎ (Deleted to make way for move.)
# 2006-03-17T17:08:05 deleted "John heap" ‎ (pointless redirect)
# 2006-03-08T12:38:54 deleted "Gostivari" ‎ (POV fork of Gostivar; not even in English!)
# 2006-03-04T19:54:06 deleted "Quango" ‎ (content was: '#REDIRECT Quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation')
# 2006-03-01T21:53:21 restored "Ray Bradley" ‎
# 2006-03-01T21:47:50 restored "Ray Bradley" ‎
# 2006-02-25T20:01:33 deleted "Henry Ward, Hastings architect c.1880 - 1920" ‎ (pointless redirect)
# 2006-02-24T22:55:25 deleted "Glacier dynamics" ‎ (Page moved; redirect not useful)
# 2006-02-17T21:29:42 deleted "File:Bang-dont-shoot.JPG" ‎ (errrm, probably not a good idea really, wouldn't have been very funny)
# 2006-02-08T22:09:57 restored "Talk:Aetherometry" ‎
# 2006-02-03T10:00:59 restored "User:Howrealisreal" ‎ (1 revisions restored)
# 2006-02-03T10:00:15 deleted "User:Howrealisreal" ‎ (Remove old personal info at user request (will recreate just present version))
# 2006-01-18T20:33:29 restored "Henry Farrell (political scientist)" ‎ (7 revisions restored)

and here are the last few:

# 2009-07-20T16:50:05 deleted "Sub-Saharan African DNA admixture in Europe" ‎ (G4: Recreation of a page that was deleted per a deletion discussion)
# 2009-07-09T20:13:08 deleted "Talk:Ancient Egyptian race controversy/Draft request for arbitration enforcement" ‎ (sock stuff)
# 2009-07-01T09:50:44 deleted "Hilery clintin" ‎
# 2009-07-01T09:50:40 deleted "Cheekle" ‎
# 2009-07-01T09:50:35 deleted "Gray brich" ‎
# 2009-07-01T09:50:31 deleted "Saddam heussein" ‎
# 2009-07-01T09:50:25 deleted "Mon key" ‎
# 2009-07-01T09:49:58 deleted "Gorge bush" ‎ (pointless)
# 2009-05-23T13:38:09 deleted "Talk:Human rights in the United States" ‎ (G6: Deleted to make way for move)
# 2009-05-23T13:35:35 deleted "Human rights in the United States" ‎ (G6: Deleted to make way for move)
# 2009-05-19T07:37:19 deleted "User talk:Tennis expert" ‎ (per user request)
# 2009-05-09T18:01:46 deleted "Catastrophic climate change (disambiguation)" ‎ (oh no not again)
# 2009-05-08T12:01:55 deleted "Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Catastrophic climate change" ‎ (bye bye)

Notice the date on the last one. Oddly, Beany doesn’t seem to have noticed that I lost my admins rights a while back ([[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William M. Connolley]]) but it probably wouldn’t have fitted into that story very well. Nor, come to that, my recent failed bid for arbcomm.

Conclusion: a rather dull article by Beany. Nothing new, and he hasn’t done his homework properly.

[Update: As an entertaining example of the wacko echo-sphere, A new report reveals a British scientist and Wikipedia administrator rewrote climate history, editing more than 5,000 unique articles in the online encyclopedia to cover traces of a medieval warming period [2] takes some beating. In case you miss the point… my total-articles is ~5k, of which only a tiny number touch on the MWP]

[Update: more trash from LS

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Comments

  1. #1 dhogaza
    2009/12/19

    The fact that you deleted a lot of edits is no surprise, but I hadn’t realized you’d lost your superpowers over there.

    [It is my dark shame and I avoid mentionning it -W]

  2. #2 Dallas Dinosaur
    2009/12/19

    I thought Solomon’s article was very interesting. Actually, Steve McIntyre also points to some of your more “interesting” comments in Wiki (particularly your Hockey Stick debate comments). In the climategate emails, you are cc’d quite a bit, but the only note I find you wrote was the one below (which much of the content is actually from Phil Jones). Are there others with your name misspelled? Can you explain the one below? It looks innocuous, but there are others emails that have at first glance, looked harmless, only to look much more conspiritorial once you understand context.

