What if you demanded a debate and nobody came?

I think it's important to note that Dessler was looking specifically for a Texas climate scientist. There are, of course, a fair number of non-Texan non-scientist sceptics who have been badgering Al Gore for a debate for donkey's years.

Maybe Tom DeLay could take this opportunity to begin his political comeback. Surely, global warming is in the Bible somewhere. Maybe one of his old K Street buddies in Big Oil would help him out on background.

@Tony... so, non-scientists have been badgering a non-scientist to debate science and... um... who exactly should care?

Tony, Tony, Tony here is the e-mail that was sent:

I would be interested in having an expert from your group come speak to my atmospheric sciences class.

Unfortunately, I don't have any money to support travel, so I'm hopeful that you have someone local to the area (we could probably pay for mileage to/from Houston, Austin, Dallas, or other local cities).

Thanks!

Where in this note does he ask for a Texan Climate Scientist, as you claim?

OK, in the past apparently he has asked specifically for a scientist in a related field:

A few months ago, Eric Berger of the Houston Chronicle wanted to set up a discussion between a practicing scientist in Texas skeptical of global warming -- just one -- and me. The skeptic had to be a geologist, climate scientist, or someone whose research was at least tangentially related to global warming. He looked all around the State of Texas and couldn't find one.

This is an important development, but it must be used

What is this a slow news week? One guy can't turn up a "denialist" and it's the IPCC consensus all over again? Seriously, I think it's important to note that scientists failing to respond to Steve Milloy or Steve Milloy just not caring about what Andrew Dessler wants enough to do anything is rather distant from the implications being drawn by Dessler, to wit, that there are only a handful of qualified scientists in the world who don't buy AGW. It's not a valid deduction and it's not an induction warranted by the evidence.

It's not a valid deduction and it's not an induction warranted by the evidence.

OK, give us a nice list of QUALIFIED scientists who don't, then, longer than a "handful". More than a dozen, say.

It's not a valid deduction and it's not an induction warranted by the evidence.

You are correct. Considered by itself this is not evidence of much. It is, however, one more small piece of evidence to add on a mountain of evidence higher than all the manure in Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma combined in one pile.

Hence, induction is not completely unwarranted.

Well first let's specify our terms, D. We must define "qualified" and define the point of contention: "don't buy AGW." Since you want me to do it, offer some definitions.

And what exactly does your "OK" mean? Does it mean "OK, you're right that Dessler made a hasty generalization. Let's move on to something else."? Or does it mean "OK, I am going to ignore this valid point you've offered so we can consider an irrelevant one."?

I am betting the latter since whether or not I can cough up 13 scientists has no logical connection to whether or not Dessler made a valid induction from the evidence he presented. But I'll bracket that belief pending your reply.

Well first let's specify our terms, D. We must define "qualified" and define the point of contention: "don't buy AGW." Since you want me to do it, offer some definitions.

You want definitions *after* you stuck your foot in it?

Pfft.

Dhogaza: Having done a fair amount of debate, defining terms is important. How many will I present only to have you claim they are not qualified or I have misunderstood the AGW position? Do I take this to mean you can't meet the challenge of defining the terms you challenged me to meet? I asked for two real simple and necessary clarifications; the best you can offer is "Pfft."? Hmmm.

And I still would like to see you clarify that "OK." It's looking more and more like this is simple irrelevance. Even Dessler eventually admitted he was just citing evidence necessary to convince himself and not a deduction or a statistically significant sampling.

Look, dude, it's your side that keeps splurfing that we can barely walk around campus without stumbling across a scientist who denies the reality of AGW.

So, it shouldn't be hard to come up with a list.

Tell us straight out:

Do you, or do you not, believe that a significant number of qualified scientists (those who work in climatology or related fields like atmospheric physics), disagree with the AGW consensus.

If so, what do you base your belief on.

If so, give us supporting evidence. Names, annotated with qualifications, will do.

Dhogaza:

You are confusing me, an individual, with a "side". I haven't sampled the scientific world in any statistically meaningful fashion. My comment was offered because this story was a big fat non-story that I saw trumpted across the blogosphere like it meant something important. It doesn't.