    > William M Connolley wrote:
    > > On Thu, 4 Jan 2007, Phil Jones wrote:
    > >
    > >> The net is closing…
    > >>
    > >> National Research Council, US Committee for the Global Atmospheric
    > >> Research Program, Understanding Climatic Change: A Program for Action,
    > >> National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, (1975), appendix A.
    > >>
    > >> This book (Fig A2b) has the same figure as Imbrie/Imbrie. It is rotated.
    > >> It also has the same concept of the IPCC 1990 Figure, changes on
    > >> various timescales – all rotated. Loads of Lamb diagrams I have
    > >> seen countless times before.
    > >>
    > >
    > > ? The source for IPCC can’t be the 1975 NAS report. That fig is relatively warm
    > > about 1600; the IPCC ’90 figure is cold then. And as noted the “MWP” is colder
    > > than 1950. But NAS 75 is the same as I+I, true (they both source to Lamb 69).
    > >
    > > Incidentally my I+I says copyright 1979, seventh printing 1998.
    > >
    > > -W.

    [Yes, this is the bit I said you could find if you looked hard enough. But I don't think you've done your homework enough - go read the wiki page on MWP/LIA and see if you know then -W]

  3. #3 Larry Johnson
    2009/12/19

    The jig is up, though you still seem not to be getting the message. Not surprising given you are a pathological narcissist.

    The whole world is on to your and the Team’s suppression of dissenting opinions. Your credibility is zilch.

  4. #4 Louie
    2009/12/19

    You probably could have written this a bit less snidely, and also a bit more professionally. I understand that temperatures can flare, but you may want to hold back the instant-gratification that the Internet allows (lest ye reach a tipping-point) ;-)

    [Ah, but I'm not a climate professional any more. More seriously, its my style; you'll just have to cope I'm afraid -W]

  5. #5 Eli Rabett
    2009/12/19

    Over cold confusion?? you gotta come play in the hydrino patch

  6. #6 Lysenko-ism
    2009/12/19

    This looks interesting:
    http://www.climate-gate.org/email.php?eid=446

    how can a public relations blog be used as a “reliable” source on wikipedia ?

    [Its not a PR blog. Read it, then you'd know -W]

  7. #7 Steve L
    2009/12/19

    Re #6 — I’m more concerned with William Connolly being listed twice as a contributor to RealClimate.org. The ‘Team’ has clearly taken to cloning in their sinister plot to bla bla bla.

  8. #8 Spencer
    2009/12/19

    I always thought your site was one of the odder ones I had come across in the website regarding climate change. Now having read the Solomon article and other commentaries on climategate I think understand why it seemed so odd.

    [Why thank you. I do try -W]

  9. #9 Paul Kelly
    2009/12/20

    Hooray for frivolity. The climate catastrophe global governance framework is collapsing regardless of Emails or the science or whether it is an insult to be called a wikipedia wise man. It just doesn’t work, man. There’s seventeen years of proof of that.

    You could ignore Solomon as I did when I first learned of your wiki connection last year. No one interested in getting reliable information uses wikipedia, so what’s the big deal?

  10. #10 Dave
    2009/12/20

    Look, stitch the world up if you must, but please please pleeeaassseee spare us from this!!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DSC_1150-w-smile.JPG

    Advise interested readers to check the “All public logs” filter option rather than “Deletion log”. That shows the true busyness of the editing.

    [You should check my facebook page photo -W]

  11. #11 vg Phd
    2009/12/20

    Probably time to move on or get out. People are getting angry and the surveys are showing this (only 29% now believe what “climate scientists” are telling them). In a months time it will probably be 5%….delete if you want but you get the message
    BTW I am a scientis with 4 higher degrees in statistics and related science my father was an eminent meteorologist. You will be accused of fornicating science to the max!

  12. #12 VG
    2009/12/20

    BTW good on you and RC for allowing us “skeptics” to post. In the end it will go positive for you because there is of course a great future for long term forecasting methods models etc. Unfortunately what you guys have done is reduce the credence in it. I am sure you are a very capable mathematician put it to good use for Gods sake!