On the topic you'd apparently prefer to debate, you've introduced at least two ambiguous terms that you don't seem inclined to define. "Qualified" and "significant". Further I don't even know what proposition you want to debate. What do you hold the main tenets of AGW to be? What is the consensus?

I would hold, e.g., that Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick were qualified to disprove the validity of the methodology in MBH. I think my contention is supported by the responses of Edward Wegman and Gerald North and Peter Bloomfield before Congress. Is this anti-AGW in your estimate? Is it just anti-Mann? Is MBH98 & 99 sufficiently important to the AGW case and the subsequent studies that have used it that proving it invalid holds some consequences for the theory as a whole? You really need to define your terms, define the proposition being debated. I'd enjoy debating the point, but I don't want to spend a lot of time wasted on miscommunicating or better yet to research the topic, put something substantive together and just get from you "Gah, not that guy; he's an Exxon shill."

I would hold, e.g., that Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick were qualified to disprove the validity of the methodology in MBH.

Isn't it funny how a debate about the fraction of scientists who deny the reality of AGW usually gets switched into whether M&M have disproved the methodology in MBH. This appears to be a variation of Godwin's Law. i.e. sooner or later any debate about scientists and AGW is switched to whether M&M have disproved the validity of MBH98.

I would hold, e.g., that Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick were qualified to disprove the validity of the methodology in MBH.

I would suggest they did no such thing. They demonstrated a small anomaly in one segment of MBH's methodology that when corrected for proved to be insignificant.

Obsessa hockeysticka

Chris:

I know MM holds a special place in your heart, but seeing that Mann just turned out a paper attempting to rebut MM2005 and reenergize MBH98 it's not like it is a dead issue in climatology. Further, you've offered nothing better than question begging to support "the reality of AGW" here and Dhogaza never even replied with criteria for a debate. By Dessler's standards I can now conclude that only a few dozen such standards exist in the world.

Luminous Beauty:

You can suggest that. I don't think Edward Wegman would agree, though. The NAS panel also seemed to support Wegman in calling MM2005's critques of MBH98 valid.

I know MM holds a special place in your heart

Funny how the person saying this was the first to mention MM on this thread. The words "pot", "kettle", "black" come to mind.

As much as Wegman and North would have liked to overturn MBH98, all they could find was an insignificant anomaly which maximally reduced the level of confidence in the MBH reconstruction by a few percentage points for the oldest portion.

A mole hill that Steve McIntyre and his band of doofii have built into a mountain of mole-shit.

The science has long moved on and reconstructions have gotten better, moving the timeline back an additional millenium in which the evidence is strong that no decade has been warmer than the last decade.

If the clowns at ClimateAudit were right and there was a huge world-wide and simultaneous MWP that greatly exceeded modern global temperatures it would mean that climate sensitivity would likely be greater than estimated and AGW worse than predicted, but being armchair pseudo-scientists they are so focused on attacking the messenger they haven't a clue exactly what it is they are arguing.

LB:

Why would North who sat on the NAS panel be invested in overturning MBH? Why would Edward Wegman, chair of the NAS Committee on Theoretical and Applied Stat.? You make a lot of libelous assertions but not much substantive.

Wegman said MM2005 was valid in its critiques of MBH; one such is below. Wegman specifically commented on the issue that everyone who is MBH friendly seems to avoid: bristlecone pines are weighted heavily in Mann's proxy study and not only did the NAS recommend against their use, the evidence is looking decent that they, especially strip bark trees, are poor temperature proxies.

http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/mcintyre.ee.2005.pdf

"The modification caused the PC1 to be dominated by a subset of
bristlecone pine ring width series which are widely doubted to be reliable
temperature proxies."

Science has not "moved on" and the climatology community still defends and even worse cites to MBH98 & 99. Mann just released a paper on it this year. Whatever secret knowledge you have about Wegman and North, both as well as Peter Bloomfield of the NAS, all testified under oath before Congress either directly [Wegman] or by implication [North and Bloomfield] that MM2005 was valid and MBH wasn't.