  13. #13 sHx
    2009/12/20

    William,

    mate, you are the man of the moment!

    What’s up with that photo in your wiki page? Isn’t that against wiki POV rules or something like that?

    Dome may say it’s “hot”, though others may disagree and say, “No, it’s cool”. What do you reckon?

    My point of view is that it makes you look like running away after snatching a kiddie’s teddy-bear. Like a reverse mug-shot! It is a hatchet job, mate! Why don’t you take the issue with the Wikipedia and supply the wiki with a photo that shows your real quality?

    Ta, mate. No matter how much they try to sully your good name, never give up.

    [That small animal is "Mr Weasel" and we're very fond of him -W]

  14. #14 VG
    2009/12/20

    I would leave Stoat alone. After all they were right in many of their beliefs which I agree with… to many people cars cement etc of course hes right in that respect. The only contention with us skeptics was C02 and warming.. but I can understand why they got carried away with it.. I was convinced of it 5 years ago! But then we only live 80-90 years that’s not climate! We cannot see “Climate change” we live too short! good luck and chao

  15. #15 Jeff Minch
    2009/12/20

    You are a propagandist, nothing more. You stifle debate and censor those who disagree with you. Then you attempt to act coy.

    But you aren’t simply a propagandist, you are a propagandist that used the name of Wikipedia to spread your beliefs. You stifled debate and censored critics, and you did it all under someone else’s good name. You discredited your host and violated the trust that people put in Wikipedia, but your cause was just and your soul was pure, so actions were justified. You should be ashamed, but you won’t be. Propagandists never are.

    [Ah well, I can only urge you to read the wiki pages and understand the science. If you insist you already know what is the Truth, though, there is little chance of you learning -W]

  16. #16 Andrew Cates
    2009/12/20

    Did you kill Kennedy as well? I think we should be told.

    [We didn't kill Kennedy - it was all faked, he is hiding in an ice cavern in our sekret Antarktik base -W]

  17. #17 NikFromNYC
    2009/12/20

    The AGW meltdown continues. Copenhagen hottest decade on record…1870. Fzzzzzzzt. Copenhagen hottest decade on record…1920. Popcorn munch munch. Copenhagen hottest decade on record…1940. Oh! such drama. Copenhagen hottest decade on record…1980. Drum roll please. Copenhagen hottest decade on record…2010. Sing with me oh e-v-e-r-y g-e-n-e-r-e-n-e-r-a-t-i-o-n, you s-e-eeee-eee-eh-eee, there’s another hippie dippie doo doo emergenceeeeeee.

    http://i45.tinypic.com/ele3bp.jpg

  18. #18 MartinM
    2009/12/20

    Nice of the denialists to show up here and continue demonstrating their rather regrettable lack of substance.

    [Indeed. It is tempting to delete their comments but more destructive to just leave them :-) -W]

  19. #19 Bill O'Slatter
    2009/12/20

    Keep up the good work Stoatie. It’s also good to see McIntyre off with the black helicopters (as usual) on this one.

  20. #20 Hank Roberts
    2009/12/20

    Wow, I actually remember ‘abd’ showing up on The WELL, and “wall of text” is certainly the right description for his approach. The guy was bad at 1200 baud; thanks to an effective killfile there and on Usenet I never saw him again. So he got into Wikipedia. Too bad. He was like a PCR for bad thinking; give it a snippet and it’d come back multiplied, lather rinse repeat.

  21. #21 Ray Lopez
    2009/12/20

    Ping. Does my comment get in Bill? What a joke. You set back the AGW cause by five years with your censorous activity. FURL

    [See? I *am* all powerful -W]

  22. #22 ToddPT
    2009/12/20

    Funny how the right-wing reactionaries are always redefining words. Deleting unsupported ignorance becomes “censorship” instead of a moral obligation to the truth.

  23. #23 parrotsatemypiate
    2009/12/20

    Looks like you have outlived your usefulness for Marxism, Mr. Connolley.