Kevin, I curious about where in the NAS report did they recommend against using bristlecone proxies.

Kevin,

You are a dendroclimatologist? Can you explain why coring from strip-bark locations on bcps is contraindicative to temperature sensitivity? Or is this something you are taking on faith? Do you know why some trees are good temperature sensitive proxies while others are not?

ClimateAudit "...is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Subtle slander is Steve Mac's first principle.

The 'hockeystick'persists even without PCA or tree-rings:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ei/ei_nodendro.html

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=114

The one clue to identify the clueless:

reenergize MBH98

Haw!. You crack us up, son.

Best,

D

not only did the NAS recommend against their use

The only thing NAS ever said was:

"While "strip-bark" samples should be avoided for temperature reconstructions,"

which was in response to their statement:

"The possibility that increasing tree ring widths in modern times might be driven by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations,".

This means they had no problem at all with using strip-bark samples that were not affected by increased CO2 (such as before 1750 AD) and they did not say strip-bark samples must be avoided. For example, if you can determine a correction for the increased CO2 or if you could calibrate off a period before 1750 AD then you should be able to use these proxies without any problem. McIntyre and his acolytes refuse to understand this point and appear to suffer cognitive failure because it conflicts with their world-view.

testified under oath before Congress either directly [Wegman] or by implication [North and Bloomfield] that MM2005

published in a journal (E&E) that is not in the list of the top 6000 peer-reviewed journals

was valid and MBH

publish in Nature, number 10 on the impact factor list of peer-reviwed journals

wasn't.

Sure, that is so believable.

LB:

I think dendroclimatologists are taking it on faith that any trees are good temperature proxies. These trees have been alive for millenia and they can be certain that during millenia of unobserved growth the main factor affecting those trees was temperature alone? No, I am not a dendrochronologist or climatologist and especially with the divergence "problem" I am not sure that any empirical evidence exists that this is a field of science at all, rather than a logical exploration of some, in principle, unobservable hypotheses. If trees don't hold up as temperature proxies now, how speculative is it that they ever did, as opposed to their growth reflecting any number of varying influences? And no, I don't know the necessary and sufficient conditions of a tree being a good temp. proxy; I think the divergence issue means they don't either. When your observations are inconsistent with your hypotheses, the hypothesis is the thing you are supposed to jettison.

Chris:

You quoted the NAS recommending against the use of strip bark trees in temp. reconstructions [what was MBH again?] while denying they said such trees were to be avoided. I wasn't referring to avoiding BCPs as dance partners. I meant in temperature studies.

"The possibility that increasing tree ring widths in modern times might be driven by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations,".

Meaning that the evidence they are good temperature proxies is not empirically corroborated in contemporary times.

"For example, if you can determine a correction for the increased CO2 or if you could calibrate off a period before 1750 AD then you should be able to use these proxies without any problem. McIntyre and his acolytes refuse to understand this point and appear to suffer cognitive failure because it conflicts with their world-view."

Assuming they are temperature proxies at all. And how would this "correction" be verified?

Your further defense of MBH and indictment of MM is simply an argument from popularity fallacy.

Wegman, North and Bloomfield all hold credibility in the field upon which they were commenting and the commentary is clear. Their choice to support the conclusions of a study from a non-top 6000 peer reviewed journal is interesting, but not conclusive of anything in particular except that they believe MM2005 was valid and MBH98 wasn't.

Kevin,

"And no, I don't know the necessary and sufficient conditions of a tree being a good temp. proxy"

You have just impeached yourself.

they said such trees were to be avoided

NAS said "should be avoided", not "were to be avoided". Stop lying Kevin.

"The possibility that increasing tree ring widths in modern times might be driven by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations,".

Meaning that the evidence they are good temperature proxies is not empirically corroborated in contemporary times.

That should be meaning that the evidence that they are good proxies except with a CO2 related factor is empirically corroborated in contemporary times.

Assuming they are temperature proxies at all.

NAS had no significant problem with them at all before AD 1750. Are you doubting NAS?

And how would this "correction" be verified?