  24. #24 Boris
    2009/12/20

    Why did all of you denialists decide to post in this thread? More interestingly, how much drool can a standard keyboard take before it needs replacement?

  25. #25 dhogaza
    2009/12/20

    [See? I *am* all powerful -W]

    Wow, Ray Lopez. It was you who taught him that there’s more to life than Usenet?

    More to flood with absolute nonsense, that is …

  26. #26 windansea
    2009/12/20

    It appears that Connolley’s effort to get elected to Wikipedia’s arbitration committee have failed according to the election results:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ACE2009
    He had 234 support votes, 284 neutral votes and 478 oppose votes for a net of -244. He came in 19th out of 22 and nine were to be elected.

    [That would have been more impressive if you'd managed to work it out *before* I posted it to my talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:William_M._Connolley . Or indeed, before I posted it on this very post -W]

  27. #27 MartinM
    2009/12/20

    It appears that Connolley’s effort to get elected to Wikipedia’s arbitration committee have failed

    Gosh, you figured that out all by yourself? Impressive!

  28. #28 Tom C
    2009/12/20

    [Rubbish spelling cut -W]

    Why do you go trolling for Lawrence Solomon’s associations in an effort to discredit what he says? Isn’t your Green Party activism in itself more damaging to the supposed impartiality that one should have as a Wiki editor?

    [You have an inflated idea of my GP activism. I fact, I'm fairly sure you haven't got a clue. Which bits are you referring to, in the past year? -W]

  29. #29 bigcity
    2009/12/20

    I wonder if the vote got freeped. There was a link to it from Newsbusters this morning.

  30. #30 parrotsatemypiate
    2009/12/20

    Wait, I though you people were just kidding. You actually believe this conspiracy crap??

  31. #31 Boris
    2009/12/21

    If there’s something stupid to believe, there is someone on the internet who believes it.

  32. #32 D. Robinson
    2009/12/21

    W,

    It seems to me that our climate’s co2 sensitivity has been exaggerated [to some extent] due to temperature records that are riddled with UHI problems, and biased statistical work. I think the CRU E-mails support this line of thinking. (Does that make me a denialist too? Darn it all.)

    Do you believe the temperature records, paleo data and therefore calculated co2 sensitivity are free from exaggeration due to confirmation bias among climatologists?

    [As far as I am aware, there is no evidence whatsoever that the climate records have been biased. There has been an awful lot of frothy talk, but no substance at all. If you think I'm wrong, you should point out some solid evidence. To answer you second para, there may well be some "confirmation bias" but it has nothing at all to do with the CRU emails. I'm with JA in this - climate sensitivity is 3 oC, pretty well as everyone thinks -W]

  33. #33 dhogaza
    2009/12/21

    It seems to me that our climate’s co2 sensitivity has been exaggerated [to some extent] due to temperature records that are riddled with UHI problems

    Even though analyses have been done using only rural stations that show the same trend?

    In what way do you think the stolen CRU e-mails support your line of unreasoning?

  34. #34 pough
    2009/12/21

    You deleted Gorge Bush!? What a cheekle mon key!

  35. #35 Eli Rabett
    2009/12/21

    Boris wins the thread

  37. #37 Paul Kelly
    2009/12/22

    As an alternative energy activist, I wonder if all this is, for you, anything other than an academic exercise. All the concern with trivialities and denierism is wasted effort if the real goal is a carbon free energy world.

    This is a troubling time for many, as environmentalists and others realize the COP/IPCC framework cannot accomplish the real goal.

    [Yes indeed. That requires its own post -W]

  38. #38 Quaternion
    2009/12/22

    Thanks for the rhetorical help in killing off Climate Change legislation. I realize that you are just a tiny wheel, but every LITTLE bit helps.

  39. #39 James Annan
    2009/12/22

    Louie,

    Thanks, that’s f-ing brilliant! I’ve heard of the Wingnut Daily but don’t think I’ve actually read it before.