If you ever took the time to read MBH99 (Figure 1), you might find out.

testified under oath before Congress .. by implication [North and Bloomfield]

That's an interesting concept, testifying by implication. I wonder if we should trust Kevin's conclusion.

Wegman, .. hold credibility in the field

Sure, with a favourite place to publish being the Journal of the American Statistical Association (impact factor 1.1), I'm sure he is one of the world's leading scientists.

Kevin,

You appear to believe the hypothesis of AGW hinges on the publication of MBH '98 in Nature. This is one of the classic obfuscations of the sceptics. Try to convince the lay public that all of the 'climate change eggs' are in one basket. Then expend immense energy attacking that single source. Inhofe and Barton did their part. But the truth is, like it or not, that AGW was being discussed well before the publication of the Mann et al. paper. In the early 1990's there was already immense discussion and concern over the effects of the human combustion of fossil fuels in driving climate change. Frankly, you and your brethren who are focusing your rage on MBH '98 are a sad lot.

Crass O'Neill said #29:
"Sure, with a favourite place to publish being the Journal of the American Statistical Association (impact factor 1.1), I'm sure he [Wegman] is one of the world's leading scientists". Surely not compared with Crass, who now qualifies for promotion to the new rank of Cretin O'Neill, whose favourite Journal is Woman's Own which for some unaccountable reason never cites articles by Wegman in the Journal of the American Statistical Association. To all except the Cretin, an impact of 1.98 [ACTUAL for 2004 not Cretin's 1.1, and ACTUAL 4.25 for 2000-2004, and ACTUAL 22.01 for 1981-2004] in a highly esoteric and restricted field dealing only with statistics methodology rather than with SEX like Bioinformatics is fully consistent with Wegman's reputation as one of the world's leading statisticians pace Woman's Own.

But then Cretin also said: 'NAS said "should be avoided", not "were to be avoided". Stop lying Kevin.' What is the difference? Even Woman's Own would not be so silly. And who is the LIAR when it comes to reporting Impact Factors? Cretin.
depp=true
notiz=[Disemvowelled. Please stop the name calling.]

Jeff:

You appear to be offering a straw man argument. I make no such claim because I don't believe it. I expend energy on that particular source because people keep defending it despite the plain and above all public testimony from the NAS and one of its chairs that it has an invalid methodology. Frankly, your inability to simply grant MBH98 was bad science despite heavily influencing the IPCC is sad.

LB: You have a curious view of impeachment. If anyone knew all of the necessary and sufficient conditions of a tree being a good temp. proxy then there would be no divergence issue in dendroclimatology.

Chris:

If you can explain a relevant semantic difference between "should be avoided" and "were to be avoided" have at. I see none. They are both normative recommendations AGAINST using such trees in temp. studies.

This:"The possibility that increasing tree ring widths in modern times might be driven by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations,".

Does not entail this:"That should be meaning that the evidence that they are good proxies except with a CO2 related factor is empirically corroborated in contemporary times."

"NAS had no significant problem with them at all before AD 1750. Are you doubting NAS?"

Sure. NAS can't make mistakes? NAS did a survey of extant studies. If the studies have an erroneous assumption, like trees making good proxies, NAS would be wrong and its process would not be designed to catch such errors.

And if you don't trust my claims about the entailments of North and Bloomfield's testimony, say why. They plainly said they supported Wegman's lengthier analysis. Wegman said MM2005's critiques of MBH98 were valid.

Wegman chairs an NAS Committee. Are you doubting NAS? If so, have a valid reason, something other than impact factor.