  40. #40 Marlys
    2009/12/22

    …’abd’ showing up on The WELL…

    Wait. abd, of lore, from the WELL? Yikes. That was years ago but I think I remember abd. I didn’t post a lot in the topics he infected so I didn’t instantly bozo him but I’m pretty sure I had to filter him at some point just to make it through a linked topic. Ouch. If it’s not him, it’s his twin. It’s startling to see him re-surface. I guess everyone loses with abd but reading through the wikipedia discussion of the dispute made me think wikipedia, more than you, lost. I guess motivations aren’t germane here but it’s worth pointing out that abd has been, um, highly motivated for this kind of stuff for at least, what?, twenty years.

    [Bit of a shame we didn't know this before. Still, the on-wiki evidence was clear enough to anyone with the sense to read it -W]

  41. #41 andrewt
    2009/12/22

    Found on Watts blog:

    “William Connolley is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible human beings I ever had an email contact with. This former small-time British Arctic Survey employee has turned Wikipedia administration into a personal Maoist-style censorship. Having failed in personal and professional life, Connolley sadistically exercises his editorial power over larger hearts and more knowledgeable minds in the virtual dreamland of Wikipedia.”

    Did you run over is dog – or just revrt something he wrote I wonder?

    [Hey wow am I famous or what? I just had a look at the blog - the standard of ignorance of the comments is mind boggling -W]

  42. #42 SomeBeans
    2009/12/22

    You made it into the Daily Telegraph (blog):

    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020515/climategate-the-corruption-of-wikipedia/

  43. #43 Adam
    2009/12/22

    “Having failed in personal and professional life,”

    You have?
    Now there’s a sentence that smacks of projection.

  44. #44 dhogaza
    2009/12/22

    I just had a look at the blog – the standard of ignorance of the comments is mind boggling

    Part of me says we should thank Watts for gathering such an impressive array of ignorance in one place. It’s really quite an accomplishment.

    What would be an appropriate honor?

    Oh, I know! Science Blog of the Year!

    </vomit> …

  45. #45 tata
    2009/12/22

    Hi, William
    Some people are saying that you “misused your administrative privileges while involved in a dispute unrelated to climate warming”. What’s this all about (can you explain)?

    [I'm not sure I can *explain* really. I can point you at the arbcomm decision http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William_M._Connolley and you can see if you understand it :-) -W]

  46. #46 guthrie
    2009/12/22

    Ahhh, James DElinpole – as unhinged and obsessive as Monkton and with even less scientific knowledge. He manages to insinuate a great deal about how insane and corrupt you, realclimate and CRU are, but the most obvious thing is that he thinks you are ugly. Just another demonstration of why the telegraph isn’t worth the paper its written on.

  47. #47 D. Robinson
    2009/12/22

    Re: dhogaza

    Why are you always so nasty? Is it your job, your marriage, underwear too tight?

    Even though analyses have been done using only rural stations that show the same trend? No doubt some analyses have been done comparing rural ADJUSTED stations that subsequently confirmed the trend. But the station metadata and GHCN classifications are not accurate enough for that purpose. One needs to go through it by hand to pick truly rural stations with long records. 1) Just using the oldest 3000 stations RURAL OR URBAN in the NOAA database yields no warming until the 1990′s when the station count suddenly drops from 2600 to 1300. 2) There is a quantifiable difference in temp trend over land vs. ocean. 3) NOAA, GISS and CRU start from the same GHCN data.

    In what way do you think the stolen CRU e-mails support your line of unreasoning?

    One example of what looks to be arbitrary data manipulation:

    http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1016&filename=1254108338.txt

    “So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC,
    then this would be significant for the global mean — but
    we’d still have to explain the land blip.

    I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an
    ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of
    ocean blip to explain the land blip”

    The temperature trend is affected by poor UHI corrections and bias on the part of the data set builders. How much? Dunno.

  48. #48 wildlifer
    2009/12/22

    D. Robinson,

    You should really do some research and quit coming here directly from the ditto-head echo chamber.

    From Real Climate:

    Wigley: The concern with sea surface temperatures in the 1940s stems from the paper by Thompson et al (2007) which identified a spurious discontinuity in ocean temperatures. The impact of this has not yet been fully corrected for in the HadSST data set, but people still want to assess what impact it might have on any work that used the original data.

  49. #49 D. Robinson
    2009/12/22

    Re Wildlifer:

    Thanks for the input. And without question anything RC says just has to be right on the money with no bias or defensiveness. I’ve done enough looking to have formed an opinion, that confirmation bias has had an impact on the global temperature records. Not claiming AGW is a hoax or mass conspiracy by nefarious and unscrupulous scientists.

    And for the record, I’m not claiming anything about the 1940′s ‘blip’ being real or spurious. I quoted Phil Jones exact words in choosing a correction factor based on his DESIRE to make it less pronounced.

  50. #50 dhogaza
    2009/12/22

    I’ve done enough looking to have formed an opinion, that confirmation bias has had an impact on the global temperature records.

    Yes, glaciers, the arctic ice cap, pine bark beetles, red-shouldered hawks and black phoebe on the west US coast, golden eagles in northern NE Canada, and a myriad other things of the vegetable-animal-mineral sort all display the same confirmation bias.

    And for the record, I’m not claiming anything about the 1940′s ‘blip’ being real or spurious. I quoted Phil Jones exact words in choosing a correction factor based on his DESIRE to make it less pronounced.

    This was an estimate based on incomplete work. The ‘blip’ is real, and documented, and the cause known (change in shipboard sampling procedures). You’re arguing that taking a look at what a known ‘blip’ might do to one’s analysis of the SST dataset is what? Fraud? Cooking the books? You’re an idiot.

    No doubt some analyses have been done comparing rural ADJUSTED stations that subsequently confirmed the trend. But the station metadata and GHCN classifications are not accurate enough for that purpose.

    The second statement is a handwaving assertion with nothing to back it up.

    Regarding the first statement, if nothing else you have to adjust for when stevenson screens were introduced. Saying that making such adjustments is wrong is just stupid. It’s like saying doctors shouldn’t take into account whether a patient’s temperature is taken orally or rectally when makin a diagnosis.

    And, of course, people have analyzed the homogenization adjustment trends and they follow a normal distribution heavily clustered very close to 0C.

    Not claiming AGW is a hoax or mass conspiracy by nefarious and unscrupulous scientists.

    No, you’re just another amateur claiming to be smarter than the thousands of professionals working in the field. I’m as likely to believe that as I am to allow you to do open heart surgery on me.

  51. #51 Mike
    2009/12/22

    Do you ever respond to actual arguments? Or do you just use sarcasm and claims of authority and knowing ultimate truth? I’ve been following this debate for a while and to be honest I have never seen anyone on your side respond with anything other than sarcasm and claims of authority. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a single argument for AGW other than the one that “all scientists agree”.

    [Yes, I respond to arguments, if people make them. You haven't made one. If you're interested in Global Warming, then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming is a reasonable place to start. If you want to know about attribution, thentry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_change -W]

  52. #52 Deep Climate
    2009/12/22

    Yeah, but has Watts ever been in email contact with Edward Wegman?

    http://deepclimate.org/2009/12/22/wegman-and-rapp-on-tree-rings-a-divergence-problem-part-1/

    Aren’t you impressed by my ability to stay on topic?

    [Hmm, I'm not sure that's allowed. You wouldn't be senisble, would you? -W]

  53. #53 sHx
    2009/12/22

    [That small animal is "Mr Weasel" and we're very fond of him -W]

    Yeah, but that photo is not on Mr Weasel’s Wiki page, mate, is it?

    [You should be more formal -W]

    One would have thought as an ardent Wikipedean, you would follow the letter and the spirit of Wikipedia rules. You have posted a POV photo of yours on your own Wikipedia page.

    [No. I don't watch that page. What people do there is up to them, not me -W]

    Why not supply them with a decent photo rather than a silly one? Is it because you do not consider Wikipedia a serious endeavour at all?

    [I like it. I'm playful. The photo is representative -W]

  54. #54 Barbara
    2009/12/22

    [Cut. Don't give out too many clues to the clueless -W]

    Excuse me by what definition of neutrality does one justify your involvement with editing Richard Lindzen’s bio or commenting on the Middle Ages Warming Period or IPCC’s head Pachauri?