I note that once again it is OK by Tim Lambert for Chris O'Neill to call Kevin a liar, and to abuse me serially, but not for me to call O'Neill a liar when he wilfully cites an incorrect impact factor. O'Neill said #29: "Sure, with a favourite place to publish being the Journal of the American Statistical Association (impact factor 1.1), I'm sure he [Wegman] is one of the world's leading scientists". Impact factors are not the last word on scientific standing, but Wegman's is exceptional by any standards. In any case, to all except O'Neill, an impact of 1.98 [that is the ACTUAL for 2004 not O'Neill's 1.1, and the ACTUAL was 4.25 for 2000-2004, and the ACTUAL is the exceptionally high 22.01 for 1981-2004, the period covering much of Wegman's work, and indicating its longevity] in a highly esoteric and restricted field dealing only with statistics methodology is fully consistent with Wegman's reputation as one of the world's leading statisticians.
But then as I noted before Kevin himself - but was disemvowelled - O'Neill's claim that Kevin lied when he said: 'NAS said "should be avoided", not "were to be avoided". Stop lying Kevin.' was meaningless. Or perhaps Tim Lambert could elucidate the difference and explain why O'Neill is not merely misleading when it comes to his reporting of Impact Factors? But then O'Neill leads a charmed life here, and is allowed to get away with slurs on giants like Wegman, just as you allowed Gould to accuse Gary Kasparov here of being a chess cheat.

Tim Curtin asks: Sure. NAS can't make mistakes?

Lindzen is a member

Eli: I have never mentioned NAS or Lindzen, but also feel sure that Lindzen has a higher impact factor than even your own good self. Do correct me if I am wrong.

"should be avoided" does not mean the same as "must be avoided" or words that mean the same as "must be avoided". To understand the significance of the "should be avoided" statement and when it does or does not have some effect, the relevent text needs to be read and understood. Anything less is just playing with words as we have seen above from Kevin.

Does not entail this:"That should be meaning that the evidence that they are good proxies except with a CO2 related factor is empirically corroborated in contemporary times."

I was referring to the fact that you ignored that there is such an empirical corroboration which you would have been aware of if you had read and understood MBH99.

Chris:

A good sign you are spinning pointlessly is your failure to actually articulate the difference between the terms you claim make me a liar.

From Merriam Webster online:
Should
verbal auxiliary
1archaic a: will have to : *must* b: will be able to : can
2 a--used to express a command or exhortation b--used in laws, regulations, or directives to express what is mandatory

Must
verbal auxiliary
1 a: be commanded or requested to b: be urged to : ought by all means to
2: be required by immediate or future need or purpose to
3 a: be obliged to : be compelled by social considerations to b: be required by law, custom, or moral conscience to c: be determined to

So 'should' is used to: mean 'must', express a command and also what is mandatory.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you're full of "rhetoric". Like I mentioned and you either failed to comprehend or rebut, the NAS offered a [scientific] normative recommendation against using the trees used in MBH98. It shouldn't be a hard point to grasp or grant.

Kevin

A good sign you are spinning pointlessly is that you continue to do nothing more than play with words. I can play with words too. How about Should: Used to express probability or expectation, i.e. not certainty. You can pick out which ever dictionary meaning you prefer to believe applies to NAS's statement but that is totally meaningless without understanding why NAS made that statement.

Chris:

'They should arrive at noon' was the example sentence you left out. You picked the wrong usage for the context. Oh well.

And I quoted one reason for it:

"The possibility that increasing tree ring widths in modern times might be driven by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations"

If the confounding factor exists now while the trees are under observation, how many such opportunities existed in millenia of unobserved growth? Now we have the privilege of hypothesizing why there is a divergence problem with tree rings as temp. proxies. Were there similar problems in the past?

"If the confounding factor exists now while the trees are under observation, how many such opportunities existed in millenia of unobserved growth?"

Finally we're past the word play. Certainly took long enough. Maybe there were other opportunities but they weren't the basis of the NAS statement. Proxies are not just compared with modern observations. They are compared with other proxies for consistency e.g. Figure 1 of MBH99.

"You picked the wrong usage for the context."

Sure if you say so.

Again, and again, and again, the wisdom of not replying to the trolls, but rather, collecting the troll arguments then replying generally and linking to the reply thereafter is reinforced for me. Once you descend to colloquy with them, it's turtles all the way down.

A. They deny consensus. ("not how science works")
B. They deny peer review ("bogus")
C. They deny the value of data ("contaminated" "just in it for the money" when the money is going towards data.)
D. They deny the value of models ("you can prove anything with models")

This is straightforward anti-science denialism. And they cycle the disinformation REGARDLESS of your response. They want nothing more than a Monty Pythonesque argument. Never give them one.