    [I'm not sure what conflict you perceive. Are you arguning along the lines "you know something about GW, so therefore should not edit any GW related pages"? Or "I disagree with you about GW, therefore..."? Please explain -W]

  55. #55 Steve Reynolds
    2009/12/22

    “… I’m with JA in this – climate sensitivity is 3 oC, pretty well as everyone thinks -W]”

    Didn’t a more recent JA paper show closer to 2C more likely based on ERBE data?

    [Doesn't sound very likely. He may stop by though -W]

  56. #56 Steve Reynolds
    2009/12/22

    This more recent JA paper seems to show close to 2C peak pdf sensitivity in figure 2:
    http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frsgc/research/d5/jdannan/probrevised.pdf

  57. #57 Rattus Norvegicus
    2009/12/23

    I’m sure that James would be surprised at your interpretation of his paper. He is pretty well set on 3C as being the most likely value. This paper seems to be an exploration of why uniform priors are wrong (a pet peeve of the 2006 paper), but is really focusing on what the upper 95% limit is.

  58. #58 Deep Climate
    2009/12/23

    #56
    2C is much too low

    When this prior is updated with the analysis of Forster and Gregory (2006), the long fat tail that is characteristic of all recent estimates of climate sensitivity simply disappears, with an upper 95% probability limit for S easily shown to lie close to 4oC, and certainly well below 6oC. Alternative likelihoods based on Hegerl et al. (2006) and Annan and Hargreaves (2006) generate similar results. Thus it might be reasonable for the IPCC to upgrade their confidence in S lying below 4.5oC to the “extremely likely” level, indicating 95% probability of a lower value.

    So the 95% upper bound is somewhere between 4 and 4.5. The central estimate is close to 3, I’m quite sure (maybe 2.8 or 2.9 to two significant digits, if I recall correctly).

  59. #59 Marco
    2009/12/23

    Rattus Norvegicus:
    Even more evidence of the 3 degrees comes from paleoclimatology:
    http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
    As Richard Alley notes, we need the 3 degrees climate sensitivity to explain the magnitude of climate changes in the past.
    (if anyone wonders, yes, I am plugging this lecture. It’s a must-see).

  60. #60 Luke Warmer
    2009/12/23

    Marco, interesting lecture thanks, but the ‘evidence’ of the 3 degrees seemed to be more his say so at the end rather than good correlations.

    I was also very confused by his explanation of CO2 lagging temperatures especially after he made such a big point of it in an early slide. His analogy of credit card debt and interest, to debunk the fact that “interest can’t cause debt” was a very tenuous and potentially misleading analogy. Both debt and interest are money (or lack of). I’m still none the wiser on that one.

  61. #61 Marco
    2009/12/23

    @Luke Warmer,
    He makes it pretty clear that without a 3 degree CO2 sensitivity (it’s one of his last graphs) you cannot explain the temperature increases. 6 degrees is too high, 1.5 degrees too low, 3 degrees comes pretty close, perhaps slightly higher.

    I don’t see the problem with the analogy myself: the interest on the initial debt increases the debt. That is, the interest is a cause of part of your debt, just like CO2 is a cause of part of the temperature increase, which was started by e.g. orbital forcing.

  62. #62 D. Robinson
    2009/12/23

    Re: dghoza

    “No, you’re just another amateur claiming to be smarter than the thousands of professionals working in the field.”

    Actually I’m a professional engineer who never claimed to be smarter than experts in the field, but I do believe there are problems with the math and statistics work of some climatologists.

  63. #63 dhogaza
    2009/12/23

    [Sorry - but at some point the back-and-forth about occupations needs to stop, and this is it -W]

  64. #64 Steve Reynolds
    2009/12/23

    Marco,

    3C may be the right number for climate sensitivity when coming out of an ice age with a large fraction of the globe covered in ice and snow (lots of albedo positive feedback).

    But why should it be the same now with much less positive albedo feedback?

  65. #65 Marco
    2009/12/23

    @Steve Reynolds:
    The albedo feedback is already taken into account, listen to the lecture and you’ll hear Alley mention it.
    Also note that we still have a lot of ice on earth even today